14000 MILES 



matters little, for it was not the boulder which was so 

 wonderful, but how it came to be suspended so mysteri- 

 ously. After seeing the Flume in its present condition, 

 the charm which always clings to mystery is lost, but 

 one is almost overpowered with the thought of the resist- 

 less force of Nature's elements. 



After climbing over the rocks till tired, we found a 

 cosy place away from the many parties who were there, 

 and in our little nook discovered a new boulder more 

 mysteriously hung than the old one. It was a little 

 larger than a man's head, and firmly held between two 

 larger rocks by two small pebbles which corresponded to 

 ears. A flat rock had lodged like a shelf across the larger 

 rocks, half concealing the miniature boulder. The old 

 boulder was no longer a mystery to us, for we could 

 easily imagine how, no one knows whether years or ages 

 ago, a mountain slide like the one in June rolled the old 

 rock along until it lodged in the gap simply because it 

 was too large to go through. But for a time this little 

 one bafifled us. When the mighty torrent was rushing 

 along, how could Nature stop to select two little pebbles 

 just the right size and put them in just the right place to 

 hold the little boulder firmly? We puzzled over it, how- 

 ever, until to our minds it was scientifically, therefore 

 satisfactorily solved ; but we are not going to tell Nature's 

 secret to the public. We call it "our boulder," for we 

 doubt if any one else saw it, or if we could find it again 

 among the millions of rocks all looking alike. We longed 

 to follow the rocky bed to the mountain where the slide 

 started, a distance of two miles, we were told, but pru- 

 dence protested, and we left that till next time. We 



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