It falls into a smooth, glassy sleep, stirred only by the night-wind, which, coming down the canon, makes it croon and mutter in ripples along its broidered shores.
Leaving the lake, it glides quietly through the rushes, destined never more to touch the living rock.

Henceforth its path lies through ancient moraines and reaches of ashy sage-plain, which nowhere afford rocks suitable for the development of cascades or sheer falls.

Yet this beauty of maturity, though less striking, is of a still higher order, enticing us lovingly on through gentian meadows and groves of rustling aspen to Lake Mono, where, spirit-like, our happy stream vanishes in vapor, and floats free again in the sky.
Bloody Canon, like every other in the Sierra, was recently occupied by a glacier, which derived its fountain snows from the adjacent summits, and descended into Mono Lake, at a time when its waters stood at a much higher level than now.

The principal characters in which the history of the ancient glaciers is preserved are displayed here in marvelous freshness and simplicity, furnishing the student with extraordinary advantages for the acquisition of knowledge of this sort.

The most striking passages are polished and striated surfaces, which in many places reflect the rays of the sun like smooth water.