Steep Trails | Page 9

find; for I was
now awake, and felt confident that the last of the town fog had been
shaken from both head and feet.
I camped at the mouth of a narrow gorge which is cut into the bottom
of the main canyon, determined to take earnest exercise next day. No
plushy boughs did my ill-behaved bones enjoy that night, nor did my
bumped head get a spicy cedar plume pillow mixed with flowers. I
slept on a naked boulder, and when I awoke all my nervous trembling
was gone.
The gorged portion of the canyon, in which I spent all the next day, is
about a mile and a half in length; and I passed the time in tracing the
action of the forces that determined this peculiar bottom gorge, which
is an abrupt, ragged-walled, narrow-throated canyon, formed in the
bottom of the wide-mouthed, smooth, and beveled main canyon. I will
not stop now to tell you more; some day you may see it, like a shadowy
line, from Cloud's Rest. In high water, the stream occupies all the
bottom of the gorge, surging and chafing in glorious power from wall
to wall. But the sound of the grinding was low as I entered the gorge,
scarcely hoping to be able to pass through its entire length. By cool
efforts, along glassy, ice-worn slopes, I reached the upper end in a little
over a day, but was compelled to pass the second night in the gorge,
and in the moonlight I wrote you this short pencil-letter in my
notebook:--
The moon is looking down into the canyon, and how marvelously the
great rocks kindle to her light! Every dome, and brow, and swelling
boss touched by her white rays, glows as if lighted with snow. I am
now only a mile from last night's camp; and have been climbing and
sketching all day in this difficult but instructive gorge. It is formed in
the bottom of the main canyon, among the roots of Cloud's Rest. It
begins at the filled-up lake basin where I camped last night, and ends a
few hundred yards above, in another basin of the same kind. The walls
everywhere are craggy and vertical, and in some places they overlean.
It is only from twenty to sixty feet wide, and not, though black and
broken enough, the thin, crooked mouth of some mysterious abyss; but
it was eroded, for in many places I saw its solid, seamless floor.
I am sitting on a big stone, against which the stream divides, and goes

brawling by in rapids on both sides; half of my rock is white in the light,
half in shadow. As I look from the opening jaws of this shadowy gorge,
South Dome is immediately in front--high in the stars, her face turned
from the moon, with the rest of her body gloriously muffled in waved
folds of granite. On the left, sculptured from the main Cloud's Rest
ridge, are three magnificent rocks, sisters of the great South Dome. On
the right is the massive, moonlit front of Mount Watkins, and between,
low down in the furthest distance, is Sentinel Dome, girdled and
darkened with forest. In the near foreground Tenaya Creek is singing
against boulders that are white with snow and moonbeams. Now look
back twenty yards, and you will see a waterfall fair as a spirit; the
moonlight just touches it, bringing it into relief against a dark
background of shadow. A little to the left, and a dozen steps this side of
the fall, a flickering light marks my camp--and a precious camp it is. A
huge, glacier-polished slab, falling from the smooth, glossy flank of
Cloud's Rest, happened to settle on edge against the wall of the gorge. I
did not know that this slab was glacier-polished until I lighted my fire.
Judge of my delight. I think it was sent here by an earthquake. It is
about twelve feet square. I wish I could take it home[4] for a
hearthstone. Beneath this slab is the only place in this torrent-swept
gorge where I could find sand sufficient for a bed.
I expected to sleep on the boulders, for I spent most of the afternoon on
the slippery wall of the canyon, endeavoring to get around this difficult
part of the gorge, and was compelled to hasten down here for water
before dark. I shall sleep soundly on this sand; half of it is mica. Here,
wonderful to behold, are a few green stems of prickly rubus, and a tiny
grass. They are here to meet us. Ay, even here in this darksome gorge,
"frightened and tormented" with raging torrents and choking
avalanches of snow. Can it be? As if rubus and the grass leaf were not
enough of God's tender