Our national parks . sible hosts of spruce and pine, aspen andwillow, nut-pine and juniper, cactus and yucca,caring nothing for drought, extending undauntedfrom mountain to mountain, over mesa anddesert, to join the darkening multitudes ofpines that covered the high Kocky ranges and theglorious forests along the coast of the moist andbalmy Pacific, where new species of pine, giantcedars and spruces, silver firs and Sequoias, kingsof their race, growing close together like grassin a meadow, poised their brave domes andspires in the sky, three hundred feet above theferns and the lilies that enam
Our national parks . sible hosts of spruce and pine, aspen andwillow, nut-pine and juniper, cactus and yucca,caring nothing for drought, extending undauntedfrom mountain to mountain, over mesa anddesert, to join the darkening multitudes ofpines that covered the high Kocky ranges and theglorious forests along the coast of the moist andbalmy Pacific, where new species of pine, giantcedars and spruces, silver firs and Sequoias, kingsof their race, growing close together like grassin a meadow, poised their brave domes andspires in the sky, three hundred feet above theferns and the lilies that enameled the ground;towering serene through the long centuries,preaching Gods forestry fresh from heaven. Here the forests reached their highest devel-opment. Hence they went wavering northwardover icy Alaska, brave spruce and fir, poplar andbirch, by the coasts and the rivers, to withinsight of the Arctic Ocean. American forests!the glory of the world! Surveyed thus fromthe east to the west, from the north to the south,. IN A PUGET SOUND FOREST THE AMERICAN FORESTS 335 they are rich beyond thought, immortal, immea-surable, enough and to spare for every feeding,sheltering beast and bird, insect and son ofAdam; and nobody need have cared had therebeen no pines in Norway, no cedars and deodarson Lebanon and the Himalayas, no vine-cladselvas in the basin of the Amazon. With suchvariety, harmony, and triumphant exuberance,even nature, it would seem, might have restedcontent with the forests of North America, andplanted no more. So they appeared a few centuries ago whenthey were rejoicing in wildness. The Indianswith stone axes could do them no more harmthan could gnawing beavers and browsingmoose. Even the fires of the Indians and thefierce shattering lightning seemed to work to-gether only for good in clearing spots here andthere for smooth garden prairies, and openings»or sunflowers seeking the light. But when thesteel axe of the white man rang out on thestartled air their doom was
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookidournationalparks1909muir
