The actinic quality of the light in this Boreal Zone made the few plants that the trailers came upon present rare, pure colours delectable to the eye. Most of these plants were cushion plants, spread out over the barren rocks where a little soil had gathered, and from the centre of the cushion the flower stalks arose. The doctor named the golden draba, the Alpine flox, and others; but the yellow columbine--not a cushion plant--was most remarkable of all. On the highest peaks flourished the Alpine buttercup, the Sierra primrose, and small Alpine willow trees, not above an inch in height. And at the very outskirts of snow banks they discovered the steer’s head, a queer relic of pre-glacial times, whose flowers, modestly lopped over, resembled the heads of a sleepy bunch of cattle. Often this flower grew with snow all about it and seemed to thrive. They were in a land of nothingness--cold and bleak and comfortless. On all sides wastes of loose stones and snow patches swept away from them. About them were the lofty peaks, so diamond clear in their dazzling whiteness that it pained the eye to look at them. They were crossing the knees of Dewlap mountain, making toward the south. They camped on windswept reaches, their mattresses the cold, hard rocks. Melted snow formed their water supply, and fuel that they had picked up in the warmer zone below them was nursed with miserly discretion. After a day and a night in this forbidding land Shirttail Henry loosed the burros, for nothing grew for them to eat except the inch-high dwarf willows, and these were few. Burros will continue content for days and days without food or water, but Charmian demanded their release after twenty-four hours of deprivation. With indignant snorts, they kicked up their heels, and the bell burro set a bee-line course over the backward trail. When they reached the Hudsonian Zone, Henry said, they would browse their way gradually down through the Canadian, and into the Transition, where they would find an abundance of chaparral; and later they would reach the horses at the lake and remain close to them until snow drove the entire band to the lower contours, from whence they might wander even to the home ranch on the desert.