Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/86

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When shall we lie down and sleep, and awake and find an Eve and the Eden in the forest ? An Eve untouched and unstained, fresh from the hand of God, gazing at her reflection in the mossy mountain stream, amazed at her beauty, and in love with herself; even in this first act setting an example for man that he has followed too well for his own peace !

This canon was as black as Erebus down there a sea of sombre firs ; and down, down as if the earth was cracked and cleft almost in two. Here and there lay little nests of clouds below us, tangled in the tree- tops, no wind to drive them, nothing to fret and dis turb. They lay above the dusks of the forest as if asleep. Over across the canon stood another moun tain, not so fierce as this, but black with forest, and cut and broken into many gorges scars of earth quake shocks, and sabre-cuts of time. Gorge on gorge, canon intersecting canon, pitching down to wards the rapid Klamat a black and boundless forest till it touches the very tide of the sea a hundred miles to the west.

Our cabin was on the mountain side. Where else could it have been but on the mountain top ? No thing but mountains. A little stream went creeping down below, a little wanderer among the boulders for it was now sorely fretted and roiled by the thousands of miners up and down.

There was a town, a sort of common centre, called The Forks ; for here three little strea