Far up on the slopes of Mt. Rainier, in Washington, is a waterfall which, according to the legend, was inhabited by a giant of enormous strength--Menuhkesen by name. From out of the East there came a genie possessed of such courage and audacity that when he was warned against the terrible powers of Menuhkesen he laughed lustily and said that he would call forth the surly giant and make him do his bidding. Summoning his afrits, he gave them orders, and they immediately surrounded the falls, some of them peering through strange instruments and making mysterious signs with their hands, while others measured distances and drove stakes, bearing weird symbols, into the river banks. Then the genie stood on the bank overlooking the falls and shouted: "Ho, afrits! Dig me here a deep hole!" And immediately they went to work with great activity. When they had dug down a hundred feet, the genie commanded them to tunnel under the falls. "We will unearth this giant and prove his strength!" he cried defiantly. So they dug a tunnel until they reached a great mass of rock underneath the brink of the falls; and here they hewed out a huge cavern, and carried into it strange machines and many wheels, fastening them all strongly. And they hung wires from those machines, stringing them a long distance through dense woods and across ghostly ravines to where many men lived and worked. When all was ready the genie grasped a great lever and shouted, "Ho, Menuhkesen! Come forth now, and get busy!" Then he pressed down the lever, and instantly the spirit sprang out of the falls, and leaping upon a wire, rushed along it with such swiftness that no one could see him. The next moment he was many miles away, performing marvelous feats of strength--pushing great street-cars at incredible speed, turning the wheels in mills and factories, and lighting stores and dwellings. In fact, he did whatever the genie ordered him to do, without an instant's delay or any demur. All over these big, resourceful United States, Menuhkesen is found, but the modern captains of industry call him "Electricity." The genii also are with us, graduates of technical colleges or of engineering departments of great factories, who, donning khaki clothes and high-laced leather boots, camp out in the wild mountain fastnesses, or on the weird deserts, or in the dense forests, and invoke the giants they meet everywhere in this wonderful country. But it is the western mountain regions which chiefly hold the romance, the tragedy, and the gigantic power of the mythical old giant. All up and down the Rockies and the Sierras, and in the network of stupendous mountains which cross the five or six hundred miles between, are mountain torrents tearing down from summits perhaps two or three thousand feet high to the valleys below. Some of them are very small in appearance, but possessed of tremendous force.