124 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFOBNIA 



landscape. Some remain buried for years, when 

 the snowfall is exceptionally great, and many open 

 only on one side late in the season. The snow of 

 the closed side is composed of coarse granules com 

 pacted and frozen into a firm, faintly stratified mass, 

 like the neve of a glacier. The lapping waves of 

 the open portion gradually undermine and cause 

 it to break off in large masses like icebergs, which 

 gives rise to a precipitous front like the discharging 

 wall of a glacier entering the sea. The play of the 

 lights among the crystal angles of these snow-cliffs, 

 the pearly white of the outswelling bosses, the bergs 

 drifting in front, aglow in the sun and edged with 

 green water, and the deep blue disk of the lake itself 

 extending to your feet, this forms a picture that 

 enriches all your afterlife, and is never forgotten. 

 But however perfect the season and the day, the 

 cold incompleteness of these young lakes is always 

 keenly felt. We approach them with a kind of 

 mean caution, and steal unconfidingly around their 

 crystal shores, dashed and ill at ease, as if expect 

 ing to hear some forbidding voice. But the love- 

 songs of the ouzels and the love-looks of the daisies 

 gradually reassure us, and manifest the warm foun 

 tain humanity that pervades the coldest and most 

 solitary of them all. 



