sweet utterance delivered with the usual abandon 

 of the wrens. 



Above the cliffs, on the precipitous slopes, is 

 the impress of still another agent. The ledge, 

 smoothed as by a plane, and the scattered boulders 

 amidst the dead timber and small aspens, give it 

 an appearance of extreme desolation. Here, where 

 now the Indian paint-brush glows in summer, the 

 glacier crept snail-like down the mountain, from 

 its cradle in some cirque above the forest. Tim- 

 ber-line is the frontier, the boundary between the 

 verdant world and the land of snow and ice. 



It was the glaciers which in the days of their 

 strength chiseled the lake basins every one, and 

 began the great canons on which the streams have 

 been at work ever since. At the same time they 

 laid out the moraines, like so many parks, where 

 the pines and the spruce have planted themselves. 

 They did the rough work and prepared the great 

 rock masses for the finer work of the rain and 

 frost and wind — as the stone-cutter precedes the 

 sculptor. 



These lakes in many cases became the glacial 

 meadows of today, which are like jewels set in 

 the vast matrix of rock. Out of elemental changes, 



i8i 



