The Cliff Gardens Of This Hidden Yosemite Are Exceedingly Rich In
Color.
On almost every rift and bench, however small, as well as on
the wider table-rocks where a little
Soil has lodged, we found gay
multitudes of flowers, far more brilliantly colored than would be
looked for in so cool and beclouded a region, - larkspurs, geraniums,
painted-cups, bluebells, gentians, saxifrages, epilobiums, violets,
parnassia, veratrum, spiranthes and other orchids, fritillaria,
smilax, asters, daisies, bryanthus, cassiope, linnaea, and a great
variety of flowering ribes and rubus and heathworts. Many of the
above, though with soft stems and leaves, are yet as brightly painted
as those of the warm sunlands of the south. The heathworts in
particular are very abundant and beautiful, both in flower and fruit,
making delicate green carpets for the rocks, flushed with pink bells,
or dotted with red and blue berries. The tallest of the grasses have
ribbon leaves well tempered and arched, and with no lack of bristly
spikes and nodding purple panicles. The alpine grasses of the Sierra,
making close carpets on the glacier meadows, I have not yet seen in
Alaska.
The ferns are less numerous in species than in California, but about
equal in the number of fronds. I have seen three aspidiums, two
woodsias, a lomaria, polypodium, cheilanthes, and several species of
pteris.
In this eastern arm of Sum Dum Bay and its Yosemite branch, I counted
from my canoe, on my way up and down, thirty small glaciers back of
the walls, and we saw three of the first order; also thirty-seven
cascades and falls, counting only those large enough to make
themselves heard several miles.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 222 of 316
Words from 60129 to 60405
of 85542
