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WHEN we force our way into
the depths of the forests, following any of the rivers back to their
fountains, we find that the bulk of the woods is made up of the Douglas
spruce (Pseudotsvga Douglasil) named in honor of David Douglas, an
enthusiastic botanical explorer of early Hudson's Bay times. It is not only
a very large tree but a very beautiful one, with lively bright-green
drooping foliage, handsome pendent cones, and a shaft exquisitely straight
and regular. For so large a tree it is astonishing how many find nourishment
and space to grow on any given area. The magnificent shafts push their
spires into the sky close together with as regular a growth as that of a
well-tilled field of grain. And no ground has been better tilled for the
growth of trees than that on which these forests are growing. For it has
been thoroughly ploughed and rolled by the mighty glaciers from the
mountains, and sifted and mellowed and outspread in beds hundreds of feet in
depth by the broad streams that issued from their fronts at the time of
their recession, after they had long covered all the land.
The largest tree of this
species that I have myself measured was nearly twelve feet in diameter at a
height of five feet from the ground, and, as near as I could make out under
the circumstances, about three hundred feet in length. It stood near the
head of the Sound not far from Olympia. I have seen a few others, both near
the coast and thirty or forty miles back in the interior, that were from
eight to ten feet in diameter, measured above their bulging insteps; and
many from six to seven feet. I have heard of some that were said to be three
hundred and twenty-five feet in height and fifteen feet in diameter, but
none that I measured were so large, though it is not at all unlikely that
such colossal giants do exist where conditions of soil and exposure are
surpassingly favorable. The average size of all the trees of this species
found up to an elevation on the mountain-slopes of, say, two thousand feet
above sea-level, taking into account only what may be called mature trees
two hundred and fifty to five hundred years of age, is perhaps, at a vague
guess, not more than a height of one hundred and seventy-five or two hundred
feet and a diameter of three feet; though, of course, throughout the richest
sections the size is much greater.
In proportion to its weight
when dry, the timber from this tree is perhaps stronger than that of any
other conifer in the country. It is tough and durable and admirably adapted
in every way for shipbuilding, piles, and heavy timbers in general. But its
hardness and liability to warp render it much inferior to white or sugar
pine for fine work. In the lumber- markets of California it is known as
"Oregon pine" and is used almost exclusively for spars, bridge-timbers,
heavy planking, and the framework of houses.
The same species extends
northward in abundance through British Columbia and southward through the
coast and middle regions of Oregon and California. It is also a common tree
in the canons and hollows of the Wahsatch Mountains in Utah, where it is
called "red pine" and on portions of the Rocky Mountains and some of the
short ranges of the Great Basin. Along the coast of California it keeps
company with the redwood wherever it can find a favorable opening. On the
western slope of the Sierra, with the yellow pine and incense cedar, it
forms a pretty well-defined belt at a height of from three thousand to six
thousand feet above the sea, and extends into the San Gabriel and San
Bernardino Mountains in southern California. But, though widely distributed,
it is only in these cool, moist northlands that it reaches its finest
development, tall, straight, elastic, and free from limbs to an immense
height, growing down to tide-water, where ships of the largest size may lie
close alongside and load at the least possible cost.
Growing with the Douglas we
find the white spruce, or "Sitka pine," as it is sometimes called. This also
is a very beautiful and majestic tree, frequently attaining a height of two
hundred feet or more and a diameter of five or six feet. It is very abundant
in southeastern Alaska, forming the greater part of the best forests there.
Here it is found mostly around the sides of beaver-dam and other meadows and
on the borders of the streams, especially where the ground is low. One tree
that I saw felled at the head of the Hop-Ranch meadows on the upper
Snoqualmie River, though far from being the largest I have seen, measured a
hundred and eighty feet in length and four and a half in diameter, and was
two hundred and fifty-seven years of age.
In habit and general
appearance it resembles the Douglas spruce, but it is somewhat less slender
and the needles grow close together all around the branchlets and are so
stiff and sharp-pointed on the younger branches that they cannot well be
handled without gloves. The timber is tough, close-grained, white, and looks
more like pine that any other of the spruces. It splits freely, makes
excellent shingles and in general use in house-building takes the place of
pine. I have seen logs of this species a hundred feet long and two feet in
diameter at the upper end. It was named in honor of the old Scotch botanist
Archibald Menzies, who came to this coast with Vancouver in 1792. [This
tree, now known to botanists as Picea sitchensis, was named Abies Menziesii
by Lindley in 1833.]
