TIME AND CHANGE 



peel off in concentric sheets, their forms are pre- 

 served. 



II 



One warm, bright Sunday near the end of April, 

 six of us walked up from the hotel to Vernal and 

 Nevada Falls, or as near to them as we could get, and 

 took our fill of the tumult of foaming waters strug- 

 gling with the wreck of huge granite cliffs: so impasr 

 sive and immobile the rocks, so impetuous and reck- 

 less and determined the onset of the waters, till the 

 falls are reached, when the obstructed river seems 

 to find the escape and the freedom it was so eagerly 

 seeking. Better to be completely changed into foam 

 and spray by one single leap of six hundred feet into 

 empty space, the river seems to say, than be forever 

 baflSed and tortured and torn on this rack of merci- 

 less boulders. 



We followed the zigzagging trail up the steep side 

 of the valley, touching melting snow-banks in its 

 upper courses, passing huge granite rocks also melt- 

 ing in the slow heat of the geologic ages, pausing to 

 take in the rugged, shaggy spruces and pines that 

 sentineled the mountain-sides here and there, or 

 resting our eyes upon Liberty Cap, which carries 

 its suggestive form a thousand feet or more above 

 the Nevada Fall. What beauty, what grandeur 

 attended us that day! the wild tumult of waters, 

 the snow-white falls, the motionless avalanches of 



74 



