Description
The Valley of the Giants
CHAPTER I
In the summer of 1850 a topsail schooner slipped into the cove under
Trinidad Head and dropped anchor at the edge of the kelp-fields. Fifteen
minutes later her small-boat deposited on the beach a man armed with
long squirrel-rifle and an axe, and carrying food and clothing in a
brown canvas pack. From the beach he watched the boat return and saw the
schooner weigh anchor and stand out to sea before the northwest trades.
When she had disappeared from his ken, he swung his pack to his broad
and powerful back and strode resolutely into the timber at the mouth of
a little river.
The man was John Cardigan; in that lonely, hostile land he was the first
pioneer. This is the tale of Cardigan and Cardigan’s son, for in his
chosen land the pioneer leader in the gigantic task of hewing a path for
civilization was to know the bliss of woman’s love and of parenthood,
and the sorrow that comes of the loss of a perfect mate; he was to know
the tremendous joy of accomplishment and worldly success after infinite
labour; and in the sunset of life he was to know the dull despair of
failure and ruin. Because of these things there is a tale to be told,
the tale of Cardigan’s son, who, when his sire fell in the fray, took up
the fight to save his heritage–a tale of life with its love and hate,
its battle, victory, defeat, labour, joy, and sorrow, a tale of that
unconquerable spirit of youth which spurred Bryce Cardigan to lead a
forlorn hope for the sake not of wealth but of an ideal. Hark, then, to
this tale of Cardigan’s redwoods:
Along the coast of California, through the secret valleys and over the
tumbled foothills of the Coast Range, extends a belt of timber of an
average width of thirty miles. In approaching it from the Oregon line
the
Product ID: 9781776790289
Sku: 9781776790289
