appears to be a high, round tower, but the train following the curve,
reveals the fact that it is not a tower, but a thin, curved
knife-blade. The sun just for one instant shone through a rift in the
clouds, and added special charm to the scene.

[Illustration: The Knife-Blade. Page 178.]

A short distance beyond is Crystal Cave station, where the guide was
waiting to take us in charge. He is an intelligent young man who has
served an enlistment term in the army, is recently married, very
obliging, and proud of being trustworthy.

The scenery here is most beautiful as well as grand. The cañon makes a
sharp turn toward the south, and on the north opens out into another
cañon of even greater beauty and higher walls, the perpendicular being
three hundred feet in places. Crystal Cave is in the hill embraced by
the junction curve. The natural entrance is more than two hundred feet
above the cañon bed and was naturally approached from above. A short
walk up the north cañon, whose name has unfortunately slipped away, was
over ice and snow the chinook had failed to reach, and brought us to a
long stairway against the wall, which affords a more direct approach
than nature gave and is a fair test of physical perfection.

Finally a resting place is reached where the grandeur of the view can be
enjoyed; and then a shorter stairway completes the ascent of the wall,
but not of the hill, so there is still a considerable upward walk
through the forest of tall pines all carpeted with brilliant mats of
kinnikinic with its shining leaves, glowing in shades of green and red,
trying to rival the bright scarlet berries. The kinnikinic here
resembles the wintergreen of the east, while in the mountains in