ing fine clouds of
color. Ribes bushes, vaccinium, and kalmia, now in flower, make
beautiful rugs and borders along the banks of the streams. Shaggy beds
of dwarf oak (_Quercus chrysolepis_, var. _vaccinifolia_) over which one
may walk are common on rocky moraines, yet this is the same species as
the large live oak seen near Brown's Flat. The most beautiful of the
shrubs is the purple-flowered bryanthus, here making glorious carpets at
an elevation of nine thousand feet.

The principal tree for the first mile or two from camp is the
magnificent silver fir, which reaches perfection here both in size and
form of individual trees, and in the mode of grouping in groves with
open spaces between. So trim and tasteful are these silvery, spiry
groves one would fancy they must have been placed in position by some
master landscape gardener, their regularity seeming almost conventional.
But Nature is the only gardener able to do work so fine. A few noble
specimens two hundred feet high occupy central positions in the groups
with younger trees around them; and outside of these another circle of
yet smaller ones, the whole arranged like tastefully symmetrical
bouquets, every tree fitting nicely the place assigned to it as if made
especially for it; small roses and eriogonums are usually found blooming
on the open spaces about the groves, forming charming pleasure grounds.
Higher, the firs gradually become smaller and less perfect, many
showing double summits, indicating storm stress. Still, where good
moraine soil is found, even on the rim of the lake-basin, specimens one
hundred and fifty feet in height and five feet in diameter occur nearly
nine thousand feet above the sea. The saplings, I find, are mostly bent
with the crushing weight of the winter snow, which at this elevation
must be at least eight or ten feet deep, judging by marks on the trees;
and this depth of compacted snow is heavy enough to bend and bury young
trees twenty or thirty feet in height and hold them down for four or
five months. Some are broken; the others spring up when the snow melts
and at length attain a size that enables them to withstand the snow
pressure. Yet even in trees five feet thick the traces of this early
discipline are still plainly to be seen in their curved insteps, and
frequently in old dried saplings protruding from the trunk, partially
overgrown by the new axis developed from a branch below the break. Yet
through all this stress the fores