and cool always, for their waters are filtered through deep beds of mosses, and flow beneath shadows all the way to the sea.  Only the streams from the glaciers are turbid and muddy.  On the slopes of the mountains where they rush from their crystal caves, they carry not only small particles of rock-mud, worn off the sides and bottoms of the channels of the glaciers, but grains of sand and pebbles and large boulders tons in weight, rolling them forward on their way rumbling and bumping to their appointed places at the foot of steep slopes, to be built into rough bars and beds, while the smaller material is carried farther and outspread in flats, perhaps for coming wheat fields and gardens, the finest of it going out to sea, floating on the tides for weeks and months ere it finds rest on the bottom.

Snow seldom falls to any great depth on the lowlands, though it comes in glorious abundance on the mountains.  And only on the mountains does the temperature fall much below the freezing point.  In the warmest summer weather a temperature of eighty-five degrees or even more occasionally is reached, but not for long at a time, as such heat is speedily followed by a breeze from the sea.  The most charming days here are days of perfect calm, when all the winds are holding their breath and not a leaf stirs.  The surface of the Sound shines like a silver mirror over all its vast extent, reflecting its lovely islands and shores; and long sheets of spangles flash and dance in the wake of every swimming seabird and boat.  The sun, looking down on the tranquil landscape, seems conscious of the presence of every living thing on which he is pouring his blessings, while they in turn, with perhaps the exception of man, seem conscious of the sun as a benevolent father and stand hushed and waiting.

XVIII

The Forests of Washington

When we force our way into the depths of the forests, following any of the rivers back to their fountains, we find that the bulk of the woods is made up of the Douglas spruce (Pseudotsuga Douglasii), named in honor of David Douglas, an enthusiastic botanical explorer of early Hudson’s Bay times.  It is not only a very large tree but a very beautiful one, with lively bright-green drooping foliage, handsome pendent cones, and a shaft exquisitely straight and regular.  For so large a tree it is astonishing how many find nourishment and space to grow on any given area.  The magnificent shafts push their spires into the sky close together with as regular a growth as that of a well-tilled field of grain.  And no ground has been better tilled for the growth of trees than that on which these forests are growing.  For it has been thoroughly ploughed and rolled by the mighty glaciers from the mountains, and sifted and mellowed and outspread in beds hundreds of feet in depth by the broad streams that issued from their fronts at the time of their recession, after they had long covered all the land.