Our National Parks - Chapters X-Index



CHAPTER X
THE AMERICAN FORESTS

The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great 
delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole 
continent was a garden, and from the beginning it seemed to be favored 
above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe. To prepare the 
ground, it was rolled and sifted in seas with infinite loving deliberation 
and fore-thought, lifted into the light, submerged and warmed over and 
over again, pressed and crumpled into folds and ridges, mountains, and 
hills, subsoiled with heaving volcanic fires, ploughed and ground and 
sculptured into scenery and soil with glaciers and rivers,--every feature 
growing and changing from beauty to beauty, higher and higher. And in the 
fullness of time it was planted in groves, and belts, and broad, 
exuberant, mantling forests, with the largest, most varied, most fruitful, 
and most beautiful trees in the world. Bright seas made its border, with 
wave embroidery and icebergs; gray deserts were outspread in the middle of 
it, mossy 

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tundras on the north, savannas on the south, and blooming prairies and 
plains; while lakes and rivers shone through all the vast forests and 
openings, and happy birds and beasts gave delightful animation. 
Everywhere, everywhere over all the blessed continent, there were beauty 
and melody and kindly, wholesome, foodful abundance.

These forests were composed of about five hundred species of trees, all of 
them in some way useful to man, ranging in size from twenty-five feet in 
height and less than one foot in diameter at the ground to four hundred 
feet in height and more than twenty feet in diameter,--lordly monarchs 
proclaiming the gospel of beauty like apostles. For many a century after 
the ice-ploughs were melted, nature fed them and dressed them every day,--
working like a man, a loving, devoted, painstaking gardener; fingering 
every leaf and flower and mossy furrowed bole; bending, trimming, 
modeling, balancing; painting them with the loveliest colors; bringing 
over them now clouds with cooling shadows and showers, now sunshine; 
fanning them with gentle winds and rustling their leaves; exercising them 
in every fibre with storms, and pruning them; loading them with flowers 
and fruit, loading them with snow, and ever making them more beautiful as 
the years rolled by. Wide-branching oak and elm in endless variety, walnut 
and 

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maple, chestnut and beech, ilex and locust, touching limb to limb, spread 
a leafy translucent canopy along the coast of the Atlantic over the 
wrinkled folds and ridges of the Alleghanies,--a green billowy sea in 
summer, golden and purple in autumn, pearly gray like a steadfast frozen 
mist of interlacing branches and sprays in leafless, restful winter.

To the southward stretched dark, level-topped cypresses in knobby, tangled 
swamps, grassy savannas in the midst of them like lakes of light, groves 
of gay, sparkling spice-trees, magnolias and palms, glossy-leaved and 
blooming and shining continually. To the northward, over Maine and Ottawa, 
rose hosts of spiry, rosiny evergreens,--white pine and spruce, hemlock 
and cedar, shoulder to shoulder, laden with purple cones, their myriad 
needles sparkling and shimmering, covering hills and swamps, rocky 
headlands and domes, ever bravely aspiring and seeking the sky; the ground 
in their shade now snow-clad and frozen, now mossy and flowery; beaver 
meadows here and there, full of lilies and grass; lakes gleaming like 
eyes, and a silvery embroidery of rivers and creeks watering and 
brightening all the vast glad wilderness.

Thence westward were oak and elm, hickory and tupelo, gum and 
liriodendron, sassafras and ash, linden and laurel, spreading on ever 
wider in glorious exuberance over the great fertile 

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tile basin of the Mississippi, over damp level bottoms, low dimpling 
hollows, and round dotting hills, embosoming sunny prairies and cheery 
park openings, half sunshine, half shade; while a dark wilderness of pines 
covered the region around the Great Lakes. Thence still westward swept the 
forests to right and left around grassy plains and deserts a thousand 
miles wide: irrepressible hosts of spruce and pine, aspen and willow, nut-
pine and juniper, cactus and yucca, caring nothing for drought, extending 
undaunted from mountain to mountain, over mesa and desert, to join the 
darkening multitudes of pines that covered the high Rocky ranges and the 
glorious forests along the coast of the moist and balmy Pacific, where new 
species of pine, giant cedars and spruces, silver firs and Sequoias, kings 
of their race, growing close together like grass in a meadow, poised their 
brave domes and spires in the sky, three hundred feet above the ferns and 
the lilies that enameled the ground; towering serene through the long 
centuries, preaching God's forestry fresh from heaven.

Here the forests reached their highest development. Hence they went 
wavering northward over icy Alaska, brave spruce and fir, poplar and 
birch, by the coasts and the rivers, to within sight of the Arctic Ocean. 
American forests! the glory of the world! Surveyed thus from the east to 
the west, from the north to the south, 

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they are rich beyond thought, immortal, immeasurable, enough and to spare 
fo every feeding, sheltering beast and bird, insect and son of Adam; and 
nobody need have cared had there veen no pines in Norway, no cedars and 
deodars on Lebanon and the Himalayas, no vine-clad selvas in the basin of 
the Amazon. With such variety, harmony, and triumphant exuberance, even 
nature, it would seem, might have rested content with the forests of North 
America, and planted no more.

So they appeared a few centuries ago when they were rejoicing in wildness. 
The Indians with stone axes could do them no more harm than could gnawing 
beavers and browsing moose. Even the fires of the Indians and the fierce 
shattering lightning seemed to work together only for good in clearing 
spots here and there for smooth garden prairies, and openings for 
sunflowers seeking the light. But when the steel axe of the white man rang 
out on the startled air their doom was sealed. Every tree heard the 
bodeful sound, and pillars of smoke gave the sign in the sky.

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things 
they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been 
made without barbarous wickedness. Likewise many of nature's five hundred 
kinds of wild trees had to make way for orchards 

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and cornfields. In the settlement and civilization of the country, bread 
more than timber or beauty was wanted; and in the blindness of hunger, the 
early settlers, claiming Heaven as their guide, regarded God's trees as 
only a larger kind of pernicious weeds, extremely hard to get rid of. 
Accordingly, with no eye to the future, these pious destroyers waged 
interminable forest wars; chips flew thick and fast; trees in their beauty 
fell crashing by millions, smashed to confusion, and the smoke of their 
burning has been rising to heaven more than two hundred years. After the 
Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia had been mostly cleared and scorched 
into melancholy ruins, the overflowing multitude of bread and money 
seekers poured over the Alleghanies into the fertile middle West, 
spreading ruthless devastation ever wider and farther over the rich valley 
of the Mississippi and the vast shadowy pine region about the Great Lakes. 
Thence still westward, the invading horde of destroyers called settlers 
made its fiery way over the broad Rocky Mountains, felling and burning 
more fiercely than ever, until at last it has reached the wild side of the 
continent, and entered the last of the great aboriginal forests on the 
shores of the Pacific.

