Ascent of Red Peak 



27 



water, I joyfully wandered along at the beginning on the 

 open park-like floor of the forest, hearing everything, 

 seeing everything, pleased with everything. Occasional 

 glimpses through the tree-tops of nearby Clark Mountain, 

 or Gray Peak ahead or beside me, or of Mt. Starr King 

 behind me, assured me of the general accuracy of my 

 upward course, which gradually grew steeper and steeper. 

 It was harvest time for the squirrels, but each one seemed 

 able to spare time to stop and present me with a piece of 

 his mind as I passed. The blue jays, too, readily left 

 their occupations and screamed out their disapproval of 

 my appearance. I met three mild-eyed does, who quietly 

 loped off out of sight, but a fine old buck with his horns 

 ''in the velvet," after a few indecisive steps of alarm, 

 stood his ground and calmly gazed at me across a meadow 

 a hundred feet away with an expression as if he were 

 enjoying it as much as the average small boy enjoys a 

 circus parade. He was no ''spike buck" nor "forked 

 horn," but possessed a magnificent set of branching 

 antlers such as the murderous nimrod likes to hang up as 

 a trophy. 



I renewed my old acquaintanceship among the flowers 

 and made some new ones. Beautiful blue larkspurs that 

 grew on stems one and a half to two feet high near San 

 Francisco, here grew on stems six feet long in generous 

 two-foot racemes. The charmingly colored delicate pink 

 mimulus and the queerly shaped purple monk's hood 

 nodded over the stream, while the cardinal castilleias 

 shone forth on three-foot supports. In the chance bits of 

 bog or meadow companies of the striking little alpine 

 (tiger) lilies raised their orange and vermilion heads on 

 tall stalks above the other vegetation as if superior to the 

 rest. On the dry granite slopes the scarlet bugler and 

 the scarlet gilia brightened up the scene unexpectedly, 

 while further up I met with the interesting spikes of pink 

 elephant's heads, the dainty May queen's lace, the fragrant 

 blossoms of the grass of Parnassus, the purple cyclamen, 

 the golden stars and the white violet. Last of all at the 



