1 KTERGRSCNI. 



carpeted with a rich covering of green, Interwoven with flowers. 

 How broad and grand they were! Their emerald horizons 

 touched the sapphire of the heavens and the vast expanse 

 was domed with that arch kalsomlned with deepest blue, un- 

 stained, untarnished with the smoke and dust of our modem 

 civilization. At night how glorious when the moon came out 

 and the stars were lighted, when the silence came down upon 

 you, and you could listen to the stillness and feel that you were 

 tenting with God. 



Further to the West are the great plains — not all a desola- 

 tion, for those wide expanses have charmB peculiarly their own. ' 

 Yonder, on the borders of the vastness, mighty mountains are 

 lifted against the sky, — the hoary Rockies, seamed with age. 

 What tremendous convulsions In those far-oft eons, when those 

 masses of granite were torn from their resting places and hurled 

 skyward! The h-orlzontal transformed to the perpendicular — 

 rugged rocks torn and rent from earth's bosom are tossed heav- 

 enward — great turrets, domes and steeples, thousands of feet 

 high, pointing giant fingers of stone to the Creator whose 

 power upheaved them. 



Let us go among them. Here are furrows a thousand feet 

 deep, plowed among the rocks. Listen to the roaring of the 

 streams as they leap over the falls and rush down the rapids 

 In their mad race to reach the plains. See all those mountain 

 sides covered with trees; the unsightly brown of the somber 

 rocks covered with green. What wonderful conifers, with sheen 

 of emeralds and ermine, softest green and sapphire, noble sen- 

 tinels are they, standing In robes of state waiting. In Nature's 

 courts, to receive and welcome the visitor. How patiently and 

 wisely faithful Nature has been tolling all the long eons, grind- 

 ing up the rocks, mixing them with the leaf mould to give sus- 

 tenance to the tree. Tender Is a grove of the Engelman 

 spruce, like a fringe around the brow of a bald mountain rising 

 above the timber line. On that sharp peak, pointing skyward, 

 there are trees clinging to the fissures In the rocks. Little 

 nourishment they get but they are there; brave trees, adding 

 their part to the beauty of the scenery. All those steep mount- 

 ain sides are covered with forests, the work of ages. 



Stand on that lofty peak and overlook It all, and It Is like 

 some mighty sea tossed with the fury of the wildest storm, 

 with billows thrown to dizzy heights and all turned to stone 

 and covered with green. 



Go further West and you see other mountains tossed out 

 of the arid plains like Sinai, "the Mount that might be touched." 

 Their crests are crowned with forests; their sides are covered 

 with grass; bushes fasten the soil like flesh to the rocky ribs. 

 Go further and you see the Yellowstone Park wedged and 

 packed with the Ledge Pole Pine, where the brave trees grow 

 even In the spray of the geysers. Go "further still and you 



