24 OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



long and over a thousand feet high, as you will see when you visit 

 the Rocky Mountain National Park. 



The rocks which are carried in mid-stream to the end of the glacier 

 and dropped when the ice melts are called the medial or middle 

 moraine. 



The end, or snout, of the glacier thus always lies among a great 

 mass of rocks and stones. The Nisqually River flows from a cave in 

 the end of the Nisqually Glacier's snout, for the melting begins miles 

 up stream under the glacier. The river is milky white when it first 

 appears because it carries sediment and powdered rock, which, how- 

 ever, it soon deposits, becoming quite clear. 



There are many glaciers as large and larger than the Nisqually 

 but they are little known because so hard to reach. When the 

 Department of the Interior opens roads to the other sides and a road 

 all around the great ice mountain all of these will become easily 

 accessible to visitors. 



CREATURES LIVING IN THE ICE 



Many interesting things might be told of these glaciers were there 

 space. For example, several species of minute insects live in the 

 ice, hopping about like tiny fleas. They are harder to see than the 

 so-called sand fleas at the sea shore because much smaller. Slender, 

 dark brown worms live in countless millions in the surface ice. Mi- 

 croscopic rose-colored plants also thrive in such great numbers that 

 they tint the surface here and there, making what is commonly called 

 "red snow." 



But this brief picture of the Mount Rainier National Park would 

 miss its loveliest touch without some notice of the wild flower parks 

 lying at the base, and often reaching far up between the icy fingers, of 

 Mount Rainier. Paradise Valley, Henrys Hunting Ground, Spray 

 Park, Summerland — such are the names given to some of these 

 beauty spots. 



Let John Muir, the celebrated naturalist, describe them here. 



"Above the forests," he writes, "there is a zone of the loveliest 

 flowers, fifty miles in circuit and nearly two miles wide, so closely 

 planted and luxurious that it seems as if nature, glad to make an 

 open space between woods so dense and ice so deep, were econo- 

 mizing the precious ground and trying to see how many of her dar- 

 lings she can get together in one mountain wreath — daisies, anemones, 

 columbine, erythroniums, larkspurs, etc., among which we wade 

 knee-deep and waist-deep, the bright corollas in myriads touching 

 petal to petal. Altogether this is the richest subalpine garden I have 

 ever found, a perfect flower elysium." 



