A Thousand-Mile Walk 
lava to the sea. What horizons of flame! What 
atmospheres of ashes and smoke! 
The conglomerates and lavas of this region 
are readily denuded by water. In the time 
when their parent sea was removed to form 
this golden plain, their regular surface, in great 
part covered with shallow lakes, showed little 
variation from motionless level until torrents 
of rain and floods from the mountains gradu- 
ally sculptured the simple page to the present 
diversity of bank and brae, creating, in the sec- 
tion between the Merced and the Tuolumne, 
Twenty Hill Hollow, Lily Hollow, and the 
lovely valleys of Cascade and Castle Creeks, 
with many others nameless and unknown, seen 
only by hunters and shepherds, sunk in the 
wide bosom of the plain, like undiscovered gold. 
Twenty Hill Hollow is a fine illustration of a 
valley created by erosion of water. Here are 
no Washington columns, no angular El Capi- 
tans. The hollow canons, cut in soft lavas, are 
not so deep as to require a single earthquake at 
the hands of science, much less a baker’s dozen 
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