THE PASSES 85 



find ourselves in the shadowy canon, closeted with 

 Nature in one of her wildest strongholds. 



After the first bewildering impression begins to 

 wear off, we perceive that it is not altogether ter 

 rible ; for besides the reassuring birds and flowers 

 we discover a chain of shining lakelets hanging 

 down from the very summit of the pass, and linked 

 together by a silvery stream. The highest are set 

 in bleak, rough bowls, scantily fringed with brown 

 and yellow sedges. Winter storms blow snow 

 through the canon in blinding drifts, and ava 

 lanches shoot from the heights. Then are these 

 sparkling tarns filled and buried, leaving not a 

 hint of their existence. In June and July they 

 begin to blink and thaw out like sleepy eyes, the 

 carices thrust up their short brown spikes, the 

 daisies bloom in turn, and the most profoundly 

 buried of them all is at length warmed and sum 

 mered as if winter were only a dream. 



Eed Lake is the lowest of the chain, and also 

 the largest. It seems rather dull and forbidding 

 at first sight, lying motionless in its deep, dark 

 bed. The canon wall rises sheer from the water's 

 edge on the south, but on the opposite side there 

 is sufficient space and sunshine for a sedgy daisy 

 garden, the center of which is brilliantly lighted 

 with lilies, castilleias, larkspurs, and columbines, 

 sheltered from the wind by leafy willows, and 

 forming a most joyful outburst of plant-life keenly 

 emphasized by the chill baldness of the onlooking 

 cliffs. 



After indulging here in a dozing, shimmering 

 lake-rest, the happy stream sets forth again, warb- 



