Not a cranny in a rock but is seized on at once by the eager little
gardeners in charge and made a bed of bloom, as though every inch
of room were priceless. And yet Nature here exemplifies the law
that our human gardeners are only learning: "Mass your bloom, to
gain effect."
As I stood on that hill, the foreground was a broad stretch of old
gold - the shining sandy yellow of drying grass - but it was patched
with large scarlet mats of arctous that would put red maple to its
reddest blush. There was no Highland heather here, but there were
whole hillsides of purple red vaccinium, whose leaves were but a
shade less red than its luscious grape-hued fruit.
Here were white ledums in roods and acre beds; purple mairanias
by the hundred acres, and, framed in lilac rocks, were rich, rank
meadows of golden-green by the mile.
There were leagues and leagues of caribou moss, pale green or lilac,
and a hundred others in clumps, that, seeing here the glory of the
painted mosses, were simulating their ways, though they themselves
were the not truly mosses at all.
I never before saw such a realm of exquisite flowers so exquisitely
displayed, and the effect at every turn throughout the land was
colour, colour, colour, to as far outdo the finest autumn tints of
New England as the Colorado Canyon outdoes the Hoosac Gorge.
