scenery, are glacier monuments.

Contemplating the works of these flowers of the sky, one may easily
fancy them endowed with life: messengers sent down to work in the
mountain mines on errands of divine love. Silently flying through the
darkened air, swirling, glinting, to their appointed places, they seem
to have taken counsel together, saying, "Come, we are feeble; let us
help one another. We are many, and together we will be strong. Marching
in close, deep ranks, let us roll away the stones from these mountain
sepulchers, and set the landscapes free. Let us uncover these clustering
domes. Here let us carve a lake basin; there, a Yosemite Valley; here, a
channel for a river with fluted steps and brows for the plunge of
songful cataracts. Yonder let us spread broad sheets of soil, that man
and beast may be fed; and here pile trains of boulders for pines and
giant Sequoias. Here make ground for a meadow; there, for a garden and
grove, making it smooth and fine for small daisies and violets and beds
of heathy bryanthus, spicing it well with crystals, garnet feldspar, and
zircon." Thus and so on it has oftentimes seemed to me sang and planned
and labored the hearty snow-flower crusaders; and nothing that I can
write can possibly exaggerate the grandeur and beauty of their work.
Like morning mist they have vanished in sunshine, all save the few small
companies that still linger on the coolest mountainsides, and, as
residual glaciers, are still busily at work completing the last of the
lake basins, the last beds of soil, and the sculpture of some of the
highest peaks.

[Illustration: MOUNT HOOD.]