ured forth from
innumerable rifts and craters; when the ice of the Glacial Period was
laid like a mantle over every mountain and valley--throughout all
these immensely protracted periods, in the throng of these majestic
operations, Nature kept her flower children in mind. She considered
the lilies, and, while planting the plains with sage and the hills with
cedar, she has covered at least one mountain with golden erythroniums
and fritillarias as its crowning glory, as if willing to show what she
could do in the lily line even here.

Looking southward from the south end of Salt Lake, the two northmost
peaks of the Oquirrh Range are seen swelling calmly into the cool sky
without any marked character, excepting only their snow crowns, and a
few weedy-looking patches of spruce and fir, the simplicity of their
slopes preventing their real loftiness from being appreciated. Gray,
sagey plains circle around their bases, and up to a height of a thousand
feet or more their sides are tinged with purple, which I afterwards
found is produced by a close growth of dwarf oak just coming into leaf.
Higher you may detect faint tintings of green on a gray ground, from
young grasses and sedges; then come the dark pine woods filling glacial
hollows, and over all the smooth crown of snow.

While standing at their feet, the other day, shortly after my memorable
excursion among the salt waves of the lake, I said: "Now I shall have
another baptism. I will bathe in the high sky, among cool wind-waves
from the snow." From the more southerly of the two peaks a long ridge
comes down, bent like a bow, one end in the hot plains, the other in
the snow of the summit. After carefully scanning the jagged towers and
battlements with which it is roughened, I determined to make it my way,
though it presented but a feeble advertisement of its floral wealth.
This apparent barrenness, however, made no great objection just then,
for I was scarce hoping for flowers, old or new, or even for fine
scenery. I wanted in particular to learn what the Oquirrh rocks were
made of, what trees composed the curious patches of forest; and, perhaps
more than all, I was animated by a mountaineer's eagerness to get my
feet into the snow once more, and my head into the clear sky, after
lying dormant all winter at the level of the sea.

But in every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks. I had
not gone more than a mile from Lake Point ere I found the way profusely