WHERE GLACIERS FEED THE APPLE ROOTS 69 



of potash in your soil; it takes some time, also, to build 

 macadam roads across miles of dusty sage brush, 

 especially when your own two hands have more than 

 they can do in your personal patch of orchard. Yet so 

 much has been accomplished in so brief a span, the bus- 

 tle of energy is so infectious, there are so few indications 

 anywhere of effort abandoned, that the visitor from the 

 East feels himself in a new world. Where he came from 

 the orchards are often more beautiful, with the beauty 

 of age, not infrequently of neglect. The old New 

 England apple tree, with its jungle of suckers, its trunk 

 gnarled and sprawling, and standing with its fellows 

 over the gray stone wall, knee deep in grass and butter- 

 cups, is a beautiful patriarch, telling tales of other 

 days and generations passed away. It matches the 

 mouse-gray barn and the shabby but dignified farm- 

 house close by, the rolling fields beyond, the languid 

 haze of the summer day. But the apples of Wenatchee 

 grow on tall, upstanding trees that speak in every line 

 of ceaseless care and lateral pruning; between the rows 

 flow the tiny irrigation ditches, and under them 

 flourishes the rich alfalfa. They are the very anti- 

 thesis of neglect, as they surround the plain, prac- 

 tical, well-painted farmhouse, usurping even the door- 

 yard. Here is no languid haze on a summer day; heat, 

 perhaps, but not haze. The eye goes out between the 

 rows to the hollow where the mighty river runs, or down 

 the valley to the far blue rampart of the Cascade Range 



