Your National Parks, with Detailed Information for TouristsMills, Enos A.
Philosophy
Your National Parks, with Detailed Information for Tourists
Mills, Enos A.
National parks and reserves -- Canada; National parks and reserves -- United States; West (U.S.) -- Guidebooks
There are scores of varieties of flowers. These brighten the woods,
stand along the streams, border the lakes, and crowd close to the
glaciers. They climb above the limits of tree growth. Grinnell Lake
has a grand wild-flower garden on its shores. Among the many kinds are
bluebell, queen's-cup, violet, water-lily, and wild hollyhock.
The summit slopes of these mountains are above the timber-line. All
the lower slopes and spaces in the Park not occupied and glorified by
lakes, streams, and cliffs are crowded with forests, green and grand.
Much of the old glaciation is covered with forest growths. Many
moraines are crowned with spruces, and numerous glacial amphitheaters
are now filled with splendid forests.
The visitor to the summit of Swift Current Pass will find himself
monarch with great scenes to survey. Below, around, and above are
lakes, streams, peaks, waterfalls, snow-fields, glaciers, cañons, and
mountains. These are splendidly grouped and combined; gradually they
fade into mysterious horizons.
St. Mary's Lake--"Good Spirit Woman Lake"--is crescent-shaped, with
miles of spruce-walled shores. It has a length of ten miles in the
Glacier Park and is a queen among queens of mountain lakes. Kingly
peaks stand waiting around the shores. Red Eagle Mountain, Fusillade
Mountain, and Going-to-the-Sun Mountain are a part of the magnificence
in which this lovely lake reposes. Mount Jackson, one of the highest
summits in the Park, is often reflected in its waters.
The mountains of this Park are broken and have towering walls. On the
east they rise abruptly from the peaceful plains. Nowhere in the
country can be found such an array of high and nearly vertical walls.
Many of these mountains and peaks are enlivened with color. Yellow,
red, and green are distributed on a magnificent scale.
The very name "Two-Ocean Pass," in the Yellowstone Park, led me
through the pathless forest for days in search of it. There was a
fairyland novelty in the lure of the name. As soon as I heard of a
glacier in the Glacier National Park whose waters were divided between
the Arctic and the Pacific Oceans, I wanted to see it. A part of the
water of a glacier on Vulture Peak goes to the Pacific through Logging
Creek and the Columbia River. The remainder goes to Hudson Bay through
the Little Kootenai Creek. Some one has wisely proposed the name
"Two-Ocean Glacier" for this ice-field.
Triple Divide Peak is another place that has a peculiarly wild,
romantic appeal. This sharp-pointed peak is 8001 feet above the sea.
Close together in its summit slopes, surrounded by a maze of alpine
mountains, three streams start almost from a common source, each to go
on its separate, scenic way to the ocean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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