The Story of a Thousand Year Pine
Enos A. Mills
THE STORY OF A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
THE STORY OF A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
ILLUSTRATED
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1909 AND 1914, BY ENOS A. MILLS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ILLUSTRATIONS
| A Veteran Western Yellow Pine | Frontispiece |
| Some of “Old Pine’s” Neighbors | 8 |
| Cliff Dwellings on the Mesa Verde | 24 |
| The Mesa Verde | 36 |
THE STORY OF A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
I
The peculiar charm and fascination that trees exert over many people Ihad always felt from childhood, but it was that great nature-lover,John Muir, who first showed me how and where to learn their language.Few trees, however, ever held for me such an attraction as did agigantic and[Pg 4] venerable yellow pine which I discovered one autumn dayseveral years ago while exploring the southern Rockies. It grew withinsight of the Cliff-Dwellers’ Mesa Verde, which stands at the corner offour States, and as I came upon it one evening just as the sun wassetting over that mysterious tableland, its character and heroicproportions made an impression upon me that I shall never forget, andwhich familiar acquaintance only served to deepen while it yet livedand before the axeman came. Many a time I returned to build mycamp-fire by it and have a day or a night in its solitary and noblecompany. I learned afterwards that it had been given the name “OldPine,” and it certainly had an impressiveness[Pg 5] quite compatible withthe age and dignity which go with a thousand years of life.
When, one day, the sawmill-man at Manc