This water-bed is one of the finest I ever saw. Evergreens wave
soothingly about it, and the breath of flowers floats over it like
incense. Here our blessed stream rests from its rocky wanderings, all
its mountaineering done,--no more foaming rock-leaping, no more wild,
exulting song. It falls into a smooth, glassy sleep, stirred only by the
night-wind, which, coming down the canon, makes it croon and mutter in
ripples along its broidered shores.
Leaving the lake, it glides quietly through the rushes, destined never
more to touch the living rock. Henceforth its path lies through ancient
moraines and reaches of ashy sage-plain, which nowhere afford rocks
suitable for the development of cascades or sheer falls. Yet this beauty
of maturity, though less striking, is of a still higher order, enticing
us lovingly on through gentian meadows and groves of rustling aspen to
Lake Mono, where, spirit-like, our happy stream vanishes in vapor, and
floats free again in the sky.
Bloody Canon, like every other in the Sierra, was recently occupied by a
glacier, which derived its fountain snows from the adjacent summits, and
descended into Mono Lake, at a time when its waters stood at a much
higher level than now.
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