Continuing along Lake Samamish, and up Squak Creek, these forests continue on both sides at some distance off. A large body of moderately sized timber runs off toward the northeast, covering the hills which lie in front of the mountain range. Passing the Gilman mines, we meet but little large timber until we enter the valley of Raging River. Here there is an almost unbroken forest of splendid timber, extending from near the mouth as far up as I went, namely, ten miles from the mouth. The mill timber here would average from six to ten inches more in diameter than that we passed near Lake Washington; and there seemed to be a vast body of it in this valley. As far up on the hill or mountain side as I went, or could see, the trees retain their large size.
At the upper coal mines I found this to be the case to the mountain top, 800 or 900 feet above the river. The trees were not only large, and thick on the ground, but extremely tall and free from knots. I was told that the heavy forest continued a considerable distance above the upper coal mines.
[Sidenote: Superior to the Long Leaf forests of the Southern States and of the Mississippi Bottom.]
In the Snoqualmie Valley proper are to be found the largest forests and the largest trees. The farmers and hop-growers have destroyed thousands of acres of the finest timber trees on the continent, but many, many thousand acres still remain unbroken. Between Falls City and Hop Ranch the wagon road passed through two or three miles of this magnificent timber. Turning from the road, I ascended the Snoqualmie Mountain, and all the way up to the coal openings I traveled in the densest forest of the largest trees I had ever seen. Passing the cleared country about Hop Ranch, I again plunged into one of these monstrous forests, and traveled three or four miles through it without a break. The sun never touches the earth in these forests. The trees rise to the height of 250 feet or upward, and lock their branches together far overhead, shutting out the sunlight and awing the traveler. Their trunks seem to stand absolutely straight and plumb from the ground to the top. I had studied the long-leafed pine forests of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. I had traveled for a hundred miles through that marvelous forest on the Yazoo Delta, where it seemed to me that Nature had done her utmost in covering the ground with vast and lofty trees; but here in the Snoqualmie valley I traveled through forests that for the size, height, and number of trees to the acre, as much exceeded the forests of the Yazoo bottom as the latter exceeded all other forests I had ever seen. The Snoqualmie forest also exceeds all others I have known in the immense quantity of its fallen timber, which renders locomotion off of the trails extremely slow and difficult. The railroad ascends the South Fork of the Snoqualmie. I did not go up the Middle Fork, but was told that the timber is fine in that valley also.