THE BOTANY OF THE ROUTE. 
19 
The other vegetation of these prairies is too varied for special enumeration here. Most of the 
plants found in them are mentioned in my list of those collected west of the Cascade range. 
Of the 360 species there given, more than 150 are peculiar to these prairies, being a very large 
proportion considering their small extent in comparison with the forests. It is also observable 
that these are of a group characteristic of the Great Plains and California, of which botanical 
regions these prairies form the northwestern outskirts. 
From February to July they look like gardens, such is the brilliancy and variety of the flowers 
with which they are adorned. The weary traveller, toiling through the forests, is sure to find 
in them game, or, at least, some life to relieve the gloomy silence of the woods. 
The narrow strip of sandy prairie along the sea beach is particularly interesting to the 
botanist, for there he finds many beautiful plants not seen elsewhere, which, wandering from 
more southern climes, meet in the adjoining cranberry marshes the cold-loving northerners 
before alluded to as common in the swamps.—(See Abronia arenaria and umbellata , Orobus 
littoralis, Cymopterus ? littoralis, Fragaria Chilensis, Framer ia, (two species ,) Calystegia, Soldanella, 
&c. 
A few remarks are necessary upon the origin of the dry prairies so singularly scattered 
through the forest region. Their most striking feature is the abruptness of the forests which 
surround them, giving them the appearance of lands which have been cleared and cultivated 
for hundreds of years. From various facts observed I conclude that they are the remains of 
much more extensive prairies, which, within a comparatively recent period, occupied all the 
lower and drier parts of the valleys, and which the forests have been gradually spreading over 
in their downward progress from the mountains. The Indians, in order to preserve their open 
grounds for game, and for the production of their important root, the camas, soon found the 
advantage of burning, and when they began this it was only those trees already large that could 
withstand the fires. Occasionally gigantic fir trees, isolated or in groups, show, by their immense 
size, that these prairies have not been produced nor always exposed to fires, for they must have 
attained a considerable age before they could have resisted fire. 
The introduction of the horse, about the beginning of this century, was a further inducement 
for burning, and doubtless also caused an increased settlement in the prairies by these people, 
hitherto accustomed to travel mostly by water, and to depend upon fishing for their subsistence. 
On some prairies near Vancouver and Nisqually, where this burning has been prevented for 
twenty years past, young spruces are found to be growing up rapidly, and Indians have told me 
that they can remember when some other prairies were much larger than at present. That 
they never were covered with forest is shown by the perfect smoothness of their surface; while 
in places very completely cleared of forests by fires are always found mounds and hollows, left 
by stumps, and an immediate growth of shrubs and trees follows, showing a tendency to return 
to forest, instead of to form prairies. Great changes must have occurred in the conformation 
and climate of this part of the coast since forests began to cover a surface once probably as bare 
as that of the Central Plains. 
Several kinds of animals are closely confined to these prairies or their borders. Among them 
are the deer, rabbit, gopher, meadow-mice, and, in less degree, probably, the sewellel, (Aplo- 
dontia,) mole, prairie-mouse, (Hesperomys austerus,) which seems, like the plants, to have 
wandered from the east side of the Cascades to Steilacoom. Wolves and foxes are scarce, com¬ 
pared to their numbers on the plains, while their associates there, the badger, cayote, and 
other species, have not been found west of the Cascades. 
