August 25, 1S97.] 



Garden and Forest. 



33i 



region passed in prehistoric days. In some of the wells 

 the drilling rock is still found ; in others it has entirely dis- 

 appeared. Into one of these wells, eight feet in diameter, 

 a pole has been thrust down thirty feet ; others are choked 

 with debris and cannot be fathomed. Of the columnar 

 formations the Devil's Chair is the best known. This towers 

 about eighty feet above the level of the river, in the form 

 of a huge chair, apparently built by some giant, of roughly 

 hewn masses of rock. Vegetation clusters about its base, 

 and tall Pines spring from the cliffs behind it, but its 

 smooth top is bare, like some strange vestige of the furni- 

 ture of an age of Titans. The Hammer Head is a column 

 with two grotesque faces looking in opposite directions, 

 like a statue of Janus, and the Sentinel, or Warden, on a 

 ledge overlooking the Narrows just below the bridge, is 

 strangely real, lifting a stern granite profile against the 

 sky. Other faces, in which one detects fancied resem- 

 blances to Washington or Napoleon, are found all through 

 the region, and one, Professor Edwards tells us, is a gigantic 

 likeness of a Ute Indian, with Pine-trees for feathers, 

 and trailing vines for scalp-lock, while a leafless Pine 

 branch does duty for a pipe in his mouth. On the 

 Minnesota side of the river there are all sorts of queer 

 rock formations, of such supernatural size and shape 

 that they are called Devil's Bake Oven, Devil's Pul- 

 pit, Devil's Parlor, etc., but on the Wisconsin side holier 

 emblems appear, and one of its most striking features is the 

 uplifted image of a great stone cross, which, particularly 

 when touched by the rays of the sunset, is a noble and 

 impressive monument. On this bank also is found a 

 lovely lake, a beautiful resort for canoeists. 



The Indian name of the most beautiful lake of the region, 

 Kichisago Sagi-a-gan, meaning large and lovely lake, still 

 lingers in the name of Chisago County. Traces of early 

 French occupation are found dating to about 1700, when 

 the long-vanished fort St. Croix was established on a plateau 

 below the Dalles. Near Taylor's Falls were still to be seen 

 in 1 85 1 the stone foundations of at least nine houses, over 

 some of which were growing trees two feet in diameter, 

 with hearthstones worn smooth by use, apparently a cen- 

 tury old. This early civilization had been long extinct, 

 however, when the pioneer of the present settlement put in 

 claims to the Dalles in 1837. The village of St. Croix was 

 first known by the Indian name of Caw-caw-baw-kong, 

 which might seem to have been suggested by the warning 

 notes of crows, but means simply the waterfall. This name 

 is still preserved in a neighboring cemetery. 



The flora of the Dalles is rich in vines and flowers that 

 love a northern climate, and its silva consists of Pines, 

 Firs, Cedars, Birches, Willows, Poplars, Maples, Walnuts, 

 Elms, Ashes and Oaks. The rocks are hung with Ferns 

 and Harebells, and all sorts of sweet wood blossoms are 

 found in their season nestling in the shade. The Walking 

 Fern lingers in the little marshes at the base of the trap- 

 rocks, and Arrow-heads abound. Here, too, flourishes the 

 Cranberry, trailing its delicate vines over barren surfaces, 

 and Grasses and wild plants clamber over the hills in 

 profusion. A report by Mr. Conway Macmillan, State 

 Botanist of Minnesota, states that if it had been the idea 

 of the legislatures of the adjacent states to preserve a 

 typical group of northern plants as a kind of natural 

 botanic garden, they could scarcely have selected a more 

 favorable locality than the region about the Dalles. Few 

 southern varieties of trees have strayed into this region, 

 but the Juniper, the Larch, the Spruce and the Canadian 

 Yew abound, while some noble specimens of the White 

 Pine survive the wholesale devastation by the lumbermen. 

