Scott; we listen and comment. Baby is abed long ago--little Baby, four
years old, born here also; knowing nothing of the beautiful world save
what is gathered in this gallery of beauties. Such a queer little child,
left to herself, no doubt thinking she is the only little one in
existence, contented to teeter for hours on a plank by the woodpile,
making long explorations by herself and returning, when we are all well
frightened, with a pocketful of lizards and a wasp in her fingers;
always talking of horned toads and heifers; not afraid of snakes, not
even the rattlers; mocking the birds when she is happy, and growling
bear-fashion to express her disapproval of any thing.

When the snows come, there will be avalanches by day and night, rushing
into all parts of the valley. The Hermit hears a rumbling in the clouds,
as he hoes his potatoes. He looks; a granite pilaster, hewn out by the
hurricanes centuries ago, at last grown weary of clinging to that
precipitous bluff, lets go its hold, and is dashed from crag to crag in
a prolonged and horrible suicide. A pioneer once laid him out a garden,
and marked the plan of his cellar; he was to begin digging the next day:
that night, there leaped a boulder from under the brow of this cliff
right into the heart of the plantation. It dug his cellar for him, but
he never used it. It behooved him and others to get farther out from the
mountain that found this settler too familiar, and sent a random shot as
a sufficient hint to the intruder.

In the trying times when the world was baking, what agony these
mountains must have endured. You see it in their faces, they are so
haggard and old-looking: time is swallowed up in victory, but it was a
desperate duel. There is a dome here that the ambitious foot of man has
never attempted. Tissayac allows no such liberty. Look up at that
rose-colored summit! The sun endows it with glory long after twilight
has shut us in. We are cheated of much daylight here--it comes later and
goes earlier with us; but we get hints of brighter hours, both morning
and evening, from those sparkling minarets now decked with snowy
arabesques. I have seen our canopy, the clouds, so crimsoned at this
hour that the valley seemed a grand oriental pavilion, whose silken roof
was illuminated with a million painted lamps. The golden woods of Autumn
detract nothing from the bizarre effect of the spectacle. To be sure,
these walls are rather sombre for a festival, but the s