29c 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



us. A never-to-be-forgotten night overtook our party 

 on the edge of a series of magnificent, abruptly de- 

 scending granite terraces over which the river plunged 

 seven or eight hundred feet into unseen depths, a furious 

 mass of roaring foam and spray. Under some daring 

 pines at the edge of the precipice we built our camp-fires 

 and cooked our evening meal. A few minutes' use of 

 rod and reel again sufficed to add to our menu a deli- 

 cious entree of trout. Surroundings more abysmally 

 grand it would have been hard to imagine. The sunset 

 glow on the heights above, the witchery of the firelight 

 on pines and rocks, the reverberating thunder of the 

 river's batteries, the white glimmer of endless falls far 

 down the canon, the brilHance of the stars, the flutter 

 and scream of wild creatures terrestrial and aerial, the 

 far-flung shadows of lowering cliffs gliding through 

 every gamut of form under the light of the rising moon — 

 these and many other assets, in extraordinary measure, 

 were among the features of that indescribable night. 

 One can only imagine what re-enforcement the imagina- 

 tion of Dante might have gained from the contemplation of 

 scenes like these. But it was not difficult to think of the 

 somber bard treading the giant stairways in the foot- 

 steps of Virgil. Yet a voice of antiquity a hundred 

 thousand times remoter than that of Dante or Virgil was 

 speaking in the roar of water that rose from the gorge — 

 the voice of the river grinding and chiseling still deeper 

 the chasm at which it had labored for ages. 



The writer is penning these words in one of the 

 most picturesque* parts of the OW World, where at mom 

 and eve 



* The Upper Rhine. 



