162 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
Freshets. 
The green hue of ice, the blue of the snow shad- 
ows, the glisten of the white particles in full 
light, are brilliant; and when the ice breaks and 
goes jostling down the stream it very often piles 
up into fantastic masses that are beautiful in 
color when struck by the sun. 
A great change comes over the stream when 
the murmur of its water becomes the surge of 
an inundating freshet, but it is not a change 
for the better. The river itself is lost in the 
flood, and both its channel and its character are 
temporarily obliterated. A freshet, such as 
frequently covers the Mississippi ‘‘ bottoms” 
from bluff to bluff, is interesting perhaps, but 
hardly beautiful to look upon. It is only a 
mad rush of muddy water. All the streams of 
the watershed are swollen beyond their banks, 
and pour into the river a turbid mass of water 
filled with all sorts of earth, driftwood, up- 
rooted trees, and the like. The sweep down- 
ward of the flood, the danger, the destruction, 
may prove attractive to some, but the gen- 
eral impression upon the average person is rather 
dreary. A freshet in the Missouri and the 
Yellowstone is still more dreary and dirty, since 
it is nothing but a solution of mud which soils 
everything with which it comes in contact. 
