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Show 142 WESTERN WILDS. THE FALLEN MONARCH. thick for their length ; but others stretch away in long, graceful col-umns of arborescent proportions, height, thickness, and branches, all in such perfect correspondence, that half the eifect of their size is lost ; there is such harmony in adjacent trees, and between different parts of the same tree, that the sense of size is lessened by that of elegant uni-formity. Most of the trees of two or three hundred feet in height, have a decidedly stumpy appearance, looking like gigantic stubs rather than trees. At first view it seemed to me the tops must have been broken off. The branches add much to this-illusion from the fact that they bend downward, starting even from the body of the tree at an angle of twenty degrees below the horizontal. This is caused by the weight of winter snows, continued annually through all the thousands of years of their growth. The smallest of these adjacent trees in an Ohio forest would create astonishment; yet here they appear trifling, as mere striplings shading off and filling nature's interval between the mammoths and common underbrush. Strangest of all, other things appear much dwarfed. As the coach drives between the " Two Guardsmen/' at the entrance of the Grove, the horses appear like mere ponies, shrunk to half their natural size. My companion, as he leans against the mon-strous trunk, and extends his arms for me to judge its width by them, appears a mere manikin ; the smallest tree, one I had guessed at four feet, spreads a foot or two on either side beyond the natural reach of his fingers, and dwarfs him amazingly by comparison. Here is the place for man to realize his littleness. In the evening shades of these green arches how naturally the mind reverts to thoughts of the vast, the unchangeable, the infinite. Heaven itself seems nearer in our thoughts; riotous mirth is hushed; solemn awe fills the soul, and in low- toned exclamations alone we briefly converse. But forty miles of staging over bowlders and rocky up- grade, with dust enough in us to start a second Adam, incline our party to think more of supper and bed, than of the biggest trees nature can produce. These comforts, first- class, are found at the Big- Tree Hotel, and for a summer resort one* can spend weeks very pleasantly there. Daylight at 4.30 A. M. shone through the green arches with a new and wondrous beauty, and we awoke to the contemplation of a new world, another |
