"There," Said I, Addressing My Feet,
To Whose Separate Skill I Had Learned To Trust Night And Day On Any
Mountain, "That Is What You Get By Intercourse With Stupid Town
Stairs, And Dead Pavements." I Felt Degraded And Worthless.
I had
not yet reached the most difficult portion of the canyon, but I
determined to guide my humbled
Body over the most nerve-trying places
I could 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.
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