The Story of the RedfisJi Lakes. 



147 



the mountains are more regular in form 

 and the slopes near the valley are 

 usually devoid of timber ; in the canons 

 are narrow fringes of conifers along the 

 creeks, while on the slopes are found 

 occasional clumps of quaking asp 

 or Cottonwood ( Popuhis treuiuloides)^ 

 grouped about some small spring or 

 spread over an area of more than aver- 

 age moisture. Elsewhere these hills 

 and mountain slopes support only herb- 

 aceous vegetation or a dense, intricate 

 chapparal of low shrubs and brushes. 



Far to the northeast two or three ex- 

 ceptionally high, barren peaks are seen, 

 which appear to be entirely without 

 vegetation, glistening white in the 

 bright sunlight. 



On the west side of the valley the 

 foothills and lower slopes of the moun- 

 tains are usually densely forested with 

 Murray pine, Douglas fir and spruce, 

 while higher up are good growths of 

 the white-barked or pinon pine. The 

 high peaks are 10,000 to 10,500 feet 

 above the sea, and are ragged and 

 jagged in a wonderful degree. These 

 are granite peaks, and they have been 

 carved by rain and snow and frost and 

 the warming sun into all the wild and 

 rugged shapes possible to granite moun- 

 tains ; towering spires and minerets, 

 bold precipices hundreds of feet high, 

 and beetling crags which not even the 

 mountain goat can scale ; great pinna- 

 cles and slender rock needles piercing the 

 sky, and between, deep, yawning gorges 

 and chasms over which one can not cross 

 and whose bottoms one can scarcely 

 see ; no domes or rounded surfaces 

 anywhere, but everything sharp, angu- 

 lar and unfinished. The timber line 

 here is between 9,500 and 10,500 feet 

 above the sea, and these peaks woiild 

 be without trees even were they less 

 rugged. 



In the gorges, rocky rifts, and on the 



protected slopes, lie patches of snow 

 which the summer sun is not able to re- 

 move, though in August we saw that 

 the melting was very rapid. Lower 

 down in the canons, among these moun- 

 tain masses, one sees unfolded before 

 him a page of geologic history upon 

 which is written in characters not to be 

 misunderstood the story of cold and ice 

 in earlier days. The canons' walls are 

 shorn of their sharp, angular projec- 

 tions, and are smoothed down ; the 

 canons' floors are worn and smoothed 

 into level, floor-like areas or into huge 

 rounded masses, the roclies moiitonees, 

 whose striated and fluted surfaces 

 plainly show the ancient glacier's track. 

 The general direction of all these 

 canons is northeast and southwest. At 

 the head of each, one or more icy-cold 

 lakelets nestle at the bases of the rocky 

 peaks ; from each of these flows a crys- 

 tal stream which, with many filmy cas- 

 cades and singing rapids, finds its way 

 down the cailon at whose mouth a 

 larger lake is usually found. At the 

 lower end of the lake the stream again 

 appears, but usually wider and less 

 rapid than above ; and all these lake 

 outlets, after a course of a few miles 

 across the western edge of the valley, 

 finally flow into Salmon River. But 

 these canons have not always had the 

 clear streams we now see. Long years 

 ago, when the Great Ice King still held 

 reign in the Sawtooth Mountains, these 

 canons were much smaller than they 

 are now, for then they were young. At 

 the head of each, where now lie the 

 little lakelets, and still above, lay great 

 beds of snow which the summer sun 

 was never able to melt ; and from these 

 snowfields great rivers of ice flowed 

 down the shallow canons. The current 

 was very slow but irresistible, perhaps 

 only a few inches or feet per day. 

 These tongues of ice which reached out 



