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Across the entire surface of this little cliff-bound circular valley it was the same, as though here a tortured nature had undergone some terrible agony in the birth of this world.

Now take the case of the Guillemot. Its young at birth are by no means helpless in the sense that the young Reed-Bunting is, and food is readily procured. But breeding stations are scarce, for although there are many miles of cliff-bound coast, yet not every type of rock formation produces the fissures and ledges upon which the bird rests.

The fresh scent of the sea came up with the morning air across the cliff-bound uplands; and far away, from headland to headland of Craydle Bay, the waters glowed and sparkled in the sunlight. Inland, too, along by the river, the woods were musical with newly-awakened birds, and the downs waved softly with early hay.

This is a fine specimen of the oldest and lowest of the existing lakes. It lies about eight miles above Yosemite Valley, on the main branch of the Merced, at an elevation of about 7350 feet above the sea; and is everywhere so securely cliff-bound that without artificial trails only wild animals can get down to its rocky shores from any direction.

For the time being the valley, with its barren cliffs rising higher and higher on each side of her, and its world of soft pink light, held her. The wide cliff-bound road, which wound its way like a white thread through a maze of light and sun-pink hills, seemed to be leading her further and further into the heart of Egypt, to the very bosom of her children's ancient kingdom.

It is the mouth of a gorge in the midst of a cliff-bound coast. The bay, but a quarter of a mile in sweep, is shut in at each end by a projecting wall of cliff cut by a natural arch. Half the shingle beach is given up to fisherfolk and their boats and tarred Noah's arks where they keep their nets.

But there was no such good fortune. Both the lieutenant and he swept the horizon and the cliff-bound coast with their glasses, and the Kestrel was sailed along close inshore in the hope that the enemy might be seen sheltered in some cove, or the mouth of one of the little rivers; but there was no result, and at last, very unwillingly, the cutter's head was laid for Portsmouth, and the lieutenant went below to prepare his despatch.

If you travel on the highroad which skirts the cliff-bound coast of Normandy you may come to a board bearing the legend "Hottetôt-sur-Mer" and a hand pointing down a narrow gorge.

Yet it was not unpleasing, this queer shrill, recurrent rhythm, the monotonous creak and splash of the oars, the mystery of feeling one's way in the blue gloom, through reed and water-lily beds, up this cliff-bound river, and far away the faint twitter also recurrent and monotonous of some nightjar.... The night grew bitterly cold on the water.

The bottom of the valley is now composed of level meadow-lands and dry, sloping soil-beds planted with oak and pine, but it was once a lake stretching from wall to wall and nearly from one end of the valley to the other, forming one of the most beautiful cliff-bound sheets of water that ever existed in the Sierra.