But, again and again, I have seen all.  Pohono has breathed upon me with its fatal breath, yet I survive.  It is said that three Indian girls were long ago bewitched by its waters, and now their perturbed spirits haunt the place.  Those perfectly round rainbows may form the nimbus for each of the martyrs; they, at any rate, look supernatural enough for such an office.  The wildly wooded pass to the Vernal and Nevada Falls has echoed to my tread.  I have been sprayed upon till my spirit is never dry of the life-giving waters that flow so freely.  But I am just a little tired of all this.  I begin to breathe short, irregular breaths.  The soul of this mighty solitude oppresses me; I want more air of the common sort, and less wisdom in daily talks and walks.  I remember the pleasant nonsense of life over the mountains, and sigh for those flesh-pots of Egypt once in a while.  These rocks are full of texts and teachings—­these cliffs are tables of stone, graven with laws and commandments.  I read everywhere mysterious cyphers and hieroglyphics; every changing season offers to me a new palimpsest.  I do not quite like to play here; I dare not be simple; I’m altogether too good to last long.  How many thousand ascensions have been made in these worshipful days, I wonder; not merely getting the body on to the tops of these wonderful peaks, but going thither in spirit, as when the soul goes up into the mountains to pray?  This eye-climbing is as fatiguing and perilous as any.  I feel the want of some pure blue sky.

A few farewell rambles associate themselves with packing up and plans of desertion.  Not sad farewells in this case, for if I never again meet these individual mountains, I carry with me their memory, eternal and incomparably glorious.  Let us peep into this nook:  I got plentiful blackberries there in the spring, together with stains and thorny scratches.  I haul myself over the ferry and back, for old acquaintance’ sake; the current is so lazy, it seems incredible that the same waters are almost impassable at some seasons.  I succeed in wrecking a whole armada of floating leaves with stems like a bowsprit.  A few beetles take passage in these gilded barges—­no doubt, for the antipodes.

Did you ever drive up the cattle at milking time?  I have; but not without endless trial and tribulation, for they spill off the path on either side in a very remarkable way, and when I rush after one with a flank movement, the column breaks and falls back utterly demoralized.  A little strategy on the part of their commander (which is myself) triumphs in the end, for I privately reconstruct and march them all up in detachments of one.  I look after the little trees, the unbent twigs; they are more interesting to me than your monsters.  This nursery of saplings sprang up in a night after a freshet:  here are quivering aspens trembling forever in penance for that one sin.  They once were gravely pointed out by the guide of a party of tourists as “shuddering