Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/29

Rh year around. Clouds and sunshine alternate in bracing, cheering succession, and health and abundance follow the storms. The outer sea-margin is sublimely dashed and drenched with ocean brine, the spicy scud sweeping at times far inland over the bending woods, the giant trees waving and chanting in hearty accord as if surely enjoying it all.

Heavy, long-continued rains occur in the winter months. Then every leaf, bathed and brightened, rejoices. Filtering drops and currents through all the shaggy undergrowth of the woods go with tribute to the small streams and these again to the larger. The rivers swell, but there are no devastating floods; for the thick felt of roots and mosses hold the abounding waters in check, stored in a thousand fountains. Neither are there any violent hurricanes here. At least, I have never heard of any, nor have come upon their tracks. Most of the streams are clear 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 place at the foot of steep slopes, to be built into rough bars and beds, while the smaller material is carried further and outspread in flats, perhaps for coming wheat fields and gardens, the finest