A GEOLOGIST'S WINTER WALK 



were falling; yet never did her soul reveal itself 

 more impressively than now. I hung about 

 her skirts, lingering timidly, until the higher 

 mountains and glaciers compelled me to push 

 up the canon. 



This canon is accessible only to mountain- 

 eers, and I was anxious to carry my barometer 

 and clinometer through it, to obtain sections 

 and altitudes, so I chose it as the most attrac- 

 tive highway. After I had passed the tall groves 

 that stretch a mile above Mirror Lake, and 

 scrambled around the Tenaya Fall, which is 

 just at the head of the lake groves, I crept 

 through the dense and spiny chaparral that 

 plushes the roots of the mountains here for 

 miles in warm green, and was ascending a 

 precipitous rock-front, smoothed by glacial 

 action, when I suddenly fell — for the first 

 time since I touched foot to Sierra rocks. After 

 several somersaults, I became insensible from 

 the shock, and when consciousness returned I 

 found myself wedged among short, stiff bushes, 

 trembhng as if cold, not injured in the sUghtest. 



Judging by the sun, I could not have been 

 insensible very long; probably not a minute, 

 possibly an hour; and I could not remember 

 what made me fall, or where I had fallen from; 

 but I saw that if I had rolled a little further, 

 my mountain-climbing would have been fin- 



21 



