Much Of This Powdered Rock Is Washed By Rain Into The Lakes And
Ponds; In Time These Cut Their Exits Down, And Drain, Leaving Each
A Broad Mud-Flat.
The climate mildens and the south winds cease
not, so that wind-borne grasses soon make green meadows of the
broad lake-bottom flats.
The process climbs the hill-slopes; every little earthy foothold
for a plant is claimed by some new settler, until each low hill is
covered to the top with vegetation graded to its soil, and where
the flowering kinds cannot establish themselves, the lichen pioneers
still maintain their hold. Rarely, in the landscape, now, is any of
the primitive colour of the rocks; even the tall, straight cliffs
of Aylmer are painted and frescoed with lichens that flame and
glitter with purple and orange, silver and gold. How precious and
fertile the ground is made to seem, when every square foot of it
is an exquisite elfin garden made by the little people, at infinite
cost, filled with dainty flowers and still later embellished with
delicate fruit.
One of the wonderful things about these children of the Barrens
is the great size of fruit and flower compared with the plant. The
cranberry, the crowberry, the cloudberry, etc., produce fruit any
one of which might outweigh the herb itself.
Nowhere does one get the impression that these are weeds, as often
happens among the rank growths farther south. The flowers in the
wildest profusion are generally low, always delicate and mostly
in beds of a single species.
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