mountain ash also occurs, at rare intervals, in the Cascade Mountains.
Possibly there are other trees and shrubs not mentioned here. Our intention has been to make the reader acquainted with the general features of an Oregon forest; and if we have not failed in our intention, a comparison of our notes with the trees which compose one will enable him to identify most of them. For their botanical classification, we are indebted to the botanist of the Railroad Exploring Expedition.
Washington Territory contains more large bodies of timber standing on level ground, than Oregon does. An immense extent of fir and cedar forest encircles the whole Sound, and borders all the rivers, besides that which is found on the foot-hills of the Cascade and Coast ranges. It is estimated that three-fourths of Western Washington is covered with forest, a large proportion of which is the finest timber in the world, for size and durability. It is nothing unusual to find a piece of several thousand acres of fir, averaging three and a half feet in diameter at the stump, and standing two hundred feet without a limb—the tops being seventy feet higher. Three hundred feet is not an extraordinary growth in Washington Territory.
It would be impossible, in speaking of the forests of Oregon and Washington, to pass in silence the subject of their commercial importance. It is estimated that the area of forest land in Oregon and Washington covers 65,000 square miles. Not all of this timber is accessible, nor all of it valuable for market, and yet the quantity is immense that is marketable. Puget Sound exports annually from 100,000,000 to 350,000,000 feet of lumber; the Columbia River, 20,000,000; and the mills along the Oregon coast, about 35,000,000.