The beautiful hemlock spruce
with its warm yellow-green foliage is also common in some portions of these
woods. It is tall and slender and exceedingly graceful in habit before old
age comes on, but the timber is inferior and is seldom used for any other
than the roughest work, such as wharf-building.
The Western arbor-vitae [Also
known as "canoe cedar," and described in Jepson's Silva of California under
the more recent specific name Thuja plicata. Editor.] (Thuja giganlea) grows
to a size truly gigantic on low rich ground. Specimens ten feet in diameter
and a hundred and forty feet high are not at all rare. Some that I have
heard of are said to be fifteen and even eighteen feet thick. Clad in rich,
glossy plumes, with gray lichens covering their smooth, tapering boles,
perfect trees of this species are truly noble objects and well worthy the
place they hold in these glorious forests. It is of this tree that the
Indians make their fine canoes.
Of the other conifers that
are so happy as to have place here, there are three firs, three or four
pines, two cypresses, a yew, and another spruce, the Abies Pattoniana. [Now
classified as Tsuga mertensiana Sarg. Editor.] This last is perhaps the most
beautiful of all the spruces, but, being comparatively small and growing
only far back on the mountains, it receives but little attention from most
people. Nor is there room in a work like this for anything like a complete
description of it, or of the others I have just mentioned. Of the three
firs, one (Picea grandis), [Now Abies grandis Lindley. Editor.] grows near
the coast and is one of the largest trees in the forest, sometimes attaining
a height of two hundred and fifty feet. The timber, however, is inferior in
quality and not much sought after while so much that is better is within
reach. One of the others (P. amabilis, var. nobilis) forms magnificent
forests by itself at a height of about three thousand to four thousand feet
above the sea. The rich plushy, plumelike branches grow in regular whorls
around the trunk, and on the topmost whorls, standing erect, are the large,
beautiful cones. This is far the most beautiful of all the firs. In the
Sierra Nevada it forms a considerable portion of the main forest belt on the
western slope, and it is there that it reaches its greatest size and
greatest beauty. The third species (P. subalpina) forms, together with Abies
Pattoniana, the upper •dge of the timber-line on the portion of the Cascades
opposite the Sound. A thousand feet below the extreme limit of tree-growth
it occurs in beautiful groups amid parklike openings where flowers grow in
extravagant profusion.
The pines are nowhere
abundant in the State. The largest, the yellow pine (Pinus ponderosa),
occurs here and there on margins of dry gravelly prairies, and only in such
situations have I yet seen it in this State. The others (P. monticola and P.
contorta) are mostly restricted to the upper slopes of the mountains, and
though the former of these two attains a good size and makes excellent
lumber, it is mostly beyond reach at present and is not abundant. One of the
cypresses (Cupressus Lawsoniana) grows near the coast and is a fine large
tree, clothed like the arborvitae in a glorious wealth of flat, feathery
branches. The other is found here and there well up toward the edge of the
timber-line. This is the fine Alaska cedar (C. Nooticatensis), the lumber
from which is noted for its durability, fineness of grain, and beautiful
yellow color, and for its fragrance, which resembles that of sandal-wood.
The Alaska Indians make their canoe-paddles of it and weave matting and
coarse cloth from the fibrous brown bark.
Among the different kinds of
hardwood trees are the oak, maple, madrofla, birch, alder, and wild apple,
while large cottonwoods are common along the rivers and shores of the
numerous lakes.
The most striking of these to
the traveler is the Menzies arbutus, or madroņa, as it is popularly called
in California. Its curious red and yellow bark, large thick glossy leaves,
and panicles of waxy-looking greenish-white urn- shaped flowers render it
very conspicuous. On the boles of the younger trees and on all the branches,
the bark is so smooth and seamless that it does not appear as bark at all,
but rather the naked wood. The whole tree, with the exception of the larger
part of the trunk, looks as though it had been thoroughly peeled. It is
found sparsely scattered along the shores of the Sound and back in the
forests also on open margins, where the soil is not too wet, and extends up
the coast on Vancouver Island beyond Nanaimo. But in no part of the State
does it reach anything like the size and beauty of proportions that it
attains in California, few trees here being more than ten or twelve inches
in diameter and thirty feet high. It is, however, a very remarkable-looking
object, standing there like some lost or runaway native of the tropics,
naked and painted, beside that dark mossy ocean of northland conifers. Not
even a palm tree would seem more out of place here.
