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208
Animal Heroes
·
Ernest Thompson Seton
186
The
treeless
stretch
is
one
vast
attest
to
the
force
of
heat.
Each
failure
of
the
sun
by
one
degree
is
marked
by
a
lower
realm
of
life.
The
northern
slope
of
each
hollow
is
less
boreal
than
its
southern
side.
The
pine
and
spruce
have
given
out
long
ago;
the
mountain-ash
went
next;
the
birch
and
willow
climbed
up
half
the
slope.
Here,
nothing
grows
but
creeping
plants
and
moss.
The
plain
itself
is
pale
grayish
green,
one
vast
expanse
of
reindeer-moss,
but
warmed
at
spots
into
orange
by
great
beds
of
polytrichum,
and,
in
sunnier
nooks,
deepened
to
a
herbal
green.
The
rocks
that
are
scattered
everywhere
are
of
a
delicate
lilac,
but
each
is
variegated
with
spreading
frill-edged
plasters
of
gray-green
lichen
or
orange
powder-streaks
and
beauty-spots
of
black.
These
rocks
have
great
power
to
hold
the
heat,
so
that
each
of
them
is
surrounded
by
a
little
belt
of
heat-loving
plants
that
could
not
otherwise
live
so
high.
Dwarfed
representatives
of
the
birch
and
willow
both
are
here,
hugging
the
genial
rock,
as
an
old
French
habitant
hugs
his
stove
in
winter-time,
spreading
their
branches
over
it,
instead
of
in
the
frigid
air.
A
foot
away
is
seen
a
chillier
belt
of
heath,
and
farther
off,
colder,
where
none
else
can
grow,
is
the
omnipresent
gray-green
reindeer-moss
that
gives
its
color
to
the
upland.
The
hollows
are
still
filled
with
snow,
though
now
it
is
June.
But
each
of
these
white
expanses
is
shrinking,
spending
itself
in
ice-cold
streams
that
somehow
reach
the
lake.
These
snö-flaks
show
no
sign
of
life,
not
even
the
'red-snow'
tinge,
and
around
each
is
a
belt
of
barren
earth,
to
testify
that
life
and
warmth
can
never
be
divorced.
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