'Travels in Alaska 



frail and delicate-looking, none of its companions is 

 more enduring or rings out the praises of beauty- 

 loving Nature in tones more appreciable to mortals, 

 not forgetting even Cassiope, who also is here and 

 her companion, Bryanthus, the loveliest and most 

 widely distributed of the alpine shrubs. Then come 

 crowberry, and two species of huckleberry, one of 

 them from about six inches to a foot high with deli- 

 cious berries, the other a most lavishly prolific and 

 contented-looking dwarf, few of the bushes being 

 more than two inches high, counting to the topmost 

 leaf, yet each bearing from ten to twenty or more 

 large berries. Perhaps more than half the bulk of the 

 whole plant is fruit, the largest and finest-flavored of 

 all the huckleberries or blueberries I ever tasted, 

 spreading fine feasts for the grouse and ptarmigan 

 and many others of Nature's mountain people. I 

 noticed three species of dwarf willows, one with nar- 

 row leaves, growing at the very summit of the moun- 

 tain in cracks of the rocks, as well as on patches of 

 soil, another with large, smooth leaves now turning 

 yellow. The third species grows between the others 

 as to elevation; its leaves, then orange-colored, are 

 strikingly pitted and reticulated. Another alpine 

 shrub, a species of sericocarpus, covered with hand- 

 some heads of feathery achenia, beautiful dwarf echi- 

 verias with flocks of purple flowers pricked into their 

 bright grass-green, cushion-like bosses of moss-like 

 foliage, and a fine forget-me-not reach to the sum- 

 mit. I may also mention a large mertensia, a fine 

 anemone, a veratrum, six feet high, a large blue daisy, 



