Desolation of desolations! Desolation of desolations! How terrible is this place! The shining mountain that flashed back to the sun his radiance is become a bald and frowning desert that appalls us with its barrenness. The sweet and sylvan approach gave no sign of such a goal, but the war between life and death was even then begun. The slant sunlight glinted through the jungle and bathed us with its glory of golden-green. The shining boles of the silvery gray birch shot up straight, and the white birch unrolled its patches of dead pallor in the sombre, untrodden depths. The spruces quivered like pure jellies tipped with light, sunshine prisoned in every green crystal. Myrtle-vines ran along the ground, the bunch-berry hung out its white banner, and you scarcely saw the trees that lay faint and fallen in the arms of their mates. The damp, soft earth nourished its numerous brood, Terrae omni parentis alumnos, its own thirsty soul continually refreshed from springs whose sparkle we could not see, though the gurgle and ripple of their march sung out from so many hiding-places that we seemed to be "Seated in hearing of a hundred streams." Whole settlements of the slender, stately brakes filled the openings, and the mountain-ash drooped in graceful curves over our heads, but gradually the fine tall trees dwindled into dwarfs, chilled to the heart by the silent, pitiless cold. Others battled bravely with the bowling winds, which have stripped them bare on one side, while they seem to toss out their arms wildly on the other, imploring protection and aid from the valley-dwellers below. Up and up, and you come suddenly upon the "Silver Forest," a grove of dead white trees, naked of leaf and fruit and bud, bare of color, dry of sap and juice and life, retaining only their form,--cold set outline of their hale and hearty vigor; a skeleton plantation, bleaching in the frosty sun, yet mindful of its past existence, sturdy, and defiant of the woodman's axe; a frostwork mimicry of nature, a phantom forest. On and on, turning to overlook the path you have trodden, at every retrospect the struggle between life and death becomes more and more palpable. The Destroyer has hurled his winds, his frosts, his fires; and gray wastes, broken wastes, black wastes, attest with what signal power. But life follows closely, planting his seeds in the very footprints of death. Where blankness and bleakness seem to reign, a tiny life springs in mosses, rich with promise of better things. Long forked tongues of green are lapping up the dreary wastes, and will presently overpower them with its vivid tints. Even amid the blanched petrifaction of the Silver Grove fresh growths are creeping, and the day is not far distant that shall see those pale statues overtopped, submerged, lost in an emerald sea. Even among the rocks, the strife rages. Some mysterious principle inheres in the insensate rock, whose loss makes this crumbling, discolored, inert debris.