fearing it might come to be trampled and "improved" like Yosemite. On my
last visit, as I was sauntering along the shore on the strip of sand
between the water and sod, reading the tracks of the wild animals that
live here, I was startled by a human track, which I at once saw belonged
to some shepherd; for each step was turned out 35 deg. or 40 deg. from the
general course pursued, and was also run over in an uncertain sprawling
fashion at the heel, while a row of round dots on the right indicated
the staff that shepherds carry. None but a shepherd could make such a
track, and after tracing it a few minutes I began to fear that he might
be seeking pasturage; for what else could he be seeking? Returning from
the glaciers shortly afterward, nay worst fears were realized. A trail
had been made down the mountain-side from the north, and all the gardens
and meadows were destroyed by a horde of hoofed locusts, as if swept by
a fire. The money-changers were in the temple.

ORANGE LAKE

Besides these larger canon lakes, fed by the main canon streams, there
are many smaller ones lying aloft on the top of rock benches, entirely
independent of the general drainage channels, and of course drawing
their supplies from a very limited area. Notwithstanding they are mostly
small and shallow, owing to their immunity from avalanche detritus and
the inwashings of powerful streams, they often endure longer than others
many times larger but less favorably situated. When very shallow they
become dry toward the end of summer; but because their basins are ground
out of seamless stone they suffer no loss save from evaporation alone;
and the great depth of snow that falls, lasting into June, makes their
dry season short in any case.

Orange Lake is a fair illustration of this bench form. It lies in the
middle of a beautiful glacial pavement near the lower margin of the
lake-line, about a mile and a half to the northwest of Shadow Lake. It
is only about 100 yards in circumference. Next the water there is a
girdle of carices with wide overarching leaves, then in regular order a
shaggy ruff of huckleberry bushes, a zone of willows with here and there
a bush of the Mountain Ash, then a zone of aspens with a few pines
around the outside. These zones are of course concentric, and together
form a wall beyond which the naked ice-burnished granite stretches away
in every direction, leaving it conspicuously relieved, like a bunch of
palms in a desert