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illustrated by the belt of Triassic sandstones of the Garden of the Gods.

We luxuriated here in plants which were altogether new to me. By the side of the road up were great clumps of the common Silene acaulis, embedded in which were little tufts of the exquisite blue Omphalodes nana, var. aretioides, closely allied to a rare alpine species. In damp, shady spots was a curious alpine form of columbine (Aquilegia brevistyla), while minute saxifrages, potentillas, trifoliums, and many dwarf composites starred the grassy slopes with beauty. In the afternoon we crossed over a low pass and descended through a precipitous forest into Grizzly Gulch, and then up to Mr. West's house and laboratory, where he did a good deal of work as an assayer of minerals for the numerous prospectors in the district. In the boggy parts of the wood we found great masses of the fine purple Primula Parryi.

We spent Sunday with Mr. West and his son, who were working a mine here in partnership with several other men, and these invited us to dine with them. After a morning among the flowers on the way up, we reached the mine tunnelled into the face of the mountain. After going in a few feet the whole surface of the tunnel becomes a mass of ice-crystals as white as snow, showing that the mean temperature of the earth at a few feet deep is below the freezingpoint. This continues for a distance of about five hundred feet, when the increase of temperature with depth becomes just sufficient to prevent freezing, and with every twenty or thirty yards further an increase of warmth is felt. We dined with about a dozen men in a large, rough cabin with sleepingbunks all round. Our table and benches were of rough planks, but they were covered with a clean table-cloth, and our hosts gave us a most excellent dinner of soup, stew, fruit, and cheese, with very good coffee. In these camps they always get a good cook.

In the afternoon we walked up the main gulch into a high, upland valley, with Gray's Peak on our left. Here I found Bryanthus empetriformis, a pretty dwarf, heath-like plant new to the flora of Colorado. The grassy slopes here were

wonderfully flowery, with the beautiful Aquilegia cærulea and the scarlet Castillejas, and higher up was a little moraine lake where Primula Parryi and Arnica cordifolia were abundant. Some account of the relations of the American and European alpine plants is given in my chapter on "Flowers and Forests of the Far West," in my "Studies" (vol. i. p. 217).

The next morning, after gathering a few more choice plants to send home to England, we bade farewell to our kind friends the miners, walked down to Graymount and took the train to Denver, noticing many fine plants on the way, as well as the grand precipices of Clear Creek cañon, where the strata are seen to have been "twisted and tortured into indescribable forms," as I noted in my journal. In the evening I had a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Eastwood, and the next day, at 8.30 a.m., left Denver for Chicago. For some time I had the sleeping-car, eighty feet long, all to myself, there being three alternative lines to Chicago, all starting at the same time. I was now going by the northernmost, so as to see the prairie country along a new line, about two hundred miles north of that by which I had come.

For some time after starting I had a fine view of the range of the Rockies, Long's Peak, to the north-west, being the most conspicuous object. At Julesberg, two hundred miles from Denver, we stopped to allow the train for California to pass us, and I took a short walk out on the prairie. All around was a boundless expanse of slightly undulating country, covered irregularly with short wiry grass, with a few patches of weeds here and there, a purple and a yellow cleome, and a dwarf entire-leaved golden rod. There was also a yellow-flowered prickly solanum and a small whiteflowered asclepiad, with linear crowded leaves, like a mare's tail. The soil was mainly gravel, composed of small crystalline pebbles, not much rounded. The smallest of these, about the size of very small peas, were gathered into many anthills about a foot high. Coming near the North Platte river, the fine blue Iris missouriensis was seen in the marshes. There was good grass here, and plenty of cattle grazing. The river was about a mile wide, but shallow and full of mud-banks.

The next morning (Wednesday, July 27) we were near Omaha, in a flat but fertile and cultivated country of undulating prairie, with meadows, and even hedges! the haystacks, horses, and cattle near the farmhouses having a more homely aspect than the usual half-desert waste of prairie. After crossing the Missouri, and leaving Council Bluffs, the country became more undulating, with fields of maize and rather more flowers. Among these were yellow œnotheras showy rudbeckias, orange marigolds, and the white euphorbia. Further on, the country was almost all cultivated, wheat being all cut, maize growing vigorously, grass all closely cropped off, and no flowers. Every engine that has passed us has poured out a column of smoke of intense blackness, the result of bad coal, careless stoking, and total disregard of the comfort of passengers. We passed the Mississippi about midnight, and in the morning found ourselves near Chicago. For miles before reaching it there are grass-grown streets laid out in the bare open country, with a house here and there-indications of a land "boom," such as are continually got up by speculators.

