WILD GARDENS OF THE YOSEMITE PARK 101 



one of these natural hothouses on the north 

 shore of a glacier lake 11,500 feet above the sea, 

 I found a luxuriant growth of hairy lupines, 

 thistles, goldenrods, shrubby potentilla, spraguea, 

 and the mountain epilobium with thousands of 

 purple flowers an inch wide, while the opposite 

 shore, at a distance of only three hundred yards, 

 was bound in heavy avalanche snow, — flowery 

 summer on one side, winter on the other. And 

 I know a bench garden on the north wall of 

 Yosemite in which a few flowers are in bloom all 

 winter ; the massive rocks about it storing up 

 sunshine enough in summer to melt the snow 

 about as fast as it falls. When tired of the 

 confinement of my cabin I used to camp out in 

 it in January, and never failed to find flowers, 

 and butterflies also, except during snowstorms 

 and a few days after. 



From Yosemite one can easily walk in a day 

 to the top of Mount Hoffman, a massive gray 

 mountain that rises in the centre of the Park, 

 with easy slopes adorned with castellated piles 

 and crests on the south side, rugged precipices 

 banked with perpetual snow on the north. Most 

 of the broad summit is comparatively level and 

 smooth, and covered with crystals of quartz, 

 mica, hornblende, feldspar, garnet, zircon, tour- 

 maline, etc., weathered out and strewn loosely as 

 if sown broadcast ; their radiance so dazzling in 

 some places as to fairly hide the multitude of 



