Though Nevada Is Situated In What Is Called The "Great Basin," No Less
Than Sixty-Five Groups And Chains Of
Mountains rise within the bounds
of the State to a height of about from eight thousand to thirteen
thousand feet
Above the level of the sea, and as far as I have
observed, every one of these is planted, to some extent, with
coniferous trees, though it is only upon the highest that we find
anything that may fairly be called a forest. The lower ranges and the
foothills and slopes of the higher are roughened with small scrubby
junipers and nut pines, while the dominating peaks, together with the
ridges that swing in grand curves between them, are covered with a
closer and more erect growth of pine, spruce, and fir, resembling the
forests of the Eastern States both as to size and general botanical
characteristics. Here is found what is called the heavy timber, but
the tallest and most fully developed sections of the forests, growing
down in sheltered hollows on moist moraines, would be regarded 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.
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