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, picturesquecharacter. 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, suggestivetestimony, 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 beavermeadows, 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 tremendousenergy displayed in lumbering" target="_blank" title="n.伐木(业)">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