THE SUMMIT OF THE AQUAEIUS. 



285 



The ascent leads us among rugged hills, almost mountainous in size, 

 strewn with black bowlders, along precipitous ledges, and by the sides of 

 canons. Long detours must be made to escape the chasms and to avoid 

 the taluses of fallen blocks ; deep ravines must be crossed, projecting crags 

 doubled, and lofty battlements scaled before the summit is reached. When 

 the broad platform is gained the story of " Jack and the beanstalk," the 

 finding of a strange and beautiful country somewhere up in the region ot 

 the clouds, no longer seems incongruous. Yesterday we were toiling over 

 a burning soil, where nothing grows save the ashy-colored sage, the prickly 

 pear, and a few cedars that writhe and contort their stunted limbs under a 

 scorching sun. To-day we are among forests of rare beauty and luxuriance ; 

 the air is moist and cool, the grasses are green and rank, and hosts of 

 flowers deck the turf like the hues of a Persian carpet. The forest opens 

 in wide parks and winding avenues, which the fancy can easily people with 

 fays and woodland nymphs. On either side the sylvan walls look impene- 

 trable, and for the most part so thickly is the ground strewn with fallen 

 trees, that any attempt to enter is as serious a matter as forcing an abattis. 

 The tall spruces (Abies subalpina) stand so close together, that even if the 

 dead-wood were not there a passage would be almost impossible. Their 

 slender trunks, as straight as lances, reach upward a hundred feet, ending 

 in barbed points, and the contours of the foliage are as symmetrical and 

 uniform as if every tree had been clipped for a lordly garden. They are 

 too prim and monotonous for a high type of beauty ; but not so the Engel- 

 mann spruces and great mountain firs (A. Engelmanni, A. grandis), which are 

 delightfully varied, graceful in form, and rich in foliage. Rarely are these 

 species found in such luxuriance and so variable in habit. In places where 

 they are much exposed to the keen blasts of this altitude they do not grow 

 into tall, majestic spires, but cower into the form of large bushes, with their 

 branchlets thatched tightly together like a great hay-rick. 



Upon the broad summit are numerous lakes — not the little morainal 

 pools, but broad sheets of water a mile or two in length. Their basins were 

 formed by glaciers, and since the ice-cap which once covered the whole 

 plateau has disappeared they continue to fill with water from the melting 



