78 
HIGH ALTITUDES 
mountain raspberries ; and Mrs. Maxwell decided 
to camp, gather some, and collect specimens of 
the animals of that altitude, till Mr. Maxwell 
came back. 
This matter of altitude seems very strange to 
one who has never thought about it. It modifies 
everything, even the rocks. Though they had 
travelled but ten miles from home, they had risen 
at least two thousand feet, and were in a climate 
materially changed by its proximity to the clouds. 
Boulder and its vicinity are over five thousand five 
hundred feet above the sea, almost as high as the 
top of Mount Washington; still it is so much far- 
ther south, that beautiful wheat, corn, and almost 
all kinds of grains and vegetables, raised in any of 
the Northern States, mature there. But, two thou- 
sand feet above it, a different state of things ex- 
ists. There, only potatoes, oats and vegetables 
that will either mature in a few weeks, or that 
will bear frosts, can be raised. Each foot added to 
the altitude shortens the season for growth, until, 
upon the Snowy Range — that succession of peaks 
rising above timber line which forms the water- 
shed between the streams flowing into the Gulf 
of Mexico and those emptying into the Pacific 
ocean — discouraged vegetation gives up altoge- 
ther, and winter and snow have their own way 
the year round. 
The effect of the change in altitude upon the 
