332 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



tundras on the north, savannas on the south, 

 and blooming prairies and plains ; while lakes 

 and rivers shone through all the vast forests and 

 openings, and happy birds and beasts gave 

 delightful animation. Everywhere, everywhere 

 over all the blessed continent, there were beauty 

 and melody and kindly, wholesome, f oodf ul abun- 

 dance. 



These forests were composed of about five 

 hundred species of trees, all of them in some way 

 useful to man, ranging in size from twenty-five 

 feet in height and less than one foot in dia- 

 meter at the ground to four hundred feet in 

 height and more than twenty feet in diameter, 

 — lordly monarchs proclaiming the gospel of 

 beauty like apostles. For many a century after 

 the ice-ploughs were melted, nature fed them and 

 dressed them every day, — working like a man, a 

 loving, devoted, painstaking gardener ; fingering 

 every leaf and flower and mossy furrowed bole ; 

 bending, trimming, modeling, balancing; paint- 

 ing them with the loveliest colors ; bringing over 

 them now clouds with cooling shadows and 

 showers, now sunshine ; fanning them with gentle 

 winds and rustling their leaves ; exercising them 

 in every fibre with storms, and pruning them ; 

 loading them with flowers and fruit, loading 

 them with snow, and ever making them more 

 beautiful as the years rolled by. Wide-branch- 

 ing oak and elm in endless variety, walnut and 