Having six hours to wait for my train to Michigan, I took a bus and some walks after breakfast to see the town. The chief impression was of endless vistas of long parallel streets ending in the lake-shore, the whole enveloped in a smoky mist worthy of London itself. Like all new American cities, there were great incongruities in the buildings, small twostorey wood houses next door to handsome shops or palatial warehouses seven or eight stories high. This extreme irregularity is the more an eyesore from the contrast of wood and granite, or other fine building stone; but, of course, this will gradually disappear. The great lake, which might have given the city a grandeur and dignity of its own, has been spoilt by the railroad companies, for though there is a belt of park and promenade, the shore-front itself is given up to eight parallel lines of railways with ugly iron railings, and a notice that the public will cross this at its own risk. There is here a great area of black dust or mud, screeching engines pouring out dense volumes of the blackest smoke, and at this time of

year the grass is dried up, and the trees all blacker than in London. The Dearborn Railway Station is a fine building, but the restaurant attached to it is very poor-ragged tablecloths or bare tables, and a general air of shabbiness pervades it. I did not regret having no business to keep me in Chicago.

Leaving at noon, I passed through a nearly level country of prairie and wood, with luxuriant meadows near the streams or burnt-up pastures, and reached Trowbridge Station at 5.30, where I was met by Mr. Cook, with whom I was to stay. We had supper, of tea, fruit, etc., and I afterwards tried their stereopticon lantern, which was very poor. The next evening (Friday) I gave my lecture on "Darwinism," and offered to give that on "Colours of Animals" on Monday evening as a return for their hospitality. The next morning Professor Beal took me to a fine bit of original swamp forest, with features which were quite new to me. Throughout my wanderings, in the Sierra and the Rockies I had never met with any sphagnum moss, which I should often have been glad of to pack my plants in. In this bit of forest, however, there were acres of such sphagnum as I had never seen before, forming a continuous carpet more than a foot thick, and in this congenial rooting medium there were numbers of very interesting plants. American pitcher-plants (sarracenia) were abundant, but what pleased me more were quantities of the elegant orchis (Habenaria ciliaris), with curious fringed flowers, making quite a sheet of yellow in places, its tubers not in the soil, but embedded in the sphagnum a few inches below the surface. There was also a curious little plant called gold-thread, allied to the hellebore, and a number of ferns. Among the shrubs were tall vacciniums, and the beautiful red-berried Nemopanthes canadensis, allied to the holly, but deciduous.

On Sunday I saw the botanical garden attached to the college, the library, and the insect collections, which latter were very fine as compared with our English species. Of moths of the genus Catocala, instead of our four species there were about twenty, many of them much larger and more gorgeously coloured, while the Saturnias and other groups

were in equal proportion. After giving my lecture on "Colour" in the evening, I had to hurry off to catch the train, in which I slept, and reached Kingston the next day early in the afternoon. Here I had been invited to spend a few days in a delightful old country house on the shores of Lake Ontario, in the refined and very congenial society of Mr. and Mrs. Allen, and their two daughters. I much enjoyed this visit, and my genuine admiration of the writings of their only son, Grant Allen, was a bond of sympathy. The house is a roomy old-world mansion, situated in a small park with grand old trees, and fruit, flower, and kitchen garden sloping down to the water. Mr. Allen himself worked at his flowers, and had a magnificent collection of gladioli now in full bloom. But what interested me even more was to see rows of vines in the open ground laden with as fine fruit as we grow in a vinery, though the winters are far longer and more severe than ours. But the higher temperature due to the more southern latitude, combined with a clearer atmosphere and greater amount of sunshine, are far more favourable to all fruit and flowers which are uninjured by low winter temperatures.

One afternoon I went to visit a relative of the Allens at Gananoque, where they have a small cottage on the rocky bank of the St. Lawrence, looking on to the celebrated Thousand Islands. There is an acre of wild ground, with a little woody ravine bounded by granite rocks, where interesting wild plants are found. The next morning I was taken among the nearer islands in a small yacht, landing on some to collect ferns. They are all ice-ground, often mere bosses rising a few feet above the water, some of the larger ones having pretty villas and gardens on them. A description of this place has been made the subject of one of Grant Allen's bright magazine articles.

One evening Mr. Allen took me to tea at Sir Richard Cartright's, one of the Canadian ministers, at his fine country house in a spacious park, a few miles in the country. One of the sons took me to a wood where trilliums were in flower; afterwards we had tea in a spacious hall. There were several

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