Redwood

“ The driver beside him was a silent man, or stricken into silence by the conditions of his journey. He answered Redwood's brief questions in monosyllables, and gruffly. Athwart the southern sky the beams of searchlights waved noiseless passes; the sole strange evidences of life they seemed in all that derelict world about the hurrying machine. ”

“ Redwood descended upon a platform lit only by a hand lantern and swept by the cool night breeze. The quiet of that derelict, wood-set, weed-embedded suburb--for all the inhabitants had taken refuge in London at the outbreak of yesterday's conflict--became instantly impressive. His conductor took him down the steps to where a motor car was waiting with blazing lights--the only lights to be seen--handed him over to the care of the driver and bade him farewell.
"You will do your best for us," he said, with an imitation of his master's manner, as he held Redwood's hand. ”

“ There is also a difference in the size of these trees; the redwood is often three hundred feet high, but is less in girth than its relative in the Sierras. There is not much underbrush and little sunshine in the cool, green redwood forests, each tree rising tall and stately for a hundred feet without branches, while the green tops seem almost to touch the sky as one looks up. Through the woods one hears the blue jay scream and chatter, and the tap, tap of the woodpecker as he drills holes in the bark to fill with acorns for his winter store. ”

“ Just then Redwood turned and waved his hand to somebody near us.
“Look out; he wants you,” said Langrish.
“Me?” said I, flabbergasted.
“Don’t you see him beckoning? Look alive, or you’ll catch it.”
I could hardly believe it; and yet everybody near looked round at me in apparent wonder at my delay.
Perhaps Redwood had heard something about me from Tempest and wanted to—
“Go on,” said Trimble, giving me a shove. “If he wants to stick you in the Fifteen, tell him it’s not good enough.” ”

“ The redwood comes down to the sea on the western slopes of the Coast Range, from southern Oregon to Monterey County in California, tempting the lumberman by the wonderful wealth and accessibility of these groves of giant trees. The wood is soft, satiny, red, like the thick, fibrous, furrowed bark that clothes the tall, fluted trunks. ”

“ Outside, darkling the whole room, a single leaf of giant Virginia creeper tapped unheeded on the pane.
Redwood became anxious to end this amazing monologue, to escape to sanity and judgment, to that beleaguered camp, the fastness of the future, where, at the very nucleus of greatness, the Sons were gathered together. For that this talking was endured. He had a curious impression that unless this monologue ended he would presently find himself carried away by it, that he must fight against Caterham’s voice as one fights against a drug. Facts had altered and were altering beneath that spell. ”

“ Originally this splendid tree occupied a far more extensive area in California and Oregon than the Wellingtonia; but lumberers have swept away great tracts of forest. In one respect the Redwood resists extermination better than any other of its kin, being almost, if not quite, unique among conifers (the yew being no longer classed as a conifer) in sending up suckers profusely, which secures natural regeneration after the parent trees have been felled. ”

“ As the shining steel bites into the wood the noise almost deafens you and the mill shakes with the thunder of log-carriage and feeders. Useless ends, slabs, and refuse are burnt in the sawdust pit, where the fires never go out. Very much of the tree is wasted and all the limbs. The redwood tree has so much life and strength, however, that it sends up bright green sprouts around the burnt stump, and standing trees charred outside to the tops will have new branches the next season. ”

“ Endless misunderstanding. All life is that. Great and little cannot understand one another. But in every child born of man, Father Redwood, lurks some seed of greatness—waiting for the Food."
"Then I am to go to Caterham again and tell him———"
"You will stay with us, Father Redwood. Our answer goes to Caterham at dawn."
"He says that he will fight. . . ."
"So be it," said young Redwood, and his brethren murmured assent.
"The iron waits," cried a voice, and the two giants who were working in the corner began a rhythmic hammering that made a mighty music to the scene. ”

