For So
Large A Tree It Is Astonishing How Many Find Nourishment And Space To
Grow On Any Given Area.
The magnificent shafts push their spires into
the sky close together with as regular a growth as that of a well-tilled field of grain.
And no ground has been better tilled for the
growth of trees than that on which these forests are growing. For it
has been thoroughly ploughed and rolled by the mighty glaciers from
the mountains, and sifted and mellowed and outspread in beds hundreds
of feet in depth by the broad streams that issued from their fronts at
the time of their recession, after they had long covered all the land.
The largest tree of this species that I have myself measured was
nearly twelve feet in diameter at a height of five feet from the
ground, and, as near as I could make out under the circumstances,
about three hundred feet in length. It stood near the head of the
Sound not far from Olympia. I have seen a few others, both near the
coast and thirty or forty miles back in the interior, that were from
eight to ten feet in diameter, measured above their bulging insteps;
and many from six to seven feet. I have heard of some that were said
to be three hundred and twenty-five feet in height and fifteen feet in
diameter, but none that I measured were so large, though it is not at
all unlikely that such colossal giants do exist where conditions of
soil and exposure are surpassingly favorable.
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