This is a timber nearly as lasting
as solid granite. For ship or boat lumber, the clear stuff from sound
wood is so exceedingly light, stiff, and durable, and so plenty and
available, that few timbers excel it, unless the yellow cedar or cyprus
(_Cupressus nutkaensis_) is excepted, which is a little tougher,
stronger, perhaps more elastic, and equally durable, if judged apart
from thorough tests and careful data, which, it has been remarked, the
apathy or ignorance of some governments appear to deem unworthy their
sublime attention. There are said to be in California a thousand times
more and better kinds of naval timbers on government lands as important
to preserve as the live oaks of the South Atlantic States. It has been
asserted as probable that, after due investigation, California would be
found to possess a vast amount of the best naval timber in the world, a
hundredfold more lasting than the best now in use, if a few woods are
excepted, of which there is understood to be no very adequate supply.
The great Washington cedar (_Sequoia gigantea_) is another important
California tree. The great sequoian timber belt lies along the Sierras,
upon the first exposed mountain side--moraines of recent retiring
glaciers--that face the Pacific, from Calaveras on the north to near the
head of Deer Creek on the south--a distance of 200 miles, or a little
above 38 degrees north to a little below 36 degrees; altitude 5,000 to
8,000 feet, and rarely 8,400 feet.
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