Identifier: greatnorthwestgu00wins (find matches)
Title: The great Northwest : a guide-book and itinerary for the use of tourists and travellers over the lines of the Northern Pacific Railroad, the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and the Oregon and California Railroad : containing descriptions of states, territories, cities, towns, and places along the routes of these allied systems of transportation, and embracing facts relating to the history, resources, population, products, and natural features of the great Northwest
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Winser, Henry Jacob, 1823-1896
Subjects: Northern Pacific Railroad Company Oregon Railway and Navigation Company Oregon and California Railroad
Publisher: New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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al forest, l,4t)0 feet above thepresent ocean level, are ancient shore lines of the sea, which has left itstrace in similar terraces in all the valleys about the Sound. Thence thetrail extends southward over a level plateau. Carbon River Caiion is butha f a mile away on the west, and five miles from Wilkeson the valley abovethe canon is reached. The descent to the river is over three miles alongthe hillside eastward. From Wilkeson to the river the way is all through a belt of forest,where the conditions of growth are very favorable. The fir trees aremassive, straight and free from limbs to a great height. The larger ones,eight to twelve feet in diameter on a level with a mans head, carry theirsize upward, tapering very gradually, till near the top they shoot out athick mat of foliage, and the trunk in a few feet diminishes to a point. Onesuch was measured; it stands like a huge obelisk, 180 feet, without a limb,supporting a crown of but forty feet more. The more slender trees are. B«
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The Glaciers of Mount Tacoma. 269 curiously enough, the taller; straight, clear shafts rise 100 to 150 feet, toppedwith foliage whose highest needles would look down on Trinity spire.Cedars, hemlocks, spruce and white fir mingle with these giants, but theydo not compete with them in height; they fill in the spaces in the vast col-onnades. Below is the carpet of deep golden green moss-and glossy ferns,and the tangle of vine3 and bushes that covers the fallen trunks of thefathers of the forest. The silence of these mountains is awesome, the soli-tude oppressive. The deer, the bear, the panther are seldom met; they seeand hear first and silently slip away, leaving only their tracks to prove theirnumbers. There are very few birds. Blue jays, and their less showy gray,but equally impudent, cousins, the whiskey jacks, assemble about acamp; but in passing through the forest one may wander a whole clay andsee no living thing save a squirrel, whose shrill chatter is startling amid thesilence.

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