Long years of labor by artists the most unconscious of their skill had been given to modelling these columnar firs. Unlike the pillars of human architecture, chipped and chiselled in bustling, dusty quarries, and hoisted to their site by sweat of brow and creak of pulley, these rose to fairest proportions by the life that was in them and blossomed into foliated capitals three hundred feet overhead. The forest is gloomy with luxuriant greenness. Many trees are shrouded with a pendent lichen, _Usnea_. This hangs in long, threadlike tufts, while beneath it, mingling with the flowers among the towering trees, are forests of far-spreading ferns. Around the foot of the mountain are the Indian-pipe and the pyrola, of the wintergreen family; and there is still another delightful member of this family, whose generic name means "delight." The dogwood (_Cornus canadensis_), the forest anemone, the dainty calypso are also here. All these and numbers of other brilliantly colored species brighten and in places illuminate the somber forest floor like touches and dashes of sunlight. On the lower slopes Douglas spruce and Western hemlock predominate, with red cedar along the streams. Above the altitude of three thousand feet, noble and silver firs are found singly and in solid groves. Ascending, we find a scattered growth of lodge-pole, growths of Engelmann spruce, and a few white-bark pines. The timber-line may be given as about sixty-five hundred feet, or at the same altitude as in the Alps. The extreme height of the tree growth is about one thousand feet greater. Most of the timber-line growth is crushed, flattened, and oppressed. The timber-line grouping is most poetical and picturesque. In places the trees are both dwarfed and distorted with wind and snow. The trees are mountain hemlock, alpine fir, Engelmann spruce, and white-bark pine. These stand singly, in groups, and in ragged groves. Commonly they stand in green meadows or brilliant wild-flower gardens. Here and there they are separated with the green tracks of permanent snowslides. The Mount Rainier National Park has its full share of bird and animal life. Here are numerous warblers and woodpeckers; chickadees, black-hooded jays, dainty hummingbirds, ptarmigans, thrushes, and trustful water-ouzels. Among the animals is that audacious climber, the mountain goat. There also are deer, elk, bears, and other alert wild folk. 2. GLACIERS OF MOUNT RAINIER Mount Rainier has the largest and the longest glacier in the United States. This is the Emmons. It is about six miles long and has an area of about eight square miles. It is on the eastern slope of the peak. The ice-area on Rainier covers one seventh of the Park, or about fifty square miles.