The pine woods on the tops of the Nevada mountains are already shining
and blooming in winter snow, making a most blessedly refreshing
appearance to the weary traveler down on the gray plains. During the
fiery days of summer the whole of this vast region seems so perfectly
possessed by the sun that the very memories of pine trees and snow are
in danger of being burned away, leaving one but little more than dust
and metal. But since these first winter blessings have come, the wealth
and beauty of the landscapes have come fairly into view, and one is
rendered capable of looking and seeing.
The grand nut harvest is over, as far as the Indians are concerned,
though perhaps less than one bushel in a thousand of the whole crop has
been gathered. But the squirrels and birds are still busily engaged,
and by the time that Nature’s ends are accomplished, every nut will
doubtless have been put to use.
All of the nine Nevada conifers mentioned in my last letter are also
found in California, excepting only the Rocky Mountain spruce, which I
have not observed westward of the Snake Range. So greatly, however,
have they been made to vary by differences of soil and climate, that
most of them appear as distinct species. Without seeming in any way
dwarfed or repressed in habit, they nowhere develop to anything like
California dimensions. A height of fifty feet and diameter of twelve or
fourteen inches would probably be found to be above the average size of
those cut for lumber. On the margin of the Carson and Humboldt Sink the
larger sage bushes are called “heavy timber”; and to the settlers here
any tree seems large enough for saw-logs.
Mills have been built in the most accessible cañons of the higher
ranges, and sufficient lumber of an inferior kind is made to supply
most of the local demand. The principal lumber trees of Nevada are the
white pine (_Pinus flexilis_), foxtail pine, and Douglas spruce, or
“red pine,” as it is called here. Of these the first named is most
generally distributed, being found on all the higher ranges throughout
the State. In botanical characters it is nearly allied to the Weymouth,
or white, pine of the Eastern States, and to the sugar and mountain
pines of the Sierra. In open situations it branches near the ground and
tosses out long down-curving limbs all around, often gaining in this
way a very strikingly picturesque habit. It is seldom found lower than
nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, but from this height it
pushes upward over the roughest ledges to the extreme limit of tree
growth—about eleven thousand feet.
On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and Golden Gate ranges we find a still
hardier and more picturesque species, called the foxtail pine, from its
long dense leaf-tassels. About a foot or eighteen inches of the ends of
the branches are densely packed with stiff outstanding needles, which
radiate all around like an electric fox- or squirrel-tail. The needles
are about an inch and a half long, slightly curved, elastic, and
glossily polished, so that the sunshine sifting through them makes them
burn with a fine silvery luster, while their number and elastic temper
tell delightfully in the singing winds.
This tree is pre-eminently picturesque, far surpassing not only its
companion species of the mountains in this respect, but also the most
noted of the lowland oaks and elms. Some stand firmly erect, feathered
with radiant tail tassels down to the ground, forming slender, tapering
towers of shining verdure; others with two or three specialized
branches pushed out at right angles to the trunk and densely clad with
the tasseled sprays, take the form of beautiful ornamental crosses.
Again, in the same woods you find trees that are made up of several
boles united near the ground, and spreading in easy curves at the sides
in a plane parallel to the axis of the mountain, with the elegant
tassels hung in charming order between them the whole making a perfect
harp, ranged across the main wind-lines just where they may be most
effective in the grand storm harmonies. And then there is an infinite
variety of arching forms, standing free or in groups, leaning away from
or toward each other in curious architectural structures,—innumerable
tassels drooping under the arches and radiating above them, the outside
glowing in the light, masses of deep shade beneath, giving rise to
effects marvelously beautiful,—while on the roughest ledges of
crumbling limestone are lowly old giants, five or six feet in diameter,
that have braved the storms of more than a thousand years. But, whether
old or young, sheltered or exposed to the wildest gales, this tree is
ever found to be irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque, offering
a richer and more varied series of forms to the artist than any other
species I have yet seen.
One of the most interesting mountain excursions I have made in the
State was up through a thick spicy forest of these trees to the top of
the highest summit of the Troy Range, about ninety miles to the south
of Hamilton. The day was full of perfect Indian-summer sunshine, calm
and bracing. Jays and Clarke crows made a pleasant stir in the foothill
pines and junipers; grasshoppers danced in the hazy light, and rattled
on the wing in pure glee, reviving suddenly from the torpor of a frosty
October night to exuberant summer joy. The squirrels were working
industriously among the falling nuts; ripe willows and aspens made
gorgeous masses of color on the russet hillsides and along the edges of
the small streams that threaded the higher ravines; and on the smooth
sloping uplands, beneath the foxtail pines and firs, the ground was
covered with brown grasses, enriched with sunflowers, columbines, and
larkspurs and patches of linosyris, mostly frost-nipped and gone to
seed, yet making fine bits of yellow and purple in the general brown.
