ON DIAMOND GREEK 165 



pine round which we gathered with tingling fingers 

 and glowing faces, the yellow and crimson leaves, 

 dropping one by one, the little searching wind that 

 came and whispered secrets of the northern caves 

 from which it sprang everything seemed new, and 

 fresh, and wonderful. 



Yet there was too, when I think of it, a shade of 

 something like sadness through it all, a vague, un- 

 easy longing for similar days long past gone to re- 

 turn no more, a something dimly reminiscent in our 

 emotions, in the smell of burning wood, in the sense 

 of shortening days, in flaming sunsets or the sharp, 

 clarion call of a cold dawn. There came over one a 

 melancholy at times, that strange nostalgia of the 

 spirit which for want of clear cause we assign al- 

 ways to something concrete and tangible that we 

 have known or loved. 



My thoughts were wont at this time to wander 

 forlornly to scenes wherein turkey and mince pie 

 were prominent, where chestnuts and popcorn and 

 great, cheery, open fires and smiling, kindly faces 

 appeared scenes and faces once seen so often in 

 other times, and now so very well, so very clearly 

 remembered after the intervening flurry of years ! 



Our runs in the Diamond Creek country were 

 ideal. An initial climb of six or seven hundred feet 

 from the base line in the canyon a climb to rouse 

 the heart and warm one's blood and we found our- 

 selves on wide, level, flower-studded mesas, beauti- 

 ful in the bright sunshine as plains of asphodel. 