Surely, then, it should not be wondered at that lovers of their country, 
bewailing its baldness, are now crying aloud, "Save what is left of 

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the forests!" Clearing has surely now gone far enough; soon timber will be 
scarce, and not a grove will be left to rest in or pray in. The remnant 
protected will yield plenty of timber, a perennial harvest for every right 
use, without further diminution of its area, and will continue to cover 
the springs of the rivers that rise in the mountains and give irrigating 
waters to the dry valleys at their feet, prevent wasting floods and be a 
blessing to everybody forever.

Every other civilized nation in the world has been compelled to care for 
its forests, and so must we if waste and destruction are not to go on to 
the bitter end, leaving America as barren as Palestine or Spain. In its 
calmer moments, in the midst of bewildering hunger and war and restless 
over-industry, Prussia has learned that the forest plays an important part 
in human progress, and that the advance in civilization only makes it more 
indispensable. It has, therefore, as shown by Mr. Pinchot, refused to 
deliver its forests to more or less speedy destruction by permitting them 
to pass into private ownership. But the state woodlands are not allowed to 
lie idle. On the contrary, they are made to produce as much timber as is 
possible without spoiling them. In the administration of its forests, the 
state righteously considers itself bound to treat them as a trust for the 
nation as a whole, and to keep in view the common good of the people for 
all time.

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In France no government forests have been sold since 1870. On the other 
hand, about one half of the fifty million francs spent on forestry has 
been given to engineering works, to make the replanting of denuded areas 
possible. The disappearance of the forests in the first place, it is 
claimed, may be traced in most cases directly to mountain pasturage. The 
provisions of the Code concerning private woodlands are substantially 
these: no private owner may clear his woodlands without giving notice to 
the government at least four months in advance, and the forest service may 
forbid the clearing on the following grounds,--to maintain the soil on 
mountains, to defend the soil against erosion and flooding by rivers or 
torrents, to insure the existence of springs or watercourses, to protect 
the dunes and seashore, etc. A proprietor who has cleared his forest 
without permission is subject to heavy fine, and in addition may be made 
to replant the cleared area.

In Switzerland, after many laws like our own had been found wanting, the 
Swiss forest school was established in 1865, and soon after the federal 
forest law was enacted, which is binding over nearly two thirds of the 
country. Under its provisions, the cantons must appoint and pay the number 
of suitably educated foresters required for the fulfillment of the forest 
law; and in the organization of a normally stocked forest, 

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the object of first importance must be the cutting each year of an amount 
of timber equal to the total annual increase, and no more.

The Russian government passed a law in 1888, declaring that clearing is 
forbidden in protected forests, and is allowed in others "only when its 
effects will not be to disturb the suitable relations which should exist 
between forest and agricultural lands."

Even Japan is ahead of us in the management of her forests. They cover an 
area of about twenty-nine million acres. The feudal lords valued the 
woodlands, and enacted vigorous protective laws; and when, in the latest 
civil war, the Mikado government destroyed the feudal system, it declared 
the forests that had belonged to the feudal lords to be the property of 
the state, promulgated a forest law binding on the whole kingdom, and 
founded a school of forestry in Tokio. The forest service does not rest 
satisfied with the present proportion of woodland, but looks to planting 
the best forest trees it can find in any country, if likely to be useful 
and to thrive in Japan.

In India systematic forest management was begun about forty years ago, 
under difficulties--presented by the character of the country, the 
prevalence of running fires, opposition from lumbermen, settlers, etc.--
not unlike those which confront us now. Of the total area of government 
forests, perhaps seventy million acres, fifty-five 

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million acres have been brought under the control of the forestry 
department,--a larger area than that of all our national parks and 
reservations. The chief aims of the administration are effective 
protection of the forests from fire, an efficient system of regeneration, 
and cheap transportation of the forest products; the results so far have 
been most beneficial and encouraging.

It seems, therefore, that almost every civilized nation can give us a 
lesson on the management and care of forests. So far our government has 
done nothing effective with its forests, though the best in the world, but 
is like a rich and foolish spendthrift who has inherited a magnificent 
estate in perfect order, and then has left his fields and meadows, forests 
and parks, to be sold and plundered and wasted at will, depending on their 
inexhaustible abundance. Now it is plain that the forests are not 
inexhaustible, and that quick measures must be taken if ruin is to be 
avoided. Year by year the remnant is growing smaller before the axe and 
fire, while the laws in existence provide neither for the protection of 
the timber from destruction nor for its use where it is most needed.

As is shown by Mr. E. A. Bowers, formerly Inspector of the Public Land 
Service, the foundation of our protective policy, which has never 
protected, is an act passed March 1, 1817, which authorized the Secretary 
of the Navy to reserve 

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lands producing live-oak and cedar, for the sole purpose of supplying 
timber for the navy of the United States. An extension of this law by the 
passage of the act of March 2, 1831, provided that if any person should 
cut live-oak or red cedar trees or other timber from the lands of the 
United States for any other purpose than the construction of the navy, 
such person should pay a fine nor less than triple the value of the timber 
cut, and be imprisoned for a period not exceeding twelve months. Upon this 
old law, as Mr. Bowers points out, having the construction of a wooden 
navy in view, the United States government has to-day chiefly to rely in 
protecting its timber throughout the arid regions of the West, where none 
of the naval timber which the law had in mind is to be found.

By the act of June 3, 1878, timber can be taken from public lands not 
subject to entry under any existing laws except for minerals, by bona fide 
residents of the Rocky Mountain states and territories and the Dakotas. 
Under the timber and stone act, of the same date, land in the Pacific 
States and Nevada, valuable mainly for timber, and unfit for cultivation 
if the timber is removed, can be purchased for two dollars and a half an 
acre, under certain restrictions. By the act of March 3, 1875, all land-
grant and right-of-way railroads are authorized to take timber from the 
public lands adjacent to their lines 

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for construction purposes; and they have taken it with a vengeance, 
destroying a hundred times more than they have used, mostly by allowing 
fires to run in the woods. The settlement laws, under which a settler may 
enter lands valuable for timber as well as for agriculture, furnish 
another means of obtaining title to public timber.

