"Park" is the name given to most of these openings, be they large or small. There are many of these scattered through the Rocky Mountains. North, South, and Middle Parks of Colorado are among the largest. These larger ones are simply meadows on a magnificent scale. Each is an extensive prairie of irregular outline surrounded by high forest-draped mountains with snowy peaks,--an inter-mountain plain broken by grassy hills and forested ridges. Here a mountain peninsula thrusts out into the lowland, and there a grassy bay extends a few miles back into the forested mountains. Samuel Bowles, in the "Springfield Republican," gave the following description of Middle Park while it was still primeval: "Above us the mountain peaks go up sharp with snow and rock, and shut in our view; but below and beyond through wide and thick forests lies Middle Park, a varied picture of plain and hill, with snowy peaks beyond and around.... It offers as much of varied and sublime beauty in mountain scenery as any so comparatively easy a trip within our experience possibly can.... A short ride brought us into miles of clear prairie, with grass one to two feet high, and hearty streams struggling to be first into the Pacific Ocean. This was the Middle Park, and we had a long twenty-five miles ride northerly through it that day. It was not monotonous by any means. Frequent ranges of hills break the prairie; the latter changes from rich bottom lands with heavy grass, to light, cold gravelly uplands, thin with bunch grass and sage brush; sluggish streams and quick streams alternate; belts of hardy pines and tender-looking aspens (cottonwood) lie along the crests or sides of the hills; farther away are higher hills fully wooded, and still beyond the range that bounds the Park and circles it with eternal snows." [Illustration: A MOUNTAIN PARK IN THE SAN JUAN MOUNTAINS] During one of his early exploring expeditions, John C. Frémont visited North Park and wrote of it as follows: "The valley narrowed as we ascended and presently degenerated into a gorge, through which the river passed as through a gate--a beautiful circular valley of thirty miles in diameter, walled in all around with snowy mountains, rich with water and with grass, fringed with pine on the mountain sides below the snow line and a paradise to all grazing animals. We continued our way among the waters of the park over the foothills of the bordering mountains." Hayden Valley in the Yellowstone National Park is another large grassy opening in a mountain forest. This valley apparently was once a vast arm of Yellowstone Lake.