Evergreen Forests of America
In America the most widespread type of forest is the evergreen coniferous
woodland of the north. Its pines, firs, spruces, hemlocks, and cedars
which are really junipers, cover most of Canada together with northern New
England and the region south of Lakes Huron and Superior. At its northern
limit the forest looks thoroughly forlorn. The gnarled and stunted trees
are thickly studded with half-dead branches bent down by the weight of
snow, so that the lower ones sweep the ground, while the upper look tired
and discouraged from their struggle with an inclement climate. Farther
south, however, the forest loses this aspect of terrific struggle. In
Maine, for example, it gives a pleasant impression of comfortable
prosperity. Wherever the trees have room to grow, they are full and
stocky, and even where they are crowded together their slender
up-springing trunks look alert and energetic. The signs of death and
decay, indeed, appear everywhere in fallen trunks, dead branches, and
decayed masses of wood, but moss and lichens, twinflowers and bunchberries
so quickly mantle the prostrate trees that they do not seem like tokens of
weakness. Then, too, in every open space thousands of young trees bank
their soft green masses so gracefully that one has an ever-present sense
of pleased surprise as he comes upon this younger foliage out of the dim
aisles among the bigger trees.
Except on their southern borders the great northern forests are not
good as a permanent home for man. The snow lies so late in the spring and
the summers are so short and cool that agriculture does not prosper. As a
home for the fox, marten, weasel, beaver, and many other fur-bearing
animals, however, the coniferous forests are almost ideal. That is why the
Hudson's Bay Company is one of the few great organizations which
have persisted and prospered from colonial times to the present. As long
ago as 1670 Charles II granted to Prince Rupert and seventeen noblemen and
gentlemen a charter so sweeping that, aside from their own powers of
assimilation, there was almost no limit to what the "Governor and Company
of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay" might acquire. By
1749, nearly eighty years after the granting of the charter, however, the
Company had only four or five forts on the coast of Hudson Bay, with about
120 regular employees. Nevertheless the poor Indians were so ignorant of
the value of their furs and the consequent profits were so large that,
after Canada had been ceded to Great Britain in 1763, a rival
organization, the
Northwest Fur Company of Montreal, was established. Then there
began an era that was truly terrible for the Indians of the northern
forest. In their eagerness to get the valuable furs the companies offered
the Indians strong liquors in an abundance that ruined the poor Native
American, body and soul. Moreover the fur-bearing animals were killed not
only in winter but during the breeding season. Many mother animals were
shot and their little ones were left to die. Hence in a short time the
wild creatures of the great northern forest were so scarce that the
Indians well-nigh starved.
Outliers of the pine forest extend far down into the United States.
The easternmost lies in part along the Appalachians and in part along the
coastal plain from southern New Jersey to Texas. The coastal forest is
unlike the other coniferous forests in two respects, for its distribution
and growth are not limited by long winters but by sandy soil which quickly
becomes dry. This drier southern pine forest lacks the beauty of its
northern companion. Its trees are often tall and stately, but they are
usually much scattered and are surrounded by stretches of scanty grass.
There is no trace of the mossy carpet and dense copses of undergrowth that
add so much to the picturesque of the forests farther north. The unkempt
half-breed or Indian hunter is replaced by the prosaic gatherer of
turpentine. As the man of the southern forests shuffles along in blue or
khaki overalls and carries his buckets from tree to tree, he seems a dull
figure contrasted with the active northern hunter who glides swiftly and
silently from trap to trap on his rawhide snowshoes. Yet though the
southern pine forest may be less picturesque than the northern, it is more
useful to man. In spite of its sandy soil, much of this forest land is
being reclaimed, and all will some day probably be covered by farms.
Two other outliers of the northern evergreen forest extend southward
along the cool heights of the Rocky Mountains and of the Pacific coast
ranges of the United States. In the Olympic and Sierra Nevada ranges the
most western outlier of this northern band of vegetation probably contains
the most inspiring forests of the world. There grow the vigorous Oregon
pines, firs, and spruces, and the still more famous Big Trees or sequoias.
High on the sides of the Sierra above the yuccas, the live oaks, and the
deciduous forest of the lower slopes, one meets these Big Trees. To come
upon them suddenly after a long, rough tramp over the sunny lower slopes
is the experience of a lifetime. Upward the great trees rise sheer one
hundred feet without a branch. The huge fluted trunks encased in soft, red
bark six inches or a foot thick are more impressive than the columns of
the grandest cathedral. It seems irreverent to speak above a whisper. Each
tree is a new wonder. One has to walk around it and study it to appreciate
its enormous size. Where a tree chances to stand isolated so that one can
see its full majesty, the sense of awe is tempered by the feeling that in
spite of their size the trees have a beauty all their own. Lifted to such
heights, the branches appear to be covered with masses of peculiarly soft
and rounded foliage like the piled-up banks of a white cumulus cloud
before a thunderstorm. At the base of such a tree the eye is caught by the
sharp, triangular outline of one of its young progeny. The lower branches
sweep the ground. The foliage is harsh and rough. In almost no other
species of trees is there such a change from comparatively ungraceful
youth to a superbly beautiful old age.
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