YOSEMI TRAILS

J • SMEi^OifeffilMi

YALE UNIVEESITY LIBEAEY

FORMED BY
James Abraham Hillhouse, B.A. 1749
James Hillhouse, B.A. 1773
James Abraham Hillhouse, B.A. 1808
James Hillhouse, B.A. 1875
Removed 194:2 from, the
Manor House in Sachem's Wood
GIFT OF
GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR

¦38p ST. Simeaton C&ase

YOSEMITE TRAILS. Illustrated.
CONE-BEARING TREES OF THE CALIFORNIA
MOUNTAINS.

YOSEMITE TRAILS

HALF-DOME FROM THE EAST

d'age SSaj

YOSEMITE TRAILS
CAMP AND PACK-TRAIN IN THE YOSEMITE
REGION OF THE SIERRA NEVADA

BY
J. SMEATON CHASE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
AND A MAP

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
MDCCCCXI

COPYRIGHT, 191 1, BY J. SMEATON CHASE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published March iqti

\^h\X

TO
FREDERICK OLIVER POPENOE
OF ALTADENA, CALIFORNIA
AT WHOSE SUGGESTION THE EXPEDITIONS OF WHICH
THIS VOLUME IS THE RESULT WERE UNDER
TAKEN, THIS ADVENTURE OF A FIRST
BOOK IS BY THE AUTHOR COR
DIALLY INSCRIBED

PREFACE
THE following pages are the outcome of three
journeys, two of them of considerable length,
through the Yosemite region of the Sierra Nevada,
and of a resulting desire to acquaint the nature-lov
ing public with the attractions more particularly of
the less known areas of the locality. The writer has
preferred not to limit his work to the specific uses of
a guide-book, but has allowed a natural propensity
for a loose rein and discursive observation to dictate
its range; with the result, he hopes, of a gain in
variety and interest both to the general reader and
to the prospective and retrospective wayfarer in the
region. The volume will be found, however, to have
also much of the value of a guide-book for the travel
ler on the ground, and with this point in view it is
furnished with a map.
Especially it has been the design of the writer to
direct the attention of mountaineers and lake-lovers
to the fact, almost unknown even among devotees of
the out-of-doors, that there exists in the Sierra Nevada
a lake-land of incomparable richness and peculiar di
versity of charm: where lakes are sprinkled like stars,
exceeding the possibility of distinguishing them by
name. The time is coming when the highlands of this

viii PREFACE
great Californian range, which it is not too grandiose
to call the Alps of our country, with its superb features
of mountain, forest, river, glacier, lake, and meadow,
and lying under a climate of unequalled regularity
and perfection, will be the playground of America.
It is largely the purpose of this volume to expedite
the day.
Los Angeles, California.

CONTENTS

PART I : YOSEMITE AND THE SEQUOIAS
I. A General Survey of the Yosemite Val
ley  3
II. The Principal Rock-Features of the Val
ley  15
III. Some Observations on the Nomenclature
of the Valley  27
IV. A Circuit of Yosemite Rim : Fort Monroe
to the Little Yosemite  37
V. A Circuit of Yosemite Rim: The Little
Yosemite to the Tuolumne Meadows . 55
VI. A Circuit of Yosemite Rim : The Tuolumne
Meadows to Yosemite Falls .... 72
VII. A Circuit of Yosemite Rim: Yosemite
Falls to the Big Oak Flat Road . . 91
VIII. The Forests of the Yosemite Region . . 103
IX. The Great Seqjjoias  126
X. The Wawona Country  144
XI. Rafaelito : An Interlude  169

X CONTENTS
PART II : THE HIGH SIERRA
XII. The High Sierra :,The Yosemite Valley
TO the Hetch-Hetchy  187
XIII. The High Sierra : The Hetch-Hetchy to
THE Till-till  211
XIV. The High Sierra : The Till-till to Lake
Benson  229
XV. The High Sierra : Lake Benson to Lake
Tenaya  246
XVL Bodie: "Well, Sir — "  264
XVII. The High Sierra : Lake Tenaya to Mono 282
XVIII. The High Sierra : Mono to Gem Lake . 306
XIX. The High Sierra: Gem Lake to the
Little Yosemite  326
Index  347

ILLUSTRATIONS
Half-Dome from the East (page 339) Frontispiece
The Yosemite Falls  8
The Yosemite Valley  12
The Sentinel  20
The Half-Dome  26
Cathedral Peak  68
A Mountain Meadow in the Forest Belt . . 94
The Great Seqjjoias  128
A Trail in the Wawona Forest  152
El Capitan from the Big Oak Flat Road . .188
The Hetch-Hetchy  202
Our Lake in Jack Main Canon  234
Mount Dana and Jessie Lake  288
Looking Eastward from Mount Dana, Mono
Lake in the Distance  292
Rush Creek and the Crest of the Sierra. .314
Mount Lyell with its Glacier  320
Map  346
The illustrations are from photographs (most of which were made especially
for this book) by the Pillsbury Picture Company, of San Francisco, California,
with the exception of a few by the author.

PART I
YOSEMITE AND THE SEQUOIAS

"Mother of marvels, mysterious and tender Nature,
why do we not live more in thee ? "
Amiel.

YOSEMITE TRAILS
CHAPTER I
A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY
THE YOSEMITE VALLEY is not, properly speak
ing, a valley. That word conveys the image of
a gentle depression with sloping sides, which the
patient fingers of Time have smoothed and rounded
into quiet, compliant lines. The Yosemite is not in
the least of that character. It is a great cleft, or chasm,
which one might imagine to have been the work
of some exasperated Titan who, standing with feet
planted fifty miles apart lengthwise of the Sierra Ne
vada summit and facing westward, raised his hands
palm to palm over his head, and struck upon the
earth with such fury as to cleave a gap nearly a mile
in depth ; then separating his hands he thrust back
the sides of the fracture, leaving between them a nar
row, precipice-walled plain.
The Act of Congress of 1864 by which the tract
was granted to the State of California defined it as
"the 'cleft' or 'gorge' in the granite peak of the
Sierra Nevada mountain " ; and it would have been
better if in the early descriptions of the spot it had
been referred to as the Yosemite Gorge, which would

4 YOSEMITE TRAILS
have more properly described it and also would have
been more stimulating to the imagination than the
tamer designation which is now, no doubt, securely
fixed upon it.
In what may be called its aesthetic sense, however,
the word " valley" answers well enough ; for the level
enclosed between the walls is a sheltered tract of the
richest verdure, mixed of forest and meadow, watered
by a wandering and placid river, starred with flowers,
and the paradise of birds and friendly, harmless crea
tures. It is greatly irt this contrast between the grandeur
and severity of the encircling walls and the sylvan
charm of the protected enclosure that the unique
character of Yosemite consists. It is as if Nature had
here put herself to show a parable of contrasted excel
lences, setting the stern heights and solemn silences
of the cliffs against the soft demeanor and gentle
voices of trees and flowers, streams and heavenly
meadows ; and to marry them together she pours the
great waterfalls, in whose cloudy graces majesty and
loveliness are so mingled that one cannot tell which
of the two delights him the more.
The valley — I shall use the term which custom
has fixed — may be said to begin, on the west, where
the Bridal Veil Fall pours down over the southern
cliff, and to end at the conspicuous pillar or buttress
of the northern wall that is called the Washington
Column ; at which point the caiions of the main Mer
ced River and the Tenaya Creek converge. Within

SURVEY OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 5
*"ese limits the valley is about six miles long and has
an average width of about half a mile. Its general di
rection is east and west, crosswise to the axis of the
mountain chain which it cleaves. The "floor" is re
markably level, and lies at an elevation of almost
exacdy four thousand feet.
At the point where, in following upwards the course
of the Merced River, this altitude is reached, the
canon opens, while at the same time the walls, which
along the whole course of the river since leaving the
plain of the San Joaquin have been first hilly and then
mountainous, become high and precipitous cliffs, des
titute of trees or brush except as regards the talus at
their feet, the huge blocks and cubes of which give
footing to a chaparral of flowering brush interspersed
with oaks, maples, and platoons of indomitable pines.
The level plain lies between, a long glade through
which the quiet river makes its way, winding leisurely
from side to side, more like some thoughtful lowland
stream than what it is, — the nervous, quick-breathing
child of glacier and mountain-chasm. A growth of
willows and poplars marks its course, contrasting
their summer green or winter lavender against the
sombre richness of the evergreens.
Every observant person will be struck at first sight
by what he will later find to be the salient geological
feature of the whole Yosemite region, — the curved,
rind-like forms of the layers of rock of which these
mountains are built. A rough image of this can be
made by placing the open hands one upon the other.

6 YOSEMITE TRAILS
the palms downward and considerably concaved ; or,
if the reader will excuse the violence of the illustra
tion, a granite onion of mountain size would well
represent the formation. This peculiar structure is
clearly seen in the domes of the upper plateau, while
on the faces of the cliffs it is exhibited in arch-shaped
recesses where masses of the lower strata have be
come detached and fallen away.
The most noticeable instance of this occurs on the
northern face of the wall at a point just to the west
of the Washington Column. Immense fractures and
displacements of rock have there produced natural
arches that are very remarkable in their vast span and
deep recession. Another example, and one which I
always found very impressive to the imagination,
occurs in the southward-facing shoulder of the great
rock that commands the entrance to the valley and
is called El Capitan. When the afternoon light is re
flected from that enormous polished curve, it is easy
to imagine it to be the domed roof of some stupen
dous hall, whose door, like that of another Hall of
Eblis, is that terrible half-mile cliff that faces the west.
When the fracture and subsidence which formed
the valley took place, the two principal streams that
flow into the Merced River at this point, Yosemite
Creek from the north and Bridal Veil Creek from the
south, became at a stroke the waterfalls which are
known by those names. The Yosemite Creek, origi
nating on Mount Hoffman and flowing southwesterly
over a high granite plateau, makes in three steps a

SURVEY OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 7
fall of twenty-five hundred feet, which places it, on
the score of height, at the head of the considerable
waterfalls of the world. The Bridal Veil Creek runs
northwesterly and leaps over a sheer cliff of six hun
dred and twenty feet at the lowest point of the valley
wall, where the upper course of the stream has fol
lowed a deep trough which may have been formed
when the general subsidence took place. The other
two great waterfalls, Vernal, of three hundred and
twenty feet, and Nevada, of six hundred feet, occur
near together on the course of the Merced River
itself, in the narrow carion which leads up to another
and smaller valley known as the Little Yosemite.
These four waterfalls, with their various actions and
charms of manner, appear to form the preeminent
attraction of the valley to the great majority of people
who come to view its scenery. That this should be so
is not surprising, for a waterfall is like a hot-house
flower of Nature, a kind of rarity for exhibition ; and
there is good reason for enthusiasm in the wonderful
and changing beauty of the falls. But a great many
people are captured by mere novelty, and I venture
to think that this trifling feature is a main factor in
the judgment which places second, or disregards alto
gether, the unequalled majesty of the cliffs.
The human palate is, in fact, strangely dead to the
majestic ingredient. How often, when I have been
passing along a city street while some gorgeous so
lemnity of cloud-scenery has been offered to the gaze,
have I marvelled to see that hardly one out of hun-

8 YOSEMITE TRAILS
dreds or thousands of passers-by has bestowed even
a casual glance upon it, but that their attention has
been given entirely to the store-windows, the pave
ment, or the hats. There is something rather awful
about this insensibility : what can it mean? No doubt
in the case of many of these oblivious ones it means
that they are engrossed with an invisible companion,
him whom the ceremonious Spaniards name Don Di-
nero. But I am afraid it means also that most people
are bored by anything great, unless it is also novel.
As for the sky, that is an every-day affair, and they
do not account anything that is to be seen there to
be worth attention. These are the people who are
given to stage-drivers for a prey, and who find hap
piness in tracing those zoological resemblances which
that valuable body of men, whose fertility of fancy
would scarcely be inferred from a demeanor often of
singular stolidity, have discovered to exist in the cliff-
scenery of the great valley.
The luxuriant forest that occupies the greater part
of the valley floor, broken here and there by meadows,
also is worth some share of the admiration which
too many people reserve exclusively for the water
falls. Companies of pines from one hundred to two
hundred feet high, straight, smooth, and taper as ever
tree grew, ought not to be commonplace to most of
us. (Certainly the birds and squirrels do not find them
so, or they themselves could not remain so interesting
and individual, but would tend, like us, to become
dull and uniform. I have known a parrot who has

the yosemite falls

SURVEY OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 9
lived with people, and been "taught," to be dull,
even dreadfully dull ; but I do not suppose you find
them so on the Orinoco.)
If it were only for the perfection of their types, these
valley-sheltered trees, which have grown to the com-
pletest stature of their kind in this sunny nursery,
are full of value and interest. The yellow pine {Pinus
ponderosd) especially shows here its finest traits, spir
ing up for the skies with a fervor of tree-desire that
is indescribably stimulating, and dressed complete
with branches that sweep in loveliness to the very
ground. In the shadow of the south wall grows
the Douglas spruce {Pseudotsuga taxifolia), a Nestor
among trees, great, strong, and wise in counsel, plated
with dark and rugged bark, and waving plumes of
sombre splendor in the cool wind that draws along the
face of the cliffs. With him stands here and there the
white silver fir {Abies concolor), tall, straight, and
of admirable symmetry. If the Douglas is Nestor the
white fir is Paris.
The cedar {Libocedrus decurre-ns) also reaches
here the perfect dignity of its race, and mixing
everywhere freely among the pines brightens their
dark richness with pyramids of ferny olive. The old
trees of this species, fulfilling the characteristics of
their type, are nearly always dead in their tops
though in full career of life. They rise solemnly amid
the forest like many-branched candlesticks, and en
force by their shape the vague idea of a religious as
sociation which is suggested by their common name

lo YOSEMITE TRAILS
of " incense cedar," and by the many allusions in the
Book of Psalms to their brethren of the Lebanon for
ests. It is pleasant to know that the great Israelitish
king was a man of trees as well as of war, and loved
the merry greenwood heartily.
Though the special glory of this forest belt lies in the
conifers, the Yosemite is splendid in oaks also. There
are many magnificent specimens of both evergreen
and deciduous oak in the valley, where the balanced
beauty of their shapes is heightened by contrast with
the straight-pillared pines and cedars. Far up Indian
Caiion, on the north side of the valley, there is grow
ing an oak that I believe would out-oak every oak
that grows on California mountain, foothill, or plain,
if it could be brought to the proof. Very few people
see it, for the caiion is narrow, gloomy, and difficult
to climb. I viewed with amazement the great wall
like trunk of this solitary monster. A kind of octopus
in shape, his long grey arms go searching up and
down the canon as though he were feeling for a
way out, and might presendy lift his splayed foot
and drag his Cyclopean deformity down to the
plain, to affright the puny sons of men.
In luxuriance of flowers the valley in spring and
summer is notable even beyond the measure of the
plain and foothill regions of the state. Chief in bril
liance, and in novelty as regards most people, of the
spring flowers is the snow-plant {Sarcodes sanguinea),
which begins to appear on the floor of the valley soon
after the snow has melted, and astonishes the early

SURVEY OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY ii
visitor with its unexpected blood-red apparition. An
unflower-like flower, it is attractive only for its glar
ing violence of color. Every fibre is red, the red of
Burgundy wine. It is a Mephistopheles among plants,
a kind of diabolical asparagus.
While the snow-plant still blazes on the brown floor,
the forest begins to be lighted up along every water
course with the six-inch blossoms of the dogwood,
gleaming like candle-flames down the dark aisles
of the pines, or flickering in the breeze that follows
the flowing river. Then the violets enter, white and
blue, and the meadows stand thick with purple cy
clamens. Next comes on the procession of lilies, that
will last all through the summer ; and with them ar
rives the mountain-lilac {Ceanothus) in clouds of azure
and white that emulate the very sky. Then the aza
leas, whose sheathed leaf-buds, like spurts of green
flame, have waited impatiently for the flower-buds to
join them, break into leaf and blossom together, and
every land-path and water-path is bordered with
their tropical beauty and rich, exotic perfume. Wild
roses mingle with them, delightful beyond all the rest
with their rustic associations and wholesome dainti
ness of air: a very epitome of country delights in
every breath of their frank, simple fragrance.
As midsummer comes on. Nature takes up the full
burden of her labor of love. Grasses grow knee-high,
and, ripening their humble fruitage, roll in russet
tides over the meadows and surge against the forest
wall. Brakes stand thickly in every opening, their

12 YOSEMITE TRAILS
cathedral richness of tracery matching the cedar-
sprays that fleck them with playful shadows. Oak-
leaves gleam with a dull, healthy polish. The birds
that have been rehearsing all the spring now give
their full concert, and the squirrel rejoices volubly in
the multitude of cones, which he can hardly suffer to
ripen before he must begin to harvest them. Hum
mingbirds dash and whir about like little thunder
bolts of flaming energy, and butterflies drowse on
drooping tassels of goldenrod.
So, in a riot of godetia, columbine, mimulus, pent-
stemon, lupine, and a score of others, the summer
passes by, and autumn, when it comes, comes in such
a rush and tumult of massed and gorgeous color that
one never thinks to mourn for summer, dead and
gone. Dogwood blooms again, crimson for white;
willows and poplars are all of paly gold ; the oaks
burn rusty-red, as befits their iron strength ; only the
pines and cedars, of a higher breed than the rest,
stand disdaining change and defying times and sea
sons. Slow lichens, purple, grey, and " melancholy
gold " (Ruskin's fine expression), creep like the tears
of Time over cold granite of cliff and earthquake-
talus, to find their summer in the yellow autumn sun
light that only reaches them when maple and moun
tain-lilac have begxin to shed their leaves.
Snow rarely falls in the valley before Christmas, al
though the trails of the upper levels may have been
closed two months before, and the passes of the High
Sierra are often sealed as early as mid-September. In

TH

ITE VALLEY

SURVEY OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY 13
the deep hollow of the valley a long Indian summer
holds the field with an ardor of color that is like a
mediaeval pageant, A sky of Prussian blue enhances
the creamy white of the cliffs and is deeply reflected
in the calm river that now saunters and hesitates
among shallows of sand. At night the cold leaps down
from the upper plateaus, and the meadows are frosted
to sallow tones of grey and drab ; but by midday the
sun burns as if through glass with a sharp, parching
fervor. Under it acorns ripen suddenly, falling in
showers at every push of wind like raindrops rattling
on a roof ; and men themselves would cure into a sort
of raisins if there were but enough sugar in them. A
dry electric energy is in the air, and trees and animals
charge themselves to saturation point. As for the
squirrels, I believe one might draw sparks from them
by applying a knuckle.
At last the weather breaks and the snow falls. In
some winters only a few inches of snow may lie on
the valley floor ; in others, many feet. But it is always
the winter of the mountains, vivifying and kindly.
The habitants of the valley bring out ski, sleds, and
snow-shoes, and the hardy Norse and Saxon strain
revives and strikes a blow for freedom. The pines
stand as it were with folded arms, resolute and endur
ing, and rejoice in the Spartan severity. The water
falls shroud themselves in bewildering phantasmago
rias of ice, and act again the glacial age in littie.
Yosemite builds up a huge white cone five hundred
feet in height ; a volcano, but of ice instead of fire.

14 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Vernal and Nevada array themselves with giant ici
cles, and thunder through reverberating caverns of
blue and green splendor.
Gradually the balance of power reverses. The sun
strengthens and the snows recede. The rush of falling
water pulsates through the valley, and the river runs
strong and dark. Somewhere the great word is
spoken; and the old, strange striving begins once
more in herb and bush and tree.

CHAPTER II
THE PRINCIPAL ROCK-FEATURES OF THE VALLEY
WHEN one looks down into the Yosemite from
a comprehensive vantage-ground such as In
spiration Point, it is seen that the cross-section shape
of the valley is somewhat like the letter U. The walls
are in general effect vertical ; the floor is smooth,
level, and as a whole narrow relatively to the height
of the walls, sweeping up at the sides to meet them
in a natural curve formed by the debris of the cliffs.
This debris is irregularly disposed, there being in
some places vast accumulations and in others surpris
ingly little of the rock-wastage. Although enormous
in total amount it is yet so little in view of the great
height of the walls that have contributed it that its
scantiness is regarded by geologists as remarkable.
An average cross-section drawing of the valley would
show the debris-angle as a mere trace, hardly easing
the abruptness of the sheer plunge of the cliffs to the
level of the floor. The greater part of the wreckage
is supposed to have fallen in some momentous earth
quake that occurred not less than three hundred years
ago, the period being determined by the age of trees
at present growing upon the talus-slope. Evidences
of the cataclysm are strewn thickly all up and down

i6 YOSEMITE TRAILS
the canon of the Merced River, which owes much
of its picturesque character to the huge obstructions
over and between which the rapid stream pours and
pushes its way in mile upon mile of foaming cascades.
The additions made during later centuries are so tri
fling in comparison as to be hardly distinguishable,
though the slow, steadfast processes of wind and rain,
heat and frost, topple down every year many tons
of freshly shattered granite to add to the grey and
lichened masses that stretch far out across the val
ley floor.
At intervals along the face of the walls the time-
darkened rock is seen to be scarred to its original
color, and has very much the appearance of being
whitened by frost. These scars mark the paths of
rock-slides of recent years. To witness one such ava
lanche stimulates the spectator to a vivid impression
of the majestic uproar involved in Nature's greater
coups de main, such as that must have been which,
perhaps at one blow, flung almost the whole of this
incalculable weight of rock down into the gulf.
Standing one day of late autumn about the middle
of the valley, I was startled by a report like a can
non-shot, which filled the whole valley with echoes
that roared and boomed, replied and multiplied, in a
long-continued, glorious tumult. As the deafening
sound died away in sullen mutterings under the vizor
of El Capitan, I was able to distinguish the point of
attack by the long, clattering descent of a vast quan
tity of rock. The night had -been a cold one in the

ROCK-FEATURES OF THE VALLEY 17
valley, while on the seven to eight thousand foot
levels of the upper rim the temperature must have
dropped almost to zero. Frost, working quietiy with
his Archimedean lever, had just succeeded in shifting
from the shoulder of The Sentinel a trifle of fifty tons
or so of granite. For near a thousand feet the boul
der fell sheer, swift and silent ; then striking the cliff
it burst like a bomb, shattering into a myriad flying
shards and splinters, and dislodging a smother of
fragments that trickled down to the valley in a stream
that lasted for minutes. Then, from the spot where
the boulder had struck, dust began to rise into the
sunny air, slowly building up and burgeoning like
a summer cloud, and every whit as snowy. It was
the flour of granite, powdered instantaneously by the
terrific shock.
As I gazed, I reflected upon the spectacular fea
tures of the catastrophe which we have seen dis
cussed in magazines as a physical possibility, — the
collision of our planet with another stellar body. This
proved soon to be too serious a matter for my un
scientific mind to contemplate calmly, and it was
a relief to turn to the past, and admire the simple
effectiveness of the device employed by men besieged
in castles and walled cities, who rolled down rocks
and other objects of useful specific gravity upon the
heads of the obstinate persons who were coming
upstairs on scaling-ladders.
The southern wall is noticeably darker in its gen
eral color than the northern, probably for the rea-

i8 YOSEMITE TRAILS
son that the greater degree of shade encourages a
stronger growth of mosses and lichens, both which
flourish extravagantly in many places. On the great
boulders near the foot of the littie Sentinel Fall, thick
sheets of moss hang like mantles, embroidered with
disks of lichen and distilling slow diamonds from
their ragged edges. This side of the walls shows also
more of those avalanche - tracks of which I have
spoken, and more of the rock-flour of recent manu
facture, which, it occurred to me, might well provide
the bread of that race of earth-giants whom one may
imagine as inhabiting some spacious hall under the
arched roof of El Capitan.
I do not know of any place where the tranquil
beauty of shadow can be so well seen and felt and
studied as in this deep, serene valley. On this un
limited canvas light paints with a mighty brush, in
broad half-miles of cobalt and purple and gold and
grey. There is continual variety in noting the day
long, quiet changes ; continual variety and continual
discovery. One may have studied El Capitan and
The Sentinel and Half-Dome a score of times, and
think that one knows them through and through and
yard by yard ; but the next observation will show
some clouding of color or massing of shadow that
quite alters your conception. Even the solid outlines
seem to change, and a slant of sunlight or skein of
mist will upset the most fixed topographical conclu
sions. Details even of great extent may easily be
overlooked on these huge walls, and such are apt to

ROCK-FEATURES OF THE VALLEY 19
be suddenly projected into visibility by some chance
arrangement of light and shade. For instance, I
thus became aware of a vast concavity in the face of
El Capitan which I had never suspected, and which
was revealed by a particular obliquity of early morn
ing light in a deep, shell-like bowl of shadow. The
Three Brothers, again, seen from the southwest soon
after sunrise, show magnificent tone effects, light and
shadow being regularly laid in broad, alternate bands
of such massiveness and strength as to give a new
characteristic to this, as I feel, somewhat formal and
uninteresting group.
The Sentinel, that perpendicular elliptical column
which stands about midway of the southern wall, is
perhaps the least variable in expression of all the
notable cliffs of the valley, standing resolutely muffled
in shadows until the sun begins to sink to its eclipse
behind the high promontory of El Capitan. Then his
face glitters with fine Plutonian lines, hard and grim
as steel on iron. To me this superb obelisk is, next to
the Half-Dome and El Capitan, the dominant point
of the valley ; and when I have lain awake at night
with that tall grey spectre impending over me and
obscuring a tenth of the host of heaven, I have been
an Egyptian in Thebes, an Assyrian in Nineveh, a
Martian or Saturnian for all I knew, under the spell
of his solemn enchantment.
At such times, also, I have tried to imagine what
would be the sensations of a person who should be
transported unawares to this valley, and set down at

20 YOSEMITE TRAILS
night among these dimly seen shapes of rock and
water. It would be all the better if it happened to be
¦ one of those moonlit but partly cloudy nights, when
the light comes and goes here and there in sudden
gleams and fadings. Here he would see, or doubt
whether he saw, close beside and crowding against
him, this perpendicular wall, which his eye would fol
low up and up, until he wondered where the top
might be. Over there would be some incomprehensi
ble shape which must surely be a delusion of his own
senses. Yonder where the pale column of Yosemite
Fall glimmered in the peering light, he would see
what might be the straight ascending camp-fire
smoke of the departed Indian genius of the place, or
perhaps the reek of some weird sacrifice. The falling
waters filling the valley with hollow voices and echoes
would confuse instead of enlightening him, and the
subtle forest-sounds, intricate and perplexing even by
day, would add a thousand small mysteries to his
bewilderment. What El Capitan is to the western end of the val
ley, Half-Dome is to the eastern. And more, for it is,
I think, incomparably the most wonderful, striking,
and impressive feature of the region. In strangeness
of shape this hemispherical mountain of solid granite
is singular among the world's geological marvels, and
its sublime height and firm, soaring outline impose it
upon the imagination more than would be possible to
bulk alone. Professor Whitney in his " Report of the
Geological Survey of California," remarks that "it

THE sentinel

ROCK-FEATURES OF THE VALLEY 21
strikes even the most casual observer as a new reve
lation in mountain forms ; its existence would be con
sidered an impossibility if it were not there before us
in all its reality ; it is an unique thing in mountain
scenery, and nothing even approaching it can be
found except in the Sierra Nevada itself,"
From every part of the upper half of the valley, the
eye is compelled as if by the force of physical attrac
tion to return to this extraordinary mountain, which
one can never tire of contemplating. One looks upon
it almost as one would gaze at some majestic frag
ment of statuary ; and I sometimes wondered with
what beautiful phantoms these cloudy domes, pearly
cataracts, amethystine gulfs, and sylvan depths of
forest would have been peopled if Yosemite had fallen
to ancient Greece, For even the matter-of-fact mod
ern mind, surrounded by forms so unusual and
heights so solemn, tends to unwarrantable flights of
imagination ; and one is apt to find one's self ponder
ing why, as much as how, they were brought into
being. The Half-Dome possesses one feature in particular
that I always found remarkable and charming, —
the strange manner in which it catches and holds
the last light of the day. Often for a full hour after
the valley has sunk into shadow, this high Alp, over
looking by two thousand feet the intervening heights,
receives the western glow, and like a great heliograph
reflects the peaceful messages of the evening over all
the quiet valley.

