mooth the ground in a
sheltered nook for a bed. When the short twilight faded, I kindled a
sunny fire, made a cup of tea, and lay down to rest and look at the
stars. Soon the night-wind began to flow and pour in torrents among the
jagged peaks, mingling strange tones with those of the waterfalls
sounding far below; and as I drifted toward sleep I began to experience
an uncomfortable feeling of nearness to the furred Monos. Then the full
moon looked down over the edge of the canon wall, her countenance
seemingly filled with intense concern, and apparently so near as to
produce a startling effect as if she had entered my bedroom, forgetting
all the world, to gaze on me alone.

The night was full of strange sounds, and I gladly welcomed the morning.
Breakfast was soon done, and I set forth in the exhilarating freshness
of the new day, rejoicing in the abundance of pure wildness so close
about me. The stupendous rocks, hacked and scarred with centuries of
storms, stood sharply out in the thin early light, while down in the
bottom of the canon grooved and polished bosses heaved and glistened
like swelling sea-waves, telling a grand old story of the ancient
glacier that poured its crushing floods above them.

Here for the first time I met the arctic daisies in all their perfection
of purity and spirituality,--gentle mountaineers face to face with the
stormy sky, kept safe and warm by a thousand miracles. I leaped lightly
from rock to rock, glorying in the eternal freshness and sufficiency of
Nature, and in the ineffable tenderness with which she nurtures her
mountain darlings in the very fountains of storms. Fresh beauty appeared
at every step, delicate rock-ferns, and groups of the fairest flowers.
Now another lake came to view, now a waterfall. Never fell light in
brighter spangles, never fell water in whiter foam. I seemed to float
through the canon enchanted, feeling nothing of its roughness, and was
out in the Mono levels before I was aware.

Looking back from the shore of Moraine Lake, my morning ramble seemed
all a dream. There curved Bloody Canon, a mere glacial furrow 2000 feet
deep, with smooth rocks projecting from the sides and braided together
in the middle, like bulging, swelling muscles. Here the lilies were
higher than my head, and the sunshine was warm enough for palms. Yet the
snow around the arctic willows was plainly visible only four miles away,
and between were narrow specimen zones of all the principa