It
was in the Indian summer, when the leaf colors were ripe and the great
cliffs and domes were transfigured in the hazy golden air. I had
scrambled up its rugged talus-dammed canyon, oftentimes stopping to take
breath and look back to admire the wonderful views to be had there of
the great Half Dome, and to enjoy the extreme purity of the water, which
in the motionless pools on this stream is almost perfectly invisible;
the colored foliage of the maples, dogwoods, Rubus tangles, etc., and
the late goldenrods and asters. The voice of the fall was now low, and
the grand spring and summer floods had waned to sifting, drifting gauze
and thin-broidered folds of linked and arrowy lace-work. When I reached
the foot of the fall sunbeams were glinting across its head, leaving all
the rest of it in shadow; and on its illumined brow a group of yellow
spangles of singular form and beauty were playing, flashing up and
dancing in large flame-shaped masses, wavering at times, then steadying,
rising and falling in accord with the shifting forms of the water. But
the color of the dancing spangles changed not at all. Nothing in clouds
or flowers, on bird-wings or the lips of shells, could rival it in
fineness. It was the most divinely beautiful mass of rejoicing yellow
light I ever beheld--one of Nature's precious gifts that perchance may
come to us but once in a lifetime.
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