14 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



life in California is more or less dormant they 

 really secured little more than a few snatched frag- 

 ments and gained no adequate conception of the 

 floral Eldorado, whose bounds they had entered. 

 The dried specimens were carried back to Europe 

 to be laid away in the herbaria of scientists, while 

 such seeds as were collected were sown in botanic 

 gardens. By and by the beauty and novelty of 

 these domesticated Californians began to arouse 

 a desire for further exploration, both in the inter- 

 est of pure science and for the enrichment of Euro- 

 pean gardens. So in 1825, the London Horticul- 

 tural Society despatched to the Pacific coast, one 

 David Douglas, a Scotch gardener with a wide 

 knowledge of plants and an abounding love for 

 them. He sailed around the Horn, and, arriving at 

 Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, made that 

 his headquarters for excursions into the wilderness 

 of what is now the State of Oregon. To him the 

 world owes the first adequate descriptions of the 

 magnificent coniferous forests of the Coast. 



Douglas returned to England in a year or two, 

 only to start westward again for the especial pur- 

 pose of investigating the flora of California, and in 

 the late autumn of 1831 he landed at Monterey. 

 California in those days was anything but a free 

 country and outsiders were personae non gratae. 



