The Third
Species Grows Between The Others As To Elevation; Its Leaves, Then
Orange-Colored, Are Strikingly Pitted And Reticulated.
Another alpine
shrub, a species of sericocarpus, covered with handsome heads of
feathery achenia, beautiful dwarf echiverias with flocks of purple
flowers pricked into their bright grass-green, cushion-like bosses of
moss-like foliage, and a fine forget-me-not reach to the summit.
I
may also mention a large mertensia, a fine anemone, a veratrum, six
feet high, a large blue daisy, growing up to three to four thousand
feet, and at the summit a dwarf species, with dusky, hairy
involucres, and a few ferns, aspidium, gymnogramma, and small rock
cheilanthes, leaving scarce a foot of ground bare, though the
mountain looks bald and brown in the distance like those of the
desert ranges of the Great Basin in Utah and Nevada.
Charmed with these plant people, I had almost forgotten to watch the
sky until I reached the top of the highest peak, when one of the
greatest and most impressively sublime of all the mountain views I
have ever enjoyed came full in sight - more than three hundred miles
of closely packed peaks of the great Coast Range, sculptured in the
boldest manner imaginable, their naked tops and dividing ridges dark
in color, their sides and the canyons, gorges, and valleys between
them loaded with glaciers and snow. From this standpoint I counted
upwards of two hundred glaciers, while dark-centred luminous clouds
with fringed edges hovered and crawled over them, now slowly
descending, casting transparent shadows on the ice and snow, now
rising high above them, lingering like loving angels guarding the
crystal gifts they had bestowed.
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