hushed and
waiting.

XVIII. The Forests of Washington

When we force our way into the depths of the forests, following any of
the rivers back to their fountains, we find that the bulk of the woods
is made up of the Douglas spruce (Pseudotsuga Douglasii), named in honor
of David Douglas, an enthusiastic botanical explorer of early Hudson's
Bay times. It is not only a very large tree but a very beautiful one,
with lively bright-green drooping foliage, handsome pendent cones, and
a shaft exquisitely straight and regular. For so large a tree it is
astonishing how many find nourishment and space to grow on any given
area. The magnificent shafts push their spires into the sky close
together with as regular a growth as that of a well-tilled field of
grain. And no ground has been better tilled for the growth of trees
than that on which these forests are growing. For it has been thoroughly
ploughed and rolled by the mighty glaciers from the mountains, and
sifted and mellowed and outspread in beds hundreds of feet in depth by
the broad streams that issued from their fronts at the time of their
recession, after they had long covered all the land.

The largest tree of this species that I have myself measured was nearly
twelve feet in diameter at a height of five feet from the ground, and,
as near as I could make out under the circumstances, about three
hundred feet in length. It stood near the head of the Sound not far from
Olympia. I have seen a few others, both near the coast and thirty or
forty miles back in the interior, that were from eight to ten feet in
diameter, measured above their bulging insteps; and many from six to
seven feet. I have heard of some that were said to be three hundred and
twenty-five feet in height and fifteen feet in diameter, but none that
I measured were so large, though it is not at all unlikely that such
colossal giants do exist where conditions of soil and exposure are
surpassingly favorable. The average size of all the trees of this
species found up to an elevation on the mountain slopes of, say, two
thousand feet above sea level, taking into account only what may be
called mature trees two hundred and fifty to five hundred years of age,
is perhaps, at a vague guess, not more than a height of one hundred and
seventy-five or two hundred feet and a diameter of three feet; though,
of course, throughout the richest sections the size is much greater.

In proportion to its weight when dry, t