158 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



lie far up on ledges and terraces of the sheer 

 canon walls, wherever a strip of soil, however 

 narrow and shallow, can rest. The birds, winds, 

 and down-washing rains have planted them with 

 all sorts of hardy mountain flowers, and where 

 there is sufficient moisture they flourish in pro- 

 fusion. Many of them are watered by little 

 streams that seem lost on the tremendous preci- 

 pices, clinging to the face of the rock in lacelike 

 strips, and dripping from ledge to ledge, too 

 silent to be called falls, pathless wanderers from 

 the upper meadows, which for centuries have 

 been seeking a way down to the rivers they be- 

 long to, without having worn as yet any appre- 

 ciable channel, mostly evaporated or given to the 

 plants they meet before reaching the foot of the 

 cliffs. To these unnoticed streams the finest of 

 the cliff gardens owe their luxuriance and fresh- 

 ness of beauty. In the larger ones ferns and 

 showy flowers flourish in wonderful profusion, 

 — woodwardia, columbine, collomia, castilleia, 

 draperia, geranium, erythraea, pink and scarlet 

 mimulus, hosackia, saxifrage, sunflowers and 

 daisies, with azalea, spiraea, and calycanthus, a 

 few specimens of each that seem to have been 

 culled from the large gardens above and beneath 

 them. Even lilies are occasionally found in these 

 irrigated cliff gardens, swinging their bells over 

 the giddy precipices, seemingly as happy as their 

 relatives down in the waterfall dells. Most of 



