260 OUR NATIONAL PAEKS 



ders, overgrown with gray lichens, trees, shrubs, 

 and delicate flowering plants. Some of the 

 largest of the boulders are forty or fifty feet 

 cube, weighing from five to ten thousand tons ; 

 and where the cleavage joints of the granite are 

 exceptionally wide apart a few blocks may be 

 found nearly a hundred feet in diameter. These 

 wonderful boulder piles are distributed through- 

 out all the canons of the range, completely chok- 

 ing them in some of the narrower portions, and 

 no mountaineer will be likely to forget the sav- 

 age roughness of the roads they make. Even 

 the swift, overbearing rivers, accustomed to sweep 

 everything out of their way, are in some places 

 bridled and held in check by them. Foaming, 

 roaring, in glorious majesty of flood, rushing off 

 long rumbling trains of ponderous blocks with- 

 out apparent effort, they are not able to move 

 the largest, which, withstanding all assaults for 

 centuries, are left at rest in the channels like isl- 

 ands, with gardens on their tops, fringed with 

 foam below, with flowers above. 



On some points concerning the origin of these 

 taluses I was long in doubt. Plainly enough 

 they were derived from the cliffs above them, 

 the size of each talus being approximately mea- 

 sured by a scar on the wall, the rough angular 

 surface of which contrasts with the rounded, 

 glaciated, unfractured parts. I saw also that, 

 instead of being slowly accumulated material, 



