THE PROPOSED ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 

 By Henry H. Saylor, F. R. G. S. 



AS I look over the notes jotted down while on our trail trip 

 L in the High Sierra last summer, they seem very prosaic, 

 very brief, and, without the pictures that memory recreates, 

 most uninteresting. Pale, ghostlike things they are now, like 

 the wind-drifted tracks of a deer in the snow. 



Mon. — 8/4 — Broke camp lo a. m. Lunch at Tent 

 Camp Meadow. Climbed to Goat Mt. Pass. Photo- 

 graphed there. Descended to GraniteBasin,y.^o p.m. 



They give but the mere frame of the picture, upon the can- 

 vas of which must be laid all the color of granite peaks shelter- 

 ing pockets of snow; rock-bound lakes of a blue-blackness that 

 is found in no tubes of paint ; stunted white-bark pines strug- 

 gling for their very existence in the shelter of clean, gray 

 boulders; alpine flowers of pastel colors and exquisite dainti- 

 ness ; the inverted bowl of clear blue sky, cloudless and serene. 



We were in the midst of the proposed Roosevelt National 

 Park, living a life from which was excluded all the petty things 

 of our vaunted civilization. Far from railroad, from mail and 

 telegraph lines, out of reach even of the automobile, which 

 dares all but the wildest country in these modern days, we 

 were free to look upon one of Nature's most glorious pages, 

 bearing in characters of granite the history of the ages. 



It was after five when we rode slowly down the steep trail 

 into Granite Basin. Already the sun had dropped low enough 

 toward the western mountain wall to bring on the evening chill 

 of the high country. About a mile across the basin, as our 

 maps showed, lay a lake fed directly by the melting snows of 

 the peaks. While the rest of us unpacked and sought some sort 

 of a level space upon which to unroll our sleeping-bags, the 

 Oldtimer and the Doctor took their trout-rods and a book of 

 flies and set out on foot to try their luck. Supper, the end and 

 aim of all our High Sierra days, came, was seen, was con- 