With the exception of the timber culture act, under which, in 
consideration of planting a few acres of seedlings, settlers on the 
treeless plains got 160 acres each, the above is the only legislation 
aiming to protect and promote the planting of forests. In no other way 
than under some one of these laws can a citizen of the United States make 
any use of the public forests. To show the results of the timber-planting 
act, it need only be stated that of the thirty-eight million acres entered 
under it, less than one million acres have been patented. This means that 
less than fifty thousand acres have been planted with stunted, woebegone, 
almost hopeless sprouts of trees, while at the same time the government 
has allowed millions of acres of the grandest forest trees to be stolen or 
destroyed, or sold for nothing. Under the act of June 3, 1878, settlers in 
Colorado and the Territories were allowed to cut timber for mining and 
educational purposes from mineral land, which in the practical West means 
both cutting and burning anywhere and everywhere, for any purpose, on any 
sort of public land. 

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Thus, the prospector, the miner, and mining and railroad companies are 
allowed by law to take all the timber they like for their mines and roads, 
and the forbidden settler, if there are no mineral lands near his farm or 
stock-ranch, or none that he knows of, can hardly be expected to forbear 
taking what he needs wherever he can find it. Timber is as necessary as 
bread, and no scheme of management failing to recognize and properly 
provide for this want can possibly be maintained. In any case, it will be 
hard to teach the pioneers that it is wrong to steal government timber. 
Taking from the government is with them the same as taking from nature, 
and their consciences flinch no more in cutting timber from the wild 
forests than in drawing water from a lake or river. As for reservation and 
protection of forests, it seems as silly and needless to them as 
protection and reservation of the ocean would be, both appearing to be 
boundless and inexhaustible.

The special land agents employed by the General Land Office to protect the 
public domain from timber depredations are supposed to collect testimony 
to sustain prosecution and to superintend such prosecution on behalf of 
the government, which is represented by the district attorneys. But timber 
thieves of the Western class are seldom convicted, for the good reason 
that most of the jurors who try such cases are 

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themselves as guilty as those on trial. The effect of the present 
confused, discriminating, and unjust system has been to place almost the 
whole population in opposition to the government; and as conclusive of its 
futility, as shown by Mr. Bowers, we need only state that during the seven 
years from 1881 to 1887 inclusive, the value of the timber reported stolen 
from the government lands was $36,719,935, and the amount recovered was 
$478,073, while the cost of the services of special agents alone was $455,
000, to which must be added the expense of the trials. Thus for nearly 
thirty-seven million dollars' worth of timber the government got less than 
nothing; and the value of that consumed by running fires during the same 
period, without benefit even to thieves, was probably over two hundred 
millions of dollars. Land commissioners and Secretaries of the Interior 
have repeatedly called attention to this ruinous state of affairs, and 
asked Congress to enact the requisite legislation for reasonable reform. 
But, busied with tariffs, etc., Congress has given no heed to these or 
other appeals, and our forests, the most valuable and the most 
destructible of all the natural resources of the country, are being robbed 
and burned more rapidly than ever. The annual appropriation for so-called 
"protection service" is hardly sufficient to keep twenty-five timber 
agents in the field, and as far as any efficient protection 

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of timber is concerned these agents themselves night as well be timber.(1)

That a change from robbery and ruin to a permanent rational policy is 
urgently needed nobody with the slightest knowledge of American forests 
will deny. In the East and along the northern Pacific coast, where the 
rainfall is abundant, comparatively few care keenly what becomes of the 
trees so long as fuel and lumber are not noticeably dear. But in the Rocky 
Mountains and California and Arizona, where the forests are inflammable, 
and where the fertility of the lowlands depends upon irrigation, public 
opinion is growing stronger every year in favor of permanent protection by 
the federal government of all the forests that cover the sources of the 
streams. Even lumbermen in these regions, long accustomed to steal, are 
now willing and anxious to buy lumber for their mills under cover of law: 
some possibly from a late second growth of honesty, but most, especially 
the small mill-owners, simply because it no longer pays to steal where all 
may not only steal, but also destroy, and in particular because it costs 
about as much to steal timber for one mill as for ten, and, therefore, the 
ordinary lumberman can no longer compete with the large corporations. Many 
of the miners find that timber is already becoming scarce and dear on 

(1. A change for the better, compelled by public opinion, is now going 
on,--1901.)

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the denuded hills around their mills, and they, too, are asking for 
protection of forests, at least against fire. The slow-going, unthrifty 
farmers, also, are beginning to realize that when the timber is stripped 
from the mountains the irrigating streams dry up in summer, and are 
destructive in winter; that soil, scenery, and everything slips off with 
the trees: so of course they are coming into the ranks of tree-friends.

Of all the magnificent coniferous forests around the Great Lakes, once the 
property of the United States, scarcely any belong to it now. They have 
disappeared in lumber and smoke, mostly smoke, and the government got not 
one cent for them; only the land they were growing on was considered 
valuable, and two and a half dollars an acre was charged for it. Here and 
there in the Southern States there are still considerable areas of 
timbered government land, but these are comparatively unimportant. Only 
the forests of the West are significant in size and value, and these, 
although still great, are rapidly vanishing. Last summer, of the unrivaled 
red-wood forests of the Pacific Coast Range, the United States Forestry 
Commission could not find a single quarter-section that remained in the 
hands of the government.(1)

(1. The State of California recently appropriated two hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars to buy a block of redwood land near Santa Cruz for a 
state park. A much larger national park should be made in Humboldt or 
Mendocino county.)

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Under the timber and stone act of 1878, which might well have been called 
the "dust and ashes act," any citizen of the United States could take up 
one hundred and sixty acres of timber land, and by paying two dollars and 
a half an acre for it obtain title. There was some virtuous effort made 
with a view to limit the operations of the act by requiring that the 
purchaser should make affidavit that he was entering the land exclusively 
for his own use, and by not allowing any association to enter more than 
one hundred and sixty acres. Nevertheless, under this act wealthy 
corporations have fraudulently obtained title to from ten thousand to 
twenty thousand acres or more. The plan was usually as follows: A mill 
company, desirous of getting title to a large body of redwood or sugar-
pine land, first blurred the eyes and ears of the land agents, and then 
hired men to enter the land they wanted, and immediately deed it to the 
company after a nominal compliance with the law; false swearing in the 
wilderness against the government being held of no account. In one case 
which came under the observation of Mr. Bowers, it was the practice of a 
lumber company to hire the entire crew of every vessel which might happen 
to touch at any port in the red-wood belt, to enter one hundred an sixty 
acres each and immediately deed the land to the company, in consideration 
of the company's paying 

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all expenses and giving the jolly sailors fifty dollars apiece for their 
trouble.

