SHOSHONE FALLS 



far ahead was often marked to us by a red line visible 

 here and there upon the dull green plain. Flowers, flow- 

 ers everywhere under the sagebrush, covered the ground. 

 The effect was as of a rough garment with a delicate many- 

 colored silk lining. Great patches of lupine, then the deli- 

 cate fresh bloom of a species of phlox, then larkspur, then 

 areas of white, yellow, and purple flowers of many kinds. 

 It is a surprise to eastern eyes to see a land without turf, 

 yet so dotted with vegetation. It is as if all these things 

 grew in a plowed field, or in the open road; the bare soil is 

 everywhere visible around them. The bunch grass does 

 not make a turf, but grows in scattered tufts like bunches of 

 green bristles. Nothing is crowded. Every shrub and 

 flower has a free space about it. The horsemen and horse- 

 women careered gaily ahead, or lingered behind, resting 

 and botanizing amid the brush. The dust from the leading 

 vehicles was seen rising up miles in advance. We saw an 

 occasional coyote slink away amid the sagebrush. Dark- 

 eared and dark-tailed gray hares bounded away or eyed us 

 from cover. Horned 

 larks were common, 

 and the sage spar- 

 row, the meadow- 

 lark and other birds 

 wereseenand heard. 

 Shoshone Falls is 

 in Snake River, 

 which later on be- 

 comes the Colum- 

 bia. The river does 

 not flow in a valley 

 like our eastern 

 rivers, but in walled canyons which it has cut into the lava 

 plain to the depth of nearly a thousand feet. The only sign 

 we could see of it, when ten miles away, was a dark heavy 



SNAKE RIVER CANYON, NEAR SHOSHONE FALLS. 



