holding its
green mantle close about its form. Imagine the upper branches nearly
bare, shattered perhaps by lightning. And imagine its crown of foliage,
dark yellowish-green, hanging in enormous graceful plumes.

This is the King of Trees.

IV

THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES

THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, NORTH CENTRAL COLORADO. AREA, 398
SQUARE MILES

I

The Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and the Cascade Range of
California, Oregon, and Washington have each three national parks which
fully represent their kind and quality. The great central system of the
United States, the Rocky Mountains, which also possess three national
parks, are represented in kind by only one, for Yellowstone is an
exceptional volcanic interlude, and Glacier is the chance upheaval of
shales and limestones from a period antedating the granite Rockies by
many millions of years; neither in any sense exhibits the nature and
scenic quality of the backbone of our continent.

This is one of the reasons for the extraordinary distinction of the
reservation appropriately called the Rocky Mountain National Park,
namely that it is the only true example of the continental mountain
system in the catalogue of our national parks. It is well, therefore, to
lay the foundations for a sound comprehension of its differentiating
features.

The Rocky Mountains, which began to rise at the close of the Cretaceous
Period at a rate so slow that geologists think they are making a pace
to-day as rapid as their maximum, extend from the plateau of New Mexico
northwesterly until they merge into the mountains of eastern Alaska. In
the United States physiographers consider them in two groups, the
Northern Rockies and the Southern Rockies, the point of division being
the elevated Wyoming Basin. There are numerous ranges, known, like the
Wasatch Mountains, by different names, which nevertheless are consistent
parts of the Rocky Mountain System.

The Rockies attain their most imposing mass and magnificence in their
southern group, culminating in Colorado. So stupendous is this heaping
together of granitic masses that in Colorado alone are found forty-two
of the fifty-five named peaks in the United States which attain the
altitude of fourteen thousand feet. Of the others, twelve are in the
Sierra of California, and one, Mount Rainier, in Washington. Mount
Elbert, in Colorado, our second highest peak, rises within eighty-two
feet of the height of California'