JUNE RAMBLES IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 215 
blue, and with this grows a very pretty yellow flowered Senecio 
which we cannot now name with certainty. We notice several 
kinds of wild currants among the more common shrubs. The one 
known in cultivation, as the Flowering Currant (Ribes aureum) and 
justly esteemed for its showy and fragrant yellow blossoms, is the 
only one in flower now, the others being earlier. 
We have now come to a rude wooden bridge, apparently con- 
structed some time ago, for the accommodation of some company 
of gold seekers ; for, on the other side, are various indications that 
mining was once undertaken there, but with short-lived success. 
The mountains on either side are now gradually drawing very 
close to the creek, and it is evident that we cannot proceed longer 
up the stream, for want of a path. We cross the bridge. A deep 
ravine, shaded by tall spruces, and filled with a variety of under- 
brush, leads up the mountain at the left. We follow this ravine in 
the hope of finding yet other novelties. Having climbed up for 
some distance, over the lichen-clad rocks, and having scratched 
our hands to a painful extent, among wild gooseberry bushes, we 
reach at last a kind of broad terrace, where we find a delightful 
spring of water, whence a clear and laughing streamlet runs musi- 
cally down to join the noisy flood below. Strawberry plants, and 
pale Canada violets are blooming abundantly along the streamlet, 
and among the bushes is a handsome composite with large yellow 
flowers on stems a foot high, the leaves clothed with soft woolly 
hairs. This proves to be Arnica cordifolia. But what is this lit- 
tle gem of a plant, growing all over the wet, mossy surfaces oi the 
shelving rocks? The delicate stems are only two or three inches 
high, each supporting three or four pendulous flowers of a deep 
purple. A nearer view shows the flowers to be those of the shoot- 
ing star (Dodecatheon Meadia). But how very different the whole 
plant seems from the specimens one sees on the borders of woods, 
east of the Mississippi, where they grow tenfold larger, and have 
white or rose-colored flowers. However, the proper authorities 
have pronounced the Rocky Mountain plant to be only ean 
of the original Dodecatheon Meadia. Following the siete 
gather, as we ascend, Clematis alpina, Antennaria Carpathica, and 
three specimens of the very rare and interesting Ranunculus 
Nuttallii. 
In the midst of all this wildness of scenery, 
accessible solitude, where it might well be supposed no human 
in an almost in- 
