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Show THE SUMMIT OF THE AQUAEIUS. 285 The ascent leads us among rugged hills, almost mountainous in size, strewn with black bowlders, along precipitous ledges, and by the sides of canons. Long detours must be made to escape the chasms and to avoid the taluses of fallen blocks ; deep ravines must be crossed, projecting crags doubled, and lofty battlements scaled before the summit is reached. When the broad platform is gained the story of "Jack and the beanstalk," the finding of a strange and beautiful country somewhere up in the region ot the clouds, no longer seems incongruous. Yesterday we were toiling over a burning soil, where nothing grows save the ashy-colored sage, the prickly pear, and a few cedars that writhe and contort their stunted limbs under a scorching sun. To-day we are among forests of rare beauty and luxuriance; the air is moist and cool, the grasses are green and rank, and hosts of flowers deck the turf like the hues of a Persian carpet. The forest opens in wide parks and winding avenues, which the fancy can easily people with fays and woodland nymphs. On either side the sylvan walls look impenetrable, and for the most part so thickly is the ground strewn with fallen trees, that any attempt to enter is as serious a matter as forcing an dbattis. The tall spruces {Abies subalpina) stand so close together, that even if the dead-wood were not there a passage would be almost impossible. Their slender trunks, as straight as lances, reach upward a hundred feet, ending in barbed points, and the contours of the foliage are as symmetrical and uniform as if every tree had been clipped for a lordly garden. They are too prim and monotonous for a high type of beauty ; but not so the Engel-mann spruces and great mountain firs (A. Engelmanni, A. grandis), which are delightfully varied, graceful in form, and rich in foliage. Rarely are these species found in such luxuriance and so variable in habit. In places where they are much exposed to the keen blasts of this altitude they do not grow into tall, majestic spires, but cower into the form of large bushes, with their branchlets thatched tightly together like a great hay-rick. Upon the broad summit are numerous lakesâ€"not the little morainal pools, but broad sheets of water a mile or two in length. Their basins were formed by glaciers, and since the ice-cap which once covered the whole plateau has disappeared they continue to fill with water from the melting |