Excerpt from The Journal of a Recluse: Translated From the Original French Two years ago, I was traveling for my pleasure, and incidentally for my profit, along the Pacific Coast of the United States, and found myself in a small town situated on Bellingham Bay, in the State of Washington. The town is probably not above fifty or sixty years old; and perhaps for a long time will retain a certain raw, unfinished appearance of youth, owing to its situation too near Seattle and Vancouver, to hope to have any commercial importance. However, two or three saw-mills, and a factory for canning salmon, give it a few internal resources, sufficient to keep it alive. One day, walking along a railroad leading out of town, skirting the bay and traversing a beautiful forest, my attention was caught by a handsome shrub, which I had seen too often in Scotland and Ireland to mistake for an indigenous plant. It was the broom, bright with yellow blossoms, and a magnificent specimen at that. It grew on a cliff, at some distance above my head. Being a botanist in a mild sort of way, my curiosity was excited. It had been planted there, no doubt, but by whom? Probably there was a house near by - the home of some emigrant. I was thirsty; I might ask for a drink and casually learn how the broom had found its way across the sea to bloom so brilliantly on the edge of an American forest. The bank was steep, but I made my way to the top without difficulty; and discovered, as I surmised, a fence not many feet beyond the bank, and behind it a small log hut. No smoke came from the chimney, and the long grass about it seemed untrodden. I climbed the fence and approached the house. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.