s at the mountains rising
along their edges, perhaps twenty miles away, but no invitation that is
at all likely to be understood is discernible. Every mountain, however
high it swells into the sky, seems utterly barren. Approaching nearer,
a low brushy growth is seen, strangely black in aspect, as though it had
been burned. This is a nut pine forest, the bountiful orchard of the
red man. When you ascend into its midst you find the ground beneath the
trees, and in the openings also, nearly naked, and mostly rough on the
surface--a succession of crumbling ledges of lava, limestones, slate,
and quartzite, coarsely strewn with soil weathered from them. Here and
there occurs a bunch of sage or linosyris, or a purple aster, or a tuft
of dry bunch-grass.

The harshest mountainsides, hot and waterless, seem best adapted to
the nut pine's development. No slope is too steep, none too dry; every
situation seems to be gratefully chosen, if only it be sufficiently
rocky and firm to afford secure anchorage for the tough, grasping roots.
It is a sturdy, thickset little tree, usually about fifteen feet high
when full grown, and about as broad as high, holding its knotty
branches well out in every direction in stiff zigzags, but turning them
gracefully upward at the ends in rounded bosses. Though making so dark
a mass in the distance, the foliage is a pale grayish green, in stiff,
awl-shaped fascicles. When examined closely these round needles seem
inclined to be two-leaved, but they are mostly held firmly together,
as if to guard against evaporation. The bark on the older sections is
nearly black, so that the boles and branches are clearly traced against
the prevailing gray of the mountains on which they delight to dwell.

The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It
furnishes fuel, charcoal, and timber for the mines, and, together with
the enduring juniper, so generally associated with it, supplies the
ranches with abundance of firewood and rough fencing. Many a square mile
has already been denuded in supplying these demands, but, so great is
the area covered by it, no appreciable loss has as yet been sustained.
It is pretty generally known that this tree yields edible nuts, but
their importance and excellence as human food is infinitely greater than
is supposed. In fruitful seasons like this one, the pine nut crop of
Nevada is, perhaps, greater than the entire wheat crop of California,
concerning which so much