ith the stars the eternal song of creation.

_July 20._ Fine calm morning; air tense and clear; not the slightest
breeze astir; everything shining, the rocks with wet crystals, the
plants with dew, each receiving its portion of irised dewdrops and
sunshine like living creatures getting their breakfast, their dew manna
coming down from the starry sky like swarms of smaller stars. How
wondrous fine are the particles in showers of dew, thousands required
for a single drop, growing in the dark as silently as the grass! What
pains are taken to keep this wilderness in health,--showers of snow,
showers of rain, showers of dew, floods of light, floods of invisible
vapor, clouds, winds, all sorts of weather, interaction of plant on
plant, animal on animal, etc., beyond thought! How fine Nature's
methods! How deeply with beauty is beauty overlaid! the ground covered
with crystals, the crystals with mosses and lichens and low-spreading
grasses and flowers, these with larger plants leaf over leaf with
ever-changing color and form, the broad palms of the firs outspread over
these, the azure dome over all like a bell-flower, and star above star.

Yonder stands the South Dome, its crown high above our camp, though its
base is four thousand feet below us; a most noble rock, it seems full of
thought, clothed with living light, no sense of dead stone about it, all
spiritualized, neither heavy looking nor light, steadfast in serene
strength like a god.

Our shepherd is a queer character and hard to place in this wilderness.
His bed is a hollow made in red dry-rot punky dust beside a log which
forms a portion of the south wall of the corral. Here he lies with his
wonderful everlasting clothing on, wrapped in a red blanket, breathing
not only the dust of the decayed wood but also that of the corral, as if
determined to take ammoniacal snuff all night after chewing tobacco all
day. Following the sheep he carries a heavy six-shooter swung from his
belt on one side and his luncheon on the other. The ancient cloth in
which the meat, fresh from the frying-pan, is tied serves as a filter
through which the clear fat and gravy juices drip down on his right hip
and leg in clustering stalactites. This oleaginous formation is soon
broken up, however, and diffused and rubbed evenly into his scanty
apparel, by sitting down, rolling over, crossing his legs while resting
on logs, etc., making shirt and trousers water-tight and shiny. His
trousers, in pa