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against the rising ground of the mountain-side. Here it is a look 
straight up into the air to reach the sky-line, and the mountain is 
heavily wooded with evergreens. 
Hemlock is abundant and beautiful, the branches of the 
Tsuga Mertensiana being more graceful than those of our eastern 
one, havingya little the effect of a drooping Norway spruce, though 
of course the tree is of magnificent size and different proportions. 
The Menzies spruce is the most common tree here, and in all 
the parts of Alaska that I visited, and is said to constitute nine- 
tenths of the coast forest. It is called the “ Sitka Pine,” and is 
cut for lumber in the settlements about Juneau. Its shape is like 
the fir of our Maine coast, presenting the same slender spires in 
the profile of an horizon line, but it stands one hundred and fifty 
or two hundred feet high, and measures six feet or more in diam- 
eter. Another evergreen, less common, is 7suga excelsa, the 
yellow cedar or yellow cypress. 
This forest forms the northern part of the most magnificent 
reach in the world, that which runs through British Columbia 
to Washington and Oregon, where the trees—-influenced by the 
same conditions of warmth and humidity which operate here, but 
with shorter winters—reach their grandest proportions. 
Taking a trail through the woods, we climb over logs by 
means of steps cut into the trunks; walk over logs or stumble 
over loose rocks, always under the cover of thick boughs, draped 
and festooned with mosses and lichens. 
The commonest mosses are golden green Hypnums, as Hyp- 
num loreum and triquetrum, or the pale and matted H. undula- 
tum ; these, with such lichens as Sticta Oregana, Usnea barbata, 
Alectoria ochroleuca, vars. sarmentosa and Fremontii, swathe the 
branches with thick bands and render them graceful with delicate 
grey and black draperies. After a rain, when @ tardily-setting 
sun throws its horizontal rays into these dark coverts, they 4f° — 
brilliant with gorgeous coloring. 
Our path is stopped at last by a wall of rock, over which 
tumbles a cascade, half-hidden by the mosses and maidenhait — 
ferns that the rocks carry. A step down from the fallen tree igs 
which we are walking takes us into the deep moss carpet that — 
everywhere covers the ground. Here are Hypuum splendems, 
