A good, strong traveler, who knows the way and the weather, might easily make a safe excursion through it from Yosemite Valley on snow-shoes during some tranquil time, when the storms are hushed.

The later snow-storms are oftentimes accompanied by winds that break up the crystals, when the temperature is low, into single petals and irregular dusty fragments; but there is comparatively little drifting on the meadow, so securely is it embosomed in the woods.

and see this funny tree, all covered over with snow-flakes, and how sweet it smells all around it."

The new moon hung athwart the western sky, and a few fleecy clouds were chasing each other like snow-drifts across the blue vault of the night.

After this discovery, I made excursions over all the High Sierra, pushing my explorations summer after summer, and discovered that what at first sight in the distance looked like extensive snow-fields, wore in great part glaciers, busily at work completing the sculpture of the summit-peaks so grandly blocked out by their giant predecessors.

We are camped for the present on the edge of a plateau, overlooking a vast plain that stretches a hundred miles or more to where Kilimanjaro lifts his snow peaks to the blue.

Most of the birds have gone down below the snow-line, the plants sleep, and all the fly-wings are folded.

Under every snow-bank a summer murmur, very faint at first, but hourly louderthe sound of falling water softly singing over all the land.

In June, 1871, she accompanied her friend Elizabeth Clay on a visit to Switzerland; there she thoroughly enjoyed the Alpine climbing, and revelled in the grand scenery of Mont Blanc and other snow mountains.

It began to be apparent that the same spirit was invading the forest that had possession of the camp; two, or at most three, did the work, and the rest shirked, got snow-blindness and rheumatism, and let the others do his share, counting securely, nevertheless, on his fifth of the proceeds, just as he counted (no matter what proportion he had contributed) on his full share of the common stock of food.

Sliding was out of the question, and the "House of Lords" having amused themselves for a time by capturing small boys and throwing them into the snow-drift, some one remarked that it would be good fun to build a snow man; which proposition was received with acclamation, and all hands were soon hard at work rolling the big balls which were to form the base of the statue.

The Boy stooped, made a snow-ball, and fired it at Kaviak.

Their eyes had dropped down that last stretch of the steep snow slope, across the two miles of frozen river, and ran half round the wide horizon-line, like creatures in a cage.

This didn't always happen either, though to drink snow-water was to invite scurvy, Father Wills said.

You could hear from the road-bushes the chirp of a snow-bird, wakened by the tramp of his horse, or the flutter of its wings.

For example: suppose I wish to speak of any object that is white, or analogous to white, I open the drawer that is thus labelled, and I see silver, lime, chalk, and white enamel, ivory, paper, snow-drops, and alabaster, and select whichever of these substances will best suit the measure and the rhyme, and has the most soft-sounding name.

Around the snow-cap of each pole was a belt of water; around this, again, a broader belt of continuous land; and outside this, forming the northern and southern boundary between the arctic and temperate zones, was another broader band of water, connected apparently in one or two places with the central, or, if one may so call it, equatorial sea.

Buffon says that the Ptarmigan avoids the solar heat, and prefers the frosts of the summits of the mountains; for, as the snow melts on the sides of the mountains, it ascends till it gains the top, where it makes a hole, and burrows in the snow.

"I thought the Esquimos lived in snow houses," said Ted, as they looked at the queer little huts, and Kalitan exclaimed: "Huh! Innuit queer Indian!" "No," said Mr. Strong; "his hut is built by digging a hole about six feet deep and standing logs up side by side around the hole.

He struck a jutting rock, only half snowed under, that broke the sheer face of the promontory, and he bounded once like a rubber ball, struck a second time, caught desperately at a solitary clump of ice-sheathed alders, crashed through the snow-crust just below them, and was held there like a mudlark in its cliff nest, halfway between bluff and river.

Toward the close of the glacial period, when the snow-clouds became less fertile and the melting waste of sunshine became greater, the lower folds of the ice-sheet in California, discharging fleets of icebergs into the sea, began to shallow and recede from the lowlands, and then move slowly up the flanks of the Sierra in compliance with the changes of climate.

The decrease in the rain- and snow-fall since the close of the glacial period in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed.

It is hard without long and loving study to realize the magnitude of the work done on these mountains during the last glacial period by glaciers, which are only streams of closely compacted snow-crystals.

The dream was ended; all was darkness in the little snow-hut, but the Bible lay under the sailor's head, faith and hope abode in his heart.

Behind him, between the snow-walls at the entrance, had appeared two facesweather-beaten men, crowding in the narrow space, craning to see the reception of the Christmas-tree and the inside of the famous Big Chimney Cabin.