d in California only as groves of saplings,
and so, relatively, they are, for by careful calculation we find that
more than a thousand of these trees would be required to furnish as much
timber as may be obtained from a single specimen of our Sierra giants.

The height of the timberline in eastern Nevada, near the middle of the
Great Basin, is about eleven thousand feet above sea level; consequently
the forests, in a dwarfed, storm-beaten condition, pass over the summits
of nearly every range in the State, broken here and there only by
mechanical conditions of the surface rocks. Only three mountains in
the State have as yet come under my observation whose summits rise
distinctly above the treeline. These are Wheeler's Peak, twelve thousand
three hundred feet high, Mount Moriah, about twelve thousand feet, and
Granite Mountain, about the same height, all of which are situated near
the boundary line between Nevada and Utah Territory.

In a rambling mountaineering journey of eighteen hundred miles across
the state, I have met nine species of coniferous trees,--four pines, two
spruces, two junipers, and one fir,--about one third the number found
in California. By far the most abundant and interesting of these is the
Pinus Fremontiana, [18] or nut pine. In the number of individual trees
and extent of range this curious little conifer surpasses all the others
combined. Nearly every mountain in the State is planted with it from
near the base to a height of from eight thousand to nine thousand feet
above the sea. Some are covered from base to summit by this one species,
with only a sparse growth of juniper on the lower slopes to break the
continuity of these curious woods, which, though dark-looking at a
little distance, are yet almost shadeless, and without any hint of the
dark glens and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods. Tens
of thousands of acres occur in one continuous belt. Indeed, viewed
comprehensively, the entire State seems to be pretty evenly divided into
mountain ranges covered with nut pines and plains covered with sage--now
a swath of pines stretching from north to south, now a swath of sage;
the one black, the other gray; one severely level, the other sweeping on
complacently over ridge and valley and lofty crowning dome.

The real character of a forest of this sort would never be guessed by
the inexperienced observer. Traveling across the sage levels in the
dazzling sunlight, you gaze with shaded eye