iS6 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



surface for about three hundred feet at an angle that 

 makes caution necessary for the footman in walking 

 beside or in sight of it. 



Buried alone in this amphitheater, which I called Gla- 

 cial Valley, where Nature is bravely striving to cover 

 up the wonderful polished glacial pavements and bare 

 granite slopes and to prepare a pleasanter abode for man 

 and beast, aside from furnishing a means of holding the 

 water a little longer than it is held now, I spent three 

 happy days like Sinbad the Sailor in the Valley of Dia- 

 monds. I enjoyed the experiences immensely, admiring 

 the lofty, impressive domes and great pine trees on all 

 sides ; hunting for trout, for leaves of the white violet and 

 sorrel for salads, for berries, for flowers, for butterflies; 

 revelling in the balmy sunshine, boying about generally, 

 and incidentally though not intentionally finding mental 

 rest and health. I saw several unusually beautiful blue 

 butterflies, but was not able to catch any. 



On the night that I arrived — August loth, the date 

 of the Laurentian shower of shooting stars from the 

 constellation of Perseus — I was counting those brilliant 

 celestial performers on their annual visit as I lay in my 

 down sleeping-bag on my flood-sand bed in a little grove 

 of quaking aspens and chinquapins at the lower, more 

 open end of the valley. I had reached twenty-five in my 

 count, one a magnificent exploding meteor or bolis which 

 lit up the heavens like a great bursting sky rocket and 

 left an incandescent wake or trail in the sky that persisted 

 for three or four seconds, when I heard in the darkness 

 crashes like artillery from the granite bluffs across the 

 creek from my camp site. I remembered of reading in 

 one of Mr. Muir's books of some such phenomena and 

 knew that this unusual, startling noise in the night was 

 caused by the fall of a mass of granite detached from the 

 cliffs two thousand feet or more above the final resting 

 place of the fragments. As these huge blocks slid, 

 bounded, crashed down the slopes, gaining in momentum 

 every instant, the startling detonations sounded like noth- 



