182 WILD LIFE AND THE CAMERA 



or man — through dark forests of magnificent 

 timber, along glades where the ground is a 

 veritable carpet of many-coloured flowers. Flowers 

 of all seasons, blooming together, make the most 

 of the all too short summer ; the earliest and the 

 latest, utterly disregarding the season. Columbines, 

 gentians, rich masses of scarlet painted-cup, are 

 here, lupins in patches of purple, blue, and white, 

 glorious yellow sunflowers, and many, many others, 

 small and large, brilliant and delicate, whose names 

 I do not know, but whose beauty make a picture 

 delightful and wonderful beyond all power of 

 description. No garden laid out with tenderest 

 care and most consummate skill could compare 

 with this garden of the Sierras, nestling in this 

 valley, watered by melting snow, kissed into life 

 by clear and unclouded sunlight, and guarded by 

 the encircling mountains whose summits, rugged, 

 bare and treeless, cut the deep blue sky with 

 startling clearness. 



All sense of distance is lost in such a climate. 

 Huge snow-polished faces of solid rock hundreds, 

 even thousands of feet in height, appeared mere 

 boulders of insignificant size. On we go through 

 all this dazzling beauty, making our way toward a 

 pass 5,000 feet above the garden valley : it is ten 

 miles away, yet it seems that we must reach it 

 within a few minutes. Higher and higher we 

 climb up the face of the mountain, zig-zaggmg 

 along the perilously narrow trail which is scarcely 

 visible in the coarse gravel. As we go, this loose 

 gravel, started by the animals' feet, rattles down 

 the steep slopes into the valley 1,000 feet or more 



