The most influential of the grasses composing the sod is a delicate
calamagrostis with fine filiform leaves, and loose, airy panicles that
seem to float above the flowery lawn like a purple mist. But, write as I
may, I cannot give anything like an adequate idea of the exquisite
beauty of these mountain carpets as they lie smoothly outspread in the
savage wilderness. What words are fine enough to picture them I to what
shall we liken them? The flowery levels of the prairies of the old West,
the luxuriant savannahs of the South, and the finest of cultivated
meadows are coarse in comparison. One may at first sight compare them
with the carefully tended lawns of pleasure-grounds; for they are as
free from weeds as they, and as smooth, but here the likeness ends; for
these wild lawns, with all their exquisite fineness, have no trace of
that painful, licked, snipped, repressed appearance that pleasure-ground
lawns are apt to have even when viewed at a distance. And, not to
mention the flowers with which they are brightened, their grasses are
very much finer both in color and texture, and instead of lying flat and
motionless, matted together like a dead green cloth, they respond to the
touches of every breeze, rejoicing in pure wildness, blooming and
fruiting in the vital light.
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