Height, 285 feet. Circumference, 93 feet. Copyright by C. C. Pierce & Co.
At the north, and on the higher lands of the south, grew the pine trees in magnificent forests, with the beautiful spruce and cedar, the latter attaining its noblest proportions in the north-west. Towards the south, on the lower lands, grew the juniper and the piñon, the latter bearing a delicious, edible nut, a boon to the native. In the south, too, were the mesquite with its sweet bean, and the splendid yuccas, some of them tree-like and twenty or thirty feet high, the pitahaya, and many other plants strange to European eyes. These and the cacti require a dry climate and a hot one, and the southern portion of the wilderness was particularly dry and hot. The extreme south-western part was the driest and the hottest, and there stretches of real desert interposed further obstacles to exploration and to settlement. On the other hand, the climate of the extreme north-west was the reverse. There mist and rain, nearly unknown in the lower basin of the Colorado, were almost constant. But the characteristic of the major part of the wilderness was excessive dryness, prohibiting agriculture without irrigation. The high peaks, receiving snow and rain in plenty, dealt out the moisture generously through creeks and rivers upon the parching plains roundabout.
A Wilderness Home.
Photograph by R. H. Chapman. U. S. Geol. Survey.
Thus there were wide deserts as well as regions of humidity; an immense range in climate with a corresponding range in life zones, till the biologist discovered in this area specimens ranging from the boreal to the tropical. The animals were of all kinds found on the North American continent. There were scorpions, tarantulas, snakes (many varieties of rattlesnakes) in the south; there and elsewhere beaver, bison, panthers, bears, wolves, deer, elk, mountain sheep, and small game of various kinds, all adjusted to altitude or latitude. Bears were particularly numerous. The bison (buffalo) roamed the east in countless numbers, crossing the Rocky Mountains and pushing westward to the Pecos, to Green River, and to the Columbia. As a wild animal the bison now is extinct, and it is difficult to imagine the enormous herds that so short a time ago at will traversed the face of the wilderness. The beaver existed in vast numbers also, and this fact was the first incentive to exploration of the immense tract by Americans. Deer and antelope grazed everywhere and scarcely a day could pass without the traveller sighting some of these animals. All furnished subsistence to the man who was there, the Amerind. Because this person was not a European he has often been regarded as hardly worth consideration, but he was a good specimen of mankind in the hunter state. Physically and mentally he had few superiors. He knew the country as well as we know it to-day. He knew every pass in the mountains, every buffalo trail. Each tribe knew its own land limits, as well as those of its neighbours, and each defended its home with unsurpassed daring and bravery.
This was the wilderness when the hordes of Europe descended upon it and claimed it for their own. Well did they fight their way into it, and equally well did the native oppose the invasion and fight to preserve his ancestral home in all its freedom and pristine glory. But the Europeans were stronger and wrested it from him, from the animals, and from Nature; yet it was never fully theirs till the sledge drove home that last spike of gold that pinned the East and the West together and tacked the skirts of Europe to those of Cathay.
