Since the National Parks and military reservations are already game refuges, it was of importance that I should see the Mt.  Whitney Military Reservation, and for this purpose I crossed the Sierra Reserve, through broad tracts suitable for Game Refuges, thus acquiring familiarity with a large and most interesting section of forest country.  From the top of Mt.  Whitney, the highest bit of land in the United States, exclusive of Alaska, one looks down two miles in altitude to Owen’s Lake almost directly beneath.  I picked up, on the plateau of the summit, a bit of obsidian Indian chipping, refutation in itself of the frequently repeated statement that Indians do not climb high peaks.  A month was spent with great profit in and about the Sierra Reserve, and one might go there many summers, ever learning something new.

Having seen these southern reserves, and desiring to bring home with me an impression of the northern woods, sharpened by immediate contrast, I next visited that one which is the most to the northwest of them all, the Olympic Reserve in Washington.  Here, at the head of the Elwha Valley, near Mt.  Olympus, we lived among the glaciers.  The forest between the headwaters and the sea affords a superb contrast to California; here are found fog and moisture, and super-abounding heavy vegetation.  In the thick shade grow giant ferns of tropic luxuriance.  The rhododendron thrives, its black glossy leaves a symbol of richly nourished power.  The devil’s club flaunts aloft its bright berries, and poisonously wounds whomsoever has the misfortune even to touch its great prickly leaves, nearly as big as an elephant’s ear; if there be a malignant old rogue of the vegetable kingdom, this is he, sharing with the wait-a-bit thorn of Africa an evil eminence.  Many new plants meet the eye, a wealth of berries—­the Oregon grape, the salmon berry, red or yellow, as big as the yolk of an egg, the salal berry, any quantity of blueberries, huckleberries, both red and blue, sarvis berries, bear berries, mountain ash berries (also loved of bears), thimble berries, high bush cranberries, gooseberries—­large and insipid—­currants, wild cherries, choke cherries; many of these friends of old, others seen here for the first time, dainty picking in the autumn for deer, bears, foxes, squirrels and many birds.  What particularly appealed to me was a wild apple, no larger than the eye of a hawk, but quite able to survive in a fierce contest for life, and with a pleasant, clean, sharp taste, very tonic to the palate, and with diminutive rosy cheeks as tempting as a stout Baldwin—­a fine, courageous little product of the wild life, symbol of the energetic quality of the Olympic air.  I, for one, am a firm believer in the axiom that a climate which will give the right “tang” to an apple will also produce determined and energetic men; this whole region, spite of its fogs, has a glorious future before it.  Superb firs towered hundreds of feet above our heads,