TIME AND CHANGE 
peel off in concentric sheets, their forms are pre- 
served. 
Il 
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 impas- 
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 
baffled 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 
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