94 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



the upper forests, lingering over beds of blue 

 gentians and purple-flowered bryanthus and cas- 

 siope, and dwarf willows an inch high in close- 

 felted gray carpets, brightened here and there 

 with kalmia and soft creeping mats of vaccinium 

 sprinkled with pink bells that seem to have been 

 showered down from the sky like hail, — thus 

 beguiled and enchanted, you reach the base of 

 the mountain wholly unconscious of the miles 

 you have walked. And so on to the summit. 

 For all the way up the long red slate slopes, that 

 in the distance seemed barren, you find little gar- 

 den beds and tufts of dwarf phlox, ivesia, and 

 blue arctic daisies that go straight to your heart, 

 blessed fellow mountaineers kept safe and warm 

 by a thousand miracles. You are now more than 

 thirteen thousand feet above the sea, and to the 

 north and south you behold a sublime wilderness 

 of mountains in glorious array, their snowy sum- 

 mits towering together in crowded, bewildering 

 abundance, shoulder to shoulder, peak beyond 

 peak. To the east lies the Great Basin, barren- 

 looking and silent, apparently a land of pure 

 desolation, rich only in beautiful light. Mono 

 Lake, fourteen miles long, is outspread below 

 you at a depth of nearly seven thousand feet, its 

 shores of volcanic ashes and sand, treeless and 

 sunburned ; a group of volcanic cones, with 

 well-formed, unwasted craters rises to the south 

 of the lake ; while up from its eastern shore in- 



