Sum Dum Bay 



Returning to the canoe, we pushed off, and in a few 

 moments were racing over the bar with lightning 

 speed through hurrahing waves and eddies and sheets 

 of foam, our little shell of a boat tossing lightly as a 

 bubble. Then, rowing across a belt of back-flowing 

 water, we found ourselves on a smooth mirror reach 

 between granite walls of the very wildest and most 

 exciting description, surpassing in some ways those of 

 the far-famed Yosemite Valley. 



As we drifted silent and awe-stricken beneath the 

 shadows of the mighty cliffs, which, in their tre- 

 mendous height and abruptness, seemed to overhang 

 at the top, the Indians gazing intently, as if they, 

 too, were impressed with the strange, awe-inspiring 

 grandeur that shut them in, one of them at length 

 broke the silence by saying, "This must be a good 

 place for woodchucks; I hear them calling." 



When I asked them, further on, how they thought 

 this gorge was made, they gave up the question, but 

 offered an opinion as to the formation of rain and 

 soil. The rain, they said, was produced by the rapid 

 whirling of the earth by a stout mythical being called 

 Yek. The water of the ocean was thus thrown up, to 

 descend again in showers, just as it is thrown off a 

 wet grindstone. They did not, however, understand 

 why the ocean water should be salt, while the rain 

 from it is fresh. The soil, they said, for the plants 

 to grow on is formed by the washing of the rain on 

 the rocks and gradually accumulating. The grind- 

 ing action of ice in this connection they had not 

 recognized. 



[ 221 ] 



