in flighi When their young hatch, the parents' life is hard, for 

 they have to fish perpetually, returning about every half-hour 

 to feed the chicks. They make their nests in crannies in the most 

 impossible places, and they are not very good navigators, 

 landings being their weak point, so that they usually crash onto 

 the cliff, toss their load at their youngsters, and then fall back 

 into the air and take off again to the high seas. On the clifT 

 above, which is clothed in a mat of stunted firs and shiny bushes, 

 gawky cormorants maintain breeding colonies and many gulls 

 wheel and wail or squat, heading into the everlasting winds and 

 mists with ruffled feathers. 



THE FORGOTTEN LAND 



.Ml down the southern stretch of this coast as far as Cape Blanco, 

 there are miles of incredible sand dunes; in fact, they are veri- 

 table sand mountains whidi at some points extend for more 

 than two miles back from the sea and rise to a height of some 

 three hundred feet. The sand is forever moving inland and tailing 

 off to the northeast. It follows the normal behavior of dunes, 

 but on such a grandiose scale that it produces some astonishing 

 results. First, low down by the sea. there are just normal dunes, 

 but behind these are vast masses of sand sculpted around out- 

 lying blodcs of vegetation that have somehow been able to 

 withstand their onslaught and that now lie in smoothly curved 

 bowls and funnels, the tops of their tallest trees being below the 

 level of the sand all around. Landward, the sand spills into solid 

 stands of large conifers and broad-leafed trees, swamping them 

 in a soft beige mass like superfine grain spilled from an elevator. 

 Some of the trees are more than half buried but still growing 

 staunchly. But more astonishing still, these marching dunes have 

 in some places wallowed over the steep coastal ridge and spilled 

 down into a string of lakes that here parallel the coast. These 

 lakes themselves are a very odd feature of the area, constituting 

 a kind of false shore line but separated from the sea by a few 

 miles of timber-clad hills and dunes. Normal topography is 

 reversed here; for. going away from the sea. you can walk out 

 of a tall, closed-canopy forest into the deep water of a fresh lake 

 and find yourself confronting a sand beach on the opposite 

 shore, extending away inland and rising into massive dunes. 

 Immediately south of Cape Blanco the coastal ranges bifurcate 

 to form two parallel chains of ranges which readi south, hugging 

 the coast, to the neighborhood of San Luis Obispo. The North 

 Coastal Range actually flows into the inner or eastern chain 

 which starts with the Klamath complex. This is perhaps the most 

 fascinating region in the United States, as yet incompletely 

 mapped and unsurveyed and to a large extent unexplored. It is 

 250 miles long and on an average about 75 miles wide (some 

 18,000 square miles), and although surrounded on three sides by 

 major modem highways, is crossed by only two first-class (one. 

 as of writing, still incomplete) and two secondary roads. It is 

 wholly mountainous, embracing the Siskiyous and the Klamaths 

 that rise to seven thousand feet in the north, and the Trinitys 

 that rise to Mount Yallo-Bally, over eight thousand feet, in the 

 south. 



These mountains rise precipitately in dozens of parallel 

 ridges. The valleys and the lower reaches are clothed in the 

 most wonderful conglomeration of both broad-leafed and 



The central Pacific coast is strung with beaches and coves 

 interspersed with vast dunes and towering cliffs. Warm 

 mists roll in from the Pacific Ocean almost daily. 



coniferous trees, with the former predominating at lower levels. 

 There are here huge maples and oaks, elders and willows, 

 mixed with the coppery-barked madrones of the south and the 

 pines, spruces, and other conifers of the north. The lowest 

 valleys are parklike, even having incipient prairies in the form 

 of open grassfields. The main northern block of this subprovlncc 

 is only now slowly and tentatively being penetrated by tedious 

 road-building operations in order to get at its rich, primeval 

 lumber resources. Therein grows timber that Is quite beyond 

 description— enormous, clean-limbed, almost all rigidly straight 

 and vertical, and almost clear below but for a blanket of 

 rhododendrons. This is mostly Sitka spruce, but there are also 

 immense Douglas firs and some pines that must surely top any 

 found elsewhere. 



In these forests there is a large and varied fauna; but, like all 

 primeval forests, it guards its inhabitants so well that you have 

 the utmost difficulty in seeing them at any time. I have sat 

 absolutely still for more than an hour and never seen anything 

 more sizable than an insect — not even an unidentified move- 

 ment—though there were some tiny twittering bird or squirrel 

 noises going on high above. Nor do you see much at night unless 

 you adopt professional jungle-hunting techniques and stay near 

 the watercourses, when otter and mink may be encountered and 

 numbers of rodents seen. Yet wherever there is soft ground (and 

 springs and streams line every slope in every gulley) you can 

 hardly put a finger between the tracks left by all sorts of animals. 

 This is the mark of the truly virgin forest, which immediately 

 distinguishes it from that whidi has been inhabited by man or 

 hunted over by him since time immemorial; and this forest was 

 apparently shunned, even by the Amerindians, on account of 

 certain legends and beliefs. Curiously, the local men who are 

 currently cutting into this wilderness building roads, timber 

 cruising, or surveying, assert that, while there are many blade 

 bears around the edges and while there are some deer in the 

 forest itself, larger game is not plentiful and bears do not seem 

 to exist there. 



There are many fascinating things to see in this isolated 

 country, but to me the most surprising was on the beautiful 

 Klamath River in a forest-choked gorge deep in the wilderness, 

 with towering spruce and fir on either hand and the nut-brown 

 river rattling along among smooth boulders, with huge trout 

 and salmon stationary between them like miniature submarines. 

 On the boulders sat sea gulls, and every now and then they 

 soared into the air and pealed with laughter just as if they were 

 crying at the winds of the ocean. Somehow this did not seem 

 right from an ecological point of view. Almost as unexpected are 

 the multitudes of quail (the California or Valley Quail) that 

 rustle about among the dead leaves in some of these valleys. 

 There can hardly be a more enchanting sight than a mother and 

 father of this species leading a dozen younsters — tiny, animated 

 balls of fluff, which rush hysterically about like mechanical toys. 



The southern portion of this mountainous area, composed of 

 the Trinity Mountains, is clothed in forests of slightly different 

 botanical constitution. Although also wild, it has been more 

 extensively traversed, explored, and hunted over. It reaches to 

 Clear Lake, which is only some seventy miles north of San 

 Francisco. South of that point there lies a series of parallel, much 

 lower mountains and hills that extend to San Francisco Bay. 

 These are clothed in short grass with isolated trees at lower 

 levels (typical parklands). then copses above this, and finally a 

 crown of thid< woods of broad-leafed but mostly evergreen trees 

 sudi as oaks. These continue with narrow breaks caused by 

 rivers leading from the Sacramento valley to the coast, all the 

 way to the Temblor Range between San Luis Obispo and Bakers- 