“ The redwood is more abundant than the giant sequoia, and in the Humboldt forests it forms magnificent stands of timber from which over one million feet of lumber have been cut from one acre.
The distribution of the redwood is an excellent illustration of the delicate balance held between vegetation and climatic environment. It forms a distinct belt along the coast ranges of central and northern California, never extending inland more than twenty or thirty miles and conforming with striking significance to the coastal fog belt. ”

“ Redwood is a handsome tree, but not so loftie as the Mastick, excellent timber to work, for it is not so hard as some others, which is the cause they seldome break their tooles in working it, and that is the reason the work-men commend it above others. ’Tis a midling tree for sise, the body about two foot and a halfe diameter. ”

“ Captain Redwood was a man of too much intelligence, and too well-informed, to have belief in this fabulous tale of the olden time. Still he knew there was enough truth in it to account for all that had occurred—for the vertigo and vomiting, the horrible nausea and utter prostration of strength that had come upon them unconsciously. They had made their camp under one of these baneful trees—the true upas (antiaris toxicaria) ; they had kindled a fire beneath it, building it close to the trunk—in fact, against it; the smoke had ascended among its leaves ”

“ The question of whether it pays to hold redwood land is therefore almost wholly local, but when conditions are favorable it can be answered affirmatively, because of the extremely rapid growth, with less doubt than of almost any other species. ”

“ Demand for fence posts, railway ties and cooperage increases. Quantities of lumber are shipped east to take the place of white pine no longer obtainable.
In cultivation the redwood is a graceful, quick-growing, beautiful evergreen, successful in the Southeastern states, and often met in European parks and gardens. Weeping forms are very popular abroad. ”

“ Redwood, fine fellow that he was, did not try to pump me, and the ladies, who kept up most of the talk, most conveniently worded their observations in such a form as not to call for a reply.
After tea, however, I did find myself talking to Mrs Redwood about my mother, and presently to Redwood about Dangerfield and my previous acquaintance with Tempest and Brown.
“Brown iii. is a town-boy,” said the captain. “I wish we’d had him in. Is he a member of your wonderful club, by the way?” ”

“ They won't do for any settlement where they build mud-and-stick chimneys on the outside of houses, and fry meat within.
It is good to get into a forest where there is not a mark of the woodman's axe. The redwood is, after all, one of the handsomest coniferous trees in [65] the world. It grows only in a good soil and a moist climate. ”

“ As soon as a redwood is cut down or burned it sends up a crowd of eager, hopeful shoots, which, if allowed to grow, would in a few decades attain a height of a hundred feet, and the strongest of them would finally become giants as great as the original tree. Gigantic second and third growth trees are found in the redwoods, forming magnificent temple-like circles around charred ruins more than a thousand years old. But not one denuded acre in a hundred is allowed to raise a new forest growth. ”

“ The importance of this proposed Redwood Park to Humboldt and Del Norte Counties, the State of California, and to the whole of North America, even to the whole world, can scarcely be estimated. Within comparatively a few generations the giant redwood forests of California will be a thing of the past; the woodsman’s ax and the ravenous sawmills will have swept them away, even as the great pine and hardwood forests of Michigan and Wisconsin have been wiped out of existence. ”

“ The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. It extends along the western slope, in a nearly continuous belt about ten miles wide, from beyond the Oregon boundary to the south of Santa Cruz, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, and in massive, sustained grandeur and closeness of growth surpasses all the other timber woods of the world. ”

“ Redwood walked back with us, and from certain fragments of conversation which fell on my ears I was able to gather something of the result of the conference.
“If it were only yourself, you know,” said Redwood, “I’d say stick out.”
“But,” said Tempest, “he knows I’m not sorry, even if I say so.”
“It’s a choice between humble pie and Low Heath losing you,” said the captain.
“Not much loss.”
“That’s all you know. There’s not a fellow we could spare less.”
They walked on in silence; then Redwood said,—
“England ought to see that Jarman rots everything the way he goes on. ”