22 YOSEMITE TRAILS
The most eccentric of all the rock-shapes is the
double-pinnacled tower called Cathedral Spires, which
forms a part of the southern wall near the western
end of the valley, and rises, a sheer monolith, to a
height of twenty-six hundred feet above the floor
level. It is not often that one meets with any really
cogent resemblance between Nature's large, artiess
architecture and man's self-conscious handiwork, but
in this case the coincidence is quite sufficiently strik
ing to warrant the name (although in my opinion
the naming of natural objects with regard to such
resemblances is always a reprehensible practice).
Old inhabitants recall that the rock originally termi
nated in three pinnacles, but one of them fell decades
ago from its high estate, and only a whitish scar
close beside the bases of the remaining two marks
the spot where it stood. There is, so far as I am
aware, no representation extant of the appearance
of this third turret, which must have fallen prior to
the year 1864, under which date King refers to " the
two sharp, slender minarets of granite " ; but if it
was at all conformable to its companion spires the
peculiarity of the circumstance would be greatiy en
hanced. In the little oak-shaded cemetery under Yosemite
Point, where the fathers of the valley are sleeping,
a fragment of this rock marks the grave of James C.
Lamon, who died in the year 1875, and whose name
still clings to the orchard which he planted near the
junction of the Tenaya Creek with the river. His

ROCK-FEATURES OF THE VALLEY 23
friend John Conway, who, one of the last of the old
backwoodsmen of the region, still lives in the Chow-
chilla country, a few miles to the south, with fine
imagination chose this fallen sky-steeple from which
to hew the simple monument of " the pioneer settier
of Yosemite," Not many of us can hope for a me
morial as impressive and dignified,
A notable object of this end of the valley is the
great castle-like pile which stands just to the west of
the Cathedral Spires and is known as Cathedral
Rocks, Here again a particular condition of light is
needed to give the mass its true power of outline, I
used to find this an unimpressive agglomeration of
shapeless humps, offering an almost irritating con
trast to the powerful lines of El Capitan on the oppo
site side of the valley, and only imposing by a certain
doggedness of contour. But under a late afternoon
sun I have seen the group draw into coherence, and
reveal a stateliness and quietude of proportion that
I was careful, whenever I passed them afterwards, to
remember. The dome-shaped formation which is the marked
geological feature of the region, and which is seen
on a vast scale in every view of the upper plateau,
is perfectly illustrated at one point along the valley
wall, where North Dome stands above the salient
angle of the Washington Column. It is a conspicu
ous object from nearly all positions, facing the Half-
Dome across the gulf of the Tenaya Canon ; a pol
ished helmet of granite, rising in a pure curve from

24 YOSEMITE TRAILS
a cliff that plunges directly to the valley floor. The
south and west inclines of the curve are marked by
deep fractures which reveal clearly the concentric
laminations of the structure.
Of these laminations. Professor Whitney says that
" the curves are arranged strictiy with reference to
the surface of the masses of rock, showing clearly
that they must have been produced by the contrac
tion of the material while cooling or solidifying, and
also giving very strongly the impression that, in
many places, we see something of the original shape
of the surface, as it was when the granitic mass as
sumed its present position." It is well to bear this in
mind, for one is tempted to refer these flowing, con
vex outlines to glacial action, the traces of which,
being so evident throughout the Yosemite region,
may easily betray the judgment of the layman. It is
natural to the unlearned to conclude that the phe
nomenon of the domes, accompanied as it is every
where by striking evidences of glacial denudation,
indicates the modelling of the ordinary rugged shapes
of mountains by this agency ; especially in view of
the fact that no example of the dome appears among
the highest peaks, whence the glaciers proceeded,
and further, that glacial action is clearly shown on
many of the domes up to their very summits.
I have not found in the notes of geologists who
have surveyed this region any explanation of the pe
culiar structure, nor any definite statement as to the
depth to which the shell-like formation extends. Mr.

ROCK-FEATURES OF THE VALLEY 25
King indeed observes, referring particularly to El Cap
itan, that the structure appears to be superficial, never
descending more than a hundred feet ; but in the case
of the Royal Arches, where the vaulting is most
remarkable, it is seen at a much greater depth ; and
the insignificant fractures which occur everywhere
on the walls but are too small to be noticed except as
one passes close to them in climbing the trails to
the upper levels, appear to indicate in a multitude of
instances the same general construction.
It is one more anomaly of the Half-Dome that the
two-thousand-foot vertical precipice of the northern
face shows no trace of the concentric stratification
beyond the thin, overhanging lip at the brink, al
though its exterior sculpture strongly illustrates the
formation. The imagination finds a fascinating exercise in try
ing to reconstruct the appearance of the valley dur
ing its glacial period. There is evidence that the gla
cier which occupied it was at one time not less than
a thousand feet in depth. From the three main ca
nons, the Tenaya, the Merced, and the Illilouette, trib
utary glaciers converged, crowding with resistless,
elemental movement into the box-like enclosure, surg
ing up in medial and lateral ridges, and broken by
profound crevasses as the ice-river swept around the
compressing angles and buttresses of the walls. It
would be a stormy lake of ice, its surface ever rear
ing up into a new confusion of monstrous shapes ;
and over the surrounding cliffs ever and anon icy

26 YOSEMITE TRAILS
blocks and masses would fall crashing from the brinks,
filling the sullen arctic air with solemn uproar.
Traces of the successive terminal moraines of the
glacier are still visible to the geologic eye at several
points of the valley floor. These moraines probably
operated as dams, holding back the water that issued
from the retreating glacier and forming the lake which
eventually replaced it. This in turn gave place to a
meadow formed by the deposit of sediment ; and with
the arrival of heavier vegetation there ensued at
length the present epoch of the valley.
If the future is to continue the revolutions of the
past, this loveliest of valleys may still be destined to
be the battle-ground of geologic forces ; and perhaps
it is only our stiffness of imagination that persuades
us that the captains will not be as heroic as those
of old.

the half-dome

CHAPTER III
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE NOMENCLATURE
OF THE VALLEY
I FIND it difficult to proceed further without reliev
ing myself of some observations upon the names
that have become, I fear, firmly fixed upon many of
the principal features of the valley, I own that I do
not expect to find that my point of view is shared by
a majority of people, but I am sure, nevertheless,
that there must be a large number of persons whose
appreciation and enjoyment of natural beauty are dis
turbed by the association with it of a name based on
some inopportune feat of humor (or the lack of it), or
on some inept sentimentality.
Particularly irritating examples occur in the names
of two small waterfalls at the lower end of the valley.
At the northwest angle of El Capitan a small creek
pours down in a fall of thirty-three hundred feet. It
is a charming fall, peculiarly airy and childlike; but
the pleasure with which one views it is far from being
enhanced by its fatuous name of The Virgin's Tears.
(Ribbon Fall is now adopted as the official titie, but
the other, unanimously backed by the Jehus, easily
holds the field.) On the opposite side of the valley, a
small, inconstant stream known as Meadow Brook

28 YOSEMITE TRAILS
executes a fall which has received the name of The
Widow's Tears. This sickly designation, which bears
all the marks of stage-driver origin even before your
whip delivers himself of the jocose explanation that
the fall only lasts for two or three weeks, has actu
ally received official sanction, and appears upon the
maps of the Geological Survey, This will never do :
is it too much to hope that a dignified Department
of the National Service will refuse to perpetuate this
trumpery appellation, and in future maps employ the
natursd title of Meadow Brook Fall ?
The name of Inspiration Point is hardly less ob
jectionable. That famous spot gives what is perhaps
the most admirable of all the many great views of
the region. No doubt all of us ought to, and most of
us do, acquire a certain amount of inspiration from
the inexpressible beauty of the landscape that opens
from this renowned station. But I do not think that
it enhances the fine impression, rather I am sure for
my own part that it belitties it, to be notified that you
are expected to feel inspired. The old Adam is a per
verse rogue, and resents these instructions; and
while it may be to an extent interesting to know that
some worthy gentieman who preceded you expe
rienced here certain creditable emotions, it is irritat
ing to have it conveyed in the very name of the
place that you ought to suffer the same ecstasy. In
spiration, in any case, is a timid bird, which appears
without advertisement, delights not in sign-boards,
and the louder it is whistled for is the more apt to

NOMENCLATURE OF THE VALLEY 29
refuse to come, I have heard the spot spoken of by
warm and jocular young gentiemen as Perspiration
Point ; and although that species of witticism is, gen
erally speaking, distasteful to me, I find that I suffer
no pang when it is practised at the expense of this
piece of pedantry.
Another instance of this obtrusive suggestion oc
curs in the name of Artists' Point. I imagine an ar
tist arriving unexpectedly (as an artist should arrive
on the scenes of his successes) at this spot, whence
he sees with rejoicing a most true and perfect land
scape, without fear and without reproach. Eagerly he
seizes upon it and marks it for his own ; and with
hasty fingers he prepares the instruments of his craft,
calling upon Winsor and Newton, He sits down and
begins those operations which answer to a prelimi
nary survey in engineering. Suddenly he perceives,
close by, an object that looks strangely like a sign
post. He reconnoitres it in the manner of the wood
pecker in the story : " Looks like a sign-post ; ugly
enough for a sign-post ; blamed if I don't believe it is
a sign-post." Hurriedly he rises and approaches it :
it is a sign-post ; and it informs him that this is the
spot from which, as a matter of course, artists are
expected to paint the valley. " Good heavens ! " he
cries, " am I to be Number Four Hundred and Sev
enty-three ? " and he loathes the stale sweetness like
a man who might discover that his bride had been
three times divorced.
Bridal Veil Fall suffers, although not so severely,

30 YOSEMITE TRAILS
from the same ill-judged sentimentalism as The Vir
gin's Tears. Why may we not be left to discover
these resemblances, or what others we prefer, for
ourselves? Surely what is wanted is a name, and
not a descriptive title reflecting the idiosyncrasies
of some person who chanced to be early on the
scene and hastened to take advantage of the fact. In
some instances we know the offender by his own
avowal. Dr. Bunnell, in his book of personal reminis
cences entitled "The Discovery of the Yosemite,"
says, —
" The most of the names were selected by myself,
and adopted by our command." (He is not here
using the idiom of royalty, but by " our command "
refers to the Mariposa Battalion, the body of men
who under Major Savage in 185 1 discovered the val
ley while pursuing marauding Indians.) " This defer
ence was awarded to my selections because I was
actively interested in acquiring the Indian names
and significations, and because I was considered the
most interested in the scenery."
One can but wish that the names which interested
him so much had suited him better.
There can be no great objection to such tities as El
Capitan, The Sentinel, and so on ; although even
there I think pure names would be preferable. Clouds'
Rest and Washington Column are harmless, and the
naming of the domes, as North, Half, and Sentinel,
is well enough. But one may wish that Mr. Watkins
had been denied his mountain, and Mr. Murphy his

NOMENCLATURE OF THE VALLEY 31
dome, if it were only for the sake of the poets yet to
be. What will they do with such monsters ? I confess
I am thankful that Wordsworth had no such problems
to encounter, but instead such gentle giants as Glara-
mara and Helvellyn. Derwentwater, moreover, is
better than Lake McGee, and Martindale than Jack
ass Meadows.
When it is a question of trees, flowers, and animals,
it is reasonable enough to designate species by the
names of their discoverers (though Clarke crow is un
fortunate in some indefinite way), and the latinized
terminations give a dignified flavor. These things
are more or less intimate and personal. But when it
is a mountain that is to be baptized some adequacy
should be observed, and the names of none but dis
tinguished men bestowed upon them ; nor those if for
any reason they are inappropriate.
The obviously best thing would be to keep to the
native names as far as they go, and in adding to them
to eschew local and temporary considerations. The
only valid objection to the use of the Indian names
would be in cases where they were too obstreperous in
pronunciation, which is seldom the fact. The longest
of them all consist of five syllables, and in every case
the sounds are simple and characteristic, and often
also euphonious ; as, for instance, Patill'ima, for the
spot which we somewhat inconsequently call Gla
cier Point ; Lo'ya, signifying a camp or signal station,
the name for Sentinel Rock ; and Ahwah'nee, mean
ing a deep valley, which was the name of the valley

32 YOSEMITE TRAILS
itself, Yosemite being the name of the tribe that
inhabited it at the time of its discovery.
I acknowledge that it is a matter of difficulty, at
this day, to secure an exact interpretation, if that
were necessary, or even a reasonably certain pho
netic spelling, of the early Indian names. In the hope
of getting some light upon a number of disputed
points of this nature, I one evening interviewed at
his camp a friendly Indian (friendly in more than the
official sense) who I had reason to think might speak
with authority. He had been bom in the valley, in
the old, peaceful days of "heap deer, heap acorn,
heap big time," and was highly intelligent, willing
to impart his lore, and confident of its accuracy ; but
after five minutes of conversation my hopes faded,
and in ten, died.
It was a picturesque scene, at least. With Miguel
was a younger Indian and the latter's squaw, who by
the uncertain light worked silently upon a half-fin
ished basket of handsome shape and design. We
held our philological powwow by a flickering fire
that burned under an aged cedar. Ten yards away
was a party of women and girls who were seated on
the ground around a larger fire that threw brigand
ish, ruddy lights upon jetty eyes, ropes and curtains
of dusky hair, glistening teeth, tawny cheeks, and
dirty but shapely feet. Necklaces of beads, blue, red,
and yellow, threw in a vivacious sprinkling of color
that happily relieved the shapeless squalor of " store "
garments of the kind that describe themselves with

NOMENCLATURE OF THE VALLEY 33
innocent precision as " wrappers." Some of the girls
were quite pretty, though it required an effort to sup
pose that any of the older women could ever have
been so.
Surly dogs, the intricacies of whose breed would
defy the sagacity of Seven Dials, prowled, growled,
and occasionally howled in the shadowy purlieus, and
the round sleek visage of a pappoose, strapped in its
basket-cradle, appeared in a solemn and intermit
tent manner from behind the bandannaed back of a
wrinkled squaw. Something in a pot over the fire
sputtered in an interesting manner, and was occa
sionally stirred with a twig by the woman with the
pappoose, upon whom, after every such operation,
she economically bestowed the twig with its adher
ing nourishment,
t* This party paid no attention to us, but maintained
an animated conversation among themselves, accom
panied with an obbligato of pleasant, low-toned laugh
ter. Finding my Indian at one moment in doubt how
to explain to me some fine shade of meaning, I sug
gested that we might consult the women at the other
fire. But this Miguel promptly negatived, dismissing
the idea with a contemptuous gesture and, " Pai-utes ;
no good " ; the younger man and the squaw signify
ing their agreement by sardonic gruntings.
The Pai-utes of the Mono Desert region on the
eastern side of the Sierra are in the habit of repairing
yearly to the Yosemite for the purpose of sharing in
the double harvest, — first of the tourists, later of

34 YOSEMITE TRAILS
acorns ; and for some reason which I could not dis
cover, their Yosemite neighbors seem to be willing
to suffer this encroachment. It may be that the prin
ciples of Free Trade, although they have by no
means fulfilled among larger communities the gener
ous hopes of the founders of the doctrine by abolish
ing racial and national jealousies, are succeeding in
this small instance, where the exchanges are such
humble matters as acorns and piiion-nuts.
My faith in Miguel's ability as an interpreter was
badly shaken early in our interview when he averred
that many of the Indian words which I propounded
to him had no meanings whatever. One after an
other of them was declared to be "Just name, all
same your name ; not mean nothing." In vain I la
bored with him, refusing to believe that it could be
as he said, and almost feeling the sincerity of Hiawa
tha himself to be hanging on the event. Now and
then he would verify one of my examples, with an
air so frank that I could not suppose him to be de
liberately misleading me when, the next moment, he
declared some supposed interpretation to be " White
man story; no good." When I argued that even
white men's names meant something he was vastiy
interested, but became sceptical when I was at a loss
to expound my own at his request. And it was not
reassuring to be told, when I put it to him that, after
all, the versions I proposed to him had certainly been
g^ven by some of his people, " Some time white
man fool Indian ; some time Indian fool white man

NOMENCLATURE OF THE VALLEY 35
maybe." This sounded so alarming at the end of
our lengthy debate that I thought it best to retire
with what few corroborations I had secured, for fear
that a fuller revelation might come ; and I did not
in the sequel act upon my friend's cordial invitation,
" You come 'gain, I tell you some more."
The interview at least left me with a high respect
for the Cherokee Sequoyah (after whom the gfiant
trees and redwoods of California have been fittingly
named), who early in the last century achieved the
feat of reducing the Indian languages to eighty-six
syllabic characters. It is unfortunate that his labors
did not result in spreading the art of writing among
the native populations, which would have availed to
define more or less exactly the sound-syllables and
their meanings. Any language that is spoken only,
not written, must tend to a looseness of pronuncia
tion, extending to the length of neighboring tribes,
originally speaking the same language, becoming
mutually unintelligible.
A case in point is the word Yosemite itself, which
Miguel stoutly affirmed to be no Indian word what
ever, declaring that the real word was Er-her'-ma-te
{h guttural), signifying a bear. The difference is no
doubt one merely of local pronunciation ; but the diffi
culty of identifying these elusive sounds is even better
illustrated in the word Illilouette. The early geogra
phers of the valley attempted in this case to adhere to
the Indian name of the waterfall, but failed to fix the
sound in English characters nearer than Illilouette

36 YOSEMITE TRAILS
for Too-loo'-lo-wy-ak, which spelling closely repre
sents the Indian word. Considerable as the diver
gence is, it is not surprising to one who has contended
with similar problems ; but it seems a gratuitous flour
ish to furnish a supposed Indian name with the galli-
cized termination "ette"; an anomaly which adver
tises its own monstrosity.
In the early " Guide-book to the Yosemite " pre
pared by Professor Whitney, he delved somewhat
deeply into the intricacies of the Indian names of
localities in the region, and gave a comprehensive list
of them. But he was fain to conclude his remarks
upon the subject with the confession, — " The discre
pancies between the statements of the different inter
preters it is beyond our power to reconcile." In the
same book he offered a suggestion which I could
wish might have been adopted, — that the general
title of the Cordilleras of North America should be
used to designate the whole system of our Western
mountain ranges. It would be a good appellation
geographically, and an excellent one imaginatively,
wafting the mind back to the day-dream mountains of
boyhood, when we roved with friendly Gauchos over
boundless llanos in the shadow of the mighty Andes.

CHAPTER IV
A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM: FORT MONROE
TO THE LITTLE YOSEMITE
FOR some time I had wished to make the complete
circuit of the upper levels adjacent to the Yosem
ite Valley when the opportunity at last came to do
so, partly in the company of a congenial friend. This
was Mr. Carl Eytel, an artist whom the heats of sum
mer had driven from his beloved Colorado Desert,
where I had last encountered him among the palms
and alkali of that sun-blistered region.
I had frequently, in argument with him, urged the
preeminence of the pine over the palm, if only on the
ground of the greater amount of drawing in it. But
Eytel is a colorist, and when he takes the argument
on to that ground there is no following him ; for you
cannot argue about color, which every man perceives
differentiy according to his spiritual composition.
We left the valley on a fine morning of mid- August,
with the two burros who were to carry our necessities
for the trip, — Adam, a sedate old grey, and Teddy,
a young black with no marked characteristics other
than a striking appetite. I always feel that I owe a
special debt to nature for providing this humble beast
of burden, for in many expeditions into the mountains

38 YOSEMITE TRAILS
I have found him better suited to my needs than either
the lordly horse or that durable hybrid which occupies
the middle place in the equine scale. My purposes
usually require a slow pace and frequent stoppages,
and the constitution of the burro is such that he is
naturally disposed to conform to my wishes in this
regard, and often, indeed, to exceed them.
Our plan was to ascend to the south rim of the
valley by way of the Wawona stage-road, and then,
taking the Pohono trail which leaves the road at
Fort Monroe, to proceed east to Glacier Point. Thence
we would follow the so-called Long trail to the head
of the Nevada Fall, and instead of descending to the
valley and climbing to the north side by the Eagle
Peak trail, I (alone from this point) intended to take
the Sunrise trail northeasterly to the Tuolumne
Meadows, and thence to double back westwards by
way of the old Tioga " road." Leaving that relic of
adventurous engineering before it turns northerly at
Porcupine Flat, I proposed to take the southwesterly
trail to the head of the Yosemite Falls, and then to
continue westwards, passing Eagle Peak, to the sum
mit of El Capitan. From there I hoped to be able to
follow the old trail out to Gentry's Saw-Mill, and so
to return to the valley by the Big Oak Flat road, thus
making a complete circumambulation.
The road to Fort Monroe was hot and dusty, but
mitigated with cool streams and intervals of grateful
forest and enlivened by many tracks of deer and
bear. The afternoon sunlight was streaming full into

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 39
the valley as we reached Artists' Point. The narrow
ness of the gateway as it is seen from this point
brings out strongly the gorge-like character of the
depression, and in my opinion renders this the most
striking of all the comprehensive views of the won
derful valley. When we reached Inspiration Point it
lacked only an hour of sunset. The vast shadow of
El Capitan lay already far across the valley, and a
long purple promontory ran out from the foot of
Three Brothers, I was reminded of the line of Virgil, by
which, it is said. Millet was always deeply affected, —
" Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae," ^
Certainly it harmonizes well with his sombre and
sensitive genius.
We camped at Fort Monroe, and ate our supper
between exclamations at the sunset color on the pines
and cedars on the opposite hillside. The level light
illuminated the forest with a radiance that was inde
scribably royal and august, and the great trees stood
thoughtful and reverent, ripening their harvest in the
golden air.
From just beyond our camp there opened a won
derful outlook to the west. The land here falls away
almost precipitously two thousand feet to the canon of
the Merced, where it forms a sweeping amphitheatre
at the point where Tamarack Creek enters from the
north. Opposite, the unbroken forest rises to the high
ridge that is held by the Merced Grove of Sequoias,
• "And the great shadows fall from the high mountains."

