220 BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA. 



" I wish I had time and skill to write of those sweet 

 mountain flowers. There is nothing quite so beautiful in 

 any other Alpine land I know of, our mountains altogether 

 outstripping the Swiss or Austrian Alps in the wealth, 

 variety, and sweetness of their flora. I don't know any- 

 thing of botany, I am ashamed to say, but we have 

 counted nearly a hundred different varieties of flowers in 

 bloom during one afternoon' s tramp. Amid the lush-green 

 of the rich valleys, great masses of harebell and borage 

 and gentian carpet the ground. Here and there, beautifully 

 contrasting with their fresh, vivid blue, wide plots of yel- 

 low, purple-centered sun-flowers stoutly hold up their 

 heads, while on the border-land of these flower-beds of 

 Nature, where the grass shortens in blade and deepens to 

 an intense shade of green, the delicate mountain lily, with 

 its three pure-white petals, fading to the tenderest green at 

 the center, reaches its graceful height of some nine inches. 

 All this one has abundant leisure to observe, as he sits well 

 to windward of the bait in this case, a dead Elk. 



On this occasion, I occupied an unusually good point of 

 vantage. My arm-chair not only commanded a little slop- 

 ing prairie, but the heads of two deep ravines leading to 

 it, and the crest of the ridge to my left, some three 

 hundred feet above me. Hour after hour passed peacefully 

 by. I tried to read Tennyson (I had a pocket volume with 

 me), with but poor success, and so gave myself up -to the 

 beauty of the scene. I realized without effort what a bliss- 

 ful thing it might be nay, sometimes is simply to exist. 

 Such hours do not come to any of us often; but when they 

 do, with them surely may come an overmastering sense of 

 that great truth Elizabeth Barrett Browning so tersely 

 puts: 



Earth's crammed with heaven, 



And every common bush afire with God; 



But only he who sees takes off his shoes. 



Without cant, I trust, that evening I took off mine, as 

 the old prayer came to mind: "We thank Thee for our 

 creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life." 



