Notes and Correspondence 



95 



piles, the tobogganers took their headlong course, undismayed, even 

 though spilled, until night called a halt. 



The fog lifted that evening and for the rest of our trip the weather 

 was perfect. From dawn on December 31, we were out of doors. Both 

 Rainier and the Tatoosh Range shone dazzlingly clear. The tops of the 

 dead trees glittered with ice. The snow was dry and sparkling, flying 

 out from the higher crests of the mountain in shining banners. Thin 

 wisps of ice-cloud were forming constantly in the sky. For a minute 

 only they would float high above us, then, like a puff of smoke, they 

 were gone. 



Many parties started out — to climb to the saddle of Pinnacle Peak, 

 to ramble toward the Cowlitz Glacier, to climb to McClure Rock, or 

 even as far as Camp Muir. Up near timber-line was a still more ex- 

 quisite world. St. Helens, Adams, and Hood shone high on the 

 southerrf horizon. Puget Sound was a sea of fog, with promontories 

 of forested hills charting a new shore-line. Cornices of snow cut the 

 sky. Struggling timber-line trees, wholly encased in ice, stood stiffly 

 upright, like branches of coral. White-capped rocks suggested half- 

 revealed sculptured forms, as if a Rodin of the frost country had 

 been busy there. 



Ski-runners were in their element. The snow was in perfect con- 

 dition, and the long runs down through that glorious sunshine must 

 have been entrancing. Three young girls climbed with us almost to 

 timber-line and shot down abreast, seeming to skim the surface of the 

 snow without touching it, as a gull skims the crests and hollows of 

 the sea. At sunset Rainier wore a crown of rainbow color. All the 

 near-by slopes were pale green, banded with violet shadows. Western 

 skies glowed with orange and yellow, eastern showed dull rose and 

 pearly gray. Then came bright moonlight. 



The annual vaudeville kept actors and audience both occupied until 

 midnight. We filed out into the moonlight then, and, facing the moun- 

 tain, sang the good-night song of the Mountaineers. The notes of 

 "Taps" ringing out over that great white amphitheater made a rarely 

 beautiful ceremony of the passing of the old year. 



Marion Randall Parsons 



Bird Sanctuaries Endangered 



Berkeley, November 3, 1919 

 Hon. Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, 

 Washington, D. C. 

 My dear Secretary Lane: You will recall that in August, 1908, the 

 late Theodore Roosevelt created by presidential proclamation the 

 Klamath and Malheur lakes reservations for the protection of wild 

 birds. It has come to our notice that, through ill-advised plans of 

 reclamation, the water supply from the Klamath River has been cut 