40 YOSEMITE TRAILS
and which here forms the watershed between the
Merced and Tuolumne systems.
In the gathering dusk the myriad pinnacles of the
forest rose into a pale, clear sky, down which the
new moon passed musingly to sink behind the west
ern mountains.
I awoke several times during the night, noting the
changes of the stars. Toward morning the sky be
came covered with fleecy clouds, through which now
and then a star gleamed for a moment and was
quickly obscured. By morning the sky cleared some
what, and when, after breakfast, we walked back down
the road to Inspiration Point, the sun shone inter
mittently through cloud openings of spiritual grey,
and touched the white foot of El Capitan with pale,
shifting gleams.
By the middle of the morning we weighed anchor,
and leaving the road took the Pohono trail. The ani
mals rebelled a little at the first steep rise, as imply
ing harder times in store, but when we got fairly
under way Adam went well in the lead, while Teddy
— somewhat strangely, as we remarked — seemed
well content with the second place.
The peculiar beauty of the Pohono trail lies in the
forest through which it passes. At this western end
the timber is mixed of cedar, sugar pine, yellow pine,
white fir and Douglas spruce, with a scattering of small
oaks ; but when at about 7000 feet the main level is
reached, the red fir {Abies magnified) takes possession.
This superb tree here often attains a height of two hun-

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 41
dred feet, and even more. The stem is a fine shaft of
dusky purple, and the broad curving fans of dark blue-
green foliage, edged as if with an effervescent spray
or froth by the silver-grey of the young growth, give
the tree a special richness and nobility of color. Im
posing as are all the conifers of this forest, to me
none other of them quite equals in distinction and
stateliness this magnificent fir.
The previous winter had been unusually severe,
and the five feet of snow which had lain on the floor
of the valley must have been more than trebled on
the upper levels. The result was a profusion of cones
on all the full-grown trees which was remarkable.
Here and there a sugar pine could be seen which
flowed gracefully over at the head like the top of a
fountain under the weight of its fruitage, and the
barrel-like cones of the firs were piled on the upper
branches until the last inch of room was taken.
We sauntered easily along, noting these and a
thousand other things, until we emerged unexpect
edly at the brink. Looking down into the valley from
that dizzy precipice, and over to the savage wilder
ness of grey and wrinkled granite that sweeps round
to north and east, we agreed that the prospect sur
passed any other that we had seen. The outer semi
circle was a billowy expanse of peaks swimming in
summer haze, but with dark clouds banked heavily
above them. "Terrible, terrible ! " said Eytel; and so
it was. Three times, at Crocker, Stanford, and Dewey
Points, the trail opens upon these amazing landscapes

42 YOSEMITE TRAILS
which are enhanced, if that is possible, by the sudden
ness with which they break upon the obscurity of
the forest.
The trail is crossed by many small streams, and
varied with oases of verdure. Epilobium was still in
flower though it was long past midsummer, and the
azalea blossom was only lately dead, and hung in
shrivelled clusters of grey among the glossy leaves.
Hazels grew plentifully, and we gathered nuts like
schoolboys, though as they were hardly ripe the sat
isfaction lay principally in the sentimental and retro
spective aspect of the feast.
Five hours ' easy travel brought us to Bridal Veil
Creek, and crossing it we went into camp by early
evening. The stream was low, and half an hour 's fish
ing resulted only in fingerlings, which were returned
to the water to grow into fish of nobler degree.
Tracks of bear and mountain-lion had been fairly
plentiful along the trail, and before turning in we
picketed our animals securely in anticipation of a
scare. But only the humpiness of a badly chosen
sleeping-place disturbed our slumbers. We arose at
dawn, and before the sun reached us were well on the
trail. The early morning hours are always the cream of
time, but most of all is it so in the forest. It is then,
even more than at evening, that the profoundest
peacefulness that is possible to us on this earth is re
alized, so long as one is not in a hurry. The nerves,
which at evening are settiing into rest in a long de-

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 43
crescendo, in the morning are at zero. We for our part
had plenty of time, for we had determined beforehand
that we would not attempt to cover more than ten
miles or so a day. Our animals stopped every min
ute to refresh themselves with seductive grasses, while
we, far from rebuking them, lounged gently along,
listening to the heavenly voices of the birds and de
lighting ourselves with the flowers. In the meadows
hidden rills ran tinkling among delicate carices mixed
with purple epilobium, lavender geranium and sultry
yellow goldenrod ; while at one spot a few blossoms,
and even buds, of late wild-rose gave us the sweetest
greeting of all.
Squirrels, jays, and woodpeckers were loquacious
with table-talk. As the sun rose and the shadows of
the great tree-stems fell purple on mats of dwarf
ceanothus and manzanita, the leaves of the aspens,
which had hung languid and unmoving since the
dawn-wind stirred them three hours before, began to
swing and dangle lazily, and then as the breeze came
up started off as if driven by an engine at full
pressure. Turning north after two or three miles, the trail
ran out again to the rim of the valley at The Fis
sures. The fissures themselves are sufficientiy remark
able, — vertical clefts in the west face of a deep side-
canon which opens on the valley opposite Eagle
Peak, These clefts, so narrow at the top that boul
ders of no large size which have fallen into them are
caught and held in the jaws of the fracture, are of

44 YOSEMITE TRAILS
great depth, apparently reaching almost to the bot
tom of the cliff. But the great precipice of the abut
ment of the side-canon itself is still more impressive.
The bench-mark of the Geological Survey gives the
height of this point as 7503 feet. The cliff is there
fore thirty-five hundred feet in height above the val
ley floor, three hundred feet higher than Glacier
Point, and on a level with Eagle Peak and El Capi
tan, which it faces. The top, stained with lichens in
vivid yellow, Indian red, and purple, overhangs con
siderably, projecting a magnificent profile against
the opposite wall of the valley.
The canon of the Yosemite Creek presents from
this point an interesting appearance. Its whole course
lies open to the eye as if drawn on a map, from the
thin line of falling water which marks the top of the
cataract back to Mount Hoffman and the crest of the
southern wall of the Tuolumne Canon, which bounds
the watershed.
There is no mountain in the immediate Yosemite
region that surpasses Mount Hoffman in grandeur
of outiine. Its isolated position on the great plateau
of granite which stretches northward from the rim of
the valley renders it a commanding object. From
this point it rises in imposing bulk in the northeast.
Trending up in long slopes from a base of great ex
tent, it sweeps up to a height of nearly 11,000 feet
by grades which are nowhere sharp or precipitous,
and conveys a remarkable impression of massiveness
by the simplicity of its lines.

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 45
A short distance further brought us within sight
of Sentinel Dome, and soon we emerged upon the
stage-road. There is a little emerald meadow here
abouts which I had noticed the previous year, and
had made an engagement with myself to camp there
when the opportunity offered. I have a liking for
making these engagements. They cannot often be
kept, and I have always many outstanding; but
there is an additional satisfaction in camping where
one of them can be fulfilled. Turning off from the
road, with its diurnal stages and humiliating tokens
of the chewing-gum age, we crossed the plushy oasis
enclosed among firs and tamaracks, and camped on
the farther side among mint, cyclamens, and lupines,
and under a superb red fir whose branches swept
almost to the ground.
A tranquil Sunday was ushered in by a pageant at
sunrise. A hundred yards to the south the ground
rose to a fine view with Half-Dome almost in the
foreground, and Hoffman, Clark, and Red Moun
tain the prominent peaks of the middle distance. The
sun rose flashing immediately at the head of the
Littie Yosemite, and sent long, tremulous beams
searching down into the cafion of the Illilouette and
up into gulfs of cloud that glowed with volcanic fires
above the sullen horizon of the south. As the day
went on the sky attained its cloudless California blue,
and the distant line of the Sierra shimmered under a
powerful sun, while the snow-banks that enamelled
the northern slopes glistened with a pearly softness.

46 YOSEMITE TRAILS
On Monday we stayed still in camp, sketching and
photographing the trees, tamarack, the two firs, and
the Jeffrey variety of yellow pine, all which here offer
excellent specimens for observation. Some climbing
also had to be done to secure unopened cones of the
fir, and when I finally descended after several of
these expeditions I was well plastered with pitch and
balsam and altogether in a highly inflammable con
dition. I do not know of any vegetable object that is more
poetic and generous in appearance than the cone of
the red fir. The great velvety cylinders take on as
they ripen a rich, peach-like bloom, and an almost
spirituous perfume exhales from the balsam with
which they are saturated. As the cones grow only
on the upper branches, and do not fall but dissipate
upon the tree, they are by no means as well-known
objects as are the cones of the pines and spruces,
which everywhere litter the forest floor, and any one
is well repaid who climbs into the fragrant world
where they grow. He will receive a revelation of the
profusion and affluence of nature that will fill him
with admiration, and moreover will refresh himself
with recollections of the bird's-nesting exploits of
youth. In the afternoon I climbed the southern shoulder
of Sentinel Dome, enjoying the march over the clean,
wholesome pavement that stretches like an apron
around the swell of the dome, and relishing the bite
of the good hob-nails into the crumbling granite.

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 47
The surface of the rock has weathered into a coarse
grit, a kind of granite hail. In the cleavage joints
pines have taken root and form a scanty forest. I
was amused by the grotesqueness of the shapes of
these unconquerable trees, which have undertaken
not only to sustain, but to propagate themselves
under almost impossible conditions. I came upon
aged firs seven or eight feet high, knotted and bat
tered of body and leaning on their elbows, whose
shivering branches grimly held up a score or two of
cones and seemed to flourish them at the wind in
scornful defiance. I could not refrain from crying
" Go it 1 " to these heroes.
On the precise summit of the round a Jeffrey pine
has established itself, the trunk a shapeless, rooty
mass and the limbs blown away horizontally to the
east. Its branches are like iron, its twigs like whip
cord, and its needles like steel. It is a small tree, but
I judge its age must be numbered in hundreds of
years. Leaving camp early the next morning we followed
the stage-road as far as*^lacier Point. Mount Hoff
man rose again grandly on our left, and Half-Dome,
Clark, and Starr King more easterly. Now and again
a white gleam among the trees revealed the position
of the Vernal and Nevada Falls, and their distant
roar rose continuously to our ears like the incessant
beating of surf on the shore. It was even possible to
see the great cloud of spray that streams out from
the foot of Vernal.

48 YOSEMITE TRAILS
The granite ocean to north and east was veiled in
a thin, milky blue (the blue that milk so often is
though it should not be). The forest lay in well-defined
folds and creases, rising here and there to the sky
line ; but the main ridge of the crests stood barren,
sharp and clearly cut against a pale cerulean sky. The
voices of the birds, plaintively sweet, seemed like
a fine embroidery upon the background of silence
and space.
Doubling southward at Glacier Point we began
the long descent to the bed of the Illilouette Creek.
As part of the so-called Long trail this route is trav
elled every year by thousands of tourists from the
valley, under the convoy of realistic guides whose
bear-skin "chaps" are artfully designed to thrill the
Easterner with a touch of genuine Western life. We
stumbled rapidly down this well-worn trail, while the
dust rose in clouds and the animals complained
loudly as we urged them to persevere.
Near the bottom we emerged at the edge of the cliff
over which the Illilouette Creek plunges to join the
Merced. The fall is broken a hundred feet or so be
low the lip by ledges on' which the water breaks, and
spreads like a film over the face of the cliff. The
lower half of the descent is a smooth wall, all but ver
tical, down which the water spurts, hissing with enor
mous velocity, gathering at the bottom into a rapid
stream, and rushing among huge boulders through
a wild and sunless caiion to its junction with the main
river. The amount of water flowing was small, but

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 49
the energy and beauty of the fall surpassed my
expectations.
The Illilouette Creek itself in its upper course is
of an attractive and stimulating appearance, flowing
in a wide bed that shows interesting glacial character
istics. I booked it for exploration at some future time
back to its sources among the cluster of peaks known
as the Merced group.
After crossing the creek the trail bears northeast
erly, climbing to a height of 6700 feet, where it skirts
the edge of the cliff which forces the river into the
gorge of Vernal Fall. Fine views opened now and
again of the upper end of the valley, and I observed,
what I had not before been aware of, that at the
eastern end of the Royal Arches the rock ends in an
impressive vertical fracture, falling to a deeply curved
recess. Basket Dome I found to be cut away on its
eastern face in the same manner ; both fractures pos
sibly having occurred at the same time that Half-
Dome suffered his frightful amputation.
As the trail begins to round the extreme eastern
end of the valley the eye takes in at a glance the
majestic nature of the Yosemite sculpture. To the
left rises for three thousand feet the huge rock which
forms the abutment between the valley proper and
the Illilouette Canon. Opposite, the profile of Mount
Broderick sweeps up steeply to a hardly less height ;
and between lies the green and level valley, the product
of the enormous grinding energy of the ice-river.
A steep descent through heavy timber brought us

so YOSEMITE TRAILS
to the open plateau at the head of the Nevada Fall.
The river here flows smooth and silent to the edge
of the cliff over which it goes thundering down in a
broad torrent of snowy foam.
No other of the Yosemite waterfalls conveys so
sublime an expression of dynamic power and irre
sistible energy as does Nevada. Seen from below,
the water seems to be hurled in masses over the pol
ished brink, to burst wildly on the ledges and fly out
in whirling water-smoke, like storm-waves crashing
upon a rocky coast. In the berserk fury of its rush
it might embody some stalwart young god of Norse
mythology, and its voice might be the death-song of
a Jotun. Crossing by the bridge just above the fall, we
turned eastward toward the Little Yosemite, follow
ing the stream while we sought an eligible camp
site. This we found about half a mile up, and went
into camp on the bank of the river among white firs
and the ubiquitous tamaracks. The sun had set for us
although it was only four o'clock. After supper I
fished for half an hour with indifferent success, and
closed the day by fighting a merry bout in the twi
light with a handsome fish, losing him honorably in
a tight place of sunken snags and boulders.
We were not to move camp the next day, and I lay
an extra hour in bed, watching the eastern grey turn
to lilac, and conjuring to myself with the cryptic
word " values " as if I understood it, while I noted
the relative tones of trunk, branch, and foliage against

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 51
the brightening sky. A squirrel in the fir overhead
barked quarrelsomely at me, insisting that I get up
and leave the valley immediately, as if the whole
place were the possessions of the house of Douglas.
Not so loud, my peppery young friend ; I admit your
prior claim, but all the same " J'y suis, j'y reste."
I suppose we all in our turn come into the debt of
the inventor of bacon. For myself, when I am in the
city I never touch the thing ; but here twice a day I
eat it with relish, and find even the etymology of the
word interesting. I never knew that Bacon was an
Irish name ; yet I understand that Ireland has given
this valuable product to the world.
There are two small lakes (so marked on the
map), that lie just at the base of the " helmet" curve
of the Half-Dome, and about a mile from where we
were camped. We walked over to see them, and
found them to be excellent examples of the evolu
tion of the mountain meadow. By the gradual filling
up of the lake-beds by detritus from the mountain
at whose base they lie, they had already become
marshes rather than lakes. Trunks of fallen trees lay
rotting in the swampy soil, and a rank vegetation
had grown up that all but obliterated them. The
transformation was nearly complete, and a few years,
I imagine, will suffice to give them the full meadow
character. The place was exuberantly flowery with
the blossoms of a tall weedy plant, and, enclosed
within a ring of forest, was windless and silent as a
vision.

52 YOSEMITE TRAILS
While we stood enjoying the perfect stillness, and
ourselves silent, I saw not forty yards away the wag
ging ears of a fawn that stood in the shade on the
edge of the meadow, persecuted by flies. He was
submerged, all but his ears, in the green and white
sea, but now and then lifted his head and showed his
delicate muzzle and spiritual, innocent eyes. He had
not seen us, but soon there was a warning whistie
from an older deer behind the thicket, and the fawn
turned and walked quietiy out of sight. Coming by
a detour to the place where he had stood, we came
upon a handsome buck, the same, no doubt, that had
whistled. We were within twenty feet of him before
he saw us, but then in a few great curving leaps he
reached the opposite side of the meadow, and the
congenial forest instantly absorbed him.
The designation of "Little Yosemite "^ well enough
describes this valley to any one who knows the
larger original. It lies at approximately two thousand
feet greater elevation, but in general features it is
simply a narrower and smaller Yosemite. Its walls,
though not so high nor so precipitous, are imposing
enough in boldness of outline and severity of pol
ished granite. It has the same level meadows, and
the river, though in places rapid and broken, flows
generally with a valley quietness. Even the timber
and underbrush are the same, except for a larger ad
mixture of firs and tamaracks among the prevailing
yellow pines and cedars; and though it lacks the
waterfalls that grace the lower valley, there is a

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 53
noticeably fine cascade at the upper end, where the
river debouches from its narrow carion. The water is
broken at the head of the cascade into coarse grains,
like the heavy spray that is stripped by the wind
from the crests of ocean waves in a storm, and races
in a broad band at frightful velocity over an ice-
planed slide into a rocking pool of emerald.
Eytel was to return to the valley from this point,
and I was to make the remainder of my circuit of
the Yosemite rim alone. We sat long that night by
a noble fire. The moon shone down on us between
black shafts of fir and pine, like — as Eytel, the art
ist lost for the moment in the " camper," remarked
— "like the lid of a lard-pail." The river rushed and
murmured, now loud, now quiet, and gleamed white
where the moonlight fell on the hurrying water. The
soliloquy of the fire drew us inevitably into reminis
cence. Vague recollections were warmed up into full
remembrance ; details and trifles came to mind in
manner and number that astonished ourselves. From
reminiscences we came to plans ; old enthusiasms
awakened. By George, what things we would do 1
New York, London, and Paris should marvel at our
pictures and eagerly discuss our books. Buy them,
too. And if they would n't, who cared ? All the world
could not prevent our painting and writing them,
and how fine that was ! Careless heroes, we defied
fate. Art was long, we knew, but " the thoughts of
youth" — we still say we are young — "are long,
long thoughts." In our enthusiasm we forgot that we

54 YOSEMITE TRAILS
had an audience and commentator. The solemn, un
changing forest stood quietly around ; the sparks flew
up like dancing stars and came down in feathers of
ash that powdered us over like grey snow ; and moth
after moth came flitting from the outer gloom into
the firelight, circled twice or thrice around the fire,
and plunged madly into it like Empedocles on Etna
or gilded youths at Monte Carlo,
Walking a short distance up the valley in the
moonlight, I was charmed by a new appearance of
Half-Dome, The sky was partly overcast, and as the
moon passed from behind a cloud and shone full
upon the great southern round of the mountain, it
was as if a vast hall, dim, grey, and unsubstantial,
had come suddenly into being by enchantment. It
hung glimmering, high and close above me, in the
northern sky, spectral, weird, visionary, its half-mile
height multiplied into an incomprehensible vastness
in which terms of size had no meaning. De Quincey
might have dreamed it. It completed my mental sub
jugation by this strange mountain, and I half feared
that I might be visited by a nightmare recurrence of
it in my sleep.

CHAPTER V
A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM: THE LITTLE
YOSEMITE TO THE TUOLUMNE MEADOWS
MY sleep that night was certainly broken, but
from a different cause, I had noticed what ap
peared to be a sleeping-place of particular excellence
some little distance from camp, where a big Jeffrey
pine had laid down a carpet of dead needles, and
I had removed my blankets to the spot, I had no
sooner lain down than numbers of large black ants,
appreciating the increase of caloric, and recognizing
me as the author of the friendly warmth, began to
swarm upon me. They did not bite, but simply ex
plored, travelling slowly and with evident pleasure
over my face and neck, and penetrating in fright
ened rushes under the clothing when I tried to sweep
them off. I lay in misery until past midnight, when I
arose, rolled up my blankets, and marched a hun
dred yards back to camp, where I slept magnificently
until six o'clock.
Bidding farewell to Eytel, whom I was to rejoin
in the valley, I took the Clouds' Rest trail with the
animals who were to be my sole companions for the
remainder of the trip. As we moved quietiy along I
was free to notice the thousand and one things that

56 YOSEMITE TRAILS
make up the silent conversation of the trail, — the
sweet tangle of bush and herbage, the wavings of
branch and fern-frond, the small, child-like voices of
the birds, the changes of the mountain walls from
white to purple and from purple again to white as
the clouds passed over, even the crackling of twigs
underfoot, and the quiet weaving of the shadow tra
cery across the trail. How superbly silent and uncon-
taminated the world is, after all I
Coming after a mile or two to the point where the
Clouds' Rest trail turns northward, I took the little
travelled track which passes easterly over Sunrise
Mountain. The animals were in good trim and humor
after their rest, marching steadily along the levels,
and taking the steep rises in fine, determined bursts
of twenty yards or so at a time.
I note that the centre of intelligence in the burro
appears to lie about the middle tract of the back ; at
least, the first movement of response arises there. A
slight, almost imperceptible, elevation of that region
is followed by a downward jerk of the head ; the ears
wag responsively ; last of all the legs receive the per
cussion, and the tough cylinder of the trunk lurches
forward. With Adam, a single word or a pebble is
sufficient to initiate the operation. In the case of
Teddy it requires three sharp words, crescendo, or a
like number of admonitions by the rod. The first
creates no impression whatever; the second is ac
knowledged by a slight tremor of the frame, which,
however, subsides almost on the moment ; at the third

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 57
the back rises, the head drops, and we all move for
ward together.
Deer are plentiful in this locality, and I found that
they were objects of interest to the burros almost as
much as to myself, I was sometimes amused by their
intelligent behavior when we came upon these crea
tures. On one occasion we encountered a doe and a
fawn standing together in an opening of the forest,
I did not at first see them, and my attention was
directed to them by Adam, who was in the lead, stop
ping abruptiy and looking curiously round at me,
with as plain an air of asking " Do you see that ? " as
though he had spoken the words. The deer and we
regarded one another respectfully for some ten or
fifteen seconds ; then, as I tugged to release my camera
from an over-tight case, they turned and leaped
lightiy back into the forest. May no worse harm be
fall them than would have come from my peaceful
gun, Clarence King truly says that " from every com
manding eminence around the Yosemite no distant
object rises with more inspiring greatness than the
Obelisk of Mount Clark," From any point of view
this is a splendid mountain, but especially from this
side, where the bold upward swing of the crest is seen
in profile. The heavy belt of forest at its base wavers
off into tenuous lines and patches, and ends in scat
tered dots before the final spring of the grey, razor-
like summit begins. As I passed in the early after
noon a shell of delicious shadow was still lying in the

58 YOSEMITE TRAILS
gfreat western curve from which the mountain spires
up to its apex, "jutting two thousand feet from a
rough-hewn pedestal of rocks and snow-fields,"
To the north Clouds' Rest still kept me company,
showing a much more abrupt peak than any one who
has seen the mountain only from the familiar valley
side would expect.
At the second crossing of the creek I found a small
triangle of meadow, and stopped to lunch. The ani
mals plunged with ardor into the riot of herbage, eat
ing ravenously until they suddenly sighed and ceased
for very weariness.
The trail here follows a long ridge bearing steadily
northeast. Throughout the Sierra it is always inter
esting to note how regularly the changes of altitude
are registered in the character of the forest. In the
Little Yosemite I had left a mixed growth of cedar,
yellow pine of two varieties, tamarack, sugar pine,
and white fir. The cedars had been the first to dis
appear, then the common yellow pine {P. ponderosd),
then the sugar pine, and last the white fir, while the
red fir, first appearing as a straggler, had come into
the principal place and was now joined by the moun
tain pine. This species {P. monticola), like all the other
conifers that year, bore an extravagant crop of cones,
and the ground under the trees was thickly littered
with the fallen burs. The cones are curved and slender,
about six inches long by one in diameter before they
open, and are borne singly or in clusters at the tips of
the upper branches, where they hang like bunches of

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 59
commas. From bright green they turn to deep purple,
and ripen at last to a lively fawn-brown. The foliage
is rather short, set in tufts in the manner of the tam
arack, but having the fine feathery grace of the sugar
pine. It is altogether a handsome tree, robust but airy
in habit, and expressing more of lightness and play
fulness than any other conifer of the region.
The tamarack is something of a free lance in the
matter of habitat, scattering through the forest pro
miscuously at all altitudes except the actual ex
tremes. The trail-blazer has a natural preference for
this tree, on whose thin, smooth bark a good blaze
is more easily made than on the rougher stems of
the other species of pine, or the firs or spruces. More
over, the tree when cut quickly exudes a great
amount of bright yellow resin, which fills the blaze
and marks it as plainly as if it were painted. The
tamarack is a brave, hardy tree, more handy than
handsome, the useful plebeian of the conifers.
The trail here was particularly attractive. For a
considerable distance it followed a high ridge whose
easy northern slope carried a forest of unusual va
riety and perfection, while to the south it fell away
steeply to the caiion of the Merced. Beyond rose
again the wilderness of mountains, swelling up from
darkly forested bases to desolate barrens and heights
of uncompromising granite.
As we entered Hopkins Meadow, Adam halted at
sight of the good green pasturage and turned upon
me an interrogative and appealing eye. It had been

6o YOSEMITE TRAILS
my intention to camp a few miles farther on, at the
lower end of Long Meadow ; but the place was un
deniably desirable, and I waived the point and made
camp on the edge of the willow-bordered creek
under a hospitable looking tamarack of unusual size.
At this point a trail takes out southeasterly to Mer
ced Lake, the same by which I had reached this
meadow on my return from the High Sierra the pre
vious summer. I had some debate with myself before
I could make up my mind to forego revisiting the
lake ; but I reflected that if I once surrendered to this
kind of temptation I should find myself every day
confronted with similar appeals of ever-increasing
urgency, and might ultimately be dragged to Mount
Lyell, or even to Mono Lake, while I should almost
certainly be landed in difficulties for provisions.
Mosquitoes were intractable for an hour or two,
but the evening chill of 9000 feet of altitude quieted
them early. The moon rose with a frosty brightness,
accompanied by a court of little silvery clouds, de-
lightiully tender and airy, that drifted dreamily along
like sky -fairies. Dead pines stood around the
meadow, as smooth and white as the masts of ships.
The tamarack more than any other pine appears to
seek the neighborhood of swamps and hollows, and
yet, strangely, oftenest suffers early decay from the
excess of moisture,
I awoke several times during the night and sighed
for one more blanket. But at any rate, cold was bet
ter than ants. Nature we can stand ; we are her chil-

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 6i
dren and know her rules. I arose at five o'clock,
really too cold to get breakfast, and took a run
through the meadow to verify Harvey's great dis
covery. The burros were standing as if frozen, and
viewed my athletics unsympathetically.
It is in these mountain meadows that the birds
congregate whose comparative scarcity in the Si
erra forests is remarked upon by casual travellers.
From willow-thickets and matted tangles of dwarf
ceanothus they emerge in troops as the sun rises,
like English sparrows from an ivy-bush. Then begins
the morning concert, the jay, you may be sure, tak
ing the part of first violin. As I ate breakfast the
din grew till I was quite bewildered. Chee-ings and
whee-ings and trillings and chucklings resounded on
all sides. Then the woodpeckers brought their power-
drills into action, and the woods rang again. Now
and then sounded, far away, a haunting, plaintive
cry, — surely the voice of the beloved "organ-bird"
of my last year's earlier summer memories. Sweet
bird, thou wilt never be forgot.
As I stood quietly beside a big fir, a hawk came
flying low among the trees straight toward me. He
did not observe me until I suddenly moved, when he
almost collapsed with fright. With a tremendous
flapping and scurrying he starboarded his helm
and bore away on another tack. " Thus conscience
does make cowards " : I have never seen other and
weaker birds, with cleaner records, behave so.
I packed leisurely and carefully in view of the steep

62 YOSEMITE TRAILS
climb which I knew lay ahead, and it was eleven
o'clock before I started. Few works of man con
sume so much time in proportion to apparent result
as the operation of loading a pack-animal ; but pre
caution pays many times over, for equally few things
are more discomposing than to have packs loosen or
slip when one is on some steep grade or other awk
ward place; and it is of course just where the trail,
and consequently the jolting, is worst that trouble is
most likely to occur.
Clouds' Rest now lay to the west, extending north
erly in a barren crest that rose in places to odd little
nodules formed of weathered slabs of granite, such
as occur at the main peak of the mountain. To the
direct north was Sunrise Mountain, over which my
trail ran. It was a long, trying climb, palliated with
expansive glimpses of the fine, open country to the
south. At 9700 feet I crossed the divide and de
scended into a meadow lying between bouldered
slopes, with an impressive sweep of snowy moun
tains on the north.
At this altitude the firs had disappeared, but the
tamaracks still held out, and with some monticola
made up the bulk of the forest. Here also came in
the mountain hemlock {Tsuga mertensiana). This
tree is strikingly distinctive. In delicate, feminine
habit of growth it greatly resembles that favorite
of the nurserymen, the Himalayan deodar. The foli
age is of the same silvery daintiness, and the branches
and the topmost sprays of young trees take the same

