Israel C. Russell

“ The larks there listen for its coming and pass the joyful message westward. The timid dwellers in the great forests of Oregon awaken at the magic sound and the lofty tree tops are made to thrill with the voices of unseen choirs while it is yet night in the silent aisles below. The onward rush of sound is not reflected or turned back by the lofty Cascades, but flows through their passes and only ceases when the sea-birds of the 298 Pacific renew a note that was dropped on the distant Atlantic coast. ”

“ The most delightful months to most people are May, when the returning migratory birds are nesting, the trees unfolding their many tinted leaves, and the air laden with the perfume of multitudes of blossoms, and October, when the rich colours of ripened leaves give to the forests a marvellous variety and brilliancy of colour and the tranquil, hazy atmosphere is undisturbed by storms for days and even weeks together. This annual period of tranquil weather, extending frequently far into November, is known as Indian summer. ”

“ Thirsty, and perhaps perishing, the traveller, Tantalus like, looks down on the shining silvery threads of water in the cañons, hundreds and even thousands of feet below, but separated from them by impassable barriers. To the south the plateaus descend to the desolate valleys of southern Arizona, where strange gigantic cactus-plants and scattered clumps of thorny shrubs alone break the dreary monotony of the hot gravelly deserts. Agriculture is there impossible without irrigation, but where the life-giving waters can be utilized, as in the Gila Valley, marvellous productiveness follows. ”

“ In fact, the general lack of rugged escarpments as well as of great elevation leads the geographer to rank even the highest of these rounded summits as hills of large size rather than attempt to burden them with the dignity that the term mountain carries with it. They are beautiful hills, separated one from another by lovely valleys, which draw the beholder to them and fill his memory with tender longings and vague dreamy fancies such as the sterner grandeurs of great mountains fail to awaken. ”

“ Lovers of nature who are unable to climb the towering summits of the High Sierra and see for themselves the marvellous beauty there so lavishly displayed can at least find a glowing pen picture of it in John Muir's fascinating book The Mountains of California. On the lower western slope of the Sierra Nevada the forests become continuous and luxuriant, the trees are of large size, and the lovely flowers carpeting the valleys and hillsides take on a more familiar appearance than the gorgeous blossoms of the alpine meadows. ”

“ Could we view the broad extent of the Prairie plains as do the birds in their southward migrations, we would see them golden with the sheen of ripening wheat at the north, green and russet in the central portion with corn, and white with cotton to the south. Everywhere from south to north and east to west the vast expanse is dotted with the curling wreaths arising from household fires, and at hundreds of localities blotted by the smoke of towns, factories, smelting-works, and coal-mines. ”

“ In the north, near where the forest breaks into outstanding groves and finally gives place to grassy hills, as along the Porcupine River in Alaska, the foliage in the lowlands becomes golden in autumn and forms irregular, far-reaching avenues of brilliant colour separating the hills, which are black with spruce-trees or shimmer with the soft gray tints of ripened grasses. ”

“ The forests are thus highly diversified and partake of the characteristics of both the northern and southern floras. It is in these northern woods that the glorious autumnal colouring for which North America is justly famous is to be seen in its greatest splendour. October is here truly the golden month of the year. At that season the bold hills, with their sombre robes of coniferous trees, rise like dark rugged islands above an undulating sea from which the most gorgeous sunset colours seem to be reflected. ”

“ In spite of the bizarre and frequently repellent appearance of the cacti as seen under cultivation, in their barren homes they are in harmony with their surroundings, and add a characteristic, and even beautiful element to the scenery of the parched and generally desolate valleys and rocky slopes where they thrive best. Their blossoms are large, usually either white or brilliantly coloured, and expand in the hot, dry air, fully exposed to the intense sunlight, and present a freshness and vigour which tell of the abundant store of moisture within the thick rind inclosing their stems. ”

“ In the splendid Atlantic forests, with their marvellous intermingling of shining pine-needles, broad, swaying leaves, and many-coloured trunks, there are also vines and creepers sometimes forming impenetrable tangles, as where the broad leaves of the wild grape grow in pendent sheets of green from supporting trees, or the jessamine fills the air with fragrance. ”

“ About 100 feet or more of the trunk is usually branchless, but its massive simplicity is relieved by the bark furrows, which, instead of making an irregular network, run evenly parallel, like the fluting of an architectural column, and to some extent by tufts of slender sprays that wave lightly in the winds and cast flecks of shade, seeming to have been pinned on here and there for the sake of beauty only. ”

“ These 372 scourges, coming from the south, have been almost as great a blight among the native peoples as would be the sweeping southward of a wave of arctic temperature to the vegetation of tropical lands. The curse of contact, resulting when a civilized race invades a land inhabited by childlike aborigines, as has been seen in many parts of the world, has overtaken the Innuits in common with nearly all other tribes in Alaska, and decadence and the prolongation of a miserable existence, unless cut short by extermination through starvation, is all that seemingly can be hoped for. ”

