d held in place
by masses of boulders and fallen trees, which, forming dams one above
another in close succession on small, outspread, channelless streams,
have collected soil enough for the growth of grasses, carices, and many
flowering plants, and being kept well watered, without being subject to
currents sufficiently strong to carry them away, a hanging or sloping
meadow is the result. Their surfaces are seldom so smooth as the others,
being roughened more or less by the projecting tops of the dam rocks or
logs; but at a little distance this roughness is not noticed, and the
effect is very striking--bright green, fluent, down-sweeping flowery
ribbons on gray slopes. The broad shallow streams these meadows belong
to are mostly derived from banks of snow and because the soil is well
drained in some places, while in others the dam rocks are packed close
and caulked with bits of wood and leaves, making boggy patches; the
vegetation, of course, is correspondingly varied. I saw patches of
willow, bryanthus, and a fine show of lilies on some of them, not
forming a margin, but scattered about among the carex and grass. Most of
these meadows are now in their prime. How wonderful must be the temper
of the elastic leaves of grasses and sedges to make curves so perfect
and fine. Tempered a little harder, they would stand erect, stiff and
bristly, like strips of metal; a little softer, and every leaf would lie
flat. And what fine painting and tinting there is on the glumes and
pales, stamens and feathery pistils. Butterflies colored like the
flowers waver above them in wonderful profusion, and many other
beautiful winged people, numbered and known and loved only by the Lord,
are waltzing together high over head, seemingly in pure play and
hilarious enjoyment of their little sparks of life. How wonderful they
are! How do they get a living, and endure the weather? How are their
little bodies, with muscles, nerves, organs, kept warm and jolly in such
admirable exuberant health? Regarded only as mechanical inventions, how
wonderful they are! Compared with these, Godlike man's greatest machines
are as nothing.

Most of the sandy gardens on moraines are in prime beauty like the
meadows, though some on the north sides of rocks and beneath groves of
sapling pines have not yet bloomed. On sunny sheets of crystal soil
along the slopes of the Hoffman Mountains, I saw extensive patches of
ivesia and purple gilia with scarce a green leaf, mak