THE APPROACH 



beaten path, and animals are just as fond of 

 a good path as humanity. By a strange coin- 

 cidence at this very moment the sharp-toed 

 print of a deer's hoof appears in the ground 

 before me. But it looks a little odd. The im- 

 pression is so clear cut that I stoop to examine 

 it. It is with no little astonishment that I find 

 it sunk in stone instead of earth petrified in 

 rock and overrun with silica. The bare sug- 

 gestion gives one pause. How many thousands 

 of years ago was that impression stamped upon 

 the stone ? By what strange chance has it 

 survived destruction ? And while it remains 

 quite perfect to-day the vagrant hoof -mark of 

 a desert deer what has become of the once 

 carefully guarded footprints of the Sargons, 

 the Pharaohs and the Caesars ? With what 

 contempt Nature sometimes plans the survival 

 of the least fit, and breaks the conqueror on his 

 shield ! 



Further up the mountain the deer-trail theory 

 is abandoned at least so far as recent times are 

 concerned. The stones are worn too smooth, 

 the larger ones have been pushed aside by 

 something more intelligent than a mule-deer's 

 hoof ; and in one place the trail seems to have 

 been built up on the descending side. There is 



The stone 

 path. 