By such methods have our magnificent redwoods and much of the sugar-pine 
forests of the Sierra Nevada been absorbed by foreign and resident 
capitalists. Uncle Sam is not often called a fool in business matters, yet 
he has sold millions of acres of timber land at two dollars and a half an 
acre on which a single tree was worth more than a hundred dollars. But 
this priceless land has been patented, and nothing can be done now about 
the crazy bargain. According to the everlasting law of righteousness, even 
the fraudulent buyers at less than one per cent of its value are making 
little or nothing, on account of fierce competition. The trees are felled, 
and about half of each giant is left on the ground to be converted into 
smoke and ashes; the better half is sawed into choice lumber and sold to 
citizens of the United States or to foreigners: thus robbing the country 
of its glory and impoverishing it without right benefit to anybody,--a 
bad, black business from beginning to end.

The redwood is one of the few conifers that sprout from the stump and 
roots, and it declares itself willing to begin immediately to repair the 
damage of the lumberman and also that of the forest-burner. As soon as a 
redwood is cut down or burned it sends up a crowd of eager, hopeful 
shoots, which, if allowed to grow, would in a 

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few decades attain a height of a hundred feet, and the strongest of them 
would finally become giants as great as the original tree. Gigantic second 
and third growth trees are found in the redwoods, forming magnificent 
temple-like circles around charred ruins more than a thousand years old. 
But not one denuded acre in a hundred is allowed to raise a new forest 
growth. On the contrary, all the brains, religion, and superstition of the 
neighborhood are brought into play to prevent a new growth. The sprouts 
from the roots and stumps are cut off again and again, with zealous 
concern as to the best time and method of making death sure. In the 
clearings of one of the largest mills on the coast we found thirty men at 
work, last summer, cutting off redwood shoots "in the dark of the moon," 
claiming that all the stumps and roots cleared at this auspicious time 
would send up no more shoots. Anyhow, these vigorous, almost immortal 
trees are killed at last, and black stumps are now their only monuments 
over most of the chopped and burned areas.

The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. It extends along the western 
slope, in a nearly continuous belt about ten miles wide, from beyond the 
Oregon boundary to the south of Santa Cruz, a distance of nearly four 
hundred miles, and in massive, sustained grandeur and closeness of growth 
surpasses all the other timber woods of the 

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world. Threes from ten to fifteen feet in diameter and three hundred feet 
high are not uncommon, and a few attain a height of three hundred and 
fifty feet or even four hundred, with a diameter at the base of fifteen to 
twenty feet or more, while the ground beneath them is a garden of fresh, 
exuberant ferns, lilies, gaultheria, and rhododendron. This grand tree, 
Sequoia sempervirens, is surpassed in size only by its near relative, 
Sequoia gigantea, or Big Tree, of the Sierra Nevada, if, indeed, it is 
surpassed. The sempervirens is certainly the taller of the two. The 
gigantea attains a greater girth, and is heavier, more noble in port, and 
more sublimely beautiful. These two Sequoia are all that are known to 
exist in the world, though in former geological times the genus was common 
and had many species. The redwood is restricted to the Coast Range, and 
the Big Tree to the Sierra.

As timber the redwood is too good to live. The largest sawmills ever built 
are busy along its seaward border, "with all the modern improvements," but 
so immense is the yield per acre it will be long ere the supply is 
exhausted. The Big Tree is also, to some extent, being made into lumber. 
It is far less abundant than the redwood, and is, fortunately, less 
accessible, extending along the western flank of the Sierra in a partially 
interrupted belt, about two hundred and fifty miles long, at a height of 
from four to eight 

[image caption: ROAD THROUGH THE SEQUOIAS, MARIPOSA GROVE]

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thousand feet above the sea. The enormous logs, too heavy to handle, are 
blasted into manageable dimensions with gunpowder. A large portion of the 
best timber is thus shattered and destroyed, and, with the huge, knotty 
tops, is left in ruins for tremendous fires that kill every tree within 
their range, great and small. Still, the species is not in danger of 
extinction. It has been planted and is flourishing over a great part of 
Europe, and magnificent sections of the aboriginal forests have been 
reserved as national and State parks,--the Mariposa Sequoia Grove, near 
Yosemite, managed by the State of California, and the General Grant and 
Sequoia national parks on the Kings, Kaweah, and Tule rivers, efficiently 
guarded by a small troop of United States cavalry under the direction of 
the Secretary of the interior. But there is not a single specimen of the 
redwood in any national park. Only by gift or purchase, so far as I know, 
can the government get back into its possession a single acre of this 
wonderful forest.

The legitimate demands on the forests that have passed into private 
ownership, as well as those in the hands of the government, are increasing 
every year with the rapid settlement and up-building of the country, but 
the methods of lumbering are as yet grossly wasteful. In most mills only 
the best portions of the best trees are used, while the ruins are left on 
the ground to feed 

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great fires, which kill much of what is left of the less desirable timber, 
together with the seedlings, on which the permanence of the forest 
depends. Thus every mill is a centre of destruction far more severe from 
waste and fire than from use. The same thing is true of the mines, which 
consume and destroy indirectly immense quantities of timber with their 
innumerable fires, accidental or set to make open ways, and often without 
regard to how far they run. The prospector deliberately sets fires to 
clear off the woods just where they are densest, to lay the rocks bare and 
make the discovery of mines easier. Sheep-owners and their shepherds also 
set fires everywhere through the woods in the fall to facilitate the march 
of their countless flocks the next summer, and perhaps in some places to 
improve the pasturage. The axe is not yet at the root of every tree, but 
the sheep is,or was before the national parks were established and guarded 
by the military, the only effective and reliable arm of the government 
free from the blight of politics. Not only do the shepherds, at the driest 
time of the year, set fire to everything that will burn, but the sheep 
consume every green leaf, not sparing even the young conifers, where they 
are in a starving condition from crowding, and they rake and dibble the 
loose soil of the mountain sides for the spring floods to wash away, and 
thus at last leave the ground barren.

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Of all the destroyers that infest the woods, the shake-maker seems the 
happiest. Twenty or thirty years ago, shakes, a kind of long, board-like 
shingles split with a mallet and a frow, were in great demand for covering 
barns and sheds, and many are used still in preference to common shingles, 
especially those made from the sugar-pine, which do not warp or crack in 
the hottest sunshine. Drifting adventurers in California, after harvest 
and threshing are over, oftentimes meet to discuss their plans for the 
winter, and their talk is interesting. Once, in a company of this kind, I 
heard a man say, as he peacefully smoked his pipe: "Boys, as soon as this 
job's done I'm goin' into the duck business. There's big money in it, and 
your grub costs nothing. Tule Joe made five hundred dollars last winter on 
mallard and teal. Shot'em on the Joaquin, tied 'em in dozens by the neck, 
and shipped 'em to San Francisco. And when he was tired wading in the 
sloughs and touched with rheumatiz, he just knocked off on ducks, and went 
to the Contra Costa hills for dove and quail. It's a mighty good business, 
and you're your own boss, and the whole thing's fun."

