

A WESTERN RIVER SCENE 



"But there is one thing a large river does for one that is beyond 

 the scope of the companionable stream, it idealizes the landscape, 

 it multiplies and heightens the beauty of the day and of the season. 

 A fair day it makes more fair, and a wild and tempestuous day it 

 makes more wild and tempestuous. It takes on so quickly and 

 completely the mood and temper of the sky above _ _ _ . How it 

 enhances and emphasizes the beauty of those calm motionless 

 days of Summer or Fall, the broad glassy surface perfectly dupli- 

 cating the opposite shore, sometimes so smooth that the finer floating 

 matter here and there looks like dust upon a mirror; 



John Burroughs. 



Not always is the river so placid as in our picture. When 

 summer heat melts the snow on the mountains, and summer 

 rains along its great length swell the flood, the water rises rapidly 

 and sweeps along in swelling strength chafing at its steep ^clay 

 banks and carrying away soil and plants that are not firmly 

 anchored. Hence, we find that the perennial plants that grow 

 on these steep river banks are either grasses with numerous 

 intertwining rootstocks firmly binding together the soil/ or else 

 plants that have deep and strong roots, like Hooker's mugwort, 

 shown in the foreground of our picture, Mackenzie's hedysarum, 

 the deflexed oxytrope, and other herbs of like habit. Sometimes 

 several inches of surface soil will be carried away from the tap 

 roots of these plants and the roots with their tufted stems hang 

 down, dirty and forlorn. But abatement of the flood brings 

 restoration to air and sunshine. The leaves quickly resume 

 their interrupted functions, the stems bend upward hopefully. 

 and soon the bank is again clothed with clean, fresh verdure. 



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