 A variety of the Club Moss is characteristic of the bare 

 hills near Taylor's Falls, and Ferns flourish freely, among 

 them the little Woodsia, the Rock Brake and the Bulb- 

 bearing Fern, which tapestries the cool ravines with its 

 feathery fronds. The wonderful Mosses and Lichens 

 which play so important a part in the color-scheme of the 

 Dalles have already been referred to, and among the former 

 are seen the famous Reindeer Moss, more properly a 



Lichen, and the Fountain Moss, found only in water, grows 

 here to sometimes a foot in length. Liverworts, kindred 

 to the Mosses, are also in profusion, and great carpets of 

 them may be found on damp cliffs near the springs. 

 About a thousand species of the higher groups of plants 

 are established about the Dalles. Rock Cresses and the 

 Jewel-weed are everywhere. The Ram's-head, Lady's- 

 slipper and the tiny Hydrocotyle now and then appear. 

 Anemones, Violets, Jack-in-thepulpit and other northern 

 flowers in spring, and Golden-rod and Asters in autumn 

 make the woods and fields gay with blossom. Heaths, 

 dwarf Cornels, Indian Pipes, the southern Pulses and 

 Spurges also abound, and one interesting plant, the 

 Prickly-pear Cactus, has strayed hither from the desert. 

 In short, the Dalles are a natural wild garden full of 

 interest. 



The landscape beauty of this reservation is inexhaustible. 

 From one high point on the Wisconsin side below the 

 elbow in the Dalles is seen the little town of Taylor's Falls 

 nestling by the river, and another distant town on the 

 Minnesota side gleams white against the background of 

 hills dark with evergreens. A slender steel bridge spans 

 the winding river, and under it the water foams and swirls 

 between the rocky banks crowned with Spruces and Firs. 

 Other stretches of the stream are as still as a lake in whose 

 quiet bosom the shores are reflected, and a floating canoe 

 scarce leaves a ripple behind. In the rapids all is commo- 

 tion. The drifting logs struggle in heaps ; the vexed 

 stream roars and leaps, white with foam, down the in- 

 cline. Again you paddle through a 'narrow gorge, where 

 strange forms rise like monuments before the wondering 

 gaze. Marvels of color delight one. Nature has clothed 

 the rocks with red and purple and green, festooned them 

 with vines and starred them with tender flowers. On all 

 this beauty stern rock faces look down like petrified 

 Jotuns mourning over the destruction of their forest home. 

 There is a mysterious and terrible attraction about the 

 fathomless wells dug by the slow grinding of the glacier. 

 The geological formation tells a tale of prehistoric convul- 

 sions, of strange upheavals, of a boiling caldron wherein 

 bowlders and pebbles whirled about, and are now found 

 imbedded in the trap-rock like plums in a monster pudding, 

 afar from the present bed of the stream. 



Merely as an object-lesson of botanic and general scien- 

 tific value the Dalles are well worth preserving, and their 

 exquisite wild beauty will be more and more cherished as 

 the region about becomes more settled. It is a source of 

 gratification to all lovers of nature that public-spirited citi- 

 zens enough were found in the two states to preserve this 

 gem of natural scenery from destruction as an Interstate 

 Park before the hand of the spoiler, with pick and axe, had 

 converted its rare features into utilitarian dust and ashes. 



Hingham, Mass. Mary C. RobblHS. 



CEcological Notes upon the White Pine. 



THE oecology of the Pines, especially of the White 

 Pine, Pinus strobus, has interested me for many 

 years. I have seen the White Pine in about all the condi- 

 tions to which it is subject in the region of the Great Lakes, 

 the Saint Lawrence, the upper Mississippi and the northern 

 reaches of the Alleghanies, which constitute its principal 

 geographical range, and no tree growing within this 

 climatic area adapts itself to a greater variety of soil con- 

 ditions. The American Aspen, the White Elm, tin- Red 

 Maple and the Red Cedar compare most favorably with it 

 in this regard. Its most congenial soil is one containing a 

 fair supply of sand and gravel or light loam, where it 

 usually attains the largest size. It does not generally 

 occupy the ground so exclusively as the Gray Pine, P. 

 Banksiana, or the Red Pine, P. resinosa, or several of the 

 southern Pines. The finest examples are isolated or in 

 companies of a few in forests of deciduous tiers. Here it 

 becomes their competitor, and from its range and ability 

 to hold its own, except against lire and the axe, 1 should 