Another of the company, a bushy-bearded fellow, with a trace of brag in 
his voice, drawled out: "Bird business is well enough for some, but bear 
is my game, with a deer and a California lion thrown in now and then for 
change. There's 

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always market for bear grease, and sometimes you can sell the hams. 
They're good as hog hams any day. And you are your own boss in my 
business, too, if the bears ain't too big and too many for you. Old 
grizzlies I despise,--they want cannon to kill 'em; but the blacks and 
browns are beauties for grease, and when once I get 'em just right, and 
draw a bead on 'em, I fetch 'em every time." Another said he was going to 
catch up a lot of mustangs as soon as the rains set in, hitch them to a 
gang-plough, and go to farming on the San Joaquin plains for wheat. But 
most preferred the shake business, until something more profitable and as 
sure could be found, with equal comfort and independence.

With a cheap mustang or mule to carry a pair of blankets, a sack of flour, 
a few pounds of coffee, and an axe, a frow, and a cross-cut saw, the shake-
maker ascends the mountains to the pine belt where it is most accessible, 
usually by some mine or mill road. Then he strikes off into the virgin 
woods, where the sugar pine, king of all the hundred species of pines in 
the world in size and beauty, towers on the open sunny slopes of the 
Sierra in the fullness of its glory. Selecting a favorable spot for a 
cabin near a meadow with a stream, he unpacks his animal and stakes it out 
on the meadow. Then he chops into one after another of the pines, until 

Page 355

he finds one that he feels sure will split freely, cuts this down, saws 
off a section four feet long, splits it, and from this first cut, perhaps 
seven feet in diameter, he gets shakes enough for a cabin and its 
furniture,--walls, roof, door, bedstead, table, and stool. Besides his 
labor, only a few pounds of nails are required. Sapling poles form the 
frame of the airy building, usually about six feet by eight in size, on 
which the shakes are nailed, with the edges overlapping. A few bolts from 
the same section that the shakes were made from are split into square 
sticks and built up to form a chimney, the inside and interspaces being 
plastered and filled in with mud. Thus, with abundance of fuel, shelter 
and comfort by his own fireside are secured. Then he goes to work sawing 
and splitting for the market, tying the shakes in bundles of fifty or a 
hundred. They are four feet long, four inches wide, and about one fourth 
of an inch thick. The first few thousands he sells or trades at the 
nearest mill or store, getting provisions in exchange. Then he advertise, 
in whatever way he can, that he has excellent sugar-pine shakes for sale, 
easy of access and cheap.

Only the lower, perfectly clear, free-splitting portions of the giant 
pines are used,--perhaps ten to twenty feet from a tree two hundred and 
fifty in height; all the rest is left a mass of ruins, to rot or to feed 
the forest fires, while thousands are hacked deeply and rejected in 
proving 

Page 356

the grain. Over nearly all of the more accessible slopes of the Sierra and 
Cascade mountains in southern Oregon, at a height of from three to six 
thousand feet above the sea, and for a distance of about six hundred 
miles, this waste and confusion extends. Happy robbers! dwelling in the 
most beautiful woods, in the most salubrious climate, breathing delightful 
odors both day and night, drinking cool living water,--roses and lilies at 
their feet in the spring, shedding fragrance and ringing bells as if 
cheering them on in their desolating work. There is none to say them nay. 
They buy no land, pay no taxes, dwell in a paradise with no forbidding 
angel either from Washington or from heaven. Every one of the frail shake 
shanties is a centre of destruction, and the extent of the ravages wrought 
in this quiet way is in the aggregate enormous.

It is not generally known that, notwithstanding the immense quantities of 
timber cut every year for foreign and home markets and mines, from five to 
ten times as much is destroyed as is used, chiefly by running forest fires 
that only the federal government can stop. Travelers through the West in 
summer are not likely to forget the fire-work displayed along the various 
railway tracks. Thoreau, when contemplating the destruction of the forests 
on the east side of the continent, said that soon the country would be so 
bald that every 

Page 357

man would have to grow whiskers to hide its nakedness, but he thanked God 
that at least the sky was safe. Had he gone West he would have found out 
that the sky was not safe; for all through the summer months, over most of 
the mountain regions, the smoke of mill and forest fires is so thick and 
black that no sunbeam can pierce it. The whole sky, with clouds, sun, 
moon, and stars, is simply blotted out. There is no real sky and no 
scenery. Not a mountain is left in the landscape. At least none is in 
sight from the lowlands, and they all might as well be on the moon, as far 
as scenery is concerned.

The half-dozen transcontinental railroad companies advertise the beauties 
of their lines in gorgeous many-colored folders, each claiming its as the 
"scenic route." "The route of superior desolation"--the smoke, dust, and 
ashes route--would be a more truthful description. Every train rolls on 
through dismal smoke and barbarous, melancholy ruins; and the companies 
might well cry in their advertisements: "Come! travel our way. Ours is the 
blackest. It is the only genuine Erebus route. The sky is black and the 
ground is black, and on either side there is a continuous border of black 
stumps and logs and blasted trees appealing to heaven for help as if still 
half alive, and their mute eloquence is most interestingly touching. The 
blackness is perfect. On account of the superior skill of our workmen, 

Page 358

advantages of climate, and the kind of trees, the charring is generally 
deeper along our line, and the ashes are deeper, and the confusion and 
desolation displayed can never be rivaled. No other route on this 
continent so fully illustrates the abomination of desolation." Such a 
claim would be reasonable, as each seems the worst, whatever route you 
chance to take.

Of course a way had to be cleared through the woods. But the felled timber 
is not worked up into firewood for the engines and into lumber for the 
company's use; it is left lying in vulgar confusion, and is fired from 
time to time by sparks from locomotives or by the workmen camping along 
the line. The fires, whether accidental or set, are allowed to run into 
the woods as far as they may, thus assuring comprehensive destruction. The 
directors of a line that guarded against fires, and cleared a clean gap 
edged with living trees, and fringed and mantled with the grass and 
flowers and beautiful seedling that are ever ready and willing to spring 
up, might justly boast of the beauty of their road; for nature is always 
ready to heal every scar. But there is no such road on the western side of 
the continent. Last summer, in the Rocky Mountains, I saw six fires 
started by sparks from a locomotive within a distance of three miles, and 
nobody was in sight to prevent them from spreading. They might run into 
the adjacent forests 

Page 359

and burn the timber from hundreds of square miles; not a man in the State 
would care to spend an hour in fighting them, as long as his own fences 
and buildings were not threatened.

