ust be
creation--a change from beauty to beauty.

Our glacier meadow camp north of the Soda Springs seems more beautiful
every day. The grass covers all the ground though the leaves are
thread-like in fineness, and in walking on the sod it seems like a plush
carpet of marvelous richness and softness, and the purple panicles
brushing against one's feet are not felt. This is a typical glacier
meadow, occupying the basin of a vanished lake, very definitely bounded
by walls of the arrowy two-leaved pines drawn up in a handsome orderly
array like soldiers on parade. There are many other meadows of the same
kind hereabouts imbedded in the woods. The main big meadows along the
river are the same in general and extend with but little interruption
for ten or twelve miles, but none I have seen are so finely finished
and perfect as this one. It is richer in flowering plants than the
prairies of Wisconsin and Illinois were when in all their wild glory.
The showy flowers are mostly three species of gentian, a purple and
yellow orthocarpus, a golden-rod or two, a small blue pentstemon almost
like a gentian, potentilla, ivesia, pedicularis, white violet, kalmia,
and bryanthus. There are no coarse weedy plants. Through this flowery
lawn flows a stream silently gliding, swirling, slipping as if careful
not to make the slightest noise. It is only about three feet wide in
most places, widening here and there into pools six or eight feet in
diameter with no apparent current, the banks bossily rounded by the
down-curving mossy sod, grass panicles over-leaning like miniature pine
trees, and rugs of bryanthus spreading here and there over sunken
boulders. At the foot of the meadow the stream, rich with the juices of
the plants it has refreshed, sings merrily down over shelving rock
ledges on its way to the Tuolumne River. The sublime, massive Mount Dana
and its companions, green, red, and white, loom impressively above the
pines along the eastern horizon; a range or spur of gray rugged granite
crags and mountains on the north; the curiously crested and battlemented
Mount Hoffman on the west; and the Cathedral Range on the south with
its grand Cathedral Peak, Cathedral Spires, Unicorn Peak, and several
others, gray and pointed or massively rounded.

CHAPTER X

THE TUOLUMNE CAMP

_August 22._ Clouds none, cool west wind, slight hoarfrost on the
meadows. Carlo is missing; have been seeking him all day. In the thick
woods between cam