842 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



sachs of Scotland, or Lake Country of leaving snow and lofty pinnacled 



Italy. Of battlefields, there are more peaks, with a roar of mountain torrents, 



than enough; but only a few are as down from the eternal ice and snow to 



much as marked; and I doubt if any wild gorges where the mad plunge of 



guide book exists to pilot the tourists to the water has literally torn a path 



those few. In Florida, on the inner through the solid rock. The phrase 



coast of the Gulf, at Galveston, from "eternal ice and snow" is not metaphor. 



Monterey to Santa Barbara areAmeri- It is literal. On Mount Ranier, in the 



can Mediterraneans ; and from Grand Illecillewaet and Asulkan Valleys, down 



Canyon to the Canadian Rockies lies a the back of Cathedral Peak, lie snow and 



succession of Switzerlands practically ice that date from the ice age. Round 



unexplored. the Valley of the Ten Peaks, or Moraine 



The great mountain playgrounds lie Lake, you can ascend glaciers and glac- 



for the most part within the bounds of ial moraine, where you can literally 



the National Forests. There are six count the years and the decades of years 



distinct belts of as different a character back the centuries like the rungs of an 



as the Dolomites of Austria from the ascending ladder, from the ledges or 



Trossachs of Scotland ; and it would be circles of ice pack and snow pack. That 



just about as sensible to attempt to do is the year's snow fall of fifteen or 



all the mountain resorts of Europe in twenty feet packs and thaws into a solid 



one season as all the mountain play- layer, distinguished from the preceding 



grounds of America. year by its silt of pulverized rock and 



Begin at the South! There is the atmospheric dust. Between two of the 



Grand Canyon Painted Desert region- Ten Peaks you can climb a glacier for 



though it will be news to the most of three miles where the year's snow fall 



Americans to know that chains of lies like steps of a stair. Similar ledges 



mountains high as the Rockies He of ice are observable on the glacier 



sunken in the abysmal gorge of the below Mt. Victoria that white wall of 



Canyon and that ^now peaks loom opal- alabaster that stretches for twelve miles 



escent above the lavender mists of the between sky and earth above the won- 



Desert. derful peacock blue lake at Laggan. 



North of the Painted Desert come the Where the train divcs into a snow shed 



mountains of Estes Park and Colorado m the Canadian Rockies, or in Colorado, 



-high park-like areas of Englemann and one comes out to see huge mountain 



spruce with turquoise lakes lying in slopes swept clear as by a mighty broom 



alpine meadows and a rush of angry ~ the force and terrible swiftness of the 



waters coming down from the snowy avalanche seem near; but at Lake 



peaks. In fact, on one railroad in Colo- Louise, Laggan, you can sit m your 



rado you can lunch in a snow shed bedroom and see the snow slides slip 



11,000 feet above sea level and play over the white ledges of Mt Victoria 



snow ball in mid-August. llke tenuous wind-blown falls; and 



Westward are the Sierra groups of nev f r realize that you are watching an 



mountain resorts-Hetch-Hetchv and avalanche till you hear the far boom of 



^ , r ., A/T V the fall like thunder. It does not need 



the Yosemite and the Manposa Grove tQ be toM here _ that laciers are not 



-all made famous by Mmr s pen, and advancing but receding an inch or 



yet more famous by their exquisite two a year _i ike the foot of an icy 



beauty and remote aloof grandeur as anc i ent drawing back from modern 



of a still isolated sacred world. days. Nor need it be told here that 



Yet northward come three more you can always tell the character of 



mountain playgrounds Ranier, Glacier the Upper Alpine Country by the color 



National Park, and the Canadian Rock- o f the mountain streams below. Streams 



ies all distinguished by similar char- from a glacier are .milky from the silt 



acteristics dense forests of pine and worn off the under rocks by the grind 



hemlock, enormous fields of glacial ice o f the centuries' ice. The silt often 



and snow I have tramped some of as in the Big Bend of the Columbia 



these fields twenty-five miles without imparts an almost vitriol greenish blue. 



