United States or Namibia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I have enjoyed thousands of camp-fires in all sorts of weather and places, warm-hearted, short-flamed, friendly little beauties glowing in the dark on open spots in high Sierra gardens, daisies and lilies circled about them, gazing like enchanted children; and large fires in silver fir forests, with spires of flame towering like the trees about them, and sending up multitudes of starry sparks to enrich the sky; and still greater fires on the mountains in winter, changing camp climate to summer, and making the frosty snow look like beds of white flowers, and oftentimes mingling their swarms of swift-flying sparks with falling snow-crystals when the clouds were in bloom.
Why in the thousand and more observed forms of snow-crystals the filaments of ice should always be arranged at angles of 60 degrees or 120 degrees; why sulphate of potash and sulphate of alumina should crystallise in octahedrons or in cubes, but in no other forms; what is the real connection between molecular changes in the brain-substance and states of consciousness all these, and a myriad more, are unsolved mysteries: we can only say that we are dealing with facts of experience.
"Your frankness is certainly as transparent as those snow-crystals there. I cannot say that it does. Why should it, even granting that it exists independently of your disordered imagination?" "It exposes you to a temptation very hard to resist. Such beauty as yours should be but the reflex of character.
It is hard without long and loving study to realize the magnitude of the work done on these mountains during the last glacial period by glaciers, which are only streams of closely compacted snow-crystals.
For there was one who could make or mar all fortunes, the absolute owner of street and houses and passers-by, one who owned the patent and dispensed the right to tread that soil, to breathe that air, to be glorified in that sunlight and amid those snow-crystals. And he looked it all.
The sea-garden exhibits were all completed and were among the museum's most popular cases, and the curator was engaged in preparing some exquisite models of the Radiolaria, those magical creatures of the sea, which are so small that they can be seen only with a powerful microscope, but which look like living snow-crystals, although a thousand times more beautiful.
In this way the snow is pressed together till the air that was hidden in its crystals, and which gave it its beautiful whiteness, is all pressed out, and the snow-crystals themselves are squeezed into one solid mass of pure, transparent ice. Then we have what is called a "glacier," or river of ice, and this solid river comes creeping down till, in Greenland, it reaches the edge of the sea.
Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake, does not suggest higher associations to one who had seen through a microscope the wondrously-varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals?
No trace of the west shore was visible, and in case the clouds should settle and give snow, or the wind again become violent, I feared getting caught in a tangle of crevasses. Snow-crystals, the flowers of the mountain clouds, are frail, beautiful things, but terrible when flying on storm-winds in darkening, benumbing swarms or when welded together into glaciers full of deadly crevasses.
After they had shown her the Winter-room and had seen her amazement at the glory of the snow-crystals and the mysterious way in which the rainbow colors were hidden in the ice, the Piper nodded his head, and they all turned back and began to retrace their steps. "I suppose thou didst wonder where we had been when thou didst join us, little friend," said the Piper. "I will tell thee.
Word Of The Day