During This
First Season He Chose Fort Vancouver, Belonging To The Hudson's Bay
Company, As His Headquarters, And From There Made Excursions Into The
Glorious Wilderness In Every Direction, Discovering Many New Species
Among The Trees As Well As Among The Rich Underbrush And Smaller
Herbaceous Vegetation.
It was while making a trip to Mount Hood this
year that he discovered the two largest and most beautiful firs in the
world (Picea amabilis and P. nobilis - now called Abies), and from the
seeds which he then collected and sent home tall trees are now growing
in Scotland.
In one of his trips that summer, in the lower Willamette Valley, he
saw in an Indian's tobacco pouch some of the seeds and scales of a new
species of pine, which he learned were gathered from a large tree that
grew far to the southward. Most of the following season was spent on
the upper waters of the Columbia, and it was not until September that
he returned to Fort Vancouver, about the time of the setting-in of the
winter rains. Nevertheless, bearing in mind the great pine he had
heard of, and the seeds of which he had seen, he made haste to set out
on an excursion to the headwaters of the Willamette in search of it;
and how he fared on this excursion and what dangers and hardships he
endured is best told in his own journal, part of which I quote as
follows: -
October 26th, 1826. Weather dull.
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