The American Wilderness. 5 



the woodland animals, some of those which have most 

 vividly impressed themselves on the imagination of the 

 hunters and pioneer settlers, are the very ones which have 

 no Old- World representatives. The wild turkey is in 

 every way the king of American game birds. Among 

 the small beasts the coon and the possum are those 

 which have left the deepest traces in the humbler lore of 

 the frontier; exactly as the cougar usually under the 

 name of panther or mountain lion is a favorite figure in 

 the wilder hunting tales. Nowhere else is there anything 

 to match the wealth of the eastern hardwood forests, in 

 number, variety, and beauty of trees ; nowhere else is 

 it possible to find conifers approaching in size the giant 

 redwoods and sequoias of the Pacific slope. Nature here 

 is generally on a larger scale than in the Old- World home 

 of our race. The lakes are like inland seas, the rivers 

 like arms of the sea. Among stupendous mountain 

 chains there are valleys and canyons of fathomless depth 

 and incredible beauty and majesty. There are tropical 

 swamps, and sad, frozen marshes ; deserts and Death Val- 

 leys, weird and evil, and the strange wonderland of the 

 Wyoming geyser region. The waterfalls are rivers rush- 

 ing over precipices ; the prairies seem without limit, and 

 the forest never ending. 



At the time when we first became a nation, nine tenths 

 of the territory now included within the limits of the 

 United States was wilderness. It was during the stirring 

 and troubled years immediately preceding the outbreak 

 of the Revolution that the most adventurous hunters, the 

 vanguard of the hardy army of pioneer settlers, first 