“ Aside from the lessons of interest to the geologist and geographer so plainly engraved on the surfaces of the plateaus crossed by the Colorado, the region has a wonderful fascination for the purely æsthetic feelings more or less latent in every human breast. To one traversing the open pine forests, in places clothing the plateaus and inclosing many grassy glades and flower-decked parks, in which timid deer may frequently be seen feeding in the early morning, and emerging on the brink of the Grand Cañon, the scene that meets the eye is marvellous beyond all description. ”

“ In glancing at the larger and most numerous trees of the Atlantic forest, and those of greatest utility, we should not neglect the humbler plants, usually of little, if any, purely commercial value, but priceless on account of their beauty and the fragrance of their flowers, which grow beneath the shade of their larger and more stately associates or are content to possess the local areas, perhaps high on the mountains, where the conditions of climate or soil are unfavourable for the growth of large trees. ”

“ Throughout nearly the entire annual course there is no material for landscape effect except the straight line of the horizon with a featureless breadth of sun-faded brown below it and above a merely broader space of faded blue. There is nowhere a curved line, and though as a scientific fact there is vast expanse of flat plain, there is little to suggest it when the sky is empty of clouds. ”

“ The large streams abound in salmon, and each cool, clear brook and rushing creek is a favourite haunt of the trout. No more delightful camping-ground for lovers of nature and searchers for recreation can be found than the grassy, park-like valleys on the sunny side of these magnificent mountains. ”

“ While a deeply sculptured land when partially submerged gives origin to a ragged coast, a region of similar elevation, but not cut by streams or other agencies so as to have deep valleys, when subsidence occurs produces a bold, harbourless shore without islands. The striking contrast between the deeply indented border of the continent, with its broad fringe of islands, from Mount Fairweather southward to Mount Olympus, and the remarkably uniform although bold coast-line from Mount Olympus southward to Mexico, and indeed nearly to Cape Horn, has much significance in this connection. ”

“ This region, celebrated in the traditions of the Southwest frontier, is described by Captain Marcy, who crossed its eastern portion in 1849, as being "much elevated above the surrounding country, very smooth and level, and spreading out in every direction as far as the eye can penetrate, without a tree, shrub, or any other herbage to intercept the vision. The traveller in passing over it sees nothing but one dreary and monotonous plain of barren solitude. It is an ocean of desert prairie, where the voice of man is seldom heard, and where no living being permanently resides. ”

“ As the weather in spring-time is fickle, and its variations not the same for any two consecutive years, so the gathering of the birds into flocks and their northward flights vary, although for a term of years the arrival of a given species at a particular station does not depart far from a mean date. With the northward sweep of the waves of bird life over the temperate and boreal portions of the continent comes the awakening of plant life, but the birds, to a marked extent, precede the unfolding of the flowers. ”

“ The most attractive features of an alpine flora, which springs into bloom as soon as the snow melts and forms a rapidly widening belt of colour as the margins of the snow-fields recede higher and higher, is the great profusion of brilliantly coloured blossoms. No sooner does the snow of winter melt than the moist ground becomes enamelled in brilliant colours on account of the springing up and quick blossoming of millions of hardy plants. ”

“ For a very long time there have been continents and oceans, lakes and rivers, and the land has been diversified by mountains and hills, plains and valleys, in the same general way as at the present time. When once the idea is grasped that we are living in a geological age, and that there is no break between the present and the past, it is evident that the history of the past can be interpreted by means of the results produced by known causes. ”

“ One of the most fascinating incidents in the life of the explorer in his lonely camps in the great forests or amid the solemn mountains is the coming of the wave of song in the spring and early summer-time which precedes and accompanies the rising of the sun. ”

“ The views of nature, unmarred by the hand of man, which reward the persistent mountaineer in this silent wonderland of the upper world, are not only grand beyond all description, but beautified by a delicacy of decoration where snow-fields and alpine gardens meet, that is undreamed of by the dwellers in the denser air of the plains and seaside. ”

“ Not only do the Bad Lands present a most attractive field to the student of erosion and of the origin of earth forms, but their deathlike solitudes have been made to yield the most wonderful procession of strange extinct animals yet unearthed by geologists. They are vast cemeteries in which are interred the skeletons of many genera and hundreds of species of animals which lived in the ancient lakes or wandered through the almost tropical forest that in distant ages clothed the adjacent country. ”

“ When one attempts to write an account of the birds of North America, the heavens seem darkened with such a multitude of varied and beautiful forms and the air filled with such a discordant clamour mingled with the sweetest of music that failure to convey an adequate idea of the countless numbers and diversity of the feathered throng within the compass of a few pages must be recognised from the start. ”

