132 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 



but both these and the grass crystals are melted be 

 fore midday, and, notwithstanding the great eleva 

 tion of the meadow, the afternoons are still warm 

 enough to revive the chilled butterflies and call 

 them out to enjoy the late-flowering goldenrods. 

 The divine alpenglow flushes the surrounding forest 

 every evening, followed by a crystal night with hosts 

 of lily stars, whose size and brilliancy cannot be con 

 ceived by those who have never risen above the 

 lowlands. 



Thus come and go the bright sun-days of autumn, 

 not a cloud in the sky, week after week until near 

 December. Then comes a sudden change. Clouds 

 of a peculiar aspect with a slow, crawling gait gather 

 and grow in the azure, throwing out satiny fringes, 

 and becoming gradually darker until every lake-like 

 rift and opening is closed and the whole bent fir 

 mament is obscured in equal structureless gloom. 

 Then comes the snow, for the clouds are ripe, the 

 meadows of the sky are in bloom, and shed their 

 radiant blossoms like an orchard in the spring. 

 Lightly, lightly they lodge in the brown grasses 

 and in the tasseled neerlles of the pines, falling hour 

 after hour, day after day, silently, lovingly, all 

 the winds hushed, glancing and circling hither, 

 thither, glinting against one another, rays interlock 

 ing in flakes as large as daisies ; and then the dry 

 grasses, and the trees, and the stones are all equally 

 abloom again. Thunder-showers occur here during 

 the summer months, and impressive it is to watch 

 the coming of the big transparent drops, each a 

 small world in itself, one unbroken ocean without 

 islands hurling free through the air like planets 