The oaks, so far as my
observation has reached, seem to be most abundant and to grow largest on the
islands of the San Juan and Whidbey Archipelago. One of the three species of
maples that I have seen is only a bush that makes tangles on the banks of
the rivers. Of the other two one is a small tree, crooked and moss-grown,
holding out its leaves to catch the light that filters down through the
close- set spires of the great spruces. It grows almost everywhere
throughout the entire extent of the forest until the higher slopes of the
mountains are reached, and produces a very picturesque and delightful
effect; relieving the bareness of the great shafts of the evergreens,
without being close enough in its growth to hide them wholly, or to cover
the bright mossy carpet that is spread beneath all the dense parts of the
woods.
The other species is also
very picturesque and at the same time very large, the largest tree of its
kind that I have ever seen anywhere. Not even in the great maple woods of
Canada have I seen trees either as large or with so much striking,
picturesque character. It is widely distributed throughout western
Washington, but is never found scattered among the conifers in the dense
woods. It keeps together mostly in magnificent groves by itself on the damp
levels along the banks of streams or lakes where the ground is subject to
overflow. In such situations it attains a height of seventy-five to a
hundred feet and a diameter of four to eight feet. The trunk sends out large
limbs toward its neighbors, laden with long drooping mosses beneath and rows
of ferns on their upper surfaces, thus making a grand series of richly
ornamented interlacing arches, with the leaves laid thick overhead,
rendering the underwood spaces delightfully cool and open. Never have I seen
a finer forest ceiling or a more picturesque one, while the floor, covered
with tall ferns and rubus and thrown into hillocks by the bulging roots,
matches it well. The largest of these maple groves that I have yet found is
on the right bank of the Snoqualmie River, about a mile above the falls. The
whole country hereabouts is picturesque, and interesting in many ways, and
well worthy a visit by tourists passing through the Sound region, since it
is now accessible by rail from Seattle.
Looking now at the forests in
a comprehensive way, we find in passing through them again and again from
the shores of the Sound to their upper limits, that some portions are much
older than others, the trees much larger, and the ground beneath them strewn
with immense trunks in every stage of decay, representing several
generations of growth, everything about them giving the impression that
these are indeed the "forests primeval," while in the younger portions,
where the elevation of the ground is the same as to the sea- level and the
species of trees are the same as well as the quality of the soil, apart from
the moisture which it holds, the trees seem to be and are mostly of the same
age, perhaps from one hundred to two or three hundred years, with no gray-bearded,
venerable patriarchs - forming tall, majestic woods without any
grandfathers.
When we examine the ground we
find that it is as free from those mounds of brown crumbling wood and mossy
ancient fragments as are the growing trees from very old ones. Then,
perchance, we come upon a section farther up the slopes towards the
mountains that has no trees more than fifty years old, or even fifteen or
twenty years old. These last show plainly enough that they have been
devastated by fire, as the black, melancholy monuments rising here and there
above the young growth bear witness. Then, with this fiery, suggestive
testimony, on examining those sections whose trees are a hundred years old
or two hundred, we find the same fire-records, though heavily veiled with
mosses and lichens, showing that a century or two ago the forests that stood
there bad been swept away in some tremendous fire at a time when rare
conditions of drouth made their burning possible. Then, the bare ground
sprinkled with the winged seeds from the edges of the burned district, a new
forest sprang up, nearly every tree starting at the same time or within a
few years, thus producing the uniformity of size we find in such places;
while, on the other hand, in those sections of ancient aspect containing
very old trees both standing and fallen, we find no traces of fire, nor from
the extreme dampness of the ground can we see any possibility of fire ever
running there.
