STEEP TRAILS 



easily found beneath the great trees in some 

 hollow out of the wind, and one need carry 

 but little provision, none at all of a kind that 

 a wetting would spoil. The colors of the woods 

 are then at their best, and the mighty hosts 

 of the forest, every needle tingling in the blast, 

 wave and sing in glorious harmony. 



" 'T were worth ten years of peaceful life, one glance at 

 this array." 



The snow that falls in the lowland woods is 

 usually soft, and makes a fine show coming 

 through the trees in large, feathery tufts, 

 loading the branches of the firs and spruces 

 and cedars and weighing them down against 

 the trunks until they look slender and sharp 

 as arrows, while a strange, muffled silence 

 prevails, giving a peculiar solemnity to every- 

 thing. But these lowland snowstorms and 

 their effects quickly vanish; every crystal melts 

 in a day or two, the bent branches rise again, 

 and the rain resumes its sway. 



While these gracious rains are searching the 

 roots of the lowlands, corresponding snows are 

 busy along the heights of the Cascade Moun- 

 tains. Month after month, day and night the 

 heavens shed their icy bloom in stormy, meas- 

 ureless abundance, filling the grand upper foun- 

 tains of the rivers to last through the summer. 



286 



