STEEP TRAILS 



ished, for just beyond the bushes the canon 

 wall steepened and I might have fallen to the 

 bottom. &quot;There,&quot; said I, addressing my feet, 

 to whose separate skill I had learned to trust 

 night and day on any mountain, &quot;that is what 

 you get by intercourse with stupid town stairs, 

 and dead pavements.&quot; I felt degraded and 

 worthless. I had not yet reached the most dif 

 ficult portion of the canon, but I determined to 

 guide my humbled body over the most nerve- 

 trying places I could find; for I was now awake, 

 and felt confident that the last of the town fog 

 had been shaken from both head and feet. 



I camped at the mouth of a narrow gorge 

 which is cut into the bottom of the main canon, 

 determined to take earnest exercise next day. 

 No plushy boughs did my ill-behaved bones 

 enjoy that night, nor did my bumped head get 

 a spicy cedar plume pillow mixed with flowers. 

 I slept on a naked boulder, and when I awoke 

 all my nervous trembling was gone. 



The gorged portion of the canon, in which I 

 spent all the next day, is about a mile and a 

 half in length; and I passed the time in tracing 

 the action of the forces that determined this 

 peculiar bottom gorge, which is an abrupt, 

 ragged-walled, narrow-throated canon, formed 

 in the bottom of the wide-mouthed, smooth, 

 and beveled main canon. I will not stop now 



22 



