These ranges in several places thin out, as it were, leaving a large
tract of level country completely embosomed in snowy ridges in the very
heart of the system. These plains are known as "parks." They are found
throughout the range. Several of them are of vast extent,--the four
principal ones forming the series called, in their order, "North,"
"Middle", "South," and "Saint Louis" Parks. Portions of them,
thoroughly irrigated, remain beautifully green throughout the year, and
herbage over the whole region is abundant. Sheltered from the blasts to
which the lower plains are exposed, these parks enjoy an equable
climate; and old hunters, who have camped in them for many seasons,
describe life there as an earthly paradise. They abound in animals of
all sorts. Elk, deer, and antelope feed on their rich grasses. Hither
also the puma follows its prey, and there are several other creatures of
the feline tribe. Bears, wolves, and foxes likewise range across them.
In some of them herds of buffalo pass their lives; for, unlike their
brethren of the plain, they are not migratory. It is doubtful whether
or not they are of the same species, but they are said to be larger and
fiercer.
The appropriate designation of the Rocky Mountain-system is that of a
chain. On crossing one of its basins or plateaux, the traveller finds
himself within a link such as has just been described. A break in one
of these links is called a "pass," or "canon." As he passes through
this break he enters another link, belonging to another parallel either
of a higher or lower series. In some of the minor plateaux between the
snowy ridges no vegetation appears. Granite and sandstone rocks outcrop
even in the general sandy level, rising bare and perpendicularly from 50
to 300 feet; as a late traveller describes it, "looking like a mere
clean skeleton of the world." Nothing is visible but pure rock on every
side. Vast stones lie heaped up into pyramids, as if they had been rent
from the sky. Cubical masses, each covering an acre of surface, and
reaching to a perpendicular height of thirty or forty feet, suggest the
buttresses of some gigantic palace, whose superstructure has crumbled
away with the race of its Titanic builders. It is these regions
especially which have given the mighty range the appropriate name of the
_Rocky Mountains_.