THE GLACIEK LAKES 103 



ers are still more excitingly beautiful and impres 

 sive in their natural positions to those who have 

 the eyes to see them as they lie imbedded in their 

 meadows and forests and glacier-sculptured rocks. 

 When a mountain lake is born, when, like a 

 young eye, it first opens to the light, it is an 

 irregular, expressionless crescent, inclosed in banks 

 of rock and ice, bare, glaciated rock on the lower 

 side, the rugged snout of a glacier on the upper. 

 In this condition it remains for many a year, until 

 at length, toward the end of some auspicious cluster 

 of seasons, the glacier recedes beyond the upper 

 margin of the basin, leaving it open from shore to 

 shore for the first time, thousands of years after its 

 conception beneath the glacier that excavated its 

 basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in 

 its pure depths ; the winds ruffle its glassy surface, 

 and the sun fills it with throbbing spangles, while 

 its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leaf 

 less shores, sun-spangles during the day and re 

 flected stars at night its only flowers, the winds and 

 the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier 

 continues to recede, and numerous rills, still 

 younger than the lake itself, bring down glacier- 

 mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, giving rise to margin- 

 rings and plats of soil. To these fresh soil-beds 

 come many a waiting plant. First, a hardy carex 

 with arching leaves and a spike of brown flowers ; 

 then, as the seasons grow warmer, and the soil-beds 

 deeper and wider, other sedges take their appointed 

 places, and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies, 

 dodecatheons, violets, honey worts, and many a lowly 

 moss. Shrubs also hasten in time to the new 



