A Cruise in the Cassiar 



forming a meadow-like margin in front of the forest. 

 Pushing my way well back into the forest, I found it 

 composed almost entirely of spruce and two hem- 

 locks (Picea sitchensis, Tsuga heterophylla and T. 

 mertensiana) with a few specimens of yellow cypress. 

 The ferns were developed in remarkable beauty and 

 size — aspidiums, one of which is about six feet high, 

 a woodsia, lomaria, and several species of polypodium. 

 The underbrush is chiefly alder, rubus, ledum, three 

 species of vaccinium, and Echinopanax horrida, the 

 whole about from six to eight feet high, and in some 

 places closely intertangled and hard to penetrate. On 

 the opener spots beneath the trees the ground is cov- 

 ered to a depth of two or three feet with mosses of in- 

 describable freshness and beauty, a few dwarf cornels 

 often planted on their rich furred bosses, together 

 with pyrola, coptis, and Solomon's-seal. The tallest 

 of the trees are about a hundred and fifty feet high, 

 with a diameter of about four or five feet, their 

 branches mingling together and making a perfect 

 shade. As the twilight began to fall, I sat down on the 

 mossy instep of a spruce. Not a bush or tree was 

 moving; every leaf seemed hushed in brooding repose. 

 One bird, a thrush, embroidered the silence with 

 cheery notes, making the solitude familiar and sweet, 

 while the solemn monotone of the stream sifting 

 through the woods seemed like the very voice of God, 

 humanized, terrestrialized, and entering one's heart 

 as to a home prepared for it. Go where we will, all the 

 world over, we seem to have been there before. 

 The stream was bridged at short intervals with 

 f 6i 1 



