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Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) http://tinyurl.com/CDoyle

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Words are Futile

From Our Second American Adventure, 1924.

Reader: Wm Leslie Howard

For generations California coast redwoods have stunned admirers and inspired awe—even within the hearts of the most analytical of observers.

Creator of the great detective character Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle was all but struck dumb by the beauty that overwhelmed him on a visit to Muir Woods.

Sequoia sempervirens, Coast Redwood or California Redwood in Muir Woods National Monument. Larger.

We walked round the crest of the mountain, and then descended in a car which ran by its own gravity, a delightful mode of progression when it continues for nearly an hour. The end of this wonderful toboggan course was the Muir Woods, where in a cleft of the hill the great sequoias lie. All words are futile to describe the tremendous majesty of the great redwoods, and mere figures such as three hundred feet as their height, or the fact that a hollow trunk can contain thirty-six people, leave the imagination cold. One has to be alone or with some single, very intimate companion to get the true impression, the deep silence of the grove, the shadowy religious light, the tremendous majesty of the red columns, the vistas between them, the solemn subconscious effect produced by their two thousand years of age.

Arthur Conan Doyle traveled throughout the world. He published Our Second American Adventure in 1924.

–Contributed by Kerrie Foy-Babbage