130 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



like a Highlander in heather. About a thou- 

 sand feet higher it is still smaller, making fringes 

 about a foot high around boulders and along 

 seams in pavements and the brows of canons, 

 giving hand-holds here and there on cliffs hard 

 to climb. The largest I have measured were 

 from twenty-five to twenty-seven feet in girth, 

 fifty to sixty feet high, and the spread of the 

 limbs was about double the height. 



The principal riverside trees are poplar, alder, 

 willow, broad-leaved maple, and Nuttall's flower- 

 ing dogwood. The poplar (Populus tricho- 

 carpa), often called balm of Gilead from the 

 gum on its buds, is a tall, stately tree, towering 

 above its companions and gracefully embowering 

 the banks of the main streams at an elevation of 

 about four thousand feet. Its abundant foliage 

 turns bright yellow in the fall, and the Indian- 

 summer sunshine sifts through it in delightful 

 tones over the slow-gliding waters when they are 

 at their lowest ebb. 



The flowering dogwood is brighter still in 

 these brooding days, for every branch of its 

 broad head is then a brilliant crimson flame. In 

 the spring, when the streams are in flood, it is 

 the whitest of trees, white as a snow bank with 

 its magnificent flowers four to eight inches in 

 width, making a wonderful show, and drawing 

 swarms of moths and butterflies. 



The broad-leaved maple is usually found in the 



