THE APPEOACH 



beaten path, and animals are just as fond of 

 a good path as humanity. By a strange coin- 

 cidence at this very moment the sharp-toed 

 print of a deer's hoof appears in the ground 

 before me. But it looks a little odd. The im- 

 pression is so clear cut that I stoop to examine 

 it. It is with no little astonishment that I find 

 it sunk in stone instead of earth — petrified in 

 rock and overrun with silica. The bare sug- 

 gestion gives one pause. How many thousands 

 of years ago was that impression stamped upon 

 the stone ? By what strange chance has it 

 survived destruction ? And while it remains 

 quite perfect to-day — the vagrant hoof-mark of 

 a desert deer — what has become of the once 

 carefully guarded footprints of the Sargons, 

 the Pharaohs and the Caesars ? With what 

 contempt Nature sometimes plans the survival 

 of the least fit, and breaks the conqueror on his 

 shield ! 



Further up the mountain the deer-trail theory 

 is abandoned — at least so far as recent times are 

 concerned. The stones are worn too smooth, 

 the larger ones have been pushed aside by 

 something more intelligent than a mule-deer's 

 hoof ; and in one place the trail seems to have 

 been built up on the descending side. There is 



Footprints, 



ThetUnu 

 pceth. 