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 63
graceful, drooping curve. The cones are quaint and
small, of long oval shape, like olives, and take on
also as they ripen the purple color of that fruit. In
old trees the smoke-colored bark turns to reddish,
the close-growing branches dress the tall shaft with
rich but scanty plumes, and the general appearance
is much like that of the red fir.
Here appeared also the outposts of the dwarf pine
(P. aldicaulis). This is the hero that carries forward
the flag of the tree kingdoms to timber-line, and I
saluted him with respect. The low, straggling growth
and grey bark, and the foliage, of a peculiarly clean
light green, render this pine easily recognizable when
it has once been identified. The staminate blossoms
are of the shade of pink which is known in dry-goods
circles, I believe, as " crushed strawberry," and the
egg-shaped cone, consisting of a comparatively small
number of thick, blunt scales, is unlike that of any
other tree of the region. But the seeds happen to be
particularly grateful to the palate of the Clarke crow,
and he arranges that very few of the ripe cones fall
to the ground to attract the observation of the traveller.
One encounters littie game in these higher alti
tudes, but grouse are not uncommon. One of these
birds, getting up as is their wont almost from under
our feet, startied Teddy into a highly creditable jump,
pack and all. There was a sound of tinware in com
motion, and for a moment I trembled for my pack ;
but with a snort which I fancy was partly invented
to cover his confusion, he hastened on to overtake

64 YOSEMITE TRAILS
his comrade, who was better employed with the
bunch-grass. A slight descent through rocky country opened a
magnificent view of the Cathedral, Echo, and Uni
corn Peaks. The evening light threw the multitudi
nous pinnacles of this remarkable group into the
strongest relief. It is evident that the glacial action
which partly produced the typical rounded outlines
of the Yosemite topography was diverted from this
small region, where splintered crests and toppling
crags remain to illustrate the Titanic shatter of the
original upheaval. To-morrow I hoped would find
me threading my way among them.
It was nearly sundown when we emerged into
Long Meadow. I had covered only four or five miles,
having spent a good deal of time in climbing trees
and in other small excursions. Passing a mile or two
up the meadow I camped at its upper end, where
a thin trickle of water ran among the boulders of a
rocky creek bed. A chilly wind blew strongly down
the valley, and I chose my camping-place with care.
The altitude was 9500 feet, I stretched one of my
canvases between two trees to form a wind-break,
built a fire that might have alarmed a Swiss canton,
and sat listening to the weird outcries of killdeer
plovers {Oxyechus vociferus well named), far down
the meadow, and noting with not unmixed admira
tion the frosty twinkling of the stars.
Before I turned in it was intensely cold, and but
for my wind-break I should have passed a miserable

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 65
night. Once or twice when I awoke and sat up for a
moment the wind cut like a whip, and I could see the
frosted meadow shining like snow in the moonlight.
There was no temptation to stay in bed after day
break, and I sat hugging the fire while I sipped
boiling coffee and watched the solemn beauty of the
coming of the day.
Straight down the meadow rose Clark and his sur
rounding mountains, sheeted on this their north side
with snow. Slowly the phantasmagoria changed from
spectral grey to the first flush of warmth, passed
through rose to orange, and so to glistening white
painted with broad washes of purple shadow. The
thin splinter of granite that is called Columbia Fin
ger shot up a thousand feet into the air to the north
east, while close to camp, for convenient geological
contrast, a small isolated dome rose from the very
edge of the meadow.
I was again amazed at the abundance of small life
that sprang into existence as soon as the sun rose. It
was quite a case of boys and girls coming out to play.
Birds in troops came flitting about, hopping among
the tussocky grass, and pursuing one another in and
out among the trees with playful ardor. Marmots
frisked about the fallen logs or sat upright eating the
grass seeds, holding them neatly to the mouth like
" corn-on-the-cob," but without a trace of the humil
iating expression which most of us are conscious of
when we venture upon that trying vegetable.
It was the middle of the morning when I started up

66 YOSEMITE TRAILS
the valley. The trail at first bore easterly, heading
straight toward the spike of granite ; then, skirting
its southern base, it entered Cathedral Pass at an ele
vation of 10,000 feet. Reaching the summit of the
pass a wild prospect, purely Alpine, spread before
me, and involuntarily I stopped, almost staggered at
the grandeur and savageness of the scene. Half a
mile to the east rose a steep, keen slope on which
a few dwarfed pines struggled, almost consciously as
it seemed, to maintain a footing. From where they
ceased, inaccessible cliffs and aiguilles sprang up
sharp and white against the intense blue. In the
powerful light every scar and seam was marked with
glittering distinctness. The long curving swing of the
ridge expressed a terrible strength and austerity, and
the grim line of the crest seemed almost to impend
ominously. On the other hand, the white obelisk
stood close beside me glistening with a vitreous hard
ness, and in the north again rose spires, turrets, and
scarps of granite. It was a maelstrom of mountains,
whose crests broke on all sides into the wildest shapes
of leaping water.
I felt again there, as I have often before, how deeply
the sense of solitude is enhanced by the presence of
wind. It is a difficult emotion to analyze, but I sup
pose that the monotonous sound and pressure may
revive in the subconscious mind some memory of
early experiences of our race during its migrations.
I am often curiously aware at these moments of a
background of Russian steppes and Asian plateaus to

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 67
my sensations, and the apparent incongruity is not,
for some reason, disconcerting.
Even at this elevation the trail was varied with
patches of meadow in which grew alpine willows
and many flowers. Along the runnels of water bry-
anthus grew thickly, and I found a few sprays on
which the rosy blossoms were still unwithered. The
plant, which is, in fact, of the Erica family, is delight
fully heathery in character, the stems tough and wiry
and the foliage brittie and stiff. The blossoms as they
fade take on a heatherish purple, and it is altogether
a fine, rough, Scotch-looking highlander.
I never saw the sky of so fervent a blue as it was
that morning. I have always hoped to observe in it
that appearance of violet darkness which has been
remarked by many travellers as occurring at no
greater altitudes than some that I have reached ; but
so far the experience has been denied me. Here, how
ever, the color was so deep as to be very remarkable.
It was a pure ultramarine, and I was encouraged to
hope that I might yet observe from these mountains
the coveted phenomenon.
Crossing another divide among ledges of granite
that were thickly studded with protruding crystals
of feldspar, the trail passed over a small snow-bank
and then descended to a meadow which encircled a
littie lake with rocky shores and islets. From the
eastern margin of the meadow Cathedral Peak tow
ered directiy up a thousand feet into the glowing
blue. The mountain shows here a very symmetrical

68 YOSEMITE TRAILS
double peak, and the white, precipitous face bears a
look of unutterable age. The topmost turrets are as
fragile and delicate as finely carved masonry that is
crumbling to decay, and I could almost fancy that I
saw the richly crocketed pinnacles and spires of the
abbeys and minsters of my native land. As I passed
along the west shoulder of the mountain the two
points of the summit merged into a single perfect
needle, and from'a little farther again, the crest showed
a series of even, sharply cleft notches, from which it
sloped off to a ridge that terminated in an abrupt
cliff. Half a mile to the west I could see Cathedral Lake,
half hidden in deep forest. It was too early to think
of camping, or I would willingly have stayed to ob
serve the appearance of this remarkable mountain by
moonlight, when its peculiar shape and pallor must
produce a night picture equally impressive and
ghostly. Again I entered the forest. In a strip of meadow
through which flowed a lively stream a late lily was
upholding still a score of ruby chalices. Could any
thing be prettier, more child-like and innocent, than
these green lawns, sown with tall lavender daisies,
and with the quiet forest shadows falling athwart
them ? I trow not, unless it be in heaven, or England.
(Forgive, gentie American reader, the Englishman's
fond exception.)
It was verging towards evening, and the birds
were busy with their small housekeepings, convers-

n

cathedral peak

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 69
ing abstractedly as they foraged. At the root of a
giant hemlock a spring of water issued, as cold as if
the earth's interior were of ice instead of fire. At a
turn of the trail I came upon what appeared to be
a camp. A considerable volume of smoke was rising
from a little clearing which exhibited the usual ugly
litter of cans and other rubbish. Some party had
camped there and had neglected to extinguish their
fire when they left. 1 was just in time to prevent a
serious conflagration. A fallen log was burning in
two places, and at every draw of wind blazed up
fiercely, while the ground for a considerable distance
around was smouldering threateningly. The animals,
whom I had allowed to get some distance ahead,
fortunately had decided that this was to be our camp
ing-place, and were waiting for me. I hastily tied
them, cut through the log with my axe, and hauled
the burning end to the creek, into which I tumbled
it. Then, stamping out the fire where it was eating
its way through the thick matting of pine-needles, I
cleared the ground around the smouldering portion,
leaving a ring within which the fire, if it should re
vive, could burn itself out.
No penalty that could be exacted would be too
severe for the offence against the public good which
is committed by persons who, merely to avoid a few
minutes' work, will expose a tract of forest to the
danger of destruction. Carelessness so selfish and so
colossal rises to the dimension of crime.
It was by now past sundown, and I hurried the ani-

70 YOSEMITE TRAILS
mals down the long descent. I really believe that, as
burros go, my good Adam came as near perfection
as could well be. He had but one fault, and even
that I am willing to believe arose from a physical
ailment, — his nose appeared to be afflicted with a
chronic itch. Fifty times a day he must stop to rub
the sensitive organ upon some convenient object
(often myself), and his countenance when thus em
ployed expressed a degree of enjoyment which was
highly irritating when I desired to make quick pro
gress ; though, after all, that occurred but seldom. I
recall that David Copperfield's Aunt was marked by
the same peculiarity, but with her the action seems
to have been involuntary, and a symptom of per
plexity of mind, while Adam made his infirmity an
excuse for securing a pleasurable titillation.
When the timber at last thinned I saw before and
below me the wide plain of the Tuolumne Meadows,
with the river winding along in peaceful convolutions.
In a few minutes the trail ran out on the level, and,
a creek converging at the same point, I went into
camp, escorted by hordes of the mosquitoes for which,
almost as much as for its scenery, this locality is
celebrated. I walked some way down the meadow before turn
ing in, and noticed that the massive clouds which
with some apprehension I had seen piling up in the
north during the afternoon, had entirely vanished,
leaving again that clear and starry firmament which
renders the California night, no less than its day, a

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 71
continual miracle to our visitors. An opening of the
forest to the south gave a glimpse of Cathedral Peak
rising superbly against an indigo sky, with a snow-field
high up on the eastern shoulder shining in the light of
the rising moon like a floating cloud.
I had tethered the animals on the farther side of the
creek, where the pasturage was better. Some capacity
for the feeling of loneliness by which these compan
ions of man have become infected manifested itself
as they observed my preparations for the night, and
they hailed me with weird sounds, incipient brayings,
which died unregretted upon the frosty air.

CHAPTER VI
A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM: THE TUOLUMNE
MEADOWS TO YOSEMITE FALLS
THE -fine enthusiasm of Mr. Muir never bums
more brightly than when he writes of the gentian
meadows of the Sierra. During a month of wander
ings in the high country the previous summer I had
been on the qui vive for a sight of the flower, for
I was infected with his spirit, — as who is not that
reads him? — but I could never catch a glimpse of
his cerulean darling. This year, also, I had thus far
searched for it in vain ; but at last, here in the Tuo
lumne Meadows, I came upon it. I knew it at once
though I had never seen it before ; this deep chalice
of glowing blue must be the long-sought blossom ;
and so it was. But delightful as the flower is, it can
never supplant with me that most charming flower
of the Sierra, the lavender daisy. With no fervors of
color, the latter embodies the sweetest of floral (as of
human) virtues, simplicity, and stands face open to
the sky, well-bred, slender, and quietly gay.
It was with reluctance that I now turned westward.
A few miles to the east were Mounts Dana and Gibbs,
with the fine territory lying beyond and to the south
of them ; and in the north, unseen but not unfelt, lay

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 73
the Matterhorn country, in whose long caiions and
by whose solitary lakes I had wandered the previous
year. But I had reached here the extreme easterly
point necessary to my purpose, and from here could
make my way back to the north wall of the valley,
keeping all the time on the high levels.
The Tioga road, which I should follow for some
fifteen miles, is a rough track built in historic days
by the owners of the once famous Tioga mine, which,
long since abandoned, lies near the crest of the
Sierra about twelve miles northeast of the meadows.
For purposes of technical "control," a wagon is
still driven over it once a year by an adventurous
teamster ; and deserted cabins mark here and there
the sites of " stations " such as Porcupine Flat, Dark
Hole, White Wolf, and Aspen Valley.
Turning westward along this ancient highway, I
came at once among the familiar Yosemite forma
tions. Slopes of glabrous rock swept down into the
level green of the meadows. Fairview Dome, a per-
fectiy turned cupola of granite, towered twelve hun
dred feet above the road, and facing it stood another
monstrous hummock, carved in peculiarly massive
plates and ledges, from the crevices of which bat
tered hemlocks and junipers peered down like stumpy
dwarfs. The road led through open forest, at first of tama
rack alone, then mixed with hemlocks and mountain-
pines. The clouds of yesterday had returned; by
noon the sun was obscured, and I looked forward

74 YOSEMITE TRAILS
with enjoyment to a rain. The forest wore its finest
aspect of gloom; every tree stood observant and
waiting. There was no wind ; no branch moved, nor
leaf whispered. The birds too were mute, flitting
quietly among the pine-aisles as if lost in a dim
church. Grey sky, grey mountains, grey stems of in
numerable trees, — all was grey, calm, expectant.
There is a melancholy amount of dead timber
throughout this region. Long stretches of tamarack
forest have perished, as if at a stroke. Close examina
tion shows that they have been destroyed by fire, al
though the polished skeletons would seem to indicate
almost any other agency. The thin bark of this spe
cies burns like paper, and when it falls off leaves the
trees complete from trunk to twig, apparently blasted
rather than burned, the mockery of a forest. But
among the dead trees there are numbers of prosper
ous young saplings from one to ten feet high. One
can only hope that the new generation is not doomed
to the fate of the old, and that the late-awakened zeal
for forest preservation will avail to save other tracts
from destruction.
Dome succeeded dome, the road descending grad
ually and bearing southwest. Passing close under
the treeless easterly slope of Murphy's Dome, I came
early in the afternoon in view of Tenaya Lake. On
the left rose another mountain, hardly less barren,
but with a few whitened junipers high up on the
ledges standing backed against the precipices in fine
fighting attitudes. A good meadow lies at the upper

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 75
end of the lake, and into this I turned to look out a
place for my camp, for the rain was now imminent.
When looking for a camp-site I usually go ahead
of the animals, leading Adam by the halter-rope.
This is the signal for Teddy to fall behind and hunt
out titbits undisturbed, but he has a youthful horror
of being left behind and lost, and generally keeps a
sharp lookout to hold us in view. On this occasion
he was betrayed by some agreeable morsel into allow
ing us to get out of his sight, and while I was tying
Adam preparatory to unloading, I heard a weird,
multitudinous kind of sound, and beheld Teddy racing
along toward us at a swinging canter, his packs jounc
ing rhythmically as he came. His ears were rigid,
and his excited eyes gleamed wildly about with an
expression of ludicrous anxiety. The sound I heard
was compounded of rattling cans, creaking harness,
and the attrition of the heterogeneous articles com
prised in his pack ; among them, I reflected, certain
liquids and semi-liquids that were not arranged for
such rapid transportation. He had made half the circuit
of the meadow, careening over at a fine, cutting angle
as he bowled along, before he espied us, when he
bore down upon us, still at a canter, came to anchor
handsomely, and in a moment was chousing his con
sort out of the best of the pasturage.
I had hardly unpacked before it began to rain
briskly. Throwing a line between two trees, I fastened
the pack-canvases together and made of them a
rough shelter, sufficient for my purpose. Then, with

76 YOSEMITE TRAILS
my blankets safely under cover, I sat botanizing in
my humble, popular way, and rejoicing over the rain
and my gentians.
With the rain came a strong wind that drove it
in heavy swirls against my shelter, and made the dead
pines rock and strain like the masts of ships at anchor
in a squall. The wavelets drove crisply up on the
beach with a joyful sound of chattering water, and two
sandpipers ran up and down the wet edges of the sand,
happy and excited, or flew out over the lake, skim
ming over the crests with sharp, curving wings, and
uttering littie wailing cries of pleasure in sympathy
with the storm.
The rain lasted for two or three hours, and then
cleared suddenly away to a spectacular sunset. The
wet rock of the mountain sides wore a more sombre
majesty of color, and a patch of snow that lay in a
niche five hundred feet above me flushed almost to
damask in the last red rays of the sun.
I had staked the burros a little way back from the
lake, and when about dark I went over to picket them
on fresh pasturage for the night, I was surprised to
see the smoke of a camp-fire rising at the upper end
of the meadow. Lake Tenaya is a favorite camping-
place for travellers to and from the High Sierra or
the Mono country, and it was not the fact of a camp,
but the place chosen for it that struck me as strange.
After attending to the animals I walked over to sat
isfy my curiosity.
I found that my neighbors were a party of Indians ;

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 77
two men, one of middle age, the other younger, a
young woman whom I guessed to be the squaw of the
younger man, and two littie giris of six or eight years.
They showed no surprise at my appearance, hardly
looking up as I approached, and I had no doubt
that with Indian quickness and secrecy they had
watched my arrival at midday, and could have given
me as exact a statement of my proceedings since that
time as I myself could have furnished. My formal
salutation was acknowledged by a glance and an in
articulate monosyllable from the men, and by the
slow retreat of the two children until they backed
against a tree, where they stood and gazed at me
with serious unconcern. The woman had not even
looked up. She was crouching on hands and knees
over a smouldering fire, which she was endeavoring
by blowing upon it to cultivate into a blaze.
In the half-darkness the swarthy face with its hang
ing ropes of hair, and the tense, muscular arms,
glowed with ruddy gleams as she blew on the embers.
The silence of the spectators and the intent attitude
of the single actor in the group conferred upon the
operation almost the quality of a rite.
It was difficult to read hospitality into the general
situation, and I allowed a minute or two to elapse
while I absorbed the pictorial elements of the scene.
But I was too well aware of the native taciturnity of
the Indians to feel it as a rebuff, and, moreover, I have
a genuine liking for them, based, I confess, more upon
indirect than upon first-hand knowledge.

78 YOSEMITE TRAILS
The offer of tobacco is to-day as ever the friendli
est advance one can make to an Indian. For that
matter, it is understood in the same light by Mexi
cans and whites also ; and I have often been thank
ful that nature has provided this universal medium
of friendly exchanges. It now supplied me with the
means of an introduction, and walking forward I ten
dered my pouch to the older man with a friendly
gesture and a word of appreciation of the fire, which
was now burning brightly. It was at once accepted,
and when at my invitation the younger man and the
woman also shared my long-cut, the way was open
for a friendly powwow, and in a minute or two we
were all seated and smoking sociably. As I used a
pipe I was able to abandon the pouch to them, and
as cigarette followed cigarette it passed from hand to
hand with a rapidity that would have defied the in
telligence of a detective.
A fragmentary conversation brought out that they
were Mono Indians returning from the Yosemite to
their valley on the eastern side of the mountains. The
fact that I had been there the previous summer, and
that we had some mutual acquaintances among the
Indians of the valley, opened the way still further ; and
when I had lured the children into partial amity with
a bait of ornamental brass buttons which I chanced
to have in my coat-pocket, and which they promptly
transferred to their mouths, we got on swimmingly.
The woman and the younger man took no part in
the conversation, entering into it only to the extent of

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 79
emphatic nods and other symbols of acquiescence in
the sentiments expressed with regard to the persons
who came under inquisition. The discussion, if it could
be called such, took, in fact, a range not much be
yond the discovery of common acquaintances, and
was conducted in some such manner as this : —
"You sabe Indian Simon?"
" Him live Mono ? "
" No, him live Yosemite ; stay Yosemite all time."
" Oh, ya-a-a, sabe Simon."
"Simon my friend, good man, yes?"
" 'Std 'ueno."
A pause, the adults smoking determinedly while
the children kept me carefully skewered. Then, —
"Manuel, you sabe?"
" Manuel live Mono ? Yosemite ? "
" Yosemite, rancheria."
" Oh, ya-a-a, sabe Manuel."
" Him good man, too."
" Ya-a-a, him good man, Manuel good man, sure."
Another pause.
" You see me when I come to-day, afternoon ? "
" Oh, ya-a-a, see you come. Bringum two burro,
Adams, Teddee."
" How you sabe my burros ? "
" Oh, ya-a-a, sabe burro allright. Burro not belong
you." " No, not belong me. How you sabe?"
" Oh, ya-a-a, sabe oleman Dickson, Hite Cove.
Him haveum burro for pack, I see. You buyum, how
much?"

8o YOSEMITE TRAILS
" No, I not buyum ; rentum."
(I found myself, with half-conscious amusement,
adopting the pidgin-English of my friends.)
"'Std' ueno: I sabe you rentum."
" How you sabe ? "
But to this I could get no answer. They grunted in
energetic chorus, but left me in ignorance and ad
miration ; and I am in doubt to-day whether he really
knew my business as thoroughly as he seemed to
do, or whether among the other interesting traits of
the Indian is to be reckoned that of being a superla
tive and unnecessary bluffer.
With such innocent exercises we passed an hour
of true Indian sociability, smoking industriously and
speaking about once every three minutes. The chil
dren had retired, that is to say, they had burrowed
under a heap of nondescript bedding and odoriferous
saddle-blankets which lay, sufficiently near, at a few
yards' distance. When I arose to go, my pouch, a
nickel-plated, horseshoe-topped affair, had not re
turned to my custody. It was an old friend, and I
was loath to lose it ; but when a casual glance around
failed to reveal it I gave it up, rather than institute a
search which, if unsuccessful, might seem to reflect
upon the honesty of my hosts. So, saying nothing
about the pouch, I bade them good-bye and groped
my way in the pitchy darkness back to my camp,
twice narrowly escaping a plunge into the creek,
which stole with a canal quietness between deeply
cut banks.

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 8i
When I reached camp my lower half was well
chilled by contact with the rain-laden bushes. I made
a genial blaze by which to dry myself, and as I sat by
it I pondered upon the mysterious nature of that law
by virtue of which the smoke of a camp-fire blows
always, without regard to the direction of the wind,
into the face of the bystander. Large spiders, of the
kind whose pin's-head of body is suspended upon
long legs of miraculous thinness, ambled over me,
exploring the creases of my costume; and I won
dered whether there is not suggested in the anatomy
of these creatures a mechanical principle which an
architect might turn to remarkable account.
Sunday was to be a day of rest and mending, and
when I awoke next morning I was determined not to
forsake my blankets until I could emerge upon a
comfortable temperature. When at length I arose I
looked in vain for the smoke of the Indians' fire.
Evidently they had already broken camp and de
parted. I thought I would walk over after breakfast
to their camp, and make a search for the pouch in
case I had overlooked it in the semi-darkness the
night before, but I confess I thought it likely that
it was in their company and well on the way to
Mono. While I sat at breakfast I saw the older Indian
loping down the meadow toward me on his pony. As
he came up and we exchanged "Buenos diasl" he
held out the pouch to me, explaining that the " mu-
chach ' " had taken it because it was bright. He was

82 YOSEMITE TRAILS
sorry, and he had " beatum good." I thanked him for
returning it and asked him to keep it for his trouble,
but I could not persuade him to accept it. While
we fraternized over the coffee-pot I learned that they
had started at sunrise and he had actually ridden back
several miles to restore my property. I had known that
these Indians bore a high reputation for trustworthi
ness, but I own I was astonished at this scrupulous
honesty, and was heartily ashamed of my suspicions.
With some difficulty I got him to accept a small can
ister of tobacco, and he rode off to overtake his party,
under pledge not to "beatum muchach'" any further
on my account.
My animals gazed at me with surprise and grati
tude when, instead of bringing them in for packing,
I presented them with a breakfast relish of onions.
Some repairs were necessary on my clothing, and as
I (to use the ingenious expression of a plainsman
friend) "staked out" my buttons with copper wire, I
was struck by the degree of polish of which khaki is
susceptible which has been well treated with pine-
gum. In the afternoon clouds again came up from the
north and a heavy thunder-storm broke over the lake.
Mount Hoffman in the west grew leaden and veiled,
and looking down the lake I could see skeins of rain
falling from the edges of the clouds that overhung
the valley. The wind blew strongly enough to raise
waves of respectable size, and I again retreated to my
shelter. The thunder became continuous and made a

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 83
noble jubilation among the mountains. There is an
amphitheatre of cliffs far up on the east shoulder of
Tenaya Peak which seemed to focus each peal, wrap
it together, and hurl it down in explosive bursts upon
the lake. It was a superb Sunday concert.
The rain was heavy and lasted for several hours. At
the foot of the tamaracks among which I was camped
solid masses of resin had collected. I kicked off lumps
from these with my boot-heel, and with them kept up a
handsome fire, independent of my rain-soaked supply
of firewood. By sundown again the clouds had van
ished, and the day closed in an idyll, with the even
ing star beaming in a thoughtful sky and drawn in
quiet, tremulous lines on the tranquil surface of the
lake. The stillness of the night was broken by the sound
of newly formed cascades that poured in many places
over the bare rock of the mountain sides. Thoreau re
lates that people used sometimes to remark upon the
loneliness of his life in the Concord woods, and rejoins
in his quaint fashion, "Why should I feel lonely? is
not our planet in the Milky Way ? " I confess I am
not built on that sublime scale ; but with trees about
me I find that I seldom suffer for lack of company.
And besides the trees themselves there are their pop
ulations of birds and squirrels, all friends and com
rades alike.
My lash-ropes, which had been thoroughly soaked
in the rain, were frozen during the night as stiff as
wire cables, and it was impossible to pack with them

84 YOSEMITE TRAILS
next morning until I had got them thawed out. As I
wrestied with the ice-bound knots and hitches I real
ized faintiy the melancholy nature of the seafaring
life, and marvelled that any one should voluntarily
"follow the sea" as a profession.
By mid-morning I had packed as well as I could
and we again took to the road, which follows the
north shore of the lake almost to its lower end. Clouds'
Rest came again into view to the south, and Mount
Hoffman closer to northwest. The rocks showed
here a remarkable degree of glacial action and shone
with the dull lustre of polished marble.
At the foot of the lake, where an ancient rail-fence
lies submerged and decaying among the grass of a
small meadow, the road turned to the north, and climb
ing a steep grade opened a lovely landscape of which
the lake, at a distance of a mile or two, was the centre.
Directly from the water's edge on its farther side
Tenaya Peak rose for two thousand feet, with Cathe
dral Peak showing over its shoulder remarkably like
an English parish church. The foreground was a slope
of glistening rock strewn with an incredible litter of
boulders. A sun of spring-like freshness shone over the land
scape, and under its warmth the wet ground poured
out its spiciest odors. The dead cones that lay in
myriads on the forest floor had closed their scales
like umbrellas, and resumed for a brief time their
living shapes. One is apt, unless he is acquainted
with the appearance of the growing cones, to be

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 85
deluded by this behavior into supposing that he is
meeting some species of pines that are new to him.
The cones of the tamarack and hemlock in particular
are not easily recognized under their temporary trans
formation. The road trended northward almost to the foot of
Mount Hoffman before it turned again westerly and
began a gradual descent in company with a versatile
little creek. An opening of the forest to the south gave
a glimpse of Half-Dome under yet another aspect,
seen at right angles to the well-known semi-profile
that commands the valley. Far to the west the blue
of timbered mountains closed the view, running to
gether fold on fold, their myriad tree-tops scratching
the sky-line like needle points.
Vivid ovals of meadow broke the forest, starred
with daisies that were more engaging than ever in
their rain-washed freshness. Rounding the base of
Mount Hoffman I discovered the expected south
westerly trail, and striking into it headed directly for
the valley rim. The timber here again was strik
ingly fine, the firs especially statuesque and dignified ;
and the afternoon sunlight flooded the forest with a
grave and solemn splendor,
I had prepared myself for trouble when I packed
in the morning, and now it overtook me. The lash-
ropes, stretching as they dried, had gradually loosened
until at a steep descent the packs of both animals
slipped bodily forward on to their necks. A few ex
cited gymnastics completed the ruin, and nothing

86 YOSEMITE TRAILS
remained but to unload and repack. The operation
is a harassing one when the ground is a steep and
brushy side-hill, and a good deal of time was con
sumed by it.
After crossing the creek which flows down Indian
Canon to the valley, the trail rose to a low divide,
then again descended, now in full view of the great
precipice which rises at the west of the Yosemite
Creek. This was already deep in shadow, a sombre
and imposing object, and enhanced by contrast the
sunset color that pulsated on the summit of Sentinel
Dome, directiy to the south. The forest became more
open, Jeffrey pines and junipers growing sparsely on
the pavement-like expanse of disintegrating granite.
A final abrupt descent brought me to Yosemite
Creek, and crossing by the bridge just above the
head of the fall I turned along the west side of the
stream and camped where a scanty growth of herb
age offered the only provender for the animals that
I was likely to find in the neighborhood.
I had arranged with my friend Eytel that I would
signal my arrival at this point to him in the valley
below. By the last of the daylight I climbed to the
highest point of the cliff on the east of the fall, and
lighted my signal-fire. The floor of the valley three
thousand feet below twinkled with electric lights, and
I anticipated without enthusiasm the time when a
captive balloon will be anchored in the middle of the
valley, and airships moored at favorable spots for
doing the sunsets and sunrises.

