This locality has been swept by fire again and again. Most of the forest is less than two hundred years of age. During the past two hundred years, beginning with 1707, there have been no less than seven forest fires, two of which appear to have swept over most of the region. There probably were other fires, the records of which have vanished. The dates of these scourges and in many cases the extent of their ravages were burned into the annual rings of a number of trees which escaped with their lives and lived on, carrying these fire-records down to us. These fires, together with the erosion which followed, had something to do with the topography and the scenery of this section. There are a few ugly scars from recent fires, but most of the burned areas were reforested with reasonable promptness. Some crags, however, may have lost for centuries their trees and vegetation. Other areas, though losing trees, gained in meadows. I am strongly inclined to ascribe much of the openness--the existence even--of Estes, Allen's, and Middle Parks to repeated fires, some of which probably were severe. Thus we may look down from the heights and enjoy the mingling beauty and grandeur of forest and meadow and still realize that fire, with all its destructiveness, may help to make the gardens of the earth. A dozen species of trees form the forests of this section. These forests, delightfully inviting, cover the mountains below the altitude of eleven thousand feet. This rich robe, draping from the shoulders to the feet of the mountains, appears a dark purple from a distance. A great robe it hangs over every steep and slope, smooth, wrinkled, and torn; pierced with pinnacles and spires, gathered on terraces and headlands, uplifted on the swells, and torn by cañons. Here and there this forest is beautified with a ragged-edged grass-plot, a lake, or a stream that flows, ever singing, on. The trees which brave the heights and maintain the forest frontier among the storms, are the Engelmann spruce, sub-alpine fir, arctic willow, black birch, quaking aspen, and limber pine. For the most part, timber-line is a trifle above eleven thousand feet, but in a few places the trees climb up almost to twelve thousand. Most of the trees at timber-line are distorted and stunted by the hard conditions. Snow covers and crushes them; cold chains their activity through the greater part of the year; the high winds drain their sap, persecute them with relentless sand-blasts, and break their limbs and roots.