And in autumn, when the
huckleberries are ripe, bands of robins and grosbeaks come to feast,
forming altogether delightful little byworlds for the naturalist.
Pushing our way upward toward the axis of the range, we find lakes in
greater and greater abundance, and more youthful in aspect. At an
elevation of about 9000 feet above sea-level they seem to have arrived
at middle age,--that is, their basins seem to be about half filled with
alluvium. Broad sheets of meadow-land are seen extending into them,
imperfect and boggy in many places and more nearly level than those of
the older lakes below them, and the vegetation of their shores is of
course more alpine. Kalmia, lodum, and cassiope fringe the meadow rocks,
while the luxuriant, waving groves, so characteristic of the lower
lakes, are represented only by clumps of the Dwarf Pine and Hemlock
Spruce. These, however, are oftentimes very picturesquely grouped on
rocky headlands around the outer rim of the meadows, or with still more
striking effect crown some rocky islet.
Moreover, from causes that we cannot stop here to explain, the cliffs
about these middle-aged lakes are seldom of the massive Yosemite type,
but are more broken, and less sheer, and they usually stand back,
leaving the shores comparatively free; while the few precipitous rocks
that do come forward and plunge directly into deep water are seldom more
than three or four hundred feet high.
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