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 87
Early next morning I climbed down to the lip of
the fall. It is a wild enough place, and the tremendous
escarpment of Yosemite Point, projected in strong
profile against the morning haze, was powerfully im
pressive. The upper end of the valley was filling with
misty sunlight, but below the village everything was
still in obscurity, except where the salient points of
the southern wall caught dull, purplish gleams. In
middle distance loomed the colossus of Half-Dome,
and beyond. Mounts Clark and Starr King stood
forward like the advancing waves of the sea of Sierra
peaks. At this time of year, the end of summer, the fall
had lost much of its beauty and grandeur, but even
now from where I stood at the verge of the first sheer
drop of sixteen hundred feet it presented a fascinating
sight. The creek, after passing through two or three
deep, cauldron-like pools, falls in cascades for a hun
dred feet. Then leaping another hundred it strikes
a ledge and is broken into dust, which drifts idly
away upon the wind and is lost to view.
From observation of the walls of the gorge above
the fall I could partiy realize the stupendous energy
with which the stream when in flood hurls its waters
far out beyond the lip of the fall, and was able to im
agine the magnificence of the spectacle at this point
on such occasions, I could also faintly conceive what
King's fine geological sense suggested to him at the
same spot, — "how immeasurably grander must it
have been when the great, living, moving glacier.

88 YOSEMITE TRAILS
with slow, invisible motion, crowded its huge body
over the brink, and launched blue ice-blocks down
through the foam of the cataract into that gulf of
wild rocks and eddying mist."
I had often noted from the valley the splinter or
flake of rock which stands separated from the main
wall near Yosemite Point. Climbing along the edge
of the cliff I found that this remarkable monolith,
standing perhaps a hundred feet clear of the summit
of the precipice, is so tall, straight, and slender that I
was nowhere able to observe where its base joins the
parent rock.
From the Point another enormous prospect opened.
Here again, as everywhere in the neighborhood of
the valley, Half-Dome was the overpowering ingre
dient in the view. The light was still misty and uncer
tain, and the great disk of the northern face hung like
a blue curtain from the edge of the mighty fracture.
From this elevation of 7200 feet the convexity of the
dome is depressed to a low, swelling curve, and the
laminations of its concentric structure show like fine
toolings on a ball of ivory. Directly to the east North
Dome showed as a mere hillock, only five hundred feet
above me. A broad splash of sunlight shone dully on
the apron of granite over which an arm of the ancient
glacier had flowed.
In the foreground the forest swept down at a keen
angle, halting only at the very edge of the precipice
which plunges sheer to the valley floor. Opposite,
across the gulf, frowned the dark escarpment of Gla-

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 89
cier Point. The broad foot of solid rock which sinks
into the forest below this great cliff is to me one of
the arresting features of the valley. The most casual
mind is struck by the massive slope of burnished gran
ite, and comprehends something of the majestic
movement of the glacier which, pouring down the
caiion of the Illilouette, encountered here the converg
ing mass of the Tenaya glacier, and, deflected west
wards, was crowded against the impeding buttress.
Turning to the south. Sentinel Dome marked the
head of the magnificent panorama of the valley wall,
the shadows of the highest points projected blue-black
across the park-like level. In the west Eagle Peak
and the abrupt faces of the Three Brothers shone in
clear morning light, and below lay the deeply cut
trough where the river gleamed palely among ob
scuring masses of timber.
It seemed somewhat of a pity that since the au
thorities had placed, or permitted some one to place,
a flag-pole at this much-visited point, there could not
have been found a worthier emblem to fly from it than
the scrap of sacking which, to judge from internal
evidence, had then long disgraced it.
Reluctantly I left this fine coign of observation. A
marmot, which when I arrived I had noticed lying on
a projecting rock apparently waiting for the sun, was
still, after perhaps half an hour, watching me with
frank curiosity. He was not more than five yards dis
tant, and I felt flattered by his confidence and spoke
appreciatively to him as I turned away. In acknow-

90 YOSEMITE TRAILS
ledgment he politely changed his position so as to
keep me in view until I disappeared below his horizon.
It was already nearly midday, and I made my way
directly back to camp, striking obliquely across a
steep slope of ledges and house-like boulders. Gnarled
pines gripped the crevices and thick beds of buck-
brush filled the sheltered hollows. The junipers were
here in unusually fine foliage, spreading in firm
rounded outlines like full-leaved oaks. The disinte
grating rock gave good footing to my nailed boots,
and I found it exhilarating to stride rapidly down
over shelves of sparkling granite that often tilted
under my weight. I crossed the creek almost dry-
shod between two of the " pot-holes " with which its
bed is honeycombed, and climbing up a brush-choked
gully, emerged, almost as much to my own surprise
as theirs, exactiy where my animals were tethered.
Their pasturage had been scanty, and with cheap
generosity I eked out their commons from such of
my supplies as promised to show a surplus.

CHAPTER VII
A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM : YOSEMITE FALLS
TO THE BIG OAK FLAT ROAD
IT was well after noon when I broke camp and started
out on the Eagle Peak trail. Almost immediately
I met once more that magnificent zone of firs which
I can never enter without a feeling that approaches
the religious. There is something in the demeanor of
these trees that ministers to an instinct for gravity
which receives little satisfaction in these days, and
I could not refrain from occasionally halting the
cavalcade while I indulged the sentiment to the
full. The conservation policy is perhaps more politic
than it knows, conserving not only the nation's re
sources, but, in a manner, its men.
The trail, after bearing northward and rounding
the high cliff that rises to the west of the creek,
turned again to the south, passing along the edge of
a meadow full of cheerful daisies, and then rose
steeply to Eagle Peak. This point, the highest of the
Three Brothers, is several hundred feet higher than
any other accessible summit along the walls, and
gives the finest of all the views of the upper end of
the valley. The scene was that day enhanced by
broken masses of cloud that hovered over the High

92 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Sierra, through which a pale sun threw sensitive,
shifting lights over the ranks of distant peaks. But
for the interference of the hemisphere of Half-Dome,
the sweep of the prospect was unbroken. Again I
admired the scimitar curve of Mount Clark, and
again felt the Alpine fascination of that noble clus
ter of mountains of which Lyell is the nucleus. The
nearer distance was filled by a sea of granite, shaded
in severe black and white ; and almost in the fore
ground but thirteen hundred feet below, I could see
the delicate scarf of the Yosemite Fall, drifting airily
down the great cliff on which I had stood at early
morning. To the south I looked directly down upon a long
gable that is cut vertically away on its eastern face
to a precipice, and runs on the west in a steep plane
to meet the flank of El Capitan,
The summit of Eagle Peak itself is a satisfactory
pile of huge leaves and boulders of weathered granite,
loosely thrown together. As I sat intent upon the wist
ful play of light and shade over the distant mountains
and the pageant of the sky-scenery, I was startied by
a rattling whistle of wings overhead. Before I could
get up from the cleft into which, for protection from
the keen wind, I had wedged myself, the bird was
gone from view, leaving me in uncertainty as to its
kind, but willing to believe that I had shared that fine
solitude with an eagle.
From Eagle Peak a southwesterly trail of not over
two miles leads to the summit of El Capitan. It is sel-

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 93
dom travelled, and in many places is obliterated by
chaparral. A mountain-trained burro will ordinarily
pick out a bad trail better than the generality of man
kind, but here Adam was at fault and wandered aim
lessly about, or stood helplessly gazing back at me
for instructions. Fastening Teddy's halter-rope to the
back horn of Adam's pack-saddle, I took the lead and
they immediately followed, ripping through scrub-
oak, buck-brush, and manzanita with what seemed
ostentatious disregard of their packs.
We feasted as we went on thimble-berries, I on the
ripe fruit, they impartially on the whole plant, which
they alternated with fern, bunch-grass, young oak-
leaves, and herbs of sundry kinds. Now and then a
mouthful of pennyroyal or spearmint odorized the
atmosphere agreeably. For some unexplained reason
none of Nature's children seem to consider the wild
gooseberry a desirable fruit. The bushes here hung
full of tempting-looking berries, prickly, but of good
flavor. No doubt the bear, an absolute omnivore,
appreciates them, but the besu-s of the region have
mostly repaired to the valley, where banquets of
piquant refuse from the camps are freely spread
for all.
The trail crossed several small creeks, but all of
them were dry. I was somewhat disconcerted at this,
for I particularly desired to camp on the summit of
El Capitan, and I knew that I should find no water
there. I had watered the animals at the meadow, but
where was my evening tea and morning coffee to come

94 YOSEMITE TRAILS
from? As we threaded an unpromising tract of brush
I heard a sound as of the subterranean trickling of
water, and traced it to a small hole just big enough
to admit my hand. By lying face downward I could
with difficulty reach my arm down to the tiny stream,
and I devoted ten minutes to filling my canteen with
a compound of gravel, dead leaves, ants, and water.
A few handsome sugar pines appeared as the forest
thinned out. This fine tree, which is here at about the
upper limit of its growth, is conspicuous even among
such monarchs as the firs. The lithe branches express
a steel-like temper, and take a spirited sweep that is
wholly different from the reserved manner and statu
esque symmetry of its companions ; and when the
tree is hung with full-grown cones there is an opu
lence in its aspect that marks it as the head of its
family. The timber ceased suddenly at a shelving expanse
of rock and sand, and I recognized the contour of
the vast headland which marks the gateway of the
valley. Not a blade of grass grows on this barren
tract, and I followed the western edge of the cliff, look
ing for pasturage, until I came to the Ribbon Fall
Creek. At the head of the 3300-foot fall (which is the
highest of all the Yosemite waterfalls, but also the
most ephemeral), I found a little swale of verdure and
there made camp, staking out the animals among
grass literally up to their heads and mosquitoes not
a few. I made a hasty supper and fled, leaving them
to enjoy their riches and bear their trials alone.

A MOUNTAIN MEADOW IN THE FOREST BELT

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 95
As for me I was determined to sleep on the very
crest of El Capitan. A certain nausea has crept into
my feeling for this famous mountain since eager ad
vertisers have claimed it for their own, and publish
its lineaments on soap- wrappers and beer bottles. But
up here on this austere and lonely brow, all that could
be forgotten, and taking my blankets and materials
for a partial breakfast, I marched back half a mile to
the summit of the elephantine forehead of the moun
tain. I had heard of a monster juniper, juniperus juni-
perorum, surpassing all the junipers of Yosemite, that
grew hereabout, and by the last of the daylight I
searched for him, hoping to pass my El Capitan night
beneath or at least beside him. My knowledge of the
habit of the species ought to have guided me to the
wind-swept western edge, where next morning I found
the tree ; but I had to content myself with a gallant hulk
of Jeffrey pine whose topmast had been blown over
in some winter's gale and now hung by a few tough
shreds creaking somewhat dismally in the wind. Here
I made a royal fire and sat in great content, watching
the red light fade in the west and congratulating my
self on the fulfilment of a long-cherished desire, —
that I might see my camp-fire smoke ascending from
the "skyish head" of the Captain of Yosemite.
Before I turned in I walked a short distance far
ther out on the promontory. It was a strange and
somewhat unearthly situation. In the dim starlight I
seemed to stand on a grey plain that sloped gradu-

96 YOSEMITE TRAILS
ally but perceptibly away on all sides. A few gaunt
trees, uncertainly seen, showed stark against the
night sky, and seemed to peer and listen. I walked
over to the eastern slope and looked down into the
valley. It was a misty void, in which the gaze sank,
and sank, as in a bottomless gulf. One dark shape
loomed in the obscurity, the great arc of mountain
which soars up to Glacier Point. Beside that there was
nothing but the pallid glimmer of the rock on which
I stood, and the stars shining in the indigo vault
with a faint, high radiance that enhanced the solem
nity of their immeasurable distances. The wind, which
had blown strongly from the east, had almost died
away, and passed me with a low and dreary sound.
I might have been the last survivor on an asteroid.
At five o'clock next morning I was astir and drink
ing my coffee. The sky was yellowing in the east,
and the irregular line of the Sierras was cut upon it
in opaque, lifeless blue. Overhead the long needles
of my pine hummed in the dawn wind, a dull, reso
nant tone like the reluctant smorzando of a bass-viol.
The great caiion to the west was deep in sleeping
mist, and above it a few stars shone greyly in a
firmament that was still dark, as if the night had re
treated there. The air was like poetry, and!^the " one
touch of nature " was supplied when a small yellow
bird arrived, fluffed himself out with an easy appear
ance of taking a chair, and fraternized sociably while
he awaited my crumbs.
Then I went down to the brink of the precipice.

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 97
There is a long, rounded slope to the south, at first
gentie, then steeply shelving. The ground is a coarse
granite sand through which the friable rock pushes
in shelves and ledges. I climbed carefully down
among huge slabs, and crept out along the edge of a
flake which leans out over the cliff. A monument of
piled rocks stands on the verge, and hard by it I
found the bench-mark of the Geological Survey, re
cording 7042 feet of altitude. I was at first tempted
to lie down and secure an absolutely vertical coup
d'ceil; but I had no difficulty in refraining when I
heard the warning tone that the loose rock returned
when I stamped upon it to test its stability, and I
contented myself with toppling a block of granite
over the edge as my proxy. No sound of its striking
came back from the abyss.
From a niche among the rocks I looked down
upon the valley, slowly growing into distinctness as
the light strengthened. El Capitan Meadows lay di
rectly below, a carpet of quiet half-tones, grey-green,
russet, and umber. The river shone like a ribbon of
steel, bordered here with white shallows of sand,
there with deep green of pine and cedar, and again
with clumps of poplar whose lighter foliage showed
the first touch of autumn gold. At the foot of the
cliffs, sharp lines of talus stood boldly out like capes
into the meadow, ashy grey, or darkly forested with
pines. The southern wall ran in mile on mile of som
bre precipice, alternately rifted with purple shadows
and scarred with white avalanche scorings.

98 YOSEMITE TRAILS
The sun rose at length, gilding the bald crest of
Sentinel Dome and sending shafts of misty amethyst
streaming between the outstanding buttresses of the
walls. The picture was still magnificent, but the deeper
enchantment passed away as the light increased. I
made my way to the west cliff and there found my juni
per : a sort of arborescent Atlas, twenty-three feet in cir
cumference at four feet above the ground. Its height
does not exceed its girth, and the farthest reaching
limbs are of about the same length and some five
feet around near the trunk. The stem rises in thick
coils, like a twisted column ; every branch and twig
is furred with the yellow moss of age, and the whit
ened twigs and branchlets stream out wildly, like
grey hair. Yet the tree is in full vigor, the foliage
dense and brushy, the arms well balanced, and the
whole appearance expressive of enormous age allied
with unfailing strength and hardiness.
As I returned to camp I noticed, attached to a
small tree, the fluttering remains of a sack which bore
the advertisement of some brand of flour, of course
"the best." The fitness of things is apparently of
small account to most of us, after all our genera
tions of culture and decades of magazines. I willingly
halted and climbed the tree in order to detach the rag,
and had the pleasure of incinerating it before I left
the mountain.
My animals received me with incoherent sounds
of welcome, and hastened toward me to the limit of
their ropes. They were standing amid the wreckage

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM 99
of their feast, surrounded by a cloud of mosquitoes,
like spendthrifts among the ruins of their fortunes, be
set by creditors. I made a second breakfast, packed,
and about noon started to make my way if I could by
the ancient trail to Gentry's, on the Big Oak Flat
road. By returning to the valley over that road I
should make my circuit exact and complete, and ful
fil my purpose in the letter as well as in the spirit.
Half a mile brought me to a small stream, the
main Ribbon Fall Creek, crossing which I came
upon a little hunched-up cabin, doorless, and leaning
half-a-dozen ways. An old pack-saddle lay near by,
and a disabled Dutch oven reclined in a Dying-Gla
diator attitude on a talus of empty cans that de
scended to the stream. On a sleeping-bunk within
the house lay an object which in the gloom I took
to be the form of the owner of the dwelling, but
which proved to be only a wood-rat's nest of impos
ing dimensions. Sundry articles of household use lay
about with that waiting expression which such ob
jects in a deserted habitation seem to contract.
On leaving this house of dejection my troubles
began. For a quarter of a mile the trail could be
kept, with difficulty, though for all evidence to the
contrary it might have been years since anybody had
travelled over it. But it became more and more ob
scure, and I frequentiy had to tie up the animals
while I made wide casts before I could recover it
some distance ahead. At last it ran out on to a
meadow (Blue-jay Meadow, as I afterwards found it

loo YOSEMITE TRAILS
is called), and there vanished finally. The most diligent
search failed to reveal any token of it coming out on
the farther side. After wasting much time I decided
to cut loose and make across country as best I could,
bearing west and somewhat south, knowing that if I
could but keep going in that direction I must sooner
or later strike the road.
My brave little burros stepped out gamely, and we
plunged into the forest. It was not long before we
were entangled in difficulties. Windfallen timber
blocked us in, whichever way we turned, and we
spent exciting hours in climbing up and jumping
down among stockades, moats, and circumvallations
such as civilian quadrupeds are not often required to
encounter. They would scramble, packs and all, over
logs of such corpulence that when their forefeet had
made the passage their bellies rested on the round.
A convulsive spasm would bring the hind-legs over,
and they would stand for a moment gazing eagerly
at me with an air of asking "What now?"
I looked anxiously for blazes, scanning each old
scar with my glasses in the hope of finding it to be
of human origin ; but always without avail. It was
near sundown, and I was beginning to think of work
ing down hill to the nearest caiion where I might
find forage and water before the light failed me,
when at last I came upon the trail and we cheerfully
marched straight ahead. The only obstructions now
were occasional newly fallen trees, and these we
could generally circumnavigate by breaking through

A CIRCUIT OF YOSEMITE RIM loi
patches of stubbom buck-brash or affectionate man
zanita. In the twilight we tramped industriously along for
two or three miles, the trail descending rapidly and
leaving the fir-belt for an open forest of sugar pines,
yellow pines, and at last cedars. About dark we en
tered an old clearing beyond which ran the good
grey road, I identified the place as being our goal,
the site of Gentry's Saw-Mill, The mill itself has long
vanished, but the name and a few ancient planks re
main to remind an oblivious world that it has been.
A quarter of a mile down the road we found water,
and I camped among sugar pines and dogwood, the
blossoms of the latter hardly yet withered at this
altitude of 6000 feet.
The feed for the animals was scanty and undesir
able, but some equine magnifico who had lately
dined hard by had left a considerable quantity of
prime oat hay by the roadside, and this, with a few
handfuls of onions and potatoes which I contributed
from my own supplies, provided them with a supper
of unusual attractiveness.
All that remained for the next day was a common
place tramp of five dusty miles down the road to the
point where, at the foot of El Capitan, it converges
with the other two roads into Yosemite, — that from
El Portal by which travellers over the railway now
enter the valley, and the old stage-road from Raymond
and Wawona by which they used to arrive (often
in hysterics) in days of more leisure and less luxury.

I02 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Lunching at noon by El Capitan bridge, a friendly
soul who was resting for the midday hour from his
work on the road, the terrifying dust of which is
being at last suppressed by a just if procrastinate
government, and of whom I asked the news of the
ten days during which I had been out of range of
news and newspapers, inquired whether I had heard
about the North Pole. In some alarm I asked him,
"What?" and then learned that while I had been on
my puny travels tidings had come that the greatest
of geographical feats had been accomplished, and
that the North Pole, the desire, the defier, and the
death of many dauntless men, had been at last con
quered, and, in a manner of speaking, was no more

CHAPTER VIII
THE FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE REGION
THE coniferous forests of the Yosemite Park,
and of the Sierra in general, surpass all others
of their kind in America, or indeed in the world, not
only in the size and beauty of the trees, but in the
number of species assembled together, and the gran
deur of the mountains they are growing on." So says
Mr. Muir ; and among those who have travelled
through the sublime woodlands of which he speaks
there will be no dissenting voice from that high
praise. In the valley itself the timber, fine as it is, is an
incidental adornment, a feature subordinate to cliffs
and waterfalls. When one is sight-seeing the mind
naturally focuses upon the principal objects, and takes
no account of accessories, beyond observing, perhaps,
that they obstruct the view. But a forest is not a
sight, and the forest frame of mind is not a wide-eyed-
wondering frame of mind, but is made up of innumer
able small and quiet sensations, incidents, and remi
niscences. Its glades and glooms, its trees and flowers,
its stealing airs and rivulets, even its sounds, are the
ingredients of a calm and peaceful mood ; and when
ever I find myself leaving the great valley, with its

I04 YOSEMITE TRAILS
varied wonders and beauties, and entering the un
mixed forest, I experience a feeling of comforting
ease, and relax like a man returning home at evening
to walk in his garden. I know all these things and
like them; and I feel that they know and like me
too. I suppose this sensation, which no doubt many
people experience, might be traced to a scientific psy
chological source. Unless I am mistaken, learned
men tell us that the branch of our race which peo
pled Northern Europe migrated thither from Central
Asia, consuming in their interrupted journeys a long
period of time. I imagine the region through which
they moved like a slowly spreading wave to have
been at that time a region, generally speaking, of
forests ; and it seems reasonable to think that in the
course of their long wanderings the wildeslust as well
as the wanderlust would enter deeply into the spirits
of our sires, to break out in us in what we call spring
fever, and treat blindly with sarsaparilla or more
wisely with camping-trips. Be that as it may, every
good man loves the woodland, and even if our con
cerns keep us all our lives out of our heritage, we hope
to lie down at last under the quiet benediction of slow-
moving branches.
The stately beauty and perfection of the trees that
compose this forest are very impressive to the trav
eller ; and when one sees from every summit and open
ing its illimitable rise and fall, mountain beyond
mountain, range beyond range, fading into the wist-

FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE 105
ful blue distance, then one recognizes the literal trath
of Mr. Muir's statement quoted at the beginning of
this chapter.
The regularity with which the various species of
conifer appear at certain altitudes is a matter of un
failing interest to the tree-lover. Species succeeds
species in orderly procession, each of them marked
by special beauties, and all merging harmoniously
like the colors of the spectrum. At the lower limit
of the pine -belt comes the Digger pine {Pinus
sabiniand), also called bull-pine and pifion- or nut-
pine. (The usual mild anarchy that exists among the
popular names of natural objects has full play in
the case of the coniferae, and in common speech the
names "bull," "pitch," "silver," "red," "yellow," and
so forth, are generally applied in an indiscriminate
and misleading manner.)
This outpost of the pines begins to occur, in the
Yosemite latitude, at about six hundred feet of ele
vation, and is noticed by travellers on the railway to
El Portal almost as soon as the foothills are reached
after leaving the San Joaquin Valley at Merced. It is
always to me a somewhat uncomfortable and unpine-
like tree, more suggestive of the arid Australian flora
than of our lusty occidental types. In shape it is loose
and spindling, and the foliage, though long and well-
tempered, is so sparse as to give the tree almost a
dying appearance. The straggling branches have
a thin-blooded look, and cast a grey, anaemic shade
that scarcely mitigates the stroke of the California sun.

io6 YOSEMITE TRAILS
In comparison with the sturdy vigor of the family it is
just what one might expect to find on the torrid foot
hill slopes which it mainly inhabits, where vitality is
drained away by a sun of semi-desert power, and the
rainfall is barely sufficient to support tree-life.
Yet it has a pallid grace of its own, and the lan
guid, transparent shapes impart an individual char
acter to the landscape, somewhat akin to that which
the yucca palm gives to the Mojave region. The hand
some oval cones are only exceeded in size by those
of Pinus coulteri and Pinus lam,bertiana, and con
tain edible nuts that provide the Indians of the local
ity with a relief from the overworked acorn. In the
aggressive tusks which guard them we seem to see
the beginning of the quarrelsome traits that mark the
purely desert growths.
Next in order appears the pine which preponder
ates on the floor of the Yosemite Valley, the yellow
pine, or pitch pine {Pinus ponderosd). It begins to
mingle with the sabiniana at about two thousand feet
of elevation, and continues in its common form up to
about five thousand feet. This type exhibits the pine
characteristics of symmetry and shapeliness at their
best. No other tree is so perfect in its slender taper
ing form, and it keeps this perfection remarkably
even in old age. The bark, of a dull buffy color, is
arranged in large irregular plates like alligator skin ;
the foliage is long and of a brilliant dark green, grow
ing in fine star-like bursts that well indicate the
vigor of the species. In the midst of these tassels of

FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE 107
foliage the bright brown staminate blossoms make a
lively contrast in early summer, and later the cones
are set, usually in twos, but sometimes as many as
six in a generous cluster. The lower main branches
of old trees are particularly picturesque, reaching
outward and downward in lines that are at once
graceful and elastic, and full of fine Japanese drawing.
In the sheltered valley this tree grows in perfec
tion, and succeeds in fulfilling Ruskin's somewhat ar
bitrary statement regarding the pine in general, —
"Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the stem —
it shall point to the centre of the earth as long as the
tree lives." The largest specimen I have found is
growing about the middle of the valley, close to the
Ford road, and measures twenty-three and a half
feet in circumference at five feet above the ground.
The industrious Yosemite woodpeckers find the thick
plates of bark well adapted to their housekeeping
methods, and the grey squirrels levy ample toll upon
the plentiful cones. The ground under the trees is lit
tered with the cores in amazing numbers, and one
would think that every grove must support a tene
ment-house population of invisible squirrels.
Overlapping the common yellow pine in some
places but not everywhere, comes what may be called
a mountain type of the same species, known as the
Jeffrey variety. It is usually of less height but greater
spread of limbs, with redder and more broken bark
and much larger cones. This versatile and adventur
ous pine inhabits a wide range of altitude, and has a

io8 YOSEMITE TRAILS
way of turning up in all manner of unlikely places.
Wherever conditions of life are hardest, there it sees
its opportunity, and like Mark Tapley "comes out
strong " under discouragement. On wind-swept gran
ite pavements, which the trees proper to the altitude
decline with thanks, there the Jeffrey appears, takes
a wrestler's grip, and holds on like a bull-dog. One of
these trees has rooted itself on the topmost round of
the Sentinel Dome, and there romps joyously about
in the terrific wind that rushes continually over that
exposed spot, its branches and foliage streaming out
horizontally like a stormy oriflamme of war. When
ever I see it I think of
" Einar Tamberskelver, bare
To the winds his golden hair," —
and a magnificent Saga of the Pine it is that he
sings. On the long promontories that stretch out into the
Mono plains on the eastern side of the Sierra, this
brave pine marches out green and sturdy among the
bleached and wizened desert growths. Wherever you
find it, it is always heartening and cheerful in bear
ing, an entire contrast to the misanthropical juniper
that often grows with it. The one chooses the stark
est places because they suit its own dour temper;
the other out of pure joie de vivre and love of fight
ing. The Douglas spruce {Pseudotsuga taxifolia) is
the most limited in vertical range of all the Sierra

FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE 109
conifers. It dislikes extremes of heat and cold, and
shows everywhere the preference for shade and
moisture which makes it the preeminent tree of the
Oregon and Washington forests. It begins to appear
at about thirty-five hundred feet, growing freely on
the talus-piles of the southern side of the valley under
the shadow of the wall. Its upper limit of growth in
this latitude is about fifty-five hundred feet, and
the handsomest specimens are usually found at the
higher elevations. In youth it is a poetic tree, child
like and dainty, and in full growth I find it pecul
iarly attractive by the contrast of the dark, rugged
stem with the flowing grace of the sprays of foliage
that play in sunny zephyrs or droop in the surging
mists of waterfalls. When the young leaves first
open they are of a vivid yellow-green that gives the
tree a particularly lively look, like a Christmas tree
dressed with lighted candles. The cones are small
but numerous, growing often in clusters that are as
graceful and fragrant as hops.
When one looks down upon a Douglas sprace
from some cliff under which it is growing, the dis
tinctiveness of its structure is beautifully displayed.
The foliage flows down in hair-like tresses from the
branchlets, which stand out in fine lines as clearly as
if drawn on a plan. I have often found it a fasci
nating sight to watch from above the play of branch
and leaf-spray in a gentle wind, when the whip-like
branches shine like veins of silver on the ground
work of waving, weaving foliage.

no YOSEMITE TRAILS
The unquestioned king of the pines, as apart from
the firs and spruces, is the sugar pine {Pinus lam-
bertiand). There are very few trees of this species
in the Yosemite Valley, where it is at its lowest limit,
about four thousand feet. From this altitude it con
tinues upwards to almost seven thousand feet, royally
conspicuous even among the splendid forest of yel
low pine, Douglas spruce, silver fir and cedar which
mixes with it. The shaft is a fine example of tree
architecture, round, true, and taper, and over two
hundred feet in height when full grown. The color
under oblique or level sunlight is a true imperial pur
ple, the finely netted bark reflecting the light with
a dull, healthy polish like buck-horn. At midday it
has become a shaded spire of smoke-tones, and I
have seen it by red sunset light kindle into an inten
sity of color that was glorious almost to the point of
solemnity. The foliage of the sugar pine gives a particular im
pression of grace and lightness. It is short, arranged
five leaves in a fascicle, and clothes the tree with
starry sprays which form a lovely foil to the vigorous
stem and the lean, far-reaching branches. As for the
cones, they are amazing revelations of Nature's opu
lence, and of her love for her favorite tree-family.
Generally about sixteen inches in length, sometimes
as much as twenty or even more, they express a royal
generosity, whether pendent like ornaments from the
tips of the branches or tossed in careless profusion
on the forest floor. As they hang ripening in the

FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE in
brilliant sunshine of midsummer they drip with crys
tal gum and glance with prismatic colors.
When I have found one of these green cones fallen
prematurely through some mischance from its high
place, I have been thankful that the Sierra squirrels
do not "take after" those questionable monkeys
whose alleged practice of pelting explorers with
cocoanuts made a deep impression on my young
imagination. "The pleasure of camping and travel
ling in these forests would be seriously disturbed if
one needed to be on the watch for aerial torpedoes
of three or four pounds' weight which might be
quietly launched from a height of one or two hun
dred feet.
When one lies awake at early dawn beneath these
trees, while the lithe arms are traced in sooty black
ness against the brightening sky, they seem to ex
press a wonderful power and nobility. The mast-like
stem shoots up with magnificent stateliness ; and
often some tall and aged tree, barren almost to its
top, will there produce a crown of branches that
stream out with every gesture of freedom, compli
ance, hopefulness, or severity ; and I will confess that
I have even found my breath quicken as I drank in
the vigor and beauty of their lines.
Scattered throughout the belt which contains the
sugar pine, yellow pine, and Douglas spruce is the
cedar {Libocedrus decurrens), commonly called the
incense cedar. In color and foliage it is a noble
tree. The bark is a warm, lustrous brown of fine tex-

112 YOSEMITE TRAILS
ture, which one may strip off in silky ribbons. It de
taches easily from the tree in plank-like shards, and
furnished the Indians of the region with the ma
terial for the picturesque huts (o'chums) which they
used to inhabit before a too generous civilization en
riched them with its packing-cases and coal-oil cans.
The foliage is particularly handsome, richly carved
and fronded, and of a deep glossy olive color.
In perfection of symmetry the young cedar is re
markable even among so shapely a race as the coni
ferae. It forms a pure geometrical cone with a height
of about twice its base-diameter, and is so thickly
clad with foliage as to appear almost solid. As it ap
proaches full development, it opens robustly to the
sun and shows the marked feature of the species, the
larger limbs growing squarely out and then straight
up in vigorous attitudes, like the bent arms of an
athlete. In late summer the tree is thickly powdered
over with the small vase-like seed-vessels, which as
they ripen add an autumn tinge to the ferny olive of
the foliage, and enable the trees to lighten the sombre
forest with tones of cheerful color.
At about the altitude of the Yosemite Valley the
white silver fir {Abies concolor) appears, and soon
after, the red silver fir {Abies magnified). A few of the
former may be found in the valley, growing along
the southern side ; but the true fir-zone lies at from
six thousand to nine thousand feet, and it is only
there that the most splendid features of the two great
firs are revealed. There they form often an unbroken

FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE 113
belt, expressing the very noblest of tree beauty, and
not inferior, in my estimation, even to the Sequoias.
In fact, if I were called upon to choose the one among
the conifers that I would live and die by, I should
choose the red silver fir, with no fear of ever weary
ing of its sublime companionship.
Both trees are perfect parables of order. In youth,
especially, they surpass every other tree in charm and
regularity of construction, both as regards their out
line and the marvellous perfection of branch and foli
age. The fine smooth arms, set in regular formation,
divide and re-divide again and again, ad infinitum,
weaving at last into a maze of exquisitely symmetrical
twigs and branchlets. To look up at the young tree
from any point of the circumference is to behold a
bewildering succession of these intricate and delicate
branchings, dwindling away less and less, and shim
mering with finely broken sunlight until the tree
seems to perform that feat which Hamlet vainly de
sired to achieve, and literally to "melt, thaw and
resolve itself into a dew."
Both the firs attain a majestic growth, and often
reach a height of over two hundred feet with a girth
of from twenty to twenty-five or even thirty feet.
The bark of the mature white fir is a dark ashy grey,
and of the red, a dusky purple ; both alike ragged
and deeply furrowed. The two species, though hardly
distinguishable from each other in general appear
ance, are easily known by their foliage, that of the
white being set in flat, lateral rows, while the shorter

114 YOSEMITE TRAILS
and thicker leaves of the red stand up on end like fur,
or a magnificent sort of plush. A branch of red fir is
truly a superb object both in color and line. It sweeps
out with a joyful vigor that carries one's very heart
with it ; the branchlets spread and sub-divide with in
tricate precision, fanning out at the extremity of the
branch into a rounded curve that is like the spread
ing of a wave on a gentle beach. The foliage, darkly,
healthily green, stands up in the manner of grass,
tray above tray, and every fan is edged with a silvery
froth or effervescence by the fresh young growth.
One branch of it would furnish a room with beauty.
The cone of the red fir is worthy of such a tree, —
a generous cylinder with a color and surface of
peachy richness, distilling rare balsam and exhaling
an almost spirituous fragrance. It is from six to eight
inches high and half as wide, built up of a large
number of flaky scales that are stained at their bases
with crimson and purple. The white fir cone is ex
actly similar, but about one half the dimensions of
the other,
I shall not easily forget one summer afternoon in
the Wawona forest when I sat down to rest by a lit
tie spring, hidden among flowery brush and musky-
smelling fern. Alders and white-flowered dogwood
grew along the gully which the spring supplied with
a little thread of water that crept quietly away
through thickets of ceanothus and azalea. Spiring a
hundred feet above the lesser trees there rose close
beside me a young silver fir. It might have been fifty

FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE 115
or sixty years old, and was at the very crisis of its
youthful beauty. It seemed as if it could not yester
day have been so transcendent, nor could such per
fection last until to-morrow, but that I had chanced
upon it at the culminating moment of its life, as at
the blossoming of some glorious orchid. Like a
young goddess at her bridal, it stood divinely beau
tiful, shimmering in a mist of transparent silver just
tinged with ethereal green, I watched it with de
light ; and as the sun declined, his serene rays envel
oped the tree in a baptism of light, revealing new
mazes and mysteries of loveliness, I felt almost as
though I had violated a sanctuary, and fancied that
the Angel of the Trees was incorporated and made
manifest for the moment in a revelation of immortal
glory. The delightful essayist, Mr. A, C, Benson, refers
somewhere to the feeling we are apt to experience in
entering suddenly a place of trees or flowers, of some
silent action having been in progress which we have
interrupted, and which is suspended while we re
main. I felt it that day. Once before, years ago, in a
high and lonely spot near the southern end of the
Sierra, I came upon a great company of white,
gleaming lilies. There were hundreds, perhaps thou
sands, of them, and every one of the shining host,
as it seemed, was endowed with the same unearthly
perfectness as my silver fir. I remember that I stopped
and half drew back, with the same abashed feehng
of having unwittingly strayed into a place where

ii6 YOSEMITE TRAILS
some heavenly work or play had been performing
but had ceased at my entrance. There was not a
movement, nor a sound; it seemed as if the pure
creatures waited for my withdrawal. Even the sun
shine seemed to pause on the multitude of white
flower-faces that were turned towards me. When I
think of it now I can feel again the listening silence
and the trance-like stillness of the scene.
Contrasting clearly with the firs and mingling here
and there among them grows the sturdy mountain
pine {Pinus monticola). It, too, is a giant, but of a dif
ferent humor, powerful more than graceful, and expres
sive of a rugged, mountainous strength. It begins to
appear at about eighty-five hundred feet of altitude,
and continues up to nearly the limit of tree-growth :
a noticeable tree, widely branching for a pine, with
bark of a fine rust-red color that seems well suited to
its hardy strength. The foliage is airy and sensitive
and resembles that of the sugar pine ; which is true
also of the dainty tapering cone, though it is not
one fourth the size of that king of cones. Taken in
conjunction with the stalwart appearance of the body
of the tree, the foliage and cone of this species ex
hibit a grace and lightness that are very welcome and
beautiful in the high regions which it inhabits, where
one expects only stubborn attributes.
There is a fine tract of mountain pine growing al
most unmixed with other trees on the southeasterly
flank of Clouds' Rest. Standing as they do there
on a wide and even slope, they display their robust

FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE 117
character to the best effect. But handsome as the
tree is, I have never quite felt for it the love which
other pines inspire in me. I seem to feel something
of discord and unfriendliness in it, I do not remem
ber, however, that I have ever made camp among
them, and I think that when I do I shall come to
understand them better.
The fir-belt is also the territory of the tamarack or
lodge -pole -pine {Pinus contorta, var, murrayana),^
although the species ranges far below and above it.
This is the least distinguished in appearance of all
the pine family, and much the most common, form
ing vast homogeneous tracts of forest on the rugged
plateaus of granite that form a great part of the
western slope of the Sierra. It is a wiry, grey-coated
little pine, quite unimposing, rarely growing to more
than seventy-five feet of height and three or four of
thickness, but full of friendly virtues and good-com
radeship. The foliage is short and stiff, with a tufty,
foxtail style of growth, the branchlets all curving
upward in a cheerful manner. The cone is small
and ordinary, hardly distinguishable while green on
the tree; but when it ripens the fertile scales open
widely while the base remains closed, giving it the
appearance of a brown rosette. In summer the tree
is quite showy with the numerous Indian-red blos
soms, which burn like points of flame at the heart of
every tuft of foliage ; and at night, when their color
1 Some botanists distinguish the m-urrayana variety as a separate
species, under the name of Pinus murrayana.

ii8 YOSEMITE TRAILS
is enhanced by red camp-fire light, the tree makes a
strangely brilliant appearance.
Athough the tamarack is not a striking tree in the
single specimen, it impresses one strongly in the vast
forests where the species multiplies upon itself un
broken, and one sees everywhere the same type re
produced to infinity. The commonplace grey stems
rising closely on all sides become as momentous as
an army ; and standing at some opening surrounded
by the illimitable sweep of the forest, one receives
a deep impression of the power and conquering
majesty of the tree-kingdoms.
Every species has its own well-marked character.
For sheer loveliness the hemlock spruce, or moun
tain hemlock {Tsuga fnertensiana), bears away the
palm. Appearing on northward-facing slopes at a
littie above eight thousand feet, it comes to perfec
tion at from one to two thousand feet higher, where it
meets the dwarf pine, the dweller on the threshold.
The pure grace of the tree would render it remark
able anywhere ; in these high and lonely altitudes it
is doubly delightful. The young trees are especially
beautiful, quite fountain-like in their flow of line, and
exquisitely feminine and yielding. The foliage is of a
dark, earnest green, redeemed from sombreness by
the silver of the young growth. Trailing branches
sweep to the ground, and all the outer branchlets,
and even the spiry tips of the trees, droop with a
fragile grace. The small, dainty cones are borne in
great profusion on the downward-hanging sprays,

FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE 119
enhancing the richness of the tree with their clusters
of dark purple.
As it comes to full growth, which may be over a
hundred feet of height and five of diameter, it takes
on the ruggedness of bearing that belongs to age
and stormy experiences. Under the scouring of a
thousand tempests the bark tans to red and the lower
limbs disappear, leaving perhaps thirty feet of clean,
bright stem bare of branches. In general appearance
the tree then much resembles the red fir, but on a
near approach the two species are easily distinguish
able by the foliage, girlishly graceful in the spruce,
firmly masculine in the fir.
The juniper {Juniperus occidentalis) is a kind of
churlish relative of the conifers, entirely unlike them
and opposed in every line and instinct to their aspir
ing characteristics. For purposes of contrast, nothing
could be better than this squat, Japanese-wrestler
looking tree, which one encounters growing in the
most difficult and uncomfortable places at all eleva
tions from six thousand to ten thousand feet. Wher
ever storms career most wildly, and on glacial pave
ments and ledges of the most uncompromising granite
where nothing else beside lichens and mosses cares
to grow, there this embittered tree exists, — it cannot
be said to flourish, — and hugs itself into a morose
longevity, like a miser living to a hundred on crusts.
High up on wind-swept angles of mountain you may
see them peering and leering down at you, their
stumpy trunks twisted into alarming contortions.

I20 YOSEMITE TRAILS
The bark of the juniper is of a cinnamon-red color,
similar to that of the cedar, and frays out, like it, into
silky, fibrous ribbons. The stem has often the appear
ance of being formed of three or four thick coils that
have become welded together, and sometimes a grey
knee or elbow, in appearance like disintegrating bone,
pushes through the red skin in a grisly, skeleton-like
manner. Even the foliage is of a sour, sage-green hue, with
a harsh look and an acrimonious odor ; and the frait,
a grey misanthropical berry of violent flavor, is just
what one would expect, and seems well suited to be
the food of the Clarke crow, whose imprecations most
often resound from this inhospitable tree. Still, one
must respect the juniper for its hardiness and self-
reliance. And there is even humor in the tree, of
an ugly, surreptitious kind: as there is, too, in the
Clarke crow, who is himself a sort of Mephistopheles.
The element of humor is otherwise not much in evi
dence in this high region, where Nature still has
rough work to do, and handles her severest tools.
Junipers may often be found whose trunks are no
higher than their circumference at base ; and this is
not always, though it is sometimes, due to the tree
having been broken off, or having died, at the top.
The trunks of perfectly grown trees sometimes taper
so rapidly that the height may not be more than three
times the diameter. This is due to the unusual size
of the branches, the lowest of which are often one
fourth the thickness of the stem, and push out only

FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE 121
two or three feet above the ground; so that the shape
of the tree, so far as any shape can be assigned to a
growth so unconventional and irregular, is that of
a heavy, flattened bush, much wider than it is high.
Last of all and least of all, yet in a way finest of
all the Sierra tree-clans, comes the dwarf pine {Pinus
albicaulis). It begins to mix among the hemlocks,
mountain pines, and tamaracks at about ten thou
sand feet, and, leaving them all behind, struggles on
alone up to the limit of tree-life, which in this latitude
is about twelve thousand feet. This is never a hand
some tree, but grows always in a straggling, shapeless
fashion, branching out in poles that lean at all angles,
more like a brush growth than a tree. The branch-
lets are usually thick and not dividing, curving up in
somewhat unpleasing lines, clothed with tufty foliage.
The leaves are of an attractive, clean, light green,
and in late summer provide a strong contrast of
color for the almost black cones which protrude from
the tasselled ends of the twigs. With its pale grey
bark this tree is particularly suggestive of the hard
white sunlight and the shrouding snow between
which its life is about equally divided.
On the high plateaus about timber-line this pine,
never much over twenty feet in height, suffers dwarf
ing to a remarkable degree. In exposed places such
as the Tuolumne Pass, I have found it spreading
horizontally only a foot or two above the ground,
crushed flat by the weight of the snow that lies on
it through fully half the year. The foliage becomes

122 YOSEMITE TRAILS
felted into a springy mattress on which I have lain in
the greatest luxury of ease that is possible to con
ceive. Sometimes these shrubby masses are found as
smooth as a table, the surface being kept planed
down by the bitter winds that sweep continually over
them. In places where they are less constantly ex
posed to wind, they struggle hard to assert some
thing of the tree shape to which they are entitled,
but they achieve at best a doubtful compromise. I
have a weird little tree of this species, not quite seven
inches high, which has all the airs of a veteran of
centuries. The trunk is four inches high and half an
inch through, thickening at the head into a ganglion
of knotty branches, all gnarls, scars, and elbows, on
which grows a towzled thatch of foliage. It was in
Cathedral Pass that I came upon this fierce little
kobold, and I liked the mettlesome look of him so
much that I pulled him up, root and all, and brought
him away in my pocket.
Under one form or other this indomitable pine
edges its way up to the uttermost limit that Nature
will allow, twisting and dodging about, shielding its
devoted head as best it may, only bent upon carry
ing forward the standard. When I think of the glori
ous winters they experience, the low, crouching skies,
the whirling storms, the deadly frosts, the hurricanes
of spring and autumn, and the thrashing rains and
tearing lightnings of summer, I love and admire and
envy them beyond all the others, fine as they all are.
I think that when next I am among them I must

FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE 123
make a point of removing one of them carefully to
the very top of the mountain that it is so set upon
climbing, and planting it there, live or die, as a re
ward. On the eastern face of the Sierra, which is much
steeper than the western, the species are naturally
somewhat more mingled, though they preserve of
course the same relative positions. Two other spe
cies occur on this side. High up near timber-line
comes the limber pine {Pinus fiexilis). It may easily
be mistaken at first sight for the tamarack, with
which it is often associated. It is remarkable that this
pine has never spread to the western slope, where
the conditions of tree-growth are in general more
favorable than on the eastern. No doubt some shade
of distinction in the quality of climate or soil, that is
too fine for us but not for this hardy pine to observe,
rules the point,
-• The level plains and the foothills of the Mono
Lake region are the home of the nut-pine or piiion-
pine {Pinus monophylld). This is a quite different
tree from the nut-pine of the western slope, although,
like it, it occupies the lowest range of elevation. It
is a bushy, uninteresting-looking tree, from fifteen to
thirty feet high, and about one foot in average thick
ness of trunk. The leaves, which are short and spiny,
are set singly on the stiff twigs, whereas the foliage
of all the other Sierra species is arranged in fascicles
of two, three, or five leaves. It is the small, egg-
shaped cone of this tree that supplies the pinon-nut.

124 YOSEMITE TRAILS
a thing of small importance to most of us, but a true
staff of life to the Indians of the region.
The trees which I have briefly described, plus the
great Sequoia, spoken of in the succeeding chapter,
are all the species of coniferae that the visitor to the
Yosemite region of the Sierra Nevada is likely to
encounter, though a few other kinds occur in distant
parts of the range, and still others occupy the Coast
Range and the seaboard. There is one, the knob-
cone pine {Pinus attenuata), which grows at low ele
vations on the western slope, but does not come
under the observation of travellers by any of the or
dinary roads into the Yosemite. The nearest point
to the valley where I am aware of this species grow
ing is Texas Hill, some twelve miles west of El
Portal, on the North Fork of the Merced River. Its
foliage is long, and set in loose, airy tassels, and the
tree has the peculiarity of keeping its cones un
opened year after year, so that the seeds are released
only when the tree falls. I have cones of this species
that were gathered years ago, and remain to-day as
closely sealed, and as solid and heavy, as on the day
they were gathered.
There is a small tree which is found growing in a
few places in the Yosemite region, particularly on
the stage-road from El Portal to the valley, against
which the traveller who may be interested in the
coniferous trees should be put on his guard. In its
general appearance, and particularly in its foliage, it
bears a very close resemblance to the coniferae, but

FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE 125
it does not belong to the family. It is the California
nutmeg-tree {Tumion californicd), — a slender, spiry
tree with grey bark, and leaves much like those of
the white fir, but stronger, and prickly to an offen
sive degree. It bears a smooth egg-shaped fruit,
about an inch and a half long, which contains a nut
that is considered edible in Japan, where also the
tree is indigenous. Both fruit and foliage are charged
with an acrid, astringent juice. The wood is exceed
ingly tough, and would be useful if the tree were
more common.
The Sierra forest of all but the highest altitudes is
the home of a goodly array of brush plants. Of them
all, none is more charming than the chamoebatia, a
shrubby, foot-high plant, with a pretty, ferny leaf
and a white flower like that of the strawberry. It
grows freely in the Wawona locality, at an elevation
of five or six thousand feet, covering the ground with
a continuous carpet that is easily mistaken at a dis
tance for grass. The stems, matted and wiry, offer a
pleasant resistance to the foot, and often as I brushed
through them, I could have fancied myself again
among the heather had it not been for the pungent
scent, like that of witch-hazel, which the plant ex
hales profusely. Washing up everywhere around the
bases of the great trees it gives an ideal complete
ness to the forest landscape, and all my recollections
of the splendid timber-belt which it inhabits are per
vaded with the healthful odor of this friendly moun
taineer.