Notwithstanding all the waste and use which have been going on unchecked 
like a storm for more than two centuries, it is not yet too late-- though 
it is high time--for the government to begin a rational administration of 
its forests. About seventy million acres it still owns,-- enough for all 
the country, if wisely used. These residual forests are generally on 
mountain slopes, just where they are doing the most good, and where their 
removal would be followed by the greatest number of evils; the lands they 
cover are too rocky and high for agriculture, and can never be made as 
valuable for any other crop as for present crop of trees. It has been 
shown over and over again that if these mountains were to be stripped of 
their trees and underbrush, and kept bare and sodless by hordes of sheep 
and the innumerable fires the shepherds set, besides those of the millmen, 
prospectors shake-makers, and all sorts of adventurers, both lowlands and 
mountains would speedily become little better than desert, compared with 
their present beneficent fertility. During heavy rainfalls and while the 
winter accumulations of snow were melting, the large streams would swell 
into destructive torrents, cutting deep, rugged-edged 

Page 360

gullies, carrying away the fertile humus and soil as well as sand and 
rocks, filling up and overflowing their lower channels, and covering the 
lowland fields with raw detritus. Drought and barrenness would follow.

In their natural condition, or under wise management, keeping out 
destructive sheep, preventing fires, selecting the trees that should be 
cut for lumber, and preserving the young ones and the shrubs and sod of 
herbaceous vegetation, these forests would be a never failing fountain of 
wealth and beauty. The cool shades of the forest give rise to moist beds 
and currents of air, and the sod of grasses and the various flowering 
plants and shrubs thus fostered, together with the network and sponge of 
tree roots, absorb and hold back the rain and the waters from melting 
snow, compelling them to ooze and percolate and flow gently through the 
soil in streams that never dry. All the pine needles and rootlets and 
blades of grass, and the fallen, decaying trunks of trees, are dams, 
storing the bounty of the clouds and dispensing it in perennial life-
giving streams, instead of allowing it to gather suddenly and rush 
headlong in short-lived devastating floods. Everybody on the dry side of 
the continent is beginning to find this out, and, in view of the waste 
going on, is growing more and more anxious for government protection. The 
outcries we hear against forest reservations come 

Page 361

mostly from thieves who are wealthy and steal timber by wholesale. They 
have so long been allowed to steal and destroy in peace that any 
impediment to forest robbery is denounced as a cruel and irreligious 
interference with "vested rights," likely to endanger the repose of all 
ungodly welfare.

Gold, gold, gold! How strong a voice that metal has!

"O was for the siller, it is sae preva'lin'!"

Even in Congress a sizable chunk of gold, carefully concealed, will 
outtalk and outfight all the nation on a subject like forestry, well 
smothered in ignorance, and in which the money interests of only a few are 
conspicuously involved. Under these circumstances, the bawling, blethering 
oratorical stuff drowns the voice of God himself. Yet the dawn of a new 
day in forestry is breaking. Honest citizens see that only the rights of 
the government are being trampled, not those of the settlers. Only what 
belongs to all alike is reserved, and every acre that is left should be 
held together under the federal government as a basis for a general policy 
of administration for the public good. The people will not always be 
deceived by selfish opposition, whether from lumber and mining 
corporations or from sheepmen and prospectors, however cunningly brought 
forward underneath fables and gold.

Emerson says that things refuse to be mismanaged 

Page 362

long. An exception would seem to be found in the case of our forests, 
which have been mismanaged rather long, and now come desperately near 
being like smashed eggs and spilt milk. Still, in the long run the world 
does not move backward. The wonderful advance made in the last few years, 
in creating four national parks in the West, and thirty forest 
reservations, embracing nearly forty million acres; and in the planting of 
the borders of streets and highways and spacious parks in all the great 
cities, to satisfy the natural taste and hunger for landscape beauty and 
righteousness that God has put, in some measure, into every human being 
and animal, shows the trend of awakening public opinion. The making of the 
far-famed New York Central Park was opposed by even good men, with 
misguided pluck, perseverance, and ingenuity; but straight right won its 
way, and now that park is appreciated. So we confidently believe it will 
be with our great national parks and forest reservations. There will be a 
period of indifference on the part of the rich, sleepy with wealth, and of 
the toiling millions, sleepy with poverty, most of whom never saw a 
forest; a period of screaming protest and objection from the plunderers, 
who are as unconscionable and enterprising as Satan. But light is surely 
coming, and the friends of destruction will preach and bewail in vain.

Page 363

The United States government has always been proud of the welcome it has 
extended to good men of every nation, seeking freedom and homes and bread. 
Let them be welcomed still as nature welcomes them, to the woods as well 
as to the prairies and plains. No place is too good for good men, and 
still there is room. They are invited to heaven, and may well be allowed 
in America. Every place is made better by them. Let them be as free to 
pick gold and gems from the hills, to cut and hew, dig and plant, for 
homes and bread, as the birds are to pick berries from the wild bushes, 
and moss and leaves for nests. The ground will be glad to feed them, and 
the pines will come down from the mountains for their homes as willingly 
as the cedars came from Lebanon for Solomon's temple. Nor will the woods 
be the worse for this use, or their benign influences be diminished any 
more than the sun is diminished by shining. Mere destroyers, however, tree-
killers, wool and mutton men, spreading death and confusion in the fairest 
groves and gardens ever planted,--let the government hasten to cast them 
out and make an end of them. For it must be told again and again, and be 
burningly borne in mind, that just now, while protective measures are 
being deliberated languidly, destruction and use are speeding on faster 
and farther every day. The axe and saw are insanely busy, chips are flying 
thick as snowflakes, 

Page 364

and every summer thousands of acres of priceless forests, will their 
underbrush, soil, springs, climate, scenery, and religion, are vanishing 
away in clouds of smoke, while, except in the national parks, not one 
forest guard is employed.

All sorts of local laws and regulations have been tried and found wanting, 
and the costly lessons of our own experience, as well as that of every 
civilized nation, show conclusively that the fate of the remnant of our 
forests is in the hands of the federal government, and that if the remnant 
is to be saved at all, it must be saved quickly.

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they 
would still be destroyed,--chased and hunted down as long as fun or a 
dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or 
magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would 
planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval 
forests. During a man's life only saplings can be grown, in the place of 
the old trees--tens of centuries old--that have been destroyed. It took 
more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western 
woods,--trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, 
waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the 
wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ's time--and long before that-- 

Page 365

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, 
avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he 
cannot save them from fools,--only Uncle Sam can do that.