At a height of about ninety-five hundred feet we passed through a
magnificent grove of aspens, about a hundred acres in extent, through
which the mellow sunshine sifted in ravishing splendor, showing every
leaf to be as beautiful in color as the wing of a butterfly, and making
them tell gloriously against the evergreens. These extensive groves of
aspen are a marked feature of the Nevada woods. Some of the lower
mountains are covered with them, giving rise to remarkably beautiful
masses of pale, translucent green in spring and summer, yellow and
orange in autumn, while in winter, after every leaf has fallen, the
white bark of the boles and branches seen in mass seems like a cloud of
mist that has settled close down on the mountain, conforming to all its
hollows and ridges like a mantle, yet roughened on the surface with
innumerable ascending spires.
Just above the aspens we entered a fine, close growth of foxtail pine,
the tallest and most evenly planted I had yet seen. It extended along a
waving ridge tending north and south and down both sides with but
little interruption for a distance of about five miles. The trees were
mostly straight in the bole, and their shade covered the ground in the
densest places, leaving only small openings to the sun. A few of the
tallest specimens measured over eighty feet, with a diameter of
eighteen inches; but many of the younger trees, growing in tufts, were
nearly fifty feet high, with a diameter of only five or six inches,
while their slender shafts were hidden from top to bottom by a close,
fringy growth of tasseled branchlets. A few white pines and balsam firs
occur here and there, mostly around the edges of sunny openings, where
they enrich the air with their rosiny fragrance, and bring out the
peculiar beauties of the predominating foxtails by contrast.
Birds find grateful homes here—grouse, chickadees, and linnets, of
which we saw large flocks that had a delightfully enlivening effect.
But the woodpeckers are remarkably rare. Thus far I have noticed only
one species, the golden-winged; and but few of the streams are large
enough or long enough to attract the blessed ousel, so common in the
Sierra.
On Wheeler’s Peak, the dominating summit of the Snake Mountains, I
found all the conifers I had seen on the other ranges of the State,
excepting the foxtail pine, which I have not observed further east than
the White Pine range, but in its stead the beautiful Rocky Mountain
spruce. First, as in the other ranges, we find the juniper and nut
pine; then, higher, the white pine and balsam fir; then the Douglas
spruce and this new Rocky Mountain spruce, which is common eastward
from here, though this range is, as far as I have observed, its western
limit. It is one of the largest and most important of Nevada conifers,
attaining a height of from sixty to eighty feet and a diameter of
nearly two feet, while now and then an exceptional specimen may be
found in shady dells a hundred feet high or more.
The foliage is bright yellowish and bluish green, according to exposure
and age, growing all around the branchlets, though inclined to turn
upward from the undersides, like that of the plushy firs of California,
making remarkably handsome fernlike plumes. While yet only mere
saplings five or six inches thick at the ground, they measure fifty or
sixty feet in height and are beautifully clothed with broad, level,
fronded plumes down to the base, preserving a strict arrowy outline,
though a few of the larger branches shoot out in free exuberance,
relieving the spire from any unpicturesque stiffness of aspect, while
the conical summit is crowded with thousands of rich brown cones to
complete its beauty.
We made the ascent of the peak just after the first storm had whitened
its summit and brightened the atmosphere. The foot-slopes are like
those of the Troy range, only more evenly clad with grasses. After
tracing a long, rugged ridge of exceedingly hard quartzite, said to be
veined here and there with gold, we came to the North Dome, a noble
summit rising about a thousand feet above the timberline, its slopes
heavily tree-clad all around, but most perfectly on the north. Here the
Rocky Mountain spruce forms the bulk of the forest. The cones were
ripe; most of them had shed their winged seeds, and the shell-like
scales were conspicuously spread, making rich masses of brown from the
tops of the fertile trees down halfway to the ground, cone touching
cone in lavish clusters. A single branch that might be carried in the
hand would be found to bear a hundred or more.
Some portions of the wood were almost impenetrable, but in general we
found no difficulty in mazing comfortably on over fallen logs and under
the spreading boughs, while here and there we came to an opening
sufficiently spacious for standpoints, where the trees around their
margins might be seen from top to bottom. The winter sunshine streamed
through the clustered spires, glinting and breaking into a fine dust of
spangles on the spiky leaves and beads of amber gum, and bringing out
the reds and grays and yellows of the lichened boles which had been
freshened by the late storm; while the tip of every spire looking up
through the shadows was dipped in deepest blue.
The ground was strewn with burs and needles and fallen trees; and, down
in the dells, on the north side of the dome, where strips of aspen are
imbedded in the spruces, every breeze sent the ripe leaves flying, some
lodging in the spruce boughs, making them bloom again, while the fresh
snow beneath looked like a fine painting.
Around the dome and well up toward the summit of the main peak, the
snow-shed was well marked with tracks of the mule deer and the pretty
stitching and embroidery of field mice, squirrels, and grouse; and on
the way back to camp I came across a strange track, somewhat like that
of a small bear, but more spreading at the toes. It proved to be that
of a wolverine. In my conversations with hunters, both Indians and
white men assure me that there are no bears in Nevada, notwithstanding
the abundance of pine-nuts, of which they are so fond, and the
accessibility of these basin ranges from their favorite haunts in the
Sierra Nevada and Wahsatch Mountains. The mule deer, antelope, wild
sheep, wolverine, and two species of wolves are all of the larger
animals that I have seen or heard of in the State.