excited by the giant was to cut one of them down and dance on its stump we have also seen dancing in the spray of dancing in the famous bower cave above and nowhere have i seen so much dancing as in a dance on the inaccessible south dome would likely follow the making of an easy way to the top of it it was delightful to witness here the infinite deliberation of nature the simplicity of her methods in the production of such mighty results such perfect repose combined with restless enthusiastic energy though cold and as a landscape of ice building was going on in the j the mountains of dark with incessant activity the and were everywhere hung with down growing like groves of some of them large others delicately each tipped with a single drop of water like the bud of a pine tree the only sounds were the dripping and of water falling into pools or faintly on the crystal floors k v in some places the crystal are arranged in graceful flowing folds deeply like stiff silken in others straight lines of the ordinary forms are combined with reference to size and tone in a regularly system like the strings of a harp with musical tones corresponding and on these stone we played by striking the crystal strings with a stick the delicious liquid tones they gave forth seemed perfectly divine as they sweetly whispered and wavered through the majestic halls and died away in faintest � the music of fairy land here we lingered and rejoicing to find so much music in stony silence so much splendor in darkness so many in the depths of the mountains buildings ever in process of construction yet ever finished developing from perfection to perfection profusion without every visible or invisible in glorious motion marching to the music of the in a region regarded as the abode of eternal stillness and death the outer chambers of mountain are frequently selected as homes by wild beasts in the in the foot hills however they seem to prefer homes and hiding places in and beneath as i have never seen their tracks in any of the this is the more remarkable because notwithstanding the darkness and water there is nothing cellar like or about them when we emerged into the bright the sun everything looked brighter and we felt our faith in nature s beauty strengthened and saw more clearly that beauty is universal and immortal above beneath on land and sea mountain and plain in heat and cold light and darkness � u chapter xvi the bee when was wild it was one sweet bee garden throughout its entire length north and south and all the way across from the snowy to the ocean wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin wilderness � through the forests along the banks of the rivers along the and the sea over valley and plain park and grove and deep leafy or far up the slopes of the mountains � throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber line bee flowers in lavish abundance here they grew more or less apart in special sheets and patches of no great size there in broad flowing folds hundreds of miles in length � of forests of of and wild rose sheets of golden beds of beds of beds of and and so on certain species blooming somewhere all the year round but of late years and sheep have made sad in these glorious pastures destroying of thousands of the acres like a fire and species of the best honey plants to the bee pastures cliffs and fence corners while on the other hand cultivation thus far has given no adequate compensation at least in kind only acres of for miles of the richest wild pasture ornamental roses and around cottage doors for of wild roses in the and small square and orange groves for broad of the great central plain of during the months of march april and may was one smooth continuous bed of honey bloom so rich that in walking from one end of it to the other a distance of more than miles your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step and innumerable were so crowded together that had ninety nine per cent of them been taken away the plain would still have seemed to any but the radiant ul touching and and rising above one another glowed in the living light like a sunset sky � one sheet of purple and gold with the bright pouring through the midst of it from the north the san from the south and their many sweeping in at right angles from the mountains dividing the plain into sections fringed with trees along the rivers there is a strip of bottom land beneath the general level and wider toward the foot hills where magnificent oaks from three to eight feet in cast grateful masses of shade over the open like and close along the water s edge there was a fine the mountains of of tropical composed of wild rose and bushes and a great variety of climbing vines and the branches and trunks of and and swinging across from summit to summit in heavy here the wild bees in fresh bloom long after the flowers of the plain had withered and gone to seed and in when the v were ripe the indians came from the mountains to feast � men women and babies in long noisy trains often joined by the farmers of the neighborhood who gathered this wild fruit with appreciation of its superior flavor while their home were full of ripe and and their were laden with grapes but though these luxuriant shaggy river beds were thus distinct from the smooth plain they made no heavy dividing lines in general views the whole appeared as one continuous sheet of bloom 