A GEOLOGIST S WINTER WALK 



to tell you more; some day you may see it, 

 like a shadowy line, from Cloud s Rest. In 

 high water, the stream occupies all the bottom 

 of the gorge, surging and chafing in glorious 

 power from wall to wall. But the sound of the 

 grinding was low as I entered the gorge, scarcely 

 hoping to be able to pass through its entire 

 length. By cool efforts, along glassy, ice-worn 

 slopes, I reached the upper end in a little over a 

 day, but was compelled to pass the second night 

 in the gorge, and in the moonlight I wrote you 

 this short pencil-letter in my notebook: 



The moon is looking down into the canon, and 

 how marvelously the great rocks kindle to her light ! 

 Every dome, and brow, and swelling boss touched 

 by her white rays, glows as if lighted with snow. 

 I am now only a mile from last night s camp; and 

 have been climbing and sketching all day in this 

 difficult but instructive gorge. It is formed in the 

 bottom of the main canon, among the roots of 

 Cloud s Rest. It begins at the filled-up lake-basin 

 where I camped last night, and ends a few hundred 

 yards above, in another basin of the same kind. 

 The walls everywhere are craggy and vertical, and 

 in some places they overlean. It is only from twenty 

 to sixty feet wide, and not, though black and 

 broken enough, the thin, crooked mouth of some 

 mysterious abyss; but it was eroded, for in many 

 places I saw its solid, seamless floor. 



I am sitting on a big stone, against which the 

 stream divides, and goes brawling by in rapids on 

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