fern-and

Updated: May 20, 2025

The trees open their leafy lids to look at the brooks and streamlets break forth into songs of gladness "the birch-tree," as the old Saxon said, "becomes beautiful in its branches, and rustles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro by the breath of heaven " the lakes uncover their sweet faces, and their mimic shores steal down in quiet evenings to bathe themselves in the transparent waters far into the depths of the great forest speeds the glad message of returning glory, and graceful fern-and soft velvet moss, and-white wax-like lily peep forth to cover rock and fallen tree and wreck of last year's autumn in one great sea of foliage.

Sir William Francis Butler - The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America