slivers along its way.
Ah! it strikes the water! In an instant there is an inverted
Niagara in the air, resplendent with prismatic and transparent
veils of spray[1].

[Footnote 1: John Vance Cheney in _Lippincott's_.]

The main portion of the canyon is walled in by abrupt acclivities,
upon which majestic trees used to grow, but where now only the growth
of the past twenty-five to fifty years is found, doing its best to
hide the scars and wounds of the logging days.

The river, issuing from the Lake above, dashes down its wild way in
resistless freedom. It is a rapid, all but savage stream, widening
occasionally into sheltered pools exceedingly dark and deep. The
bowlders in its channel, and those crowding down into it from its
farther bank, cause it to eddy and foam with fierce but becoming
pride.

A few miles from the Tavern we pass the scene of the Squaw Valley
mining excitement where the two towns of Knoxville and Claraville
arose as if by magic, tent cities of thousands of inhabitants, lured
hither by a dream of gold, too soon to fade away, leaving nothing but
distress behind.

Deer Park station suggests the leaving point for that charmingly
picturesque resort, snuggling in the heart of Bear Canyon. Now we
pass the masses of tuffaceous breccia that "Pap" Church, the old
stage-driver used to call the Devil's Pulpit, and the devil's this and
that or the other, until many a traveler would wish they were all with
the devil.

This is a remnant of the vast mass of volcanic rock that in long ago
prehistoric times was poured out in molten sheets over the region,
and that formed the range we shall shortly see at the north end of the
Lake--the Mount Pluto range. At some later period either earthquake
convulsion started the break which ultimately eroded and disintegrated
into the great gorge through which the railway has brought us, or
grinding glacier cut the pathway for us.

Here, on the right, is a tiny swinging foot-bridge over the river.
This is the beginning, the suggestion, for the vast suspension bridges
that have allowed the world to cross the great North River from New
York to Brooklyn, and that span great rivers and gorges elsewhere in
the world. Nay! scarcely the beginning. That you find further up and
deeper down in the High Sierras and their shaded and wooded canyons,
where wild vines throw their clinging tendrils across from one shore
to another of foaming creeks, and gradually grow in gir