30 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFOBNIA 



bankments, and covered with a superb growth of 

 Silver Fir and Pine. But this garden and forest 

 luxuriance was speedily left behind. The trees were 

 dwarfed as I ascended; patches of the alpine 

 bryanthus and cassiope began to appear, and arctic 

 willows pressed into flat carpets by the winter snow. 

 The lakelets, which a few miles down the valley 

 were so richly embroidered with flowery meadows, 

 had here, at an elevation of 10,000 feet, only small 

 brown mats of carex, leaving bare rocks around 

 more than half their shores. Yet amid this alpine 

 suppression the Mountain Pine bravely tossed his 

 storm-beaten branches on the ledges and buttresses 

 of Eed Mountain, some specimens being over 100 

 feet high, and 24 feet in circumference, seemingly as 

 fresh and vigorous as the giants of the lower zones. 



Evening came on just as I got fairly within the 

 portal of the main amphitheater. It is about a 

 mile wide, and a little less than two miles long. The 

 crumbling spurs and battlements of Eed Mountain 

 bound it on the north, the somber, rudely sculptured 

 precipices of Black Mountain on the south, and a 

 hacked, splintery col, curving around from moun 

 tain to mountain, shuts it in on the east. 



I chose a camping-ground on the brink of one of 

 the lakes where a thicket of Hemlock Spruce 

 sheltered me from the night wind. Then, after mak 

 ing a tin-cupful of tea, I sat by my camp-fire reflect 

 ing on the grandeur and significance of the glacial 

 records I had seen. As the night advanced the 

 mighty rock walls of my mountain mansion seemed 

 to come nearer, while the starry sky in glorious 

 brightness stretched across like a ceiling from wall 



