334 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



tile basin of the Mississippi, over damp level 

 bottoms, low dimpling hollows, and round dot- 

 ting hills, embosoming sunny prairies and cheery 

 park openings, half sunshine, half shade ; while 

 a dark wilderness of pines covered the region 

 around the Great Lakes. Thence still west- 

 ward swept the forests to right and left around 

 grassy plains and deserts a thousand miles wide : 

 irrepressible hosts of spruce and pine, aspen and 

 willow, nut-pine and juniper, cactus and yucca, 

 caring nothing for drought, extending undaunted 

 from mountain to mountain, over mesa and 

 desert, to join the darkening multitudes of 

 pines that covered the high Eocky ranges and the 

 glorious forests along the coast of the moist and 

 balmy Pacific, where new species of pine, giant 

 cedars and spruces, silver firs and Sequoias, kings 

 of their race, growing close together like grass 

 in a meadow, poised their brave domes and 

 spires in the sky, three hundred feet above the 

 ferns and the lilies that enameled the ground ; 

 towering serene through the long centuries, 

 preaching God's forestry fresh from heaven. 



Here the forests reached their highest devel- 

 opment. Hence they went wavering northward 

 over icy Alaska, brave spruce and fir, poplar and 

 birch, by the coasts and the rivers, to within 

 sight of the Arctic Ocean. American forests ! 

 the glory of the world ! Surveyed thus from 

 the east to the west, from the north to the south, 