Fire, then, is the great
governing agent in forest-distribution and to a great extent also in the
conditions of forest-growth. Where fertile lands are very wet one half the
year and very dry the other, there can be no forests at all. Where the
ground is damp, with drouth occurring only at intervals of centuries, fine
forests may be found, other conditions being favorable. But it is only where
fires never run that truly ancient forests of pitchy coniferous trees may
exist. When the Washington forests are seen from the deck of a ship out in
the middle of the Sound, or even from the top of some high, commanding
mountain, the woods seem everywhere perfectly solid. And so in fact they are
in general found to be. The largest openings are those of the lakes and
prairies, the smaller of beaver-meadows, bogs, and the rivers; none of them
large enough to make a distinct mark in comprehensive views.
Of the lakes there are said
to be some thirty in King's County alone; the largest, Lake Washington,
being twenty-six miles long and four miles wide. Another, which enjoys the
duckish name of Lake Squak, is about ten miles long. Both are pure and
beautiful, lying imbedded in the green wilderness. The rivers are numerous
and are but little affected by the weather, flowing with deep, steady
currents the year round. They are short, however, none of them drawing their
sources from beyond the Cascade Range. Some are navigable for small steamers
on their lower courses, but the openings they make in the woods are very
narrow, the tall trees on their banks leaning over in some places, making
fine shady tunnels.
The largest of the prairies
that I have seen lies to the south of Tacoma on the line of the Portland and
Tacoma Railroad. The ground is dry and gravelly, a deposit of water-washed
cobbles and pebbles derived from moraines - conditions which readily explain
the absence of trees here and on other prairies adjacent to Yelm. Berries
grow in lavish abundance, enough for man and beast with thousands of tons to
spare. The woods are full of them, especially about the borders of the
waters and meadows where the sunshine may enter. Nowhere in the north does
Nature set a more bountiful table. There are huckleberries of many species,
red, blue, and black, some of them growing close to the ground, others on
bushes eight to ten feet high; also salal berries, growing on a low,
weak-stemmed bush, a species of gaultheria, seldom more than a foot or two
high. This has pale pea-green glossy leaves two or three inches long and
half an inch wide and beautiful pink flowers, urn- shaped, that make a fine,
rich show. The berries are black when ripe, are extremely abundant, and,
with the huckleberries, form an important part of the food of the Indians,
who beat them into paste, dry them, and store them away for winter use, to
be eaten with their oily fish. The salmon-berry also is very plentiful,
growing in dense prickly tangles. The flowers are as large as wild roses and
of the same color, and the berries measure nearly an inch in diameter.
Besides these there are gooseberries, currants, raspberries, blackberries,
and, in some favored spots, strawberries. The mass of the underbrush of the
woods is made up in great part of these berry-bearing bushes, together with
white-flowered spirea twenty feet high, hazel, dogwood, wild rose,
honeysuckle, symphoricarpus, etc. But in the depths of the woods, where
little sunshine can reach the ground, there is but little underbrush of any
kind, only a very light growth of huckleberry and rubus and young maples in
most places. The difficulties encountered by the explorer in penetrating the
wilderness are presented mostly by the streams and bogs, with their tangled
margins, and the fallen timber and thick carpet of moss covering all the
ground.
Notwithstanding the
tremendous energy displayed in lumbering and the grand scale on which it is
being carried on, and the number of settlers pushing into every opening in
search of farmlands, the woods of Washington are still almost entirely
virgin and wild, without trace of human touch, savage or civilized. Indians,
no doubt, have ascended most of the rivers on their way to the mountains to
hunt the wild sheep and goat to obtain wool for their clothing, but with
food in abundance on the coast they had little to tempt them into the
wilderness, and the monuments they have left in it are scarcely more
conspicuous than those of squirrels and bears; far less so than those of the
beavers, which in damming the streams have made clearings and meadows which
will continue to mark the landscape for centuries. Nor is there much in
these woods to tempt the farmer or cattle-raiser. A few settlers established
homes on the prairies or open borders of the woods and in the valleys of the
Chehalis and Cowlitz before the gold days of California. Most of the early
immigrants from the Eastern States, however, settled in the fertile and open
Willamette Valley of Oregon. Even now, when the search for land is so keen,
with the exception of the bottom lands around the Sound and on the lower
reaches of the rivers, there are comparatively few spots of cultivation in
western Washington. On every meadow or opening of any kind some one will be
found keeping cattle, planting hop-vines, or raising hay, vegetables, and
patches of grain. All the large spaces available, even back near the summits
of the Cascade Mountains, were occupied long ago. The newcomers, building
their cabins where the beavers once built theirs, keep a few cows and
industriously seek to enlarge their small meadow patches by chopping,
girdling, and burning the edge of the encircling forest, gnawing like
beavers, and scratching for a living among the blackened stumps and logs,
regarding the trees as their greatest enemies -a sort of larger pernicious
weed immensely difficult to get rid of.