INDEX

Adenostema fasciculatum, heathlike shrub, its influence on the physiognomy 
of Sierra landscapes, 142. 
Age of trees, pine, 69, 104, 107, 108, 114, 275; libocedrus, 118; juniper, 
124; fir, 275, 276; sequoia, 260, 275-280, 297, 299. 
Alaska, plants and animals of, 7-11. 
Alpenglow, 74. 
Apple, wild, 22, 23. 
Aspen, 131 
Aster, 164 
Avalanches, snow, 27, 251-255; rock, 140, 259. 
Azalea, 146, 181, 303. 
Axe clearings, 101. 
Bear-hunters, 353; Duncan, 179; David Brown and his dog Sandy, 181. 
Bears, 28, 52, 57, 144, 314; food of Sierra, 172,; interviews with 174, 
177; tracks, 178; and sheep, 185. 
Beaver, 16, 25, 53. 
Beaver, mountain, 201. 
Beaver meadows, 23, 37. 
Birds, of the Yosemite Park, 213. 
Blackberries, 24. 
Bogs, 139, 166. 
Brodiæa, 23, 155. 
Bryanthus, 148. 
California, floweriness of, 137. 
Calochortus, 23, 145. 
Calypso borealis, 7, 23. 
Camassia, 156. 
Campanula, 282. 
Camping, 56, 133, 161, 163. 
Cañon, the Grand, of the Colorado, 35; Yellowstone, 49; Merced, 259; 
Tuolumne, 259. 
Canons of the Sierra, 83. 
Cassiope, 147. 
Cathedral Peak, 90. 
Ceanothus, 145. 
Cedar, incense, 116; red, 123, 273. 
Chamæbatia foliolosa, a forest carpet, 143. 
Chaparral, 142, 144, 146. 
Cherry, 23, 146. 
Chestnut, 22. 
Chinquapin, 146. 
Chipmunk, 196. 
Climates of the Sierra, 138, 160, 161, 164. 
Clintonia, 18, 23. 
Clouds, 77, 164, 276, 281. 
Colds, 133. 
Coyote, 194. 
Crow, Clarke, 228. 
Crystals, 161. 
Currants, 24. 
Cypripedium, 156. 
Daisy, 94, 149. 
Danger, 28, 57, 133, 184, 208. 
Deer, 189, 315. 
Deserts, 6. 
De Soto, 71. 
Diver, great northern, 227. 
Dog, Carlo, 175; Sandy, 181. 
Dogwood, flowering, 22, 130. 
Douglas, David, in forests of Oregon, 110. 
Duck-hunters, 353. 
Ducks, 226. 
Dwarf willow, 94. 
Eagle, 228. 
Earthquake, 261; ancient, 265; taluses, formation of, 260; influence on 
cañon scenery, 265.

Page 368

Fir. See Silver fir. 
Floods, 256. 
Floral cascades, 159. 
Flower beds of the Sierra, 142. 
Flowers, of pine, spruce, fir, and hemlock, 168, 169; sequoia, 284. 
Forest fires, 297, 307, 335, 352, 356-359. 
Forest picture, 302. 
Forest Reservations, Rocky Mountain, 15; Pacific Coast, 19, 31, 34; 
opposition to, 24, 360; wildness of, 24. 
Forest Reserve, Black Hills, 13; Bitter Root, 16; Flathead, 17; Sierra, 
31; Grand Cañon, 34. 
Forest sepulchres, 64. 
Forests, growing interest in, 2, 5, 33; of the Cascade Mountains, 22; 
fossil, 60; of the Yellowstone Park, 67; Sierra, 80, 98-136; Giant, of the 
Kaweah, 300; of the Tule River, 318; American, 331; destruction of, 336, 
344; influence on streams, 337, 346, 359; management of, 337-365; redwood 
(Sequoia semper-virens), 347-352. 
Fountains of the Sierra, 241, 245. 
Fritillaria, 23, 156. 
Frogs, 211. 
Frost crystals, 165. 
Gardens, wild, of California, 5; the East, 6; Alaska, 7; Black Hills, 14; 
Rocky Mountains, 18, 19; Cascade Mountains, 23, 30; Sierra, 137-142; 
forest 155; cliff, 157; wall, 159; pot-hole, shadow, alpine, 160; winter, 
161; meadow, 163; sky, Mono, and tree, 167. 
Gaultheria, 23, 350. 
Geese, 225. 
General Grant National Park and tree, 298. 
Gentians, 94, 142, 164. 
Geyser basins, 43, 44. 
Geyser craters, 46. 
Geysers, 38, 41, 43, 53; distribution of, 55. 
Giants of Sierra forests, 108; Western, 116. 
Glacial action, 84, 92, 96, 138. 
Glacial and post-glacial denudation, 84, 89. 
Glacial period, 64, 65, 78, 96, 242. 
Glacier lakes, 78, 95. 
Glacier landscapes, 65, 91. 
Glacier meadows, 37, 163. 
Glacier monuments, 84. 
Glacier pavements, 83, 84-86. 
Glacier sparrow, 231. 
Glaciers, 19, 30, 64, 78; of the Sierra, 95; ancient Tuolumne, 88, 90. 
Goat, wild, 24, 29. 
Gold, influence of, 11, 361. 
Goldenrods, 17, 142, 164. 
Gray, Asa, 33. 
Great Basin, the, 94. 
Grouse, 215. 
Hackmatack, 18. 
Hawks, 228. 
Hayden, F. V., his work exploring the Yellowstone region, and getting it 
set apart as a national park, 39. 
Hazel, 23, 146. 
Hazel Green, 81. 
Heathworts, 23, 147. 
Hemlock, mountain, 125, 170. 
Home-going, 98. 
Honeysuckle, 142, 147. 
Hooker, Sir Joseph, 33. 
Hothouses, natural, 161. 
Hot springs, 38, 41, 43, 54. 
Huckleberries, 24. 
Hulsea, 167. 
Hunters and trappers, 51, 58. 
Indian summer, 165, 283, 316.

