But So Profound Was The
General Impression, Partial Analysis Did Not Come Into Play.
The
whole mountain appeared as one glorious manifestation of divine power,
enthusiastic and benevolent, glowing like a countenance with ineffable
repose and beauty, before which we could only gaze in devout and lowly
admiration.
The far-famed Oregon forests cover all the western section of the
State, the mountains as well as the lowlands, with the exception of a
few gravelly spots and open spaces in the central portions of the
great cultivated valleys. Beginning on the coast, where their outer
ranks are drenched and buffeted by wind-driven scud from the sea, they
press on in close, majestic ranks over the coast mountains, across the
broad central valleys, and over the Cascade Range, broken and halted
only by the few great peaks that rise like islands above the sea of
evergreens.
In descending the eastern slopes of the Cascades the rich, abounding,
triumphant exuberance of the trees is quickly subdued; they become
smaller, grow wide apart, leaving dry spaces without moss covering or
underbrush, and before the foot of the range is reached, fail
altogether, stayed by the drouth of the interior almost as suddenly as
on the western margin they are stayed by the sea. Here and there at
wide intervals on the eastern plains patches of a small pine (Pinus
contorta) are found, and a scattering growth of juniper, used by the
settlers mostly for fence posts and firewood. Along the stream
bottoms there is usually more or less of cottonwood and willow, which,
though yielding inferior timber, is yet highly prized in this bare
region. On the Blue Mountains there is pine, spruce, fir, and larch
in abundance for every use, but beyond this range there is nothing
that may be called a forest in the Columbia River basin, until we
reach the spurs of the Rocky Mountains; and these Rocky Mountain
forests are made up of trees which, compared with the giants of the
Pacific Slope, are mere saplings.
XXII
The Forests of Oregon and their Inhabitants
Like the forests of Washington, already described, those of Oregon are
in great part made up of the Douglas spruce[32], or Oregon pine (Abies
Douglasii). A large number of mills are at work upon this species,
especially along the Columbia, but these as yet have made but little
impression upon its dense masses, the mills here being small as
compared with those of the Puget Sound region. The white cedar, or
Port Orford cedar (Cupressus Lawsoniana, or Chamaecyparis Lawsoniana),
is one of the most beautiful of the evergreens, and produces excellent
lumber, considerable quantities of which are shipped to the San
Francisco market. It is found mostly about Coos Bay, along the
Coquille River, and on the northern slopes of the Siskiyou Mountains,
and extends down the coast into California. The silver firs, the
spruces, and the colossal arbor-vitae, or white cedar[33](Thuja
gigantea), described in the chapter on Washington, are also found here
in great beauty and perfection, the largest of these (Picea grandis,
Loud.; Abies grandis, Lindl.) being confined mostly to the coast
region, where it attains a height of three hundred feet, and a
diameter of ten or twelve feet. Five or six species of pines are
found in the State, the most important of which, both as to lumber and
as to the part they play in the general wealth and beauty of the
forests, are the yellow and sugar pines (Pinus ponderosa and P.
Lambertiana). The yellow pine is most abundant on the eastern slopes
of the Cascades, forming there the main bulk of the forest in many
places. It is also common along the borders of the open spaces in
Willamette Valley. In the southern portion of the State the sugar
pine, which is the king of all the pines and the glory of the Sierra
forests, occurs in considerable abundance in the basins of the Umpqua
and Rogue Rivers, and it was in the Umpqua Hills that this noble tree
was first discovered by the enthusiastic botanical explorer David
Douglas, in the year 1826.
This is the Douglas for whom the noble Douglas spruce is named, and
many a fair blooming plant also, which will serve to keep his memory
fresh and sweet as long as beautiful trees and flowers are loved. The
Indians of the lower Columbia River watched him with lively curiosity
as he wandered about in the woods day after day, gazing intently on
the ground or at the great trees, collecting specimens of everything
he saw, but, unlike all the eager fur-gathering strangers they had
hitherto seen, caring nothing about trade. And when at length they
came to know him better, and saw that from year to year the growing
things of the woods and prairies, meadows and plains, were his only
object of pursuit, they called him the "Man of Grass," a title of
which he was proud.
He was a Scotchman and first came to this coast in the spring of 1825
under the auspices of the London Horticultural Society, landing at the
mouth of the Columbia after a long dismal voyage of the Columbia after
a long, dismal voyage of eight months and fourteen days. During this
first season he chose Fort Vancouver, belonging to the Hudson's Bay
Company, as his headquarters, and from there made excursions into the
glorious wilderness in every direction, discovering many new species
among the trees as well as among the rich underbrush and smaller
herbaceous vegetation. It was while making a trip to Mount Hood this
year that he discovered the two largest and most beautiful firs in the
world (Picea amabilis and P. nobilis - now called Abies), and from the
seeds which he then collected and sent home tall trees are now growing
in Scotland.
In one of his trips that summer, in the lower Willamette Valley, he
saw in an Indian's tobacco pouch some of the seeds and scales of a new
species of pine, which he learned were gathered from a large tree that
grew far to the southward.
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