VI 
PREFACE. 
change in the features of the forest; resiniferous ever- 
greens, of the family of the Pines, now predominate, and 
attain the most gigantic dimensions. All the species, 
and they are numerous, have peculiar traits, and form 
so many curious and distinct species, of which little is 
yet known more than their botanical designation. 
Other remarkable forest trees, also imperfectly known, 
inhabit this great range of mountains, which continues 
uninterruptedly into the interior of Mexico in its south- 
ern course; while on the north, following the sources of 
the Missouri and the Oregon, and after thus dividing 
the waters which flow into the Atlantic and Pacific, it 
is, at length, merged in the “Shining Mountains,” which 
send off their distant tributaries to the Arctic ocean. 
The plains of the Upper Platte, those of the Oregon 
and of Northern California, a region bereft of summer 
rains, forming extensive barren steppes, like those of 
Siberia, present no forests, scarcely an alluvial belt along 
the larger streams of sufficient magnitude to afford even 
fuel for the camp fire of the wandering hunter or the 
erratic savage. The scanty drift wood, borne down 
from the mountains, the low bitter bushes of the arid 
plain, even the dry ordure of the bison, is collected for 
fuel, and barely suffices to prepare a hasty meal for the 
passing traveller; who, urged by hunger and thirst, hur- 
ries over the desert, a region doomed to desolation, and, 
amidst privations the most appalling, lives in the hope 
of again seeing forests and green fields in lieu of arid 
plains and bitter weeds, which tantalized our famished 
animals with the fallacious appearance of food, like the 
cast-away mariner raging with thirst, though surround- 
ed with water as fatal to the longing appetite as poison. 
Towards the shores of the Pacific, and on the banks 
of the Oregon, we again meet with the agreeable fea- 
tures of the forest. 
