THE GLACIER LAKES 117 



area. Notwithstanding -they are mostly small and 

 shallow, owing to their immunity from avalanche 

 detritus and the inwashings of powerful streams, 

 they often endure longer than others many times 

 larger but less favorably situated. When very shal 

 low they become dry toward the end of summer ; 

 but because their basins are ground out of seamless 

 stone they suffer no loss save from evaporation 

 alone; and the great depth of snow that falls, lasting 

 into June, makes their dry season short in any case. 



Orange Lake is a fair illustration of this bench 

 form. It lies in the middle of a beautiful glacial 

 pavement near the lower margin of the lake-line, 

 about a mile and a half to the northwest of Shadow 

 Lake. It is only about 100 yards in circumference. 

 Next the water there is a girdle of carices with 

 wide overarching leaves, then in regular order a 

 shaggy ruff of huckleberry bushes, a zone of willows 

 with here and there a bush of the Mountain Ash, 

 then a zone of aspens with a few pines around the 

 outside. These zones are of course concentric, and 

 together form a wall beyond which the naked ice- 

 burnished granite stretches away in every direction, 

 leaving it conspicuously relieved, like a bunch of 

 palms in a desert. 



In autumn, when the colors are ripe, the whole 

 circular grove, at a little distance, looks like a big 

 handful of flowers set in a cup to be kept fresh 

 a tuft of goldenrods. Its feeding-streams are ex 

 ceedingly beautiful, notwithstanding their incon 

 stancy and extreme shallowness. They have no 

 channel whatever, and consequently are left free 

 to spread in thin sheets upon the shining granite 



