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 prattle words of love, which we so much need in these mighty
temples of power, yonder in the "benmost bore" are two blessed
adiantums. Listen to them! How wholly infused with God is this
one big word of love that we call the world! Good-night. Do you
see the fire-glow on my ice-smoothed slab, and on my two ferns and
the rubus and grass panicles? And do you hear how sweet a sleep-
song the fall and cascades are singing?

The water-ground chips and knots that I found fastened between the rocks
kept my fire alive all through the night. Next morning I rose nerved and
ready for another day of sketching and noting, and any form of climbing.
I escaped from the gorge about noon, after accomplishing some of the
most delicate feats of mountaineering I ever attempted; and here the
canyon is all broadly open again--the floor luxuriantly forested with
pine, and spruce, and silver fir, and brown-trunked libocedrus. The
walls rise in Yosemite forms, and Tenaya Creek comes down seven hundred
feet in a white brush of foam. This is a little Yosemite valley. It is
about two thousand feet above the level of the main Yosemite, and about
twenty-four hundred below Lake Tenaya.

I found the lake frozen, and the ice was so clear and unruffled that
the surrounding mountains and the groves that look down upon it were
reflected almost as perfectly as I ever beheld them in the calm evening
mirrors of summer. At a little distance, it was difficult t