But, notwithstanding all this plant
beauty, the general impression in looking across the lake is of stern,
unflinching rockiness; the ferns and flowers are scarcely seen, and not
one fiftieth of the whole surface is screened with plant life.
The sunnier north wall is more varied in sculpture, but the general tone
is the same. A few headlands, flat-topped and soil-covered, support
clumps of cedar and pine; and up-curving tangles of chinquapin and
live-oak, growing on rough earthquake taluses, girdle their bases. Small
streams come cascading down between them, their foaming margins
brightened with gay primulas, gilias, and mimuluses. And close along the
shore on this side there is a strip of rocky meadow enameled with
buttercups, daisies, and white violets, and the purple-topped grasses
out on its beveled border dip their leaves into the water.
The lower edge of the basin is a dam-like swell of solid granite,
heavily abraded by the old glacier, but scarce at all cut into as yet by
the outflowing stream, though it has flowed on unceasingly since the
lake came into existence.
As soon as the stream is fairly over the lake-lip it breaks into
cascades, never for a moment halting, and scarce abating one jot of its
glad energy, until it reaches the next filled-up basin, a mile below.
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