I have never yet met ducks in any of the lakes of this kind, but the
ouzel is never wanting where the feeding-streams are perennial. Wild
sheep and deer may occasionally be seen on the meadows, and very rarely
a bear. One might camp on the rugged shores of these bright fountains
for weeks, without meeting any animal larger than the marmots that
burrow beneath glacier boulders along the edges of the meadows.
The highest and youngest of all the lakes lie nestled in glacier wombs.
At first sight, they seem pictures of pure bloodless desolation,
miniature arctic seas, bound in perpetual ice and snow, and overshadowed
by harsh, gloomy, crumbling precipices. Their waters are keen
ultramarine blue in the deepest parts, lively grass-green toward the
shore shallows and around the edges of the small bergs usually floating
about in them. A few hardy sedges, frost-pinched every night, are
occasionally found making soft sods along the sun-touched portions of
their shores, and when their northern banks slope openly to the south,
and are soil-covered, no matter how coarsely, they are sure to be
brightened with flowers. One lake in particular now comes to mind which
illustrates the floweriness of the sun-touched banks of these icy gems.
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