Hotel, he will be very grateful, and you will find it
amusing to watch him eating them.

There is music, too, in this Forest Cathedral, which is heard to best
advantage from the elevated gallery occupied by the snow-sheds. It takes
a trained ear to distinguish the steady, rippling _staccato_ sound of a
snow-fed mountain brook from the prolonged _legato_ sigh of a pine
forest, swelling to _fortissimo_, and dying away by turns. In the
romantic spot we have chosen these sounds are blended, the music
of the torrents being caught up by the sloping forest as by a huge
sounding-board, and increased in loudness by being mingled with the
mournful strains of the tree-tops, as orchestral colors are blended by
modern masters. Those err who say there is no music in nature. It is not
in "Siegfried" alone that the _Waldweben_ is musical, that leaves sing
as well as birds, while the thunder occasionally adds its loud _basso
profundo_. The aesthetic exhilaration which we owe to these poetic sights
and sounds is intensified by the salubrious breezes which waft this
music to our ears. Born among the clouds and glaciers, they are perfumed
in passing across the forests, warmed by the sun's rays in passing over
the valley; and every breath of this elixir adds a day to one's life. It
is not surprising that mountains should make the best health-resorts;
for do they not themselves understand and obey the laws of health? They
keep their heads cool under a snow-cap, their feet warm in a mossy
blanket, and their sides covered with a dense _fir_ overcoat....

For the greater part of the two hours which the train requires to go
from Donald to Golden City it passes along the bank of the Columbia
River; and there is, perhaps, no part of the whole route where grandeur
and beauty are so admirably united as here, especially in the autumn.
The grandeur lies in the snowy summits which frame in this Columbia
valley--the Selkirks on one side, the Rockies on the other. The beauty
lies in the river itself and in the young trees and bushes along its
banks, dressed in fall styles and colors, some as richly yellow as a
golden-rod, others as deeply purple or crimson as fuchsias or begonias,
the yellow predominating. These colored trees occur in groups and
streaks along the river, and in isolated patches on the mountain-sides,
where they might be mistaken for brown mosses or lichen-colored rocks.
There may be as beautifully colored trees in our Eastern forests, bu