Pencil Notes From The Yosemite Region

"The moön is looking down iuto the anon, and how marvcllously the great ooks kindie to hor light - every dome, nd brow, and Bwelling boBS touched by ïer -white rays, glows, as if lighted with now. l.am uow only a mile from last ight's camp ; and havo been climbing nd sketchmg all day in thiss difficult but nstructive f?orge. It is forrued in the jottoin of the main canon, among the oots of Cloud's Eest. It begins at tho ead lake whoro I cainped late night, and nda a few hundred yards abovo, in anther dead lake. The walls everywhoro re craggy and vertical, and iu somo aces thoy overlean. It ia only from ,wenty to sixty feet wido, and not, though ack ■ and broken enough, tho thin, ooked mouth of some mysterious abyss ; 'or in mauy places I saw the solid, soamess Hoor. I um sifcting on a big stone, gainst which tho stream divides, and oes brawling by in rapids on both sides ; ïalf my rock is white in the light, half n shadow. Looking from the opening a wa of this shadowy gorge, South Dome a iminediately in front - high in the ;ars, her face turned from the moon, ith the rest of her body gloriously mufed in waved folds of granito. On the eft, cut from Cloud's Eest, by tho lip of 10 gorge, are three magnificent rooks, ais ,ers of the great South Dome. On the glit is the massive, moonlit front of Lount Watkine, and betwoen, low down n the furthest distance, is Sontinel )ome, girdled and darkened wiih í n the ncar foroground is the joyoua reek, Tonaya, singing against boulders lat aro white with the snow. Now, ook back twenty yards, and you will soe wateifall, fair as a spirit ; the mooniglit just touches it, bringing it in relief gaintst tho deepest, dark back-ground. A little to the leít, and a dozen steps this ido of the f all, a fliokoring light inarks my camp - and a precious camp it is. A ïuge, glacier polished slab, in falling 'rom the glassy flank of Cloud's Eest, lappened to settle on edge against the Wall of the gorge. I did not know that lis slab was glacier-polished, until I ighted my flre. Judgo of my deliglit. I nink it was sent here by au earthquake. wish I could take it down to the valley. t is .bout twelve feet square. Beneath tiis slab is the only place in this torreutwepi gorge where I have seen saud suficieiit íor a bed. I expected to sleep on te boulders, í'or I spent most of the fternoon on the slippery wall ol the anon, endeavoriug to get around this iffieulty part of the gorge, and was comelled to basten down here for water be'ore dark. I will sleep soundly on this and ; half of it is mica. Here, wondertll to bohold, are a few green sterns of rickly liubus, and a tiny grass. They re hore to meet us. Ay, even here in .his darksome gorge, ' frightf ui and tormented' with raging torrents and ohokng avalanches of pnow. Can it be 'i As f the liubus and the grass-leaf were not nough of (iod's tender prattle-words of love, which we so rnuoh need in these mighty temples of power, yonder in the ' benuioat Vore' are two blessed Ailinnturns. Listen to them. How wholly infused with God is this one big word of love that we eall the world ! Good-night. Do you see the fire glow ou my ioesmoothed slab, and on my two ; And do you hear how sweet a sleep-song the f'all aud cascades aresinging ?" - From " A Geologist's Winter Walk, in the Ooerland Montkly for April.