ot of the canyon, interrupted
only by the lakes in which the tossed and beaten waters rest. One of the
finest of the cascades is outspread on the face of a precipice, its
waters separated into ribbon-like strips, and woven into a diamond-like
pattern by tracing the cleavage joints of the rock, while tufts of
bryanthus, grass, sedge, saxifrage form beautiful fringes. Who could
imagine beauty so fine in so savage a place? Gardens are blooming in all
sorts of nooks and hollows,--at the head alpine eriogonums, erigerons,
saxifrages, gentians, cowania, bush primula; in the middle region
larkspur, columbine, orthocarpus, castilleia, harebell, epilobium,
violets, mints, yarrow; near the foot sunflowers, lilies, brier rose,
iris, lonicera, clematis.

One of the smallest of the cascades, which I name the Bower Cascade, is
in the lower region of the pass, where the vegetation is snowy and
luxuriant. Wild rose and dogwood form dense masses overarching the
stream, and out of this bower the creek, grown strong with many
indashing tributaries, leaps forth into the light, and descends in a
fluted curve thick-sown with crisp flashing spray. At the foot of the
canyon there is a lake formed in part at least by the damming of the
stream by a terminal moraine. The three other lakes in the canyon are in
basins eroded from the solid rock, where the pressure of the glacier was
greatest, and the most resisting portions of the basin rims are
beautifully, tellingly polished. Below Moraine Lake at the foot of the
canyon there are several old lake-basins lying between the large lateral
moraines which extend out into the desert. These basins are now
completely filled up by the material carried in by the streams, and
changed to dry sandy flats covered mostly by grass and artemisia and
sun-loving flowers. All these lower lake-basins were evidently formed by
terminal moraine dams deposited where the receding glacier had lingered
during short periods of less waste, or greater snowfall, or both.

Looking up the canyon from the warm sunny edge of the Mono plain my
morning ramble seems a dream, so great is the change in the vegetation
and climate. The lilies on the bank of Moraine Lake are higher than my
head, and the sunshine is hot enough for palms. Yet the snow round the
arctic gardens at the summit of the pass is plainly visible, only about
four miles away, and between lie specimen zones of all the principal
climates of the globe. In little more than