ogganed down and opened what seems at a distance like a roadway, but
is found to be a battle-field strewn with the corpses of cedars three
and four feet in diameter.

The most imposing view of such a mountain forest unbroken by a single
avalanche path is obtained from the snow-sheds just above the hotel.
Sitting outside these sheds and looking towards the left, you see a vast
mountain slope covered with literally millions of dark-green trees. Why
has none of the world's greatest poets ever been permitted to gaze on
such a Selkirk forest, that he might have aroused in his unfortunate
readers who are not privileged to see one emotions similar to those
inspired by it? But I fear that neither verse nor photographs, nor even
the painter's brush, can ever more than suggest the real grandeur of
such a forest scene. This mountain is not snow-crowned in September, but
its wooded summit makes a sharp green line against the snow-peaks beyond
and above. From this summit down to the foot stand the giant cedars, as
crowded as the yellow stalks in a Minnesota wheatfield. But in place of
the flat monochrome of a wheatfield, our sloping forest presents a most
fascinating color spectacle. The slanting rays of the sun tinge the
waving tree-tops with a deeply saturated yellowish-green, curiously
interspersed with a mosaic of dark, almost black streaks and patches of
shade, due to clouds and other causes, and the whole edged by the
dazzling snow.

If we descend and enter this forest, a cathedral-like awe thrills the
nerves. Daylight has not the power to penetrate to the ground hidden by
this dense mass of tree-tops rising two hundred to three hundred feet
into the air,--except that an occasional ray of sunlight may steal in
for a second, like a flash of lightning. And the carpet on which this
forest stands! In America we rarely see a house, even of a day-laborer,
without a carpet; why, then, should these royal trees do without one?
The carpet is itself a miniature forest of ferns and mosses, luxuriating
in riotous profusion on an ever-moist soil, the product of thousands of
generations of pine-needles. Nor is this carpet a monochrome, for the
green is varied by numerous berries of various kinds, most of which are
red, as they should be,--the complementary color of green. But there are
also acres of blueberries as large as cherries; and if you will tear off
a few branches of these and bring them to the young bear chained up near
the Glacier