“ Redwood cones are one inch or less in length. They ripen in one season. Seeds are quite small, and are equipped with wings. The bark is thick, but is much thinner than the bark of bigtrees, though it is in great ridges like the bark of that species. The habits of the two species, as to form of crown, are similar. Young redwoods, particularly if they grow in the open, develop symmetrical and conical crowns which they retain until the trunks are a foot or more in diameter. ”

“ You kids can make it pretty hot in a house if you choose.”
“Oh, we’re all backing up Tempest,” said I, “especially now he’s got his colours.”
“All serene,” said the captain; “he’ll pull through well, then.”
I stayed till it was time for Redwood to go over to the school for a committee of the Sports Club. I did not leave Number 3 without a standing invitation to come in whenever I liked, or without painful apologies for the contumacy of Mamie.
Redwood and I had just reached the bridge when some one confronted us whom I recognised at once as Mr Jarman.
“Ah, Redwood, you’ve a meeting on. ”

“ Redwood realized that his growth was indeed going on indefinitely and logically—and this she really did for the first time when the motor-perambulator arrived—she gave way to a passion of grief. She declared she never wished to enter her nursery again, wished she was dead, wished the child was dead, wished everybody was dead, wished she had never married Redwood, wished no one ever married anybody, Ajaxed a little, and retired to her own room, where she lived almost exclusively on chicken broth for three days. ”

“ Propagation is done from suckers, for, as is the case with some other trees—the English elm, for instance—the production of fertile seed is diminished or disappears with the acquirement of the suckering habit.
It has been claimed for the Redwood that it is the tallest growth in the world; but Australians dispute its title to that distinction on behalf of Eucalyptus amygdalina. The data for a verdict are as follows: In 1896 Professor Sargent measured a Redwood felled on the Eel River, and found it to be 340 feet high and 31 feet 3 inches in girth at 61⁄2 feet from the ground. ”

“ Thousands of square miles of pure forest of this species occur in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Here the trees stand even, like wheat in a grain field, the tallest reach four hundred feet, the redwood its only rival. Nowhere but in the redwood forests is there such a heavy stand of timber on this continent. No forest tree except sequoias equals the Douglas spruce in massiveness of trunk and yield of straight-grained lumber. ”

“ If the season is right there will be salmon running in Klamath and Trinity rivers or deer in the steep-sided cañons. [144] And everywhere there will be the redwoods. It is not, however, in the crowds that the tree reveals itself. Far down the deforested hills of Sonoma, in isolated groves, in small groups or singles on the tops of bossy, brass-coloured hills, it takes on character and charm.
A redwood grove is a three-story affair. ”

“ The footman sat beside him with folded arms and a face of inflexible certainties. Then the great lady herself became visible, in a hat and mantle disdainfully inelegant, peering through her glasses. Two young ladies protruded necks and peered also.
The Vicar passing on the other side swept off the hat from his David’s brow unheeded....
Redwood remained standing in the doorway for a long time after the carriage had passed, his hands folded behind him. His eyes went to the green, grey upland of down, and into the cloud-curdled sky, and came back to the glass-set wall. ”

“ Miss Redwood, as I soon discovered, was a timid, wilting individual, who had brought him successfully through the baby diseases and had taught him the elementary things, because that was what she was paid for, corrected his table manners and tried to make him the kind of boy that she would have preferred to be herself had nature fortunately not decided the matter otherwise, and chameleon-like, Jerry reflected her tepor, her supineness and femininity. ”

“ When Redwood came to remonstrate with her, she banged pillows about and wept and tangled her hair.
“He’s all right,” said Redwood. “He’s all the better for being big. You wouldn’t like him smaller than other people’s children.”
“I want him to be like other children, neither smaller nor bigger. I wanted him to be a nice little boy, just as Georgina Phyllis is a nice little girl, and I wanted to bring him up nicely in a nice way, and here he is”—and the unfortunate woman’s voice broke—“wearing number four grown-up shoes and being wheeled about by—booboo!—Petroleum! ”