68 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



striking character of the mountain meadow is the contrast of its brilliant 

 green open level with the barren ragged rocks or with the brown fallen 

 needles under the dark firs of the surrounding slopes, — a contrast 

 which gives a special value to the lushness of the plant growth — 

 grass and sedge and veratrum — tall in the midst of the meadow where 

 the sun has lain for long, and just springing from the ground at the 

 foot of the retreating snow drift on the southern side of the deep valley 

 or in the shade of the trees. After a long day of travel you may come, 

 toward evening, to the edge of such a meadow. You unpack and un- 

 saddle your animals and turn them loose, to roll and then to start 

 leisurely and comfortably to feed. After your camp is set and your 

 supper under way, you sit and smoke and watch the long shadows of 

 the outstanding groups of taller pines stretch across the meadow, and 

 the smoke of your fire make a level film across the open as the first 

 gentle cold drift of evening wind from the snows carries it down the 

 valley. You hear the gurgle of the stream near your camp, winding 

 from pool to pool between steep earth banks in the flat, and perhaps a 

 whisper from a distant fall in the same stream where it comes down 

 from the snows over the cliff which heads the valley. It is hard to 

 Imagine that anywhere there is a natural landscape which has more 

 completely an expression of peace and protection and rest. 

 The Bushy In one fundamental way the "free landscape" to which most of us 



Pasture ^^^ accustomed differs from the examples which we have just been dis- 



cussing. Although man has not interfered with our ordinary country 

 landscape with the primary intention of changing its esthetic appear- 

 ance, yet man's activities for other purposes have to a greater or less 

 degree resulted in a distinct landscape character. Take, for instance, 

 the case of the New England bushy pasture.* When the white man 

 came, the land where now the pasture lies was probably woodland. 

 It may have been cleared for purposes of pasturage, or it may have 

 been tilled for some generations after the pioneers first cleared it, and 

 then, with the abandonment of so many of the New England farms, 

 reverted to the less intensive use of pasturage. Where the cattle have 

 grazing ground enough, and where man has not expended the energy 



* See a section of Charles Eliot's Vegetation and Scenery in the Metropolitan Reser- 

 vations^ 1897, reprinted in Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect, pp. 727-729. 



