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.  Indeed, viewed comprehensively, the entire State seems to be pretty evenly divided into mountain ranges covered with nut pines and plains covered with sage—­now a swath of pines stretching from north to south, now a swath of sage; the one black, the other gray; one severely level, the other sweeping on complacently over ridge and valley and lofty crowning dome.

The real character of a forest of this sort would never be guessed by the inexperienced observer.  Traveling across the sage levels in the dazzling sunlight, you gaze with shaded eyes at the mountains rising along their edges, perhaps twenty miles away, but no invitation that is at all likely to be understood is discernible.  Every mountain, however high it swells into the sky, seems utterly barren.  Approaching nearer, a low brushy growth is seen, strangely black in aspect, as though it had been burned.  This is a nut pine forest, the bountiful orchard of the red man.  When you ascend into its midst you find the ground beneath the trees, and in the openings also, nearly naked, and mostly rough on the surface—­a succession of crumbling ledges of lava, limestones, slate, and quartzite, coarsely strewn with soil weathered from them.  Here and there occurs a bunch of sage or linosyris, or a purple aster, or a tuft of dry bunch-grass.

The harshest mountainsides, hot and waterless, seem best adapted to the nut pine’s development.  No slope is too steep, none too dry; every situation seems to be gratefully chosen, if only it be sufficiently rocky and firm to afford secure anchorage for the tough, grasping roots.  It is a sturdy, thickset little tree, usually about fifteen feet high when full grown, and about as broad as high, holding its knotty branches well out in every direction in stiff zigzags, but turning them gracefully upward at the ends in rounded bosses.  Though making so dark a mass in the distance, the foliage is a pale grayish green, in stiff, awl-shaped fascicles.  When examined closely these round needles seem inclined to be two-leaved, but they are mostly held firmly together, as if to guard against evaporation.  The bark on the older sections is nearly black, so that the boles and branches are clearly traced against the prevailing gray of the mountains on which they delight to dwell.