“ This great river 134 year by year and century after century has deepened its channel through the plateau region where the rainfall is small, more rapidly than the general surface has been lowered by erosion. The main conditions are a broad area of nearly horizontal rocks, raised high above the sea or above the base level of erosion, and an arid climate; crossing this region is the ever-flowing river, which, acting like an endless saw, cuts deeper and deeper into the blocks of the earth's crust which have been raised athwart its course. ”

“ The diversity of scenery in the Great Basin is increased by mountains of volcanic origin, including several modern craters, some of which hold lakes, and by lava-flows of recent date, and by great alluvial fans or detritus cones which stream out into the valleys from the mouths of gorges in the bordering mountains.
The Great Basin proper, with its rugged topography and arid climate, is not an agricultural region. Small portions of it, however, when water can be had for irrigation, have been transformed into fruitful farms and gardens which yield bountiful returns. ”

“ The wide-spreading crown of glossy pinnate leaves of this species is borne on a spindle-shaped stem of tough fibrous wood—so strong and pliant that it defies even the hurricane—in many instances 150 feet above the ground. The tree is a marvel of beauty and elasticity, and, fortunately for Cuba, is one of the most abundant of the larger trees on the island. It is met with almost everywhere; in the centre of broad pasture-lands it often stands alone, tall and straight, while bordering the cultivated fields of the rich planter it forms a shady avenue to his dwelling. ”

“ Although this region has not been studied in detail, it seems to furnish an example of a rugged mountain range that has been partially submerged at a comparatively recent date. The rocks in many places descend precipitously into deep water, leaving no room for the formation of beaches, and hence the waves, to a great extent, are without tools with which to cut away the land. At the heads of the many bays and inlets, however, one finds beautiful sand-beaches with gracefully curving lines, in striking contrast to the dark, rugged cliffs bordering their seaward extensions. ”

“ It should have favourable climatic conditions, agricultural land, forests, mines, fisheries, etc. More than this, even if all material wants are supplied from within its own border, intellectual desires demand outside stimuli. The ideal nation should therefore touch the ocean, in order to have avenues for travel open to its people. I am well aware that a more commanding, or, perhaps better, a more modern view, would show that improved methods of transportation have made the whole world commercially one; but invisible tariff walls still separate peoples and wars break lines of communication. ”

“ As a whole, the portion of the continent embraced in the temperate zone is characterized by its pronounced seasonal changes, including wide extremes of heat and cold over large areas, and by its frequently sudden and strongly marked weather changes during short periods of time. It is a highly suggestive fact that of all the great climatic zones the one having the most changeable climate, the greatest extremes of heat and cold, and the most frequent storms should be the one in which man has reached the highest development both of body and mind. ”

“ Of all portions of the continental forest belt, variation in elevation is least marked in the forests of Canada, and for this reason, in part, we there find the most uniform and most monotonous of all the forests of the continent. The influence of elevation, however, on climate and on both plant and animal life is greater for a given measure, as for 1,000 feet, in the torrid than in the cool or cold zone, for the reason that the possible range in climatic conditions is much greater at the south than at the north. ”

“ The distribution of life in the sea is analogous to the distribution of life on land, but in a reverse direction with reference to sea-level. A traveller passing from the tropical plains of eastern Mexico and ascending Orizaba, for example, crosses successive belts of vegetation, each with its indigenous animals, but merging one with another so as to make a gradation in the luxuriance of the flora and the abundance of animal life from the wonderfully rich plains adjacent to the Gulf coast to the snow-capped mountain top. ”

“ To the south of the United-States-Mexican boundary, but beginning in the southwestern portion of the United States, and including also the greater part of the population of the West Indies, Spanish is the current language, except among the uncivilized aborigines. French is commonly spoken by many thousands of people in the province of Quebec, Canada, and in certain of the West Indies.
The ideal nation, from the point of view of the geographer, is one so situated that it is self-sustaining—that is, contains within its own domain all the conditions necessary for its life and growth. ”

“ Elias, at an elevation of 2,500 feet or less above the sea, every knoll and island-like area in the vast ice-fields is so densely overgrown with brilliantly flowered plants that one has to part the rank growths with his hands and press them aside with his alpenstick in order to force a way through the fields of bloom. ”

“ Standing on some commanding crag in the Bad Lands in the early morning or when the purple 112 shadows of evening fill the gorges and ravines, the most unimaginative traveller sees in the silence about him the ruins of a vast city, with cathedrals, temples, and palaces of varied colours and weird designs such as no mortal hand ever fashioned. ”

“ Not only is Mount Mazama with its wonderful lake one of the most unique natural features of North America, but it has its full share of the artistic details of lake and mountain scenery which appeal so forcibly to the finer instincts within us. The outer slopes of the mountain are clothed with the all-embracing coniferous forests which cover the Cascades as with a mantle throughout their entire extent, while the precipitous inner slopes are for the most part bare precipices of angular and extremely rugged rock. ”