The effect of this expressive outspokenness on the part of the
canon-rocks is greatly enhanced by the quiet aspect of the alpine
meadows through which we pass just before entering the narrow gateway.
The forests in which they lie, and the mountain-tops rising beyond them,
seem quiet and tranquil. We catch their restful spirit, yield to the
soothing influences of the sunshine, and saunter dreamily on through
flowers and bees, scarce touched by a definite thought; then suddenly we
find ourselves in the shadowy canon, closeted with Nature in one of her
wildest strongholds.
After the first bewildering impression begins to wear off, we perceive
that it is not altogether terrible; for besides the reassuring birds and
flowers we discover a chain of shining lakelets hanging down from the
very summit of the pass, and linked together by a silvery stream. The
highest are set in bleak, rough bowls, scantily fringed with brown and
yellow sedges. Winter storms blow snow through the canon in blinding
drifts, and avalanches shoot from the heights. Then are these sparkling
tarns filled and buried, leaving not a hint of their existence. In June
and July they begin to blink and thaw out like sleepy eyes, the carices
thrust up their short brown spikes, the daisies bloom in turn, and the
most profoundly buried of them all is at length warmed and summered as
if winter were only a dream.
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