But all these are as yet mere
spots, making no visible scar in the distance and leaving the grand
stretches of the forest as wild as they were before the discovery of the
continent. For many years the axe has been busy around the shores of the
Sound and chips have been falling in perpetual storm like flakes of snow.
The best of the timber has been cut for a distance of eight or ten miles
from the water and to a much greater distance along the streams deep enough
to float the logs. Railroads, too, have been built to fetch in the logs from
the best bodies of timber otherwise inaccessible except at great cost. None
of the ground, however, has been completely denuded. Most of the young trees
have been left, together with the hemlocks and other trees undesirable in
kind or in some way defective, so that the neighboring trees appear to have
closed over the gaps made by the removal of the larger and better ones,
maintaining the general continuity of the forest and leaving no sign on the
sylvan sea, at least as seen from a distance.
In felling the trees they cut
them off usually at a height of six to twelve feet above the ground, so as
to avoid cutting through the swollen base, where the diameter is so much
greater. In order to reach this height the chopper cuts a notch about two
inches wide and three or four deep and drives a board into it, on which he
stands while at work. In case the first notch, cut as high as he can reach,
is not high enough, he stands on the board that has been driven into the
first notch and cuts another. Thus the axeman may often be seen at work
standing eight or ten feet above the ground. If the tree is so large that
with his long-handled axe the chopper is unable to reach to the farther side
of it, then a second chopper is set to work, each cutting halfway across.
And when the tree is about to fall, warned by the faint crackling of the
strained fibers, they jump to the ground, and stand back out of danger from
flying limbs, while the noble giant that had stood erect in glorious
strength and beauty century after century, bows low at last and with gasp
and groan and booming throb falls to earth.
Then with long saws the trees
are cut into logs of the required length, peeled, loaded upon wagons capable
of carrying a weight of eight or ten tons, hauled by a long string of oxen
to the nearest available stream or railroad, and floated or carried to the
Sound. There the logs are gathered into booms and towed by steamers to the
mills, where workmen with steel spikes in their boots leap lightly with easy
poise from one to another and by means of long pike-poles push them apart
and, selecting such as are at the time required, push them to the foot of a
chute and drive dogs into the ends, when they are speedily hauled in by the
mill machinery alongside the saw-carriage and placed and fixed in position.
Then with sounds of greedy hissing and growling they are rushed back and
forth like enormous shuttles, and in an incredibly short time they are
lumber and are aboard the ships lying at the mill wharves.
Many of the long, slender
boles so abundant in these woods are saved for spars, and so excellent is
their quality that they are in demand in almost every shipyard of the world.
Thus these trees, felled and stripped of their leaves and branches, are
raised again, transplanted and set firmly erect, given roots of iron and a
new foliage of flapping canvas, and sent to sea. On they speed in glad, free
motion, cheerily waving over the blue, heaving water, responsive to the same
winds that rocked them when they stood at home in the woods. After standing
in one place all their lives they now, like sight-seeing tourists, go round
the world, meeting many a relative from the old home forest, some like
themselves, wandering free, clad in broad canvas foliage, others planted
head downward in mud, holding wharf platforms aloft to receive the wares of
all nations.
The mills of Puget Sound and
those of the redwood region of California are said to be the largest and
most effective lumber-makers in the world. Tacoma alone claims to have
eleven sawmills, and Seattle about as many; while at many other points on
the Sound, where the- conditions are particularly favorable, there are
immense lumbering establishments, as at Ports Blakely, Madison, Discovery,
Gamble, Ludlow, etc., with a capacity all together of over three million
feet a day. Nevertheless, the observer coming up the Sound sees not nor
hears anything of this fierce storm of steel that is devouring the forests,
save perhaps the shriek of some whistle or the columns of smoke that mark
the position of the mills. All else seems as serene and unscathed as the
silent watching mountains. |
