TREES OF WESTERN AMERICA. I 27 



Steep climbing brings one to the hotel recently built at Longmires 

 Springs. The Government carriage road is completed to a little 

 beyond this point, but the intention is that it shall be continued 

 to Paradise Valley — 9000 feet above the sea — which is at timber- 

 line. The spot is well named, as, perhaps, there is no finer 

 Alpine garden in the world than this huge belt immediately above 

 the trees, and below the eternal ice of the mighty cone of Mount 

 Tacoma. The trees here are very fine. Thuja, Douglas fir, and 

 Tsuga Albertiatia, Abies grandis in the river-bed, and an 

 occasional Menziesii, till the eastern limit of this tree was passed. 

 Then Abies a?nabilis, Finns fuofiticola, Finns Murrayana, and 

 at Longmires Abies lasiocarpa, Tsuga Fattoniana, and Chamm- 

 cypaiis nootkatefisis {Thujopsis borealis). I never before saw_ 

 this tree, and feel sure it is worthy of general planting in our 

 country as a forest-tree. It covers a wide area from Alaska to 

 Washington. The specimens in this country have mostly been 

 raised from cuttings, and I believe it would be desirable to get 

 large supplies of seed from its native place. Its wood is practic- 

 ally imperishable, but is no use for shingles, as it cannot be split 

 like Thuja or Libocedrus. I went on to the Nisqually glacier, 

 to which the Government road has just reached. The difficulties 

 of blasting out stumps and rocks for such a road may be imagined. 



1 found here the charming little Acer glabrum, which only grows 

 at high altitudes in the western country. I know of no other 

 valley in Western America where such a variety of conifers may be 

 seen growing together, and all at their best — -2 hemlocks, 4 Abies, 



2 pines, I Ficea, i Thuja, i cypress, the omnipresent Douglas — 

 12 altogether. 



We next travelled south to Grant's Pass in South-West Oregon. 

 Unfortunately our day in Portland was cloudy, and no view could 

 be had of Mount Hood, the great rival of Mounts Tacoma and 

 Shasta. The Siskiyou Mountains, which run east and west more 

 or less, divide Oregon and California, and this is the home of 

 that rarest of all spruces, Ficea Brezveriana. The character of 

 the soil is greatly changed here from that of the north. The 

 ground is dry, and there is not the great depth of rich humus in 

 all the valleys which one sees in Washington. We drove thirty miles 

 to the old mining settlement of Kerby, and next day started over 

 an impossible road to find our spruce. A friendly placer-miner 

 acted as guide, and after a climb of 4000 feet through almost 

 impenetrable and what seemed interminable thickets, we found 



