noon
I think there were hours when we must have covered our four miles , and even on long , upward slopes we must have made better than three . There is in swift walking , when the muscles are hard , the wind long , and the atmosphere exhilarating , a buoyant rhythm that more , perhaps , than merited success , or valorous conduct , smoothes out the creases in a man 's soul . And so quick is a man to recover from his own baseness , and to ape outwardly his transient inner feelings , that I found myself presently , walking with a high head and a mind full of martial thoughts . All that day , except for a short halt at noon , we followed the river across the great natural park ; now paralleling its convolutions , and now cutting diagonals . Late in the afternoon we came to the end of the park land . A more or less precipitous formation of glistening quartz marked its boundary , and into a fissure of this the stream , now a small river , plunged with accelerated speed . The going became difficult .