the loose earth. Not a living thing is in sight, and the only sounds the
occasional roar of a distant snow-slide, and the mournful sighing of the
breeze as it plays a weird, melancholy dirge through the gently swaying
branches of the tall, sombre pines, whose stately trunks are half buried
in the omnipresent snow. To-night I stay at the Summit Hotel, seven
thousand and seventeen feet above the level of the sea. The "Summit"
is nothing if not snowy, and I am told that thirty feet on the level is
no unusual thing up here. Indeed, it looks as if snow-balling on the "
Glorious Fourth" were no great luxury at the Summit House; yet
notwithstanding the decidedly wintry aspect of the Sierras, the low
temperature of the Rockies farther east is unknown; and although there
is snow to the right, snow to the left, snow all around, and ice under
foot, I travel all through the gloomy sheds in my shirt-sleeves, with
but a gossamer rubber coat thrown over my shoulders to keep off the snow-
water which is constantly melting and dripping through the roof, making
it almost like going through a shower of rain. Often, when it is warm
and balmy outside, it is cold and frosty under the sheds, and the dripping
water, falling among the rocks and timbers, freezes into all manner of
fantastic shapes. Whole menageries of ice animals, birds and all imaginable
objects, are here reproduced in clear crystal ice, while in many places
the ground is covered with an irregular coating of the same, that often
has to be chipped away from the rails.

East of the summit is a succession of short tunnels, the space between
being covered with snow-shed; and when I came through, the openings and
crevices through which the smoke from the engines is wont to make its
escape, and through which a few rays of light penetrate the gloomy
interior, are blocked up with snow, so that it is both dark and smoky;
and groping one's way with a bicycle over the rough surface is anything
but pleasant going. But there is nothing so bad, it seems, but that it