Page 369

Indians, 24, 51, 263; their orchards, 105; hunting grounds, 14, 122, 193; 
tame, 317. 
Johnson, Dr., on the trees of Scotland, 108. 
Joliet and Father Marquette on the upper Mississippi, 71. 
Juniper, western, 123, 273. 
Lakes, McDonald, 18; Avalanche, 19; Yellowstone, 47, 70; Mono, 94, Tahoe, 
48; Tenaya, 86. 
Landscapes, new, 8; changes in, 4; of the Sierra, 87. 
Landslip, 287. 
Larch, western, 18; Lyall, 18. 
Lark, meadow, 238. 
La Salle, 71. 
Lewis and Clark, 28. 
Library, geological, 59. 
Light, 82, 165. 
Lightning, 276. 
Lilies, 23, 153, 155, 350. 
Linnæa borealis and companions, 18, 50. 
Lizards, 204. 
Log houses, 288, 305, 320. 
Loggers, 29. 
Lumbering in the Sierra, 100. 
Man influence on landscapes, 4. 
Manzanita, 143. 
Maple, 22, 130. 
Mariposa tulip, 155. 
Marmot, 17, 199. 
Meadows, glacier, 37, 163; in sequoia woods, 296, 302. 
Monardella, 282. 
Moneses, 18. 
Monument, the Glacier, 87. 
Mosses, 22. 
Mt. Rainier, 30; Amethyst, 60, 73; Washburn, 66; Dana, 90, 93; Lyell, 
McClure, Gibbs, 90; Hoffman, 161. 
Mountaineering, 285, 306. 
Mountains, the Western, 2; new, 4; Cascade, 19; Olympic, 19; Rocky, 12-18, 
37, 38; Sierra, 76. 
Mud, 44. 
Mule, Brownie, 285, 295, 301; his prayer, 318. 
Names, 58. 
Nature, 56, 73, 97, 332; laboratories of, 44. 
Night air, 133. 
Nights, 165 
Nuts, pine, 103. 
Oaks, California black, 128; gold-cup live-oak, 128. 
Orchids, 23, 156. 
Ousel, water, 29, 52, 238. 
Owens River water, 246. 
Parks, national, of the West, 12; Mt. Rainier, 30; Yellowstone, 37; 
Yomesite, 76; animals of, 172, 201; birds, 213; General Grant and Sequoia, 
298, 328, 329; management of, 40, 351. 
Petrified forests, 38, 60. 
Phlox, 94. 
Pika, 162, 201. 
Pine, yellow, 13, 112, 115; contorted, lodge-pole, Murray, two leaved, 
tamarack, 15, 18, 67, 68, 83, 121, 122; mountain, 18, 108; Sabine, 102; 
hard cone (attenuata), 103; dwarf, 106; sugar, 100, 109; nut, 105; white, 
68, 105. 
Plover, 227. 
Plum, 23. 
Polemonium, alpine, 167. 
Poplar, 130. 
Primrose, shrubby, 147. 
Prospectors, 289, 352. 
Pyrola, 18. 
Quail, mountain, 219; valley, 222. 
Railroads in western forests, 357. 
Rain, 26. 
Raspberries, 24. 
Rat, wood, 201. 
Rattlesnakes, 28, 57, 206. 
Redwood, 100, 268. 
Reservations, See Forest Reservations. 
Rhododendron, 23, 146, 350. 
Ribes, 282. 
River, the Yellowstone, 48; Mississippi, 71; Columbia, 73; Missouri, 73; 
Colorado, 73;

Page 370

Tuolumne, 95, 258; Merced, 95, 258; San Joaquin, 95. 
Rivers, 37; Sierra, 242. 
Riverside trees, 130. 
Robin, 236. 
Rock ferns, 149. 
Rose, 23, 147, 282. 
Rubus, 147. 
Sage-cock, 214. 
Salmon berries, 24. 
Sandhill crane, 227. 
Sanger Lumber Co., 298. 
Sarcodes, 281. 
Sawmills, in sequoia woods, 292, 298, 299, 319, 351. 
Scenery, habit, 2, 3; best, care-killing, 17; cañon, 259, 266. 
Seed collectors, 101. 
Seeds of conifers, 120. 
Sequoia ditches, 291. 
Sequoia gigantea, 268; cones, 274; age, 275; death, 276; groves in spring, 
281; summer, 282; autumn, 283; winter, 283; studies, 285; seedlings, 297; 
young trees, 288, 296; oldest, 297; size of, 294, 322; durability of wood, 
291; gum, 292; groves of Yosemite Park, 109; Mariposa Grove, 286, 328; 
Fresno Grove, 287-292; Dinky Grove, 293; forests of Kings River, 295; 
Kaweah and Tule river basins, 300, 314, 316; distribution of, 322, 325; 
permanence of the species, 323; influence on streams, 324, 329. 
Shake-makers, 298, 353. 
Sheep, wild, 194; hoofed locusts, 317, 318, 352. 
Shepherds, 33, 185, 293, 317. 
Sierra climate, change of, 324. 
Silex pavements, 46. 
Silver fir, alpine, 31, 68, 170; magnificent, 83, 118, 170; white, noble, 
grand, and lovely, 119, 170. 
Snow, 26, 247. 
Snow avalanches, 251. 
Snow plant (Sarcodes), 156, 281. 
Snowstorms, 249, 283. 
Soil, 65, 67; moraine, 100, 138; crystal, 140, 161; earthquake boulder, 
140, 259. 
Sparrow, the glacier, 231. 
Spiræa, 142. 
Spiritual world, the, 74. 
Springs, 244, 245; soda, 247. 
Spruce, Engelmann, 14, 68; Douglas, 19, 22, 68, 100, 116; Sitka, 170. 
Squirrels, 19, 52, 192, 194, 274, 284. 
Storms, 267. 
Streams of the Sierra, 241, 246, 248; in spring, 256; in summer and 
autumn, 257. 
Sunflowers, crystal, 162. 
Swamps, 7. 
Talus, earthquake, 140, 259. 
Tamarack, 18. 
Thoreau, his description of the pistillate flowers of the white pine, 169; 
on the destruction of trees and shrubs, 356. 
Torreys, 131. 
Tourists, 21, 27, 53. 
Trapper, 57. 
Travel, modern, 1, 50, 56. 
Tree flowers, 168; how best to see them, 165. 
Tree gardens, 167. 
Trout, 18, 48, 67, 211. 
Tumion, 131. 
Tundra, Alaska, 7. 
Vaccinium, 18, 94, 148. 
Valley, Central, of California, 5, 137. 
Violets, 142, 281. 
Volcanic cones, 30, 94. 
Volcanic rocks, 60. 
Volcanic storms, 61. 
Volcanoes, 30; mud, 51. 
Water, action of, on soilbeds, 138. 
Water, Owens River, 246. 
Waterfalls, Yellowstone, 49; Kaweah, 300. 
Wildness, 2; unchangeable, 4. 
Willow, dwarf, 94. 
Wind, action of, on soilbeds, 139. 
Woodchuck, 199. 
Woodpeckers, 233, 282. 
Wood-rat, 201.