CHAPTER IX
THE GREAT SEQUOIAS
TO the lover of trees it is something of an epoch
when he enters for the first time the vast virgin
forest of the Sierra Nevada, and his eye roves,
with that perfect satisfaction of which delight is only
the froth and lightest part, so deep and pure is it,
through and over the countless, countless, countless
myriads of the stateliest members of the noblest fam
ily of trees (for so I rank the conifers). From every
rise and opening he sees with exultation still, and
only, the unbroken forest : mountains, yes, leagues
and ranges of mountains, as far as sight will carry,
dimming away into blue infinity, still clad with the
illimitable forest.
For one loves the forest much as one loves (or
should love) one's fellow men ; that is to say, both in
the aggregate and in particular. The tree-lover, sur
veying a great expanse of forest, is transported in
fancy over among the objects of his love. He walks
in spirit among them, and responds to every individ
ual of all the beloved host. He perceives by a mysteri
ous sense their distinguishing beauties : the noble
sweep of this one's broad and level boughs ; how
that one is braided and shagged with moss ; and
where that other is rubbed and polished by the horns

THE GREAT SEQUOIAS 127
of deer. He sees and hears, a day's march away, the
tinkling monologue of the tiny forest rivulet, creeping
and stealing about the mossy roots of his friends ;
yes, and lights his " littie friendship fire " by it, pulls
out and eats his bread and cheese and reads his
pocket Thoreau by it. So that the quality of a forest,
like that of mercy, may be said to be " twice blest."
If then to the tree-lover it be a privilege to enter
the great Sierra forest, he will feel almost as if he en
gaged in a rite when he stands for the first time in a
grove of the great Sequoias. If among the innu
merable hosts of the pines and firs he finds true com
panionship and feels joy and thankfulness, among the
great Sequoias he will receive a more solemn message
and return a deeper response. In them we have what
seems to be the last survival of the Heroic Age of
the earth, that misty dawn of time when all things,
man perhaps included, reached the gigantic in stat
ure and age. They are an anachronism, an unaccount
able oversight, a kind of arboreal Rip Van Winkles ;
and it is a high distinction of California that it is her
exhilarating air and her sun-drenched soil that have
tempted these patriarchs to remain with us in our
feebler times, instead of joining their old companions
" the monsters of the Prime " upon some lustier and
more youthful planet.
The spectator experiences among the Sequoias
something, I imagine, of the awe of an Egyptian
who should be introduced into one of those vast
temple-halls where he would see ranged on all sides

128 YOSEMITE TRAILS
the colossal figures of the king-gods of his race ; the
awe of unutterable age, irresistible power, and infin
ite repose. It might be called, in fact, an Egyptian
impression that is made by these mighty trees upon
the beholder. They are Egyptian in their size and
ponderous immobility ; in their color, which is Egyp
tian red in the stems of mature trees, while the great
limbs far overhead are of a strange flesh-bronze hue,
round, smooth, and gleaming, like Cleopatra's arm ;
and I cannot conceive of a more magnificently Egyp
tian portal to some vast hall or temple than would
be formed by using two of these huge trunks for pil
lars with another laid crosswise for lintel.
In some other regards the impressiveness of the
Sequoias is of an architectural kind. This is due
partly to the incomparable shaft of the tree, which
seems to stand column-like upon the earth rather
than to be rooted in it. No limbs break the perfect
roundness for half the tree's height, only there may
be thrown out at one or two points a branchlet,
hardly more than a twig, of delicate foliage, bursting
through the covering of bark like a spurt of green
smoke in token of the energy within. These sprays
of lace-like foliage are a noticeable characteristic, and
add an unexpected grace and playfulness to the dig
nity of the tree. Even very old trees will break out
in these flights of fancy, like youthful old gentlemen
who are fond of sportingjoud neckties.
The massiveness of the trunk is relieved also by a
fluting of the bark which is often so regular as to be

THE GREAT SEQUOIAS

THE GREAT SEQUOIAS 129
remarkable, and which adds to the architectural sug
gestion. This fluting is often broken up near the base
of the tree into a network of tracery, the bark run
ning into a maze of niches and foliations that is
richly Gothic and beautiful. As one stands in the
dream-like silence of these groves of ancient trees,
the solemnity of their enormous age and size, to
gether with the grace and fancifulness of this carved
and fretted ornamentation, combine to produce a
cathedral mood of quietude and receptiveness.
The two species of Sequoia, the ,$". gigantea of the
Sierra Nevada and the S. sempervirens of the Coast
Range, seem to be the last survivors of a genus
which was once widely distributed, and which can be
traced by its fossil remains throughout Europe and
Asia, as well as North America. It is remarkable
and fortunate, in view of that fact, that there is no
indication of decline in the surviving members of the
family : rather the contrary, for on all hands the sons
of the giants are arising in stalwart thousands to
carry on the royal line.
Impressive as it is to gaze upon these trees that
have kept note, as it were, of human history from its
beginnings, it is at least equally so to imagine the
course of time with which a sequoia that is now be
ginning its career may run parallel. On a moderate
comparison the Sequoia may look to live fifty years
for every year of human life. What a kaleidoscope
of fantastic pictures rises in one's mind when one
thinks of the possible conditions of life and society

I30 YOSEMITE TRAILS
five hundred or a thousand years hence! Yet the
Sequoias that are now foot-high seedlings will then
be only in what answers with us to youth or boyhood.
He would be a desperately bold American or Briton
who should calmly forecast the world-position of his
fatherland ten centuries hence, when these infant
trees will hardly be approaching maturity ; while if
one attempts to look forward through the mists of
the slow-passing centuries during which they will be
standing in unchanging strength, the phantasma
goria becomes too wild for the mind even to wish to
dwell upon. It is solemn enough, standing here, to
conjure up the long drama of the past which these
great trees have seen enacted ; but it is almost heart-
shaking to reflect how unimaginably strange will be
the course of history of which the tree that grows
from the papery seed which I shake out of last year's
cone may be the impassive spectator.
The young Sequoias for the first few years of their
life show no mark of their royal nature, but crook and
twist about in a particularly ambitionless manner.
Their branchlets sprawl out in a short-sleeved, lanky
fashion, and their heads, as if they were young
anthropophagi, " do grow beneath their shoulders."
Standing generally in tangled clumps and thickets,
they have an awkward, schoolboyish air, very differ
ent from that of the pines and firs, which even while
crowded in their nurseries show their lineage in an
aristocratic trimness.
But after a few decades blood begins to tell. The

THE GREAT SEQUOIAS 131
Sequoia becomes conscious of his destiny, and, an
swering the inward urge, makes for the skies in a
climbing, high-hearted fashion that is fine to behold.
Still the family likeness does not shine out clearly as
they stand mixed in the general forest of the conifers,
all of high birth. They keep yet the thin whip-like
branchlets that grow irregularly from foot to crown,
by now bare of foliage, but furred instead with yellow
moss. By the time he reaches his first century of age,
however, being then perhaps eighty feet high, the
young tree sloughs his skin and begins to take on the
noble color and habit that mark him at a glance as
a sequoia, of the old nobility of the tree-creation. He
" mews his mighty youth," and casting off with it the
undistinguished features of childhood, the trunk, clean,
bright, and tapering, which is to bear aloft his mas
sive head through the long procession of the cen
turies, stands revealed.
By five hundred years the full color is taken, the
taper has widened to a slight curve at the foot, and
the pointed reticulation of the bark is noticeable. The
characteristic shape is now fully marked, — the head
a sugar-loaf cone, remarkable in its regularity of out
line, and the trunk a steadfast column of shining red.
Thenceforward they go from strength to strength,
ever more glorious and excellent. Their deep-rifted
bark clothes them with dignity and age ; the great
limbs, mossed and lichened, stand out oak-like above
and athwart the pines and firs whose dainty tops spire
a hundred feet into the air ; and still higher, their

132 YOSEMITE TRAILS
sumptuous tops are built up in dense bosses of corded
foliage. In those high places they bear their multitu
dinous cones, pendent singly or in twos or threes on
stout, bracted stems ; till in due time the sun ripens
them and coaxes them to open their tight-locked
caskets, and the wind, careful old forester, winnows
out the flaky seeds and sows them in generous broad
cast over the warm forest floor.
When the first millennium is reached the general
shape is unchanged, only that the curve at the base is
wider, and the lowest limbs are becoming weary and
trend downward from the weight of the snows of un
counted winters. Another age passes, and Atlas has
planted his feet still wider as he bears up the enor
mous weight. The symmetry is broken : he has now
entered upon middle age, and his individual features
are stamped upon him. You may tell Achilles from
Agamemnon, and Ajax from Menelaus. Here a thun
der-bolt has ploughed a heavy furrow, and that fear
ful scar marks the place where a tree-like arm was
torn away.
A second millennium passes, with thirty more gen
erations of the sons of men, and the Sequoia shows no
change but that he has settled at his base into a con
vex curve, which may be reversed as it enters the
ground ; — a very beautiful form, exhibiting the per
fect combination of strength with grace which marks
this noblest of trees. From then onward Time has no
dominion over him, and the passage of centuries does
but mark his inexhaustible fertility and power.

THE GREAT SEQUOIAS 133
A thunder-storm in this forest is a memorable ex
perience, and one which even enhances the awe of the
great Sequoias, I was roaming one day about the
lower Mariposa Grove, commiserating the tourists
who were driven swiftly past on schedule, when I be
came aware of that quickening of the senses which
one feels before a heavy storm, I had noticed an
unusual quietness of the population of the brush, the
birds going about their concerns with a serious air
that was quaint and amusing. The robins in particu
lar foraged silently through the silent woods, passing
and repassing one another alternately with that comi
cal appearance of being pushed in jerks from behind,
like perambulators. The snow-bird's soliloquies were
carried on under his breath : even the jay, impudent
and voluble in general beyond the wont of birds, re
frained himself and pursued his persecutions almost
politely. Suddenly a heavy wind roared overhead, from
which the firs and pines recoiled ; but I noticed that
the Sequoias stood stately and unmoving, only their
foliage was roughly tossed. Then came a wild slither
of lightning, then a crash of thunder, and then the
rain came tearing down. For ten minutes the ele
ments were in a paroxysm; lightning thrust and
parried, thunder roared incoherent applause, and the
rain fell savagely as if it were flung by an angry
hand. Then with another burst of wind, that filled
the air with sodden tassels of foliage, the storm
passed on, and the_^only sound was that of a hundred

134 YOSEMITE TRAILS
rills trilling tiny carillons. When one considers how
many times the thunderbolts must have hurtied about
these ancient trees it is astonishing that one of them
is left standing.
The roots of the Sequoia are noticeably short, as
tonishingly so for the enormous growth of the tree.
The base, as one sees by trees that have fallen, con
sists of a number of short, stout tentacles, and there
is no taproot. It seems a miracle that the tree can
stand, and still more that it can grow. It must draw
directiy from the air almost all its sustenance ; but
then, what air it is 1 I suppose there flows in the
Sequoia's mighty veins not the common earth-drawn
sap of trees, but some celestial ichor, such, in fact, as
would account for their almost immortality. For the
Sequoia is all but imperishable, even when over
thrown, and trees that can be proved to have lain for
two or three hundred years show no trace of decay.
Only two things can destroy them : Fire, the rapa
cious element, and Man, the rapacious pygmy. Even
fire the Sequoias can almost defy, wrapped in their
panoply of bark of two feet thickness ; but man, —
there is something pathetic in the fact that nothing
can stand against him. He is put, as it were, on his
honor, and a weak defence it has proved when
weighed against gold. It is a shocking thing to see
any tree cut down, — a sycamore, an oak, an elm :
that living green tower, with all its halls and cham
bers and galleries of whispering delight, which Na
ture with her great patience has laboriously built up

THE GREAT SEQUOIAS 135
to perfectness, — to see it so briefly, so trivially, all
undone. But the Sequoias, one wonders that any one
could bring himself to put axe or saw to them. How
ever, although the individual man is not to be trasted
when he smells gold, he yet, in the aggregate, has
sensibilities under his pachydermatous rind, and can
be prevailed upon not to murder his grandfather : so
that practically all the great trees are now protected,
and have been enclosed in national parks.
Since my first acquaintance with the Sequoias I
had cherished a desire to sleep with them. Many
times I had enjoyed the hospitality of the friendly
guardian of the Mariposa Grove, and had slept be
side the generous fires that cheer his lonely cabin.
But I had a particular wish to camp for a night
under that tree of trees, the Grizzly Giant ; and one
clear summer night I shouldered my blankets, and
with a frugal half-breakfast in my pocket marched
off to keep my tryst.
The forest through which I tramped was dimly
lighted by a half moon. The stars burned with a still,
high radiance. Straight, silent, and vast the Sequoias
stood up into the night, while the moonlight crept
quietly over the open spaces of the forest and flecked
with ghostly silver the deep-channelled stems of the
immemorial trees. It was very quiet ; only now and
then a bird twittered, or there was a sudden rash
in the undergrowth, or the distant hooting of an
owl. The dead firs and pines, white and barkless,
gleamed pale in the moonlight, and the innumerable

136 YOSEMITE TRAILS
pinnacles of the conifers rose on all sides into a sky
of clear darkness, A cool breeze met and passed me,
and the foliage played for a moment like the restiess
fingers of a dreaming child, then was again intensely
still, I wandered on and on in a mood of vagrant re
verie, often stopping to listen to the flawless silence
and to delight in the ageless virginity of the earth.
Suddenly I came upon the giant, a vast black shape,
rising unexpectedly close before me. The moon
chanced to be shining just behind him, and made a
soft and wistful glory among the forest of branchlets,
twigs, and foliage of his head. The mighty shadow
was projected toward me, the arms traced in gro
tesque shapes, intensely black, upon the open glade
that surrounds this king of trees, (How many times,
I wondered, had that shadow passed, with the solemn
imperceptibility of Time itself, over that silver earth-
dial ?) Huge as its bulk is by day, it was multiplied
tenfold in the peering light of night, when details
were obscured and only size and shape were left to
possess the imagination.
To me that night it was an awful tree, I felt much
as one might who, walking among the grey rains of
Babylon or Thebes, should come upon some prime
val man, ancient as the very earth, who, overlooked
by death, had lived on from age to age, and might
now live to the last day of Time, Its great arms
were uplifted as if in serene adoration, and all around,
the lesser forest stood aloof, like the worshippers in

THE GREAT SEQUOIAS 137
an outer temple - court, while this, their high - priest,
communed alone. And when I reflected that on the
night before the Crucifixion when Christ stood in
Pilate's hall, this tree was standing much as it stood
now, lifting its arms, ancient even then, to the hushed
sky, it seemed to take on in truth the character of an
unconscious intercessor, a representative of the awe-
stricken mute creation.
In the presence of this monument of Time, one's
thoughts take the same solemn and peaceful tone
that comes upon them under a wide, starry sky ; a
solemnity so deep that it rises into joy ; a peace so
absolute that it touches the infinite goodness. It is a
place in which to go over one's favorite poems ; for
instance, Milton's " Ode on Time." The great lines
incorporate themselves, and stand about one like the
vast columns of the trees, forming a temple in which
the mind ranges more freely than is its wont, with a
clearer vision and a deeper understanding.
I rolled myself in my blankets and tried to sleep,
intending to be up at daybreak to enjoy the hour be
fore sunrise. But it was long before I became un
conscious. Lying at the foot of the giant I gazed up,
and felt more than saw the great bole sweep up ma
jestically into the night. The moon, now setting,
touched with soft brightness the limbs that stood out
far above me. The silence was profound, and the
owl's hooting echoed around the forest as if it were
an empty room. All the old solemnity of night was
upon the world, and the riddle of the Sphinx was

138 YOSEMITE TRAILS
still unanswered. This old tree should know some
thing of it, but the wisdom of perhaps threescore cen
turies is locked in its iron heart.
At last I fell asleep, but soon was awake again.
The moon was down, and the velvet blackness was
pierced by innumerable stars. The Great Bear glinted
between the bossy plumes of the firs and pines whose
spires outlined the mat of open sky. Two sharp re
ports broke the stillness ; it was the sound of the
breaking and fall of a great limb from some lord of
the forest. I slept and awoke, and slept and awoke,
again and again. A faint silvery blueness grew in the
east, a pure, dark light. The stars receded, lingered,
ghmmered, and died. The cold dawn-wind blew (that
unearthly wind, eternally as fresh as on the first
morning of creation), and the hearse-like plumes
tossed for a moment, then again were still. The first
bird awoke and twittered faintiy ; another answered,
and another, and then many, with rustiings in the
low brush close to where I lay. A squirrel barked.
It was a quarter to four.
I rose and wandered through the forest, eating my
unprodigal breakfast with zest and sober exhilaration,
and drinking a draught of icy water at the spring.
The owl hooted once, reporting his night-watch
ended. Soon the sun touched hesitatingly the top
most arm of the great tree ; then, in a moment, the
whole head kindled and blazed like a beacon above
the lower forest.
As I take my way slowly back, the day is spread-

THE GREAT SEQUOIAS 139
ing and flowing, mile on mile, mountain on mountain,
lifting the shadows as the sun lifts vapor. The trail
of the old grey coyote is fresh on my own last night's
tracks. Slinking and grinning and slanting he goes,
lean and wary, to his rock-pile den. Glancing back I
wave farewell to the giant, whose sunlit face glows
cheerfully down at me in reply. The greatest arm,
turned to the south, carries a magnificent suggestion
of prowess and adventure, the long tapering shaft at
its end standing out and up like the bowsprit of a tall
Indiaman. What, old hero, is thy heart still so young?
Adios I adios I
And here let me say that I for one hope that when
the great clock that tells the centuries marks the last
of the Grizzly Giant's innumerable days, nothing will
be done to avert his fall. It would be a sort of im
piety, an indecency almost; as if one should prop
and bolster up a dead king on his throne to be gazed
at. He is too illustrious a thing for us to meddle with ;
and surely he will have earned his rest.
No conception whatever of the majesty of the great
Sequoias is possible to be conveyed by statements of
their size. What idea of Charlemagne would you get
from his tailor's measurements ? I myself always feel
that, as illustrating the wonders or beauties of Nature,
processions and columns of figures (like the well-
meant but desolating chatter of cathedral - guides)
detract from instead of adding to one's vital im
pression. Speaking in terms of phrenology, I imagine
that the "bump " — excuse the ineptword — of ven-

I40 YOSEMITE TRAILS
eration, for instance, would be found retreated into
the farthest possible corner of the cranium from the
one that revels in mathematics. When they told me
that the Washington tree was a hundred and one feet
in circumference and two hundred and forty-five feet
high, I only found that I suffered a painful relapse,
for I had just been seeing it infinitely greater. One
needs to see such things with the spirit : the mind
sees them about one tenth of their size. Lying down
at the foot of the pedestal of Grizzly Giant for an hour
of enchantment, seeing and hearing invisible and in
audible things, a plague on the gowk who blunders
into my dream with " Half a million feet of lumber in
that tree, sir I " Is that all there is in that tree ? I as
sure you, my friend, I can see vastly more in it if you
will but leave me alone.
But then, I am driven to suppose that I am singular
in my feeling for the great Sequoias as objects of
dignity and glory. I cannot understand how, other
wise, the childish, unsightly, and paltry practice could
have arisen, and could continue apparently without
objection, of labelling them with the names of cities,
states, and persons. I confess I am amazed at the gen
eral obliviousness to the disgrace of the thing, even
among cultivated persons, and am compelled to be
lieve that the people who come to view them have
no real appreciation of their grandeur, but look upon
them merely with a Barnum eye as curiosities and
" big things." Their admiration for the Sequoias
seems to be of a commonplace and commercial kind.

THE GREAT SEQUOIAS 141
for there is no recogfnition of the anomaly involved in
disfiguring objects of such nobility and beauty with
hideous tin labels. I am sure that to every thoughtful
person the charm and impressiveness of these groves
of ageless trees are greatly spoiled by this fatuous and
trivial proceeding ; and I can but hope that some day
the authorities will cease to consider the Sequoia for
ests as freak museums, but with a better appreciation
of their value and splendor will order the removal of
these ignoble defacements.
A feature of the Sequoias which always interested
me is the strange manner in which they receive and
hold the earliest and last light of the day. Often I
have watched some great tree at sunset, as it stood
facing the altar-fire of the west. Slowly the red light
left its base, passed up the columnar trunk, and burned
in a lingering glow on the many - branched head ;
then reluctantly, imperceptibly, faded and died. But
for an hour still, and long after the lesser forest had
sunk into darkness, the Sequoia's high smooth bole
held the light, and shone as if by its own preeminent
glory and strength.
Often, too, when I have been camped beneath them,
waking when the dawn had hardly begun to brighten
the eastern sky I have seen their tops begin to flush
and glow above the sleeping pines and firs: like
prophets who caught and rejoiced in the vision before
the rest. And when a sunset or sunrise redder than
usual has lighted them, I have seen their color deepen
to a hue that was almost ominous, and they have

142 YOSEMITE TRAILS
burned with a volcanic intensity, the violence of
which, in conjunction with the majesty of their de
meanor, affects one in much the same manner as the
reading of a great drama.
The Sequoias grow always upon hill-sides, and thus
their beauty of proportion may be fully observed.
There is nothing to obscure them unless it be the
growth of intervening conifers, for no other families
of trees inhabit the Sequoia zone : only bushes and
low-growing shrubs share these choice places with
gardens of flowers and meadowlets of greenest grass.
Little trickles of water steal and tinkle almost unseen
in their narrow channels, and spread here and there
into small pools that charmingly mirror sky, and
foliage, and fluted bole.
Around these basins the bird-life of the forest loves
to centre, peopling the hazels, currants, and chinqua
pins with multitudinous voices. Hither come the deer
to drink, and mixed with their dainty tracks you may
often find the big round pads of the mountain-lion
and the coyote's smaller footprints. The summer air
swarms with floating and darting insects, playing out
their day-lives with tragic unconcern amid the monu
mental trees. As I sat ruminating at the foot of one of
these oldest-born of Time, I could not be unconscious
of the irony of man's small moralizings : but then,
length of mortal days is a vain criterion, for, after all,
with a bit of iron one could soon undo the growth of
a hundred generations of his own measure of time.
It is not surprising that one should experience a

THE GREAT SEQUOIAS 143
certain soberness of feeling in bidding farewell to the
great Sequoias, Shall I (I asked myself) look down
from some immortal sphere upon these trees a mil
lennium hence, and will they still be standing as I see
them now, changelessly watching the unchanging
sky ? It may well be ; I deeply hope it will be. As I pon
dered the question, and looked with love and rever
ence upon them, the massy tasselled plumes, moving
softly in the sunny air, seemed to say, " Yes, we shall
meet again." And with a long, backward gaze I an
swered, " Yes, yes ; surely, surely ; farewell, farewell."

CHAPTER X
THE WAWONA COUNTRY
WAWONA lies sequestered ' at the bottom of a
bowl of forested mountains. The South Fork
of the Merced River emerges here from its narrow
canon into a gentie expanse of meadow, through
which it dreams a short course before it is again
caught and imprisoned by its rough gaoler.
All forest places are places of rest, and meadows and
valleys are even more so in their nature. Wawona
combines them all, and indeed I do not know a more
idyllic spot. Seclusion is in the very air, and its beauty
is of that gentle and perfect quality that does not so
much command one's admiration as it quietly capti
vates one's heart. Even its wonders, the great Se
quoias, are friendly wonders, living and personal ;
and I for one always feel that if Yosemite has the
greater glory, Wawona has the deeper charm.
Wawona, moreover, is classic ground. Fifty years
ago, when California was very young indeed, Clark's
Station, as the place was then called, was the centre
of the life of the Sierra backwoods. The lower creeks
and reaches of the Merced as much as anywhere were
the scene of the boisterous epic which Bret Harte has
immortalized. The names on the map of the region

THE WAWONA COUNTRY 145
are themselves a directory of picturesque episodes ;
and along every creek are relics of the Golden Age,
— old shafts, and uncouth mounds of dirt; some of
them tokens of " prospects " only, to which such a
name as " Nary Red " might have appertained ; others
which you look at with respect as your driver, point
ing with his whip up some cheerless caiion, remarks
that " a half a million was took out of that there gully.
Who by ? Old man Dougan, him as they call Hard
Luck Sime, down to Mariposa. Where's the hard
luck come in ? Well, you see it was this-a-way : — "
and there follows a chapter from life, a wild but fully
credible story, beginning in toil and hardy bouts with
Fortune, traversing a spectacular region of glitter and
riot, and ending in poverty and crime.
Here and there you may come upon an abandoned
arrastra, the ponderous water-wheel warped and sag
ging under a long alternation of dry and wet seasons.
In one such spot which I encountered the ghosts of
the Fifties came crowding thickly around me. There
lay the great stones still beside the pit, the rotting
cables still holding by a rough mortising of lead. The
rough-hewn timbers were pulling apart, and shed out,
when one tapped them, a yellow, lifeless dust from a
thousand worm-holes. Skeletons of chairs, scraps of
looking-glass, and such debris lay about. Mixed with
mouldy rags and sacking were shreds of a woman's
finery, frills and raffles; and nailed to one of the
empty window-frames, half hidden by giant lupines,
was a littie bird-cage made of slips of cedar, from

146 YOSEMITE TRAILS
which the mocking-bird or meadow-lark that once
made it his unwilling home had long been emanci
pated. Adjoining the house was an enclosure of half-
an-acre or so. The fence lay on the ground, and in
the long grass two rose-bushes and a lilac were slowly
strangling to death. The place seemed to hold the
memory of some very human action ; and I was fain
to hope that the cage and roses might mark it as an
innocent drama of love and children's laughter.
A few miles east of Wawona stands a sightly peak,
Mount Raymond, which carries its snow well into
midsummer, although it rises only forty-five hundred
feet above the warm and sheltered valley. One sunny
day of early summer, leaving my camp in the upper
Mariposa Grove of Sequoias, I started leisurely on
the easy ascent. Making due east and keeping to the
ridge which here forms the watershed between the
Merced and San Joaquin river systems, I entered the
forest, which here is principally of the red and white
firs. The delightful company of these my favorite
trees constantly drew me into side explorations, and
delayed me into a saunter. Now and then faint traces
of a blazed trail appeared, but they were so doubt
ful and elusive that it was fortunate that there was
no difficulty in keeping my direction without their
help. The trail, moreover, was often blocked by fallen
trees that made ramparts of a man's height, and of
fered the choice of climbing convex walls or making
circuits which were often prolonged by unexpected
entanglements. On the north side of the ridge the

THE WAWONA COUNTRY 147
mountain ran steeply down in an unbroken slope of
thirty-five hundred feet to the river ; on the south the
slope was not so sharp and was somewhat more broken.
The timber thinned out to a scantier growth as I
left the fir-belt. The brush grew sparse and stunted,
and patches of snow lay in the hollows. Then rather
suddenly I passed out on to bare rock, and straight
ahead rose the peak, glistening white and cold. Here
it became necessary to keep to the southern slope,
for the snow on the other was treacherously soft and
shot down at an uncomfortable angle, unbroken but
for a few black bolts of rock or decapitated stumps
of pine.
Heavy blue clouds were massing in the south and
east, and the wind suddenly blew from the same
quarter in heavy gusts and with a bitter rawness. I
began to have a suspicion that a storm was brewing,
but was unprepared for the abruptness with which it
came. It was late in the season for snow to fall, so
that I was surprised to see the first warning flakes.
It was not a comfortable spot in which to stand even
a short siege. The storm was coming from the south,
and I was consequentiy exposed to its full force, as I
had no desire to bivouac on the steep, soft snowfield
of the northern slope, especially in the strong wind
that was now blowing. I was well above the main
forest belt, and the few isolated Jeffrey pines within
reach were too small to afford any shelter. Under
the circumstances I judged it best to hurry forward
and try to reach some favorable spot before the height

148 YOSEMITE TRAILS
of the storm was upon me. I was not far from the
summit, and after twenty minutes of pretty violent
exertion I arrived there, and found partial shelter
under the topmost point of the mountain.
Almost on the moment the storm reached me, and
I was enveloped in a swirl of snow that charged at
me horizontally with dizzying velocity. I flattened
myself against the friendly rock that bore the brunt
of the onset, and debated what was best to do. I had
no fear that the storm would last longer than an hour
or two at most, but I was heated with the exertion
of the climb, and in the icy temperature, and without
opportunity of exercise, I began to chill at an alarm
ing rate. Fortunately, after the first blinding gusts
had spent themselves the snow lightened somewhat,
and I seized the moment to make a sortie in search
of dry brushwood for a fire, if I could succeed in
kindling one. Fifty yards down the mountain side
I found what I wanted, and gathering an armful, I
scurried back to shelter. In a few minutes, by ma
noeuvring with coat and sombrero I had cherished
a few twigs into burning, but then had much ado to
keep them together in the furious wind. No sooner
would I get them fairly ablaze than they would be
contemptuously swept off by the wind into the snow-
filled air. Again and again I tried, with numbing
fingers, while my little stock of matches decreased
until I began to lose hope. But at last I got a good
blaze, and then, after another sally for larger fuel, I
sat down in great exhilaration.

