ls besides the feeding of human beings, then will these
foodless "deserts" have taught a fine lesson.

XIII. Nevada Forests [17]

When the traveler from California has crossed the Sierra and gone a
little way down the eastern flank, the woods come to an end about as
suddenly and completely as if, going westward, he had reached the ocean.
From the very noblest forests in the world he emerges into free sunshine
and dead alkaline lake-levels. Mountains are seen beyond, rising in
bewildering abundance, range beyond range. But however closely we have
been accustomed to associate forests and mountains, these always present
a singularly barren aspect, appearing gray and forbidding and shadeless,
like heaps of ashes dumped from the blazing sky.

But wheresoever we may venture to go in all this good world, nature is
ever found richer and more beautiful than she seems, and nowhere may you
meet with more varied and delightful surprises than in the byways and
recesses of this sublime wilderness--lovely asters and abronias on the
dusty plains, rose-gardens around the mountain wells, and resiny woods,
where all seemed so desolate, adorning the hot foothills as well as the
cool summits, fed by cordial and benevolent storms of rain and hail
and snow; all of these scant and rare as compared with the immeasurable
exuberance of California, but still amply sufficient throughout the
barest deserts for a clear manifestation of God's love.

Though Nevada is situated in what is called the "Great Basin," no less
than sixty-five groups and chains of mountains rise within the bounds of
the State to a height of about from eight thousand to thirteen thousand
feet above the level of the sea, and as far as I have observed, every
one of these is planted, to some extent, with coniferous trees, though
it is only upon the highest that we find anything that may fairly be
called a forest. The lower ranges and the foothills and slopes of the
higher are roughened with small scrubby junipers and nut pines, while
the dominating peaks, together with the ridges that swing in grand
curves between them, are covered with a closer and more erect growth of
pine, spruce, and fir, resembling the forests of the Eastern States both
as to size and general botanical characteristics. Here is found what
is called the heavy timber, but the tallest and most fully developed
sections of the forests, growing down in sheltered hollows on moist
moraines, would be regarde