the john muir exhibit - writings - steep_trails - chapter 18
Chapter 18
The Forests of Washington
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 (Pseudotsuga Douglasii), 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 canyons 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 than
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
23
.
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
24
(Thuja gigantea) 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
25
.
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)
26
, 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 edge of the
timberline 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)
27
grows near the coast and is a
fine large tree, clothed like the arbor-vitae in a glorious wealth of
flat, feathery branches. The other is found here and there well up
toward the edge of the timberline. This is the fine Alaska cedar (C.
Nootkatensis), the lumber from which is noted for its durability,
fineness of grain, and beautiful yellow color, and for its fragrance,
which resembles that of sandalwood. 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,
madrona, 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
madrona, 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 section 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 had 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 seed 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 spiraea
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 or
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 ships 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 make 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.
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