Travels in Alaska 



incomparably more punishing than the buckthorn 

 and manzanita tangles of the Sierra. 



The cliff gardens of this hidden Yosemite are ex- 

 ceedingly rich in color. On almost every rift and 

 bench, however small, as well as on the wider table- 

 rocks where a little soil has lodged, we found gay 

 multitudes of flowers, far more brilliantly colored 

 than would be looked for in so cool and beclouded 

 a region, larkspurs, geraniums, painted-cups, blue- 

 bells, gentians, saxifrages, epilobiums, violets, par- 

 nassia, veratrum, spiranthes and other orchids, fri- 

 tillaria, smilax, asters, daisies, bryanthus, cassiope, 

 linnaea, and a great variety of flowering ribes and 

 rubus and heathworts. Many of the above, though 

 with soft stems and leaves, are yet as brightly painted 

 as those of the warm sunlands of the south. The 

 heathworts in particular are very abundant and 

 beautiful, both in flower and fruit, making delicate 

 green carpets for the rocks, flushed with pink bells, 

 or dotted with red and blue berries. The tallest of 

 the grasses have ribbon leaves well tempered and 

 arched, and with no lack of bristly spikes and nodding 

 purple panicles. The alpine grasses of the Sierra, 

 making close carpets on the glacier meadows, I have 

 not yet seen in Alaska. 



The ferns are less numerous in species than in 

 California, but about equal in the number of fronds. 

 I have seen three aspidiums, two woodsias, a lomaria, 

 polypodium, cheilanthes, and several species of pteris. 



In this eastern arm of Sum Dum Bay and its Yo- 

 semite branch, I counted from my canoe, on my way 



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