In the Christmas Woods. 



started upward. He left a long, silvery trail on 

 the screen door and gained the wall. I watched 

 him crawl past the eaves to the roof, and I have no 

 doubt but that in the course of time he came down 

 on the other side. Another of the same tribe I 

 once found halted at the edge of a stream a few feet 

 wide. I pushed him out on a chip and ferried him 

 over, whereupon he started up the bank without a 

 backward glance at me who had so opportunely 

 played Providence for him. 



The rain must have slackened somewhat up 

 above. There is less beating in, but the creek still 

 roars turbulently. I have reached, in my clamber- 

 ing progress, a place where the water tosses itself 

 joyfully over a great rock to fall into a deep, wide 

 pool, so dark and so still that even the tumult of 

 the storm seems hardly to have reached it. It is 

 dim and green and quiet here ; for the sunlight 

 never penetrates to this spot. The tops of the hills 

 seem almost to meet, two hundred feet above our 

 heads, and the redwood growth is dense. The air 

 is heavy with damp, woodsy fragrance and the 

 water is almost black. We talk of Mother Earth, 

 but we might with even more truth speak of Mother 

 Water ; for every evidence, to-day, is that the first 

 life appeared, not from the soil, but nurtured at the 

 broad breast of Mother Sea, even ere land had 

 pushed its way up from ocean's depths. The green 

 scum on the surface of still pools ; the slime molds 

 covering moist bottoms, furnish us with some 

 indication of what this primordial vegetation was 



12 



