704 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



This has been the fuel for the kitchen, the engine house, the blacksmith 

 shop. It has supplied the props, posts, stulls, and lagging for the 

 underground operations. Fences for stock corrals, sheds, stables, 

 cabins, and bridges have been constructed of the small, crooked trunks 

 and the distorted limbs, when no other wood could be had in fifty or a 

 hundred miles. Extensive tracts have been cut clean in the vicinity of 

 mines. The product of the singleleaf pine forest cannot be measured in 

 board or log feet, because of the smallness of the trunks and branches, 

 but by the cord. The wood is medium heavy, rather high in fuel value, 

 very weak, brittle, and soft. The resin passages are few and small, 

 color yellow or light brown, the sapwood nearly white. In contact with 

 the soil the wood is not durable, but its principal use has been in a very 

 dry climate, and it lasts well there. It is the most important of the nut 

 pines. 



It produces enormous crops which are larger some years than others. 

 John Muir believed that the singleleaf pinon's annual nut yield surpassed 

 California's yield of wheat. Only a small part of the nut crop is ever 

 put to use by man. Scattered over mountains, mesas, and deserts, 

 100,000 square miles in extent, most of the nuts fall and decay, though 

 the animals of the rocks and sands, and the birds of the air live on them 

 while they last. The Indians of the region long looked upon the nut 

 crop, as the Egyptians upon the overflow of the Nile a guarantee 

 against famine. The Indians are not so dependent on the nuts now as 

 formerly because scattered settlements throughout the region supply 

 other sources of food. Many nuts are still gathered, and are sold in 

 stores from San Francisco to Denver. They look like peanuts, but are 

 richer in oil, and if eaten raw they speedily cloy the appetite. The 

 Indians usually roast them, and frequently crush them into meal. 

 When the harvest is ripe the Indians gather from all sides and camp 

 during a month or more, thrash the cones from the trees with poles, 

 extract the nuts, and keep up the operation until all present needs are 

 supplied, and every available basket is filled for future use. The pack- 

 horses and burros of the mining country in Nevada where this pine grows, 

 acquire a liking for the nuts. They are as nourishing as oats, and the 

 pack animals like them better. Indians do considerable business 

 collecting the nuts and selling them by the gunny sack to pack trains, for 

 horse feed. A single Indian will sometimes gather thirty or forty 

 bushels, for which he can get a dollar a bushel when he has carried them 

 to market. 



The singleleaf pine's future will be about as its past has been, as 

 far as can now be foreseen. Little planting will ever be done, nor is it 

 necessary. Nature plants all that the sterile soil will support. It is of 





