TIME AND CHANGE 
foot of the fall. At first I was surprised at the vol- 
ume of water that came hurrying out of the hidden 
recess of dripping rocks and trees — a swiftly flow- 
ing stream, thirty or forty feet wide, and four or 
five feet deep. How could that comparatively nar- 
row curtain of white spray up there give birth to 
such a full robust stream? But I saw that in making 
the tremendous leap from the top of the precipice, 
the stream was suddenly drawn out, as we stretch 
a rubber band in our hands, and that the solid and 
massive current below was like the rubber again re- 
laxed. The strain was over, and the united waters 
deepened and slowed up over their rocky bed. 
Yosemite for a home or a camp, the Grand Cafion 
for a spectacle. I have spoken of the robin I saw 
in Yosemite Valley. Think how forlorn and out of 
place a robin would seem in the Grand Cafion! 
What would he do there? There is no turf for him 
to inspect, and there are no trees for him to perch 
on. I should as soon expect to find him amid the 
pyramids of Egypt, or amid the ruins of Karnak. 
The bluebird was in the Yosemite also, and the 
water-ouzel haunted the lucid waters. 
I noticed a peculiarity of the oak in Yosemite that 
I never saw elsewhere! — a fluid or outflowing condi- 
tion of the growth aboveground, such as one usually 
sees in the roots of trees — so that it tended to en- 
1 T have since observed the same trait in the oaks in Georgia 
— probably a characterjstic of this tree in southern latitudes. 
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