14 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



is yellow most of the summer with showy Wythia, 

 arnica, applopappus, solidago, and other sun-lov- 

 ing plants, which, though they form no heavy 

 entangling growth, yet give abundance of color 

 and make all the woods a garden. Beyond the 

 yellow pine woods there lies a world of rocks 

 of wildest architecture, broken, splintery, and 

 spiky, not very high, but the strangest in form 

 and style of grouping imaginable. Countless 

 towers and spires, pinnacles and slender domed 

 columns, are crowded together, and feathered 

 with sharp-pointed Engelmann spruces, making 

 curiously mixed forests, — half trees, half rocks. 

 Level gardens here and there in the midst of 

 them offer charming surprises, and so do the 

 many small lakes with lilies on their meadowy 

 borders, and bluebells, anemones, daises, castil- 

 leias, comandras, etc., together forming land- 

 scapes delightfully novel, and made still wilder 

 by many interesting animals, — elk, deer, beavers, 

 wolves, squirrels, and birds. Not very long ago 

 this was the richest of all the red man's hunting- 

 grounds hereabout. After the season's buffalo 

 hunts were over, — as described by Parkman, 

 who, with a picturesque cavalcade of Sioux sav- 

 ages, passed through these famous hills in 1846, 

 — every winter deficiency was here made good, 

 and hunger was unknown until, in spite of most 

 determined, fighting, killing opposition, the 

 white gold-hunters entered the fat game reserve 



