The Valley of the Giants | Page 3

was an employer of labour
now, well known in San Francisco as a manufacturer of split-redwood
products, the purchasers sending their own schooners for the cargo.
And presently John Cardigan mortgaged all of his timber holdings with

a San Francisco bank, made a heap of his winnings, and like a true
adventurer staked his all on a new venture--the first sawmill in
Humboldt County. The timbers for it were hewed out by hand; the
boards and planking were whipsawed.
It was a tiny mill, judged by present-day standards, for in a
fourteen-hour working day John Cardigan and his men could not cut
more than twenty thousand feet of lumber. Nevertheless, when
Cardigan looked at his mill, his great heart would swell with pride.
Built on tidewater and at the mouth of a large slough in the waters of
which he stored the logs his woods-crew cut and peeled for the bull-
whackers to haul with ox-teams down a mile-long skid-road, vessels
could come to Cardigan's mill dock to load and lie safely in twenty feet
of water at low tide. Also this dock was sufficiently far up the bay to be
sheltered from the heavy seas that rolled in from Humboldt Bar, while
the level land that stretched inland to the timber-line constituted the
only logical townsite on the bay.
"Here," said John Cardigan to himself exultingly when a long-drawn
wail told him his circular saw was biting into the first redwood log to
be milled since the world began, "I shall build a city and call it Sequoia.
By to-morrow I shall have cut sufficient timber to make a start. First I
shall build for my employees better homes than the rude shacks and
tent-houses they now occupy; then I shall build myself a fine residence
with six rooms, and the room that faces on the bay shall be the parlour.
When I can afford it, I shall build a larger mill, employ more men, and
build more houses. I shall encourage tradesmen to set up in business in
Sequoia, and to my city I shall present a church and a schoolhouse. We
shall have a volunteer fire department, and if God is good, I shall, at a
later date, get out some long-length fir-timber and build a schooner to
freight my lumber to market. And she shall have three masts instead of
two, and carry half a million feet of lumber instead of two hundred
thousand. First, however, I must build a steam tugboat to tow my
schooner in and out over Humboldt Bar. And after that--ah, well! That
is sufficient for the present."

CHAPTER II
Thus did John Cardigan dream, and as he dreamed he worked. The city
of Sequoia was born with the Argonaut's six-room mansion of rough
redwood boards and a dozen three-room cabins with lean-to kitchens;
and the tradespeople came when John Cardigan, with something of the
largeness of his own redwood trees, gave them ground and lumber in
order to encourage the building of their enterprises. Also the dream of
the schoolhouse and the church came true, as did the steam tugboat and
the schooner with three masts. The mill was enlarged until it could cut
forty thousand feet on a twelve-hour shift, and a planer and machines
for making rustic siding and tongued-and-grooved flooring and ceiling
were installed. More ox-teams appeared upon the skid-road, which was
longer now; the cry of "Timber-r-r!" and the thunderous roar of a
falling redwood grew fainter and fainter as the forest receded from the
bay shore, and at last the whine of the saws silenced these sounds
forever in Sequoia.
At forty John Cardigan was younger than most men at thirty, albeit he
worked fourteen hours a day, slept eight, and consumed the remaining
two at his meals. But through all those fruitful years of toil he had still
found time to dream, and the spell of the redwoods had lost none of its
potency. He was still checker-boarding the forested townships with his
adverse holdings--the key-positions to the timber in back of beyond
which some day should come to his hand. Also he had competition now:
other sawmills dotted the bay shore; other three- masted schooners
carried Humboldt redwood to the world beyond the bar, over which
they were escorted by other and more powerful steam- tugs. This
competition John Cardigan welcomed and enjoyed, however, for he had
been first in Humboldt, and the townsite and a mile of tidelands
fronting on deep water were his; hence each incoming adventurer
merely helped his dream of a city to come true.
At forty-two Cardigan was the first mayor of Sequoia. At forty-four he
was standing on his dock one day, watching his tug kick into her berth
the first square-rigged ship that had ever come to Humboldt Bay