ves, and desiring to bring home with me
an impression of the northern woods, sharpened by immediate contrast, I
next visited that one which is the most to the northwest of them all,
the Olympic Reserve in Washington. Here, at the head of the Elwha
Valley, near Mt. Olympus, we lived among the glaciers. The forest
between the headwaters and the sea affords a superb contrast to
California; here are found fog and moisture, and super-abounding heavy
vegetation. In the thick shade grow giant ferns of tropic
luxuriance. The rhododendron thrives, its black glossy leaves a symbol
of richly nourished power. The devil's club flaunts aloft its bright
berries, and poisonously wounds whomsoever has the misfortune even to
touch its great prickly leaves, nearly as big as an elephant's ear; if
there be a malignant old rogue of the vegetable kingdom, this is he,
sharing with the wait-a-bit thorn of Africa an evil eminence. Many new
plants meet the eye, a wealth of berries--the Oregon grape, the salmon
berry, red or yellow, as big as the yolk of an egg, the salal berry, any
quantity of blueberries, huckleberries, both red and blue, sarvis
berries, bear berries, mountain ash berries (also loved of bears),
thimble berries, high bush cranberries, gooseberries--large and
insipid--currants, wild cherries, choke cherries; many of these friends
of old, others seen here for the first time, dainty picking in the
autumn for deer, bears, foxes, squirrels and many birds. What
particularly appealed to me was a wild apple, no larger than the eye of
a hawk, but quite able to survive in a fierce contest for life, and with
a pleasant, clean, sharp taste, very tonic to the palate, and with
diminutive rosy cheeks as tempting as a stout Baldwin--a fine,
courageous little product of the wild life, symbol of the energetic
quality of the Olympic air. I, for one, am a firm believer in the axiom
that a climate which will give the right "tang" to an apple will also
produce determined and energetic men; this whole region, spite of its
fogs, has a glorious future before it. Superb firs towered hundreds of
feet above our heads, and archaic-looking cedars, a thousand years old,
thrust their sturdy shoulders firmly against the storms and the
winds. But the valleys, the trees and the glaciers, were only the
_mise-en-scene_ of that which constituted primarily the reason of
my visiting this peninsula. Here is the only wild herd of elk of any
considerable size outside of th