THE WAWONA COUNTRY 149
If I had set my mind to imagine the best possible
experience for the day I could not have succeeded
half so well. Here I was, on the summit of my first
Sierra peak thus far, snugly sheltered in the middle
of a snowstorm which could not, I felt sure, last long
enough to become dangerous ; with a noble fire roar
ing defiance to the screaming wind, lion against pan
ther ; only midday, with time and daylight to spare ;
lunch in pocket, with pipe and tobacco to follow. It
was huge luck. I even found in my pocket a small
quantity of tea. Quickly I filled my tin cup with snow,
and in a few minutes had a cup of boiling amber
fragrance ready to accompany my bread and cheese.
Then I sat down, back to my stout rock and feet to
the fire, and rejoiced in the hurly-burly, while my
pipe-bowl glowed almost to the point of incandes
cence with the intense combustion.
All the time the storm came whirling past, the flakes
shooting by level in the heavy gusts as if they had
been fired from a gun, and I sat and watched them
stream away into the void. My bivouac was on the
very edge of the snow-slope, so that the fire gradually
ate out a semicircle of the snow-cliff opposite me. It
was an inspiriting experience. I was in a little world
alone with the lusty elements, sometimes unable to
see for ten feet around me : above and all about was
nothing but the whirling white void, from which and
into which the crowding snowflakes hurried, seeming
to push upon one another in their silent haste to be
gone.

I50 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Suddenly it brightened, and the leaden dullness
changed to a silvery glow like that we used to see
on the faces of angels in our childhood's dreams. In
another minute, while I wondered at the quickness
of the change, a thin sunlight washed past me, and
I looked up to see the last flakes pelting like black
specks across the glistening haze of the sky. Two
minutes more, and the storm was over ; I could see its
rearguard, blue and misty, crossing the gorge to the
north. Then through the snowy veil the eastern peaks
began to glimmer, whitely glorious under a broken
sky. Looking over the sharp northern edge of the
mountain, Wawona Meadows glinted greenly in the
sun, and all around on west, north, and east, the wide
slopes, blue and dark with timber, were flecked with
rapid cloud-shadows.
Opposite gleamed the stony forehead of Wawona
Dome, and midway between, but far below, the river
ran palely. I fancied I could hear its hoarse cry.
Turning to the south I saw a high, summery sky in
which floated bands of little fleecy clouds, and along
the horizon lay the faint fawn-color stretches of the
valley of the San Joaquin. Nearer, in middle distance,
the forest rose higher and higher, running in wavy
undulations ; and nearer yet it was broken by patches
of gleaming snow. From a hollow not five miles away
smoke was rising : alas, it marked a lumber-camp.
Though the storm was over the icy wind still blew,
and more clouds were massing. By the middle of the
afternoon I began the return, keeping closer to the

THE WAWONA COUNTRY 151
spine of the mountain than in the ascent. The ex
hilaration of the wild day and place gave every sense
its widest range, and I noted a hundred new things
with quickened sympathy and perception, — the
quaint, inch-high blossoms that trembled in the wind
in such myriads that I almost believed I could catch
the sound of their vibrations ; the angry cry of a hawk
fighting his way up wind and compelled to veer and
temporize, against his haughty nature ; the snow-bird
that, blown almost into my face, chirped a humorous
apology as he swung over the ridge ; the Douglas
squirrel who disputed my passing under his tree so
viciously that he nearly barked himself off from it and
was fain to scramble up again ignominiously; the
dwarf oaks just in bud as though it were February,
that splayed over the rocky ground ; the dwarf cur
rants that seemed grotesquely trying to clamber away
out of sight in an awkward, high-legged fashion, like
spiders ; and the young ten and twelve foot firs still
lying full length and half buried under last winter's
snow, that sprang up and threw handfuls of frozen
snow in my face when I gave them a lift to free
them from their covering. And so back again to my
camp among the great Sequoias, standing dark and
stately against the fire-strewn sky of a still stormy
sunset. On another expedition I made in the Wawona re
gion, I had the company of a lanky Stanford under
graduate who was recuperating at the hotel from the
stress of examinations. He was an ardent fisherman,

152 YOSEMITE TRAILS
and kindled at my mention of a chain of lakes, of high
repute among the craft, that lie up on the high pla
teau over which the Chilnualna Creek flows to its
leap into the chasm that opens beside Wawona Dome.
It was early in the summer, and the trail beyond the
head of the fall had not been travelled that season ;
but that was all the better. So one morning Long-
shanks and I marched out upon our quest.
For a mile or two our way led through the valley
forest, where now, at the end of May, every sunny
opening was enamelled with fresh grass and flashed
blue with lupines, lilac with cyclamens, and white
with the large nemophila of the Sierra. Half an hour
brought us to the foot of the falls of the Chilnualna.
These falls have been so much eclipsed in fame by
the great waterfalls of the Yosemite that they are
not as much celebrated [as their fantastic beauty de
serves. Without depreciating the glories of the mighty
cataracts of the valley, I acknowledge that I for one
find these less renowned falls equally beautiful and
more romantic. The lower part of the descent is an
alternation of boisterous cascades and most seductive
pools. The wayward water every moment changes
its mood, now plunging in bursts of hissing spray,
now circling in pools where you wonder whether some
slender naiad has not slipped under the rocking water
at your approach, and fancy that it is the lifting and
spreading of her hair that makes that misty gloom in
the emerald depths. The rocks are of a formation
which breaks vertically, and the water shoulders its

A TRAIL IN THE WAWONA FOREST

THE WAWONA COUNTRY 153
way among the obstracting cubes and pillars in a
thousand bolts of white thunder.
From the foot of the fall the trail starts away on a
wide detour, tacking in legs and reaches that seem
to take a most unreasonable circuit. Fresh tracks of
deer accompanied us, and presently we came upon a
group of three quietly feeding seventy or eighty
yards ahead. For a few moments they did not see us ;
then as our scent reached them their heads went up
all on the same instant, as if by clockwork, and they
stood gazing with nervous curiosity, but with no sign
of fear. After a long pause two of them went on graz
ing, while the other from time to time scratched his
ear with a quaint expression, apparently wondering
how much longer we meant to stand staring at no
thing. When at last we started toward them they
allowed us to approach within forty yards, before
with two or three great bounds they vanished into
the friendly chaparral.
A hundred varieties of blossoming plants called for
notice and admiration : delicate iris, that embodiment
of French elegance, pushed up through the foot-high
thicket of chamoebatia; the manzanita was still in
bloom at this elevation, though by now its "littie
apples " were ripening in the valley below ; and many
varieties of compositae shone up with friendly re
minders of English meadows 'dappled with daisies
and dandelions. Moreover, there was continual inter
est in noting the exits and the entrances of the
various conifers as we climbed, species after species

154 YOSEMITE TRAILS
appearing, waxing to its prime, waning, and disap
pearing.
The traveller in these mountains is generally in the
company of three kinds of coniferous trees, — the one
through whose proper belt he happens to be passing,
the one next below, and the one next above it. One
comes after a time to feel the changes subjectively, as
it were, becoming aware of the tree-company one is
in, almost without noticing it, by a kind of intuitive
knowledge. Without consciously observing the tran
sition I find myself in a yellow pine mood, or a red
fir mood, or a tamarack mood, my senses automati
cally taking their key from the nature of the prevail
ing forest. When I enter the tamaracks, for instance,
the background of my mind shifts into a sense of the
illimitable, weird, and dreary : the yellow pines affect
me with laziness and easy views of life: among the
Sequoias my consciousness takes on an Egyptian
tinge : I am somehow aware of crocodiles and ibises.
Every species has its own atmosphere, and I fancy
that if I were led blindfolded through the Sierra
forests, I should know at any time in what compan
ionship of trees I was by recognition of their familiar
spirit. Only the Jeffrey variety of P. ponderosa is
somewhat of an uncertain quantity, the wanderer of
the family, making erratic appearances, sometimes
high up on the upper margin of the firs, and again
picketed out among the sun-bleached brush of the
Mono plains.
Coming after a climb of twenty-five hundred feet

THE WAWONA COUNTRY 155
to the head of the fall, we stopped to view the leap
of the water. The stream comes down from the
rough plateau of its upper course in a series of steps,
runs for two hundred yards through a chain of pools
and reaches, and then is drawn smoothly over a
rounded lip into the dark and well-like gorge. Fifty
feet down it breaks upon a ledge and rises in a great
arc or wheel of water. As the still early sun shone
obliquely upon it, the wild wind that ascended from
the tumult of that black chasm stripped off every
moment the edge of the whirling rim of water in va
porous rainbow-flames of red, and blue, and orange.
It was a solemn and beautiful sight, such a vision as
might have found a place in the sublime narrative of
a Hebrew prophet. I have never seen elsewhere any
thing of the kind, and the recollection of the hurrying
flames playing upon the wheel of racing water comes
over me now with a sense of having witnessed some
deep parable, of which, though I saw the outward
glory, I had been too gross to understand the meaning.
While I still stood fascinated, I noticed a white
butterfly come drifting over the gulf. It hung flutter
ing for a moment, then with a curious leisureliness
circled down, following the falling water, until it
passed out of my sight. In a few moments the littie
insect reappeared, sailing up out of the tumult with
a superb carelessness of flight. I watched the frail
emblem of the soul with a feeling which I did not
trouble to analyze, recognizing unconsciously, per
haps, some allegory of innocence and victory.

156 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Our trail lay now over a rough plateau thinly tim
bered with pines whose foliage was of a black and
serious cast. These wind-swept table-lands, open to
every weather, have often a peculiarly stark and for
bidding appearance ; the blazing sun and withering
winds seem to have bleached the very granite to a
shivering complexion, and the shallow draws and
contours, marked with dark timber, are drawn in
lines like the creases in an aged face. At about seven
thousand feet we began to enter snow, which as we
climbed soon became continuous and left us only
scanty blazes by which to follow the trail. Now our
mild troubles began. The snow, though fairly deep,
was well softened, and every few minutes one or
other of us would go through, often up to the knees.
Uphill travelling of this kind is very slow and tiring
work, every step up and forward being discounted
by several inches of slipping down and backward,
and the strain is severe and continuous. However,
the exertion put us in good state to withstand our
constantly increasing wetness as we plunged more
and more frequently through the thin crust which
had frozen during the night and was now every mo
ment softening under the sun.
One thing that we had not taken into account was
the likelihood of having to ford the stream ; and as
usual, the unexpected happened. The Chilnualna
Creek is but a trifling affair as rivers go, and in later
summer no doubt one could easily jump it. But as
we stood on the snowy bank and cogitated our prob-

THE WAWONA COUNTRY 157
lem, we faced a swirling stream of icy water, varying
from knee-deep to waist-deep, and of considerable
strength of current. A cast up and down the bank
for some distance convinced us that the trail had
made no mistake as to the best place to ford the
creek. As my companion put it with scholastic pre
cision, the problem was simplified by the elimination
of the factor of place, leaving only the points of time
and method to be solved.
Here Longshanks had the advantage of me. His
bodily configuration was arranged upon the useful
principle of a pair of compasses, and, moreover, he
was fresh from the Olympic "stunts" with which
college students temper the academic severities. On
the other side of the stream a large rounded boulder
offered the chance of escaping a ducking to an ath
lete who might expect to reach it by vaulting. Long-
shanks provided himself with a pine branch, straight
and long, and pluckily made the essay. Sound mus
cle and judgment stood him in good stead. He
sailed through the air ; his pole struck in a friendly
crevice, and he landed neatly on the boulder and
jumped down, exhorting me to follow without delay.
I felt morally sure that I could not make the leap
with the best vaulting-pole that ever grew ; but the
stream had to be crossed somehow, so I plucked up
heart, found a likely looking pole, and vaulted my
best. My pole, through some concealed defect, broke
in halves as my weight came on it, and I fell in mid
stream in four feet of water. Luckily I came down

158 YOSEMITE TRAILS
on my feet and was able by a strong effort to brace
myself against the current, and so splashed ashore.
After all, I was not much worse off, for I had been
wet to the knees for an hour already. It was almost
a satisfaction to be so completely soaked: I could
now go ahead, careless of snow and water alike.
When in the course of a mile or two we had to cross
again, I simply marched through and squelched on
my way, Longshanks enviously searching for nar
rower places while I assured him that the wide cross
ings were much the best, for the water had only
reached to my equator.
Mile after mile we ploughed along, perspiring
heartily and occasionally glissading down snow-slopes.
The blazes grew more and more casual, until we
began to think we might have passed our lakes,
hidden in some fold of the snowy landscape. Sud
denly we came upon the first of them, — Grouse Lake,
a dark steel mirror of water, intensely still, almost an
exact circle in shape, and ringed with banks of pure
unsullied snow. From the further side came the sharp
bark of a fox, and a troop of snow-birds flitted silently
across and away. It was delightfully Arctic and soli
tary, and we gazed with admiration and with some
thing of the elation of discoverers. At least it was
certain that the identical beauty that lay under our
eyes had not been seen by any other, for we were the
first to travel the trail since the winter snows (which
usually fall on the Sierra at this altitude by mid-
October) had shut the lonely lakelet up to its eight
months' solitude.

THE WAWONA COUNTRY 159
It was well past midday, and eight hours since we
had had breakfast, so here we decided to eat our
meal. Longshanks ate his in a fisherman's hurry, for
he was itching to cast his flies on that untried water.
My own first necessity was to forage for firewood and
to pray that my block of matches, which I had stuck
in my hat-band to dry, might fulfil their office. As
one after another of them gave up the ghost with
only a fizz and an evil smell, though I tried every
variety of friction, from the drawling scratch of the
experienced cowboy to the vicious jerk of the ten
derfoot, my opinion of the inventor of that curious
survival, the California block-match, sank very low.
At last a fortunate twist brought success, and I
soon had a royal fire blazing. Then, peeling, I hung
my sodden clothes on the brush within range of the
generous heat, and proceeded with my own lunch,
wondering the while how many centuries might have
elapsed since last a gentleman had dined there " in
the buff," and surrounded by snow. My clothes
steamed away industriously, but I had time to smoke
a pipe before they were reasonably dry. I could see
Longshanks working his way round the lake, casting
assiduously but apparentiy without success ; and by
the time I was dressed he rejoined me, fishless in
deed, but excited with the vision of an incomparable
trout that he had seen swim out from under a sub
merged log, leaving, so he declared, a wake like a
Mississippi steamer.
We knew that two other lakes lay a short distance

i6o YOSEMITE TRAILS
to the west, and struck across country to find them,
over snow that was deeper and firmer, A mile
brought us to Crescent Lake, which we found to be
a larger sheet of water, of irregular shape, still partly
covered with melting ice. At the northern end of the
lake we came upon a forlorn little cabin, half buried
in a snow-drift. Entering, we stood upon a floor of
clear ice : the melting of the snow had flooded the
house, and the hard packed earth floor had held the
water, which had frozen solid. Bones of deer and of
other game were littered about the room, one end of
which was cumbered with the wreck of a huge chim
ney of rock, I had heard of the place : it was once
the summer home of Jim Duncan, a man whose fame
as a hunter still lingers in the memory of old Sierra
back-woodsmen. The exploits of Jim Duncan, if they ever come to
be written, will make a stirring tale. It is known that
he kept a diary of his hunting-trips, but I learned
from his sister that when questioned about it during
his last illness, he denied its existence, and it is sup
posed that he had destroyed it. Mr. Galen Clark, *
now of Yosemite but anciently of Clark's Station (the
present Wawona), who was intimate with him, tells
me that Duncan at one time intended publishing this
^ Since this was written Mr. Clark has passed away, high in the
regard of all who knew him, and close upon the completion of his
ninety-sixth year. His body lies in the little Yosemite cemetery, and
in the Sequoia-shaded grave which, after the tranquil fashion of those
Biblical patriarchs whom in simplicity of spirit he resembled, he had
prepared for himself years ago.

THE WAWONA COUNTRY i6i
diary, and with that view put it into the hands of
some acquaintance of his to edit and put in form for
the publisher. For some reason, which can hardly
have been that the subject-matter proved to be not
of sufficient interest, the editor-elect failed to fulfil his
office, and Mr. Clark supposes that Duncan, under
the influence of his disappointment, may have de
stroyed his manuscript.
The few facts regarding him which I have been
able to gather from his old companions in these
mountains are to the following effect: About the
year 1857 Duncan came up into the Sierra from
Visalia. It is likely that he was one of the many un
successful gold-hunters who about that time were
left stranded by the retiring wave of the gold excite
ment all up and down the foothill creeks and caiions
of the Sierra Nevada. His native state of Michi
gan contributed her full quota of these defeated Ar
gonauts. Duncan, for his part, forsaking the quest
of gold had declined upon pork, and in the year
named was roaming with a band of hogs among the
virgin pastures of the lower Sierra, after the manner
of those Newtys of Pike whom Clarence King has
immortalized in his delightful pages.
The course of his wanderings brought him to the
green meadows of Wawona (as now called), and here
his career as a bear -hunter began with a chance
encounter. Walking up one day from the meadows,
where he was camped, in the direction of the grove
of Sequoias (which had that same year been dis-

i62 YOSEMITE TRAILS
covered by Mr, Clark), Duncan met his first bear. He
was carrying a combined rifle and shotgun, but he
had at that time such a high estimation of the Cali
fornia grizzly that he forbore to fire. A few days
later he had another encounter, this time at close
range. Hurriedly firing a heavy charge of buckshot
at the redoubtable foe he turned and ran for dear life
without waiting to ascertain the result of his shot. On
the third occasion he killed his game; and as time
went on, and he and Bruin had frequent misunder
standings regarding pork, he began to match him
self against his enemy with more confidence.
Those were the golden days of hunting in the Far
West, and bears were incredibly plentiful. In one day
of his early career Duncan killed five bears, a father,
mother, and three well-grown cubs ; and from that
time he lost all fear, and settled into his stride as
a hunter with a special mission for bear. As years
passed, and notches multiplied on the stock of his old
muzzle-loader, he set himself the task of an even hun
dred, or century, of bears. But it was not to be : he
died some ten years ago without completing his task,
but with an authentic record of between eighty and
ninety bears to his credit. It may be that chagrin at
his failure to reach the goal he had set himself was
the cause of his destroying the diary to which I have
referred. Mild tourists to the Yosemite, where now a degen
erate race of bears dwell under the protection of
the incomprehensible laws which have banished their

THE WAWONA COUNTRY 163
mutton, may denounce the killing of nearly a hun
dred bears by one man as slaughter. But in Duncan's
time the boot was on the other leg ; and as Long
shanks and I stood and looked at his littie cabin in
this desolate and lonely spot, we paid sincere homage
to the spirit of the departed pioneer.
As it was impossible to cast a line beyond the ring
of half-submerged ice that encircled the lake, Long
shanks gave up all idea of fishing ; and the afternoon
being well advanced we were fain also to abandon
our intention of seeing Johnson Lake, and take the
trail homeward, I was by this time comfortably warm
and dry, and the thought of having to wade the stream
again on our way back was highly provoking. In the
hope that we might evade it we left the trail and made
a wide cast to the north, which we figured should
bring us in somewhere near the head of the fall.
Without a compass or knowledge of the ground such
calculations are open to a host of mischances. For
one thing, it is not easy to estimate the arc of a circle
in covering rough country, and for another, unex
pected obstacles may make it impossible to keep even
reasonably near to the proposed line of travel.
Progress was slow, for the snow was softer than it
had been in the morning ; but we floundered along,
mile on mile, up and down, tobogganing helter-skel
ter down every practicable slope. In the exhilarating
air even the uphill work was a sort of play. When
ever we heard the roar of the river sounding near us
we took another cast, and flattered ourselves that we

i64 YOSEMITE TRAILS
were outflanking the enemy. But as the hours and the
miles passed it began to be a question how long this
was to go on. Nature is hard to beat at the game of
patience. Then we found ourselves facing the river
once more. It was getting dusk and we decided to
cross, neck or nothing; so it looked as if I, at any
rate, was in for another bath of snow-water. Pros
pecting up and down the bank for the best place to
tackle the annoying job, we espied a dead tree that
had fallen at a steep slant partly across the stream,
the further end overhanging a broken stump that
leaned from the other side. Blessing our luck we
swarmed up, and with a ten-foot drop landed on the
stump and slid down on the other side.
The rest was plain sailing, for we were headed in
the right direction and began to leave the snow be
hind as we came to lower levels. The way lay then
over a wide expanse of granite, almost treeless, and
curving in overlapping layers into seams and folds,
along which ran arrowy brooks of water from the
snows we had left. The sun had set behind rifted
clouds, but on our left the high ridge of Buena Vista
Peak suddenly flushed to almost crimson, culminating
and sinking to ashy gray in a breath, as with a sigh
of ineffable beauty.
We reached the head of the falls as the light was
almost gone, and after a few minutes' rest plunged
down the well-marked trail, swinging along at five
miles an hour, sore of foot but with spirits unflagged.
By nine o'clock we made the Wawona road, and

THE WAWONA COUNTRY 165
half an hour later were at headquarters. We had been
out fifteen hours, and had covered about twenty-five
miles of pretty rough country, mainly over soft snow,
and with a rise of forty-five hundred feet in altitude.
Longshanks successfully dodged the enquiries of
rival fishermen, and we turned in after an impressive
supper, desperately tired but satisfied exceedingly.
Wawona Meadows themselves might be called the
Sleepy Hollow of the West. It is the most peaceful
place that I know in America, and comes near being
the most idyllic spot I have seen anywhere (which
is a considerable admission for an Englishman to
make). Here is an unbroken meadow, green as
heaven, a mile long, waving knee-high with all de
licious grasses and threaded with brooklets of crystal
water. It is surrounded with a rail-fence that rambles
in and out and round about and hither and thither
in that sauntering way that makes a rail-fence such
a companionable thing, nearly as good as a hedge.
Beyond the fence the forest rises on all sides, surging
gloriously up, ridge above ridge, a most friendly and
comfortable sight.
The meadows lie east and west. To the east stands
Mount Raymond, and to the west Signal Mountain
(known also as Devil's Peak), the culminating point
of the Chowchillas. The South Fork of the Merced
flows along the northern edge, breathing easier after
its boisterous rush through the cafion ; and beyond
it the glistening mass of Bald Mountain shows like
an elephant's forehead to centre the gaze. On the

i66 YOSEMITE TRAILS
south lies a particularly admirable belt of forest,
flowery and ferny to a degree, through which the
short trail climbs up to the Sequoia groves. Yellow
pines, sugar pines, firs, oaks, and cedars stand ranked
in emulous perfection, with a first-storey undergrowth
of ceanothus, dogwood, wild-rose, hazel, and goose
berry, and a ground-floor tangle of lilies white, lilies
red, lilies grave, lilies gay, dwarf ceanothus with deli
cious little blossoms of sapphire blue, chamoebatia
the blessed, and dozens more.
In the Wawona Meadows one may experience what
used to be called, in a pretty old English phrase,
"a charm of birds." Embroidered upon the tenor
voice of the pines, the deeper whisper of the oaks,
and the talking rustle of ferns and grasses are the
meadow-lark's bubbling cascade, the wild cry of the
flicker, and innumerable chucklings, carollings,' and
cacklings from songsters of greater or less degree.
Platoons of blackbirds wheel about in rhythmic
manoeuvres, dropping now and then by one impulse
out of sight, as if the ground had opened to receive
them. Swallows dip and dive over the lake of her
bage, breasting the green billows like swimmers, and
exploiting all manner of flavorable insects. All the
earth's children, animal and vegetable alike, are ram
pantly at work or play. Starry hosts of mimulus
twinkle, wild strawberries hide and tantalize, butter
cups and wild-roses perform their little alchemies of
remembrance ; gay young dandelions flash their gold
like prodigals, and hoary old dandelions (" all flaxen

THE WAWONA COUNTRY 167
was his poll") stand pondering on the brevity of
life. And ever the shining waves of the grass go by
and away, to die in soundless surf on the forest edge.
The soft wind blows you little cool kisses, and when
for a moment it dies away, the pine incense rises hot
and spicy, with almost a spirituous pungency.
For an hour or so at midday silence reigns. The
birds retire to shady siestas: everything drowses,
except the tireless wind and the grass, and even they
move sleepily. Then some one, somewhere, gives the
word, " Come on I " — and in a moment the world
moves on again, whistling and playing pranks like a
schoolboy. Trailside company is distractingly plen
tiful : there are pipings and rustlings overhead, ex
cited scamperings underfoot, underground soliloquies
of amphibious brooks, indecisions of butterflies, im
minent perils of pendent bees, trepidations of liz
ards, absurdities of inverted beetles, perturbations of
ants, exasperations of gnats with assassinations of the
same ; and everywhere green laughter of leaf and
grey reverie of lichen.
The high land-cliff of Wawona Point rises on the
northern boundary of the upper grove of the Wa
wona Sequoias. From it one looks down nearly
three thousand feet into the gulf of forest, in the
midst of which the meadows lie like a sheltered lake.
I found it especially a noble station from which to
watch the sunrise. Only two miles to the east rