And as for geology--the Grand Canyon of Arizona has afforded me
nature reading material for nearly three decades and I am delighted
by reading it yet. Still I am free to confess the uplift of these
high-sweeping Sierras, upon whose lofty summits

The high-born, beautiful snow comes down,
Silent and soft as the terrible feet
Of Time on the mosses of ruins;

the great glacial _cirques_, with their stupendous precipices
from which the vast ice-sheets started, which gouged, smoothed,
planed and grooved millions of acres of solid granite into lake-beds,
polished domes and canyon walls and carried along millions of tons of
rock debris to make scores of lateral and terminal moraines; together
with the evidences of uplift, subsidence and volcanic outpouring of
diorite and other molten rocks, afford one as vast and enjoyable a
field for contemplation as any ordinary man can find in the Grand
Canyon.

But why compare them? There is no need to do so. Each is supreme in
its own right; different yet compelling, unlike yet equally engaging.

Then there are the ineffable climate of summer, the sunrises, the
sunsets, the Indians, the flowers, the sweet-singing birds, the
rowing, in winter the snow-shoeing, the camping-out, and, alas! I must
say it--the hunting.

Why man will hunt save for food is beyond me. I deem it that every
living thing has as much right to its life as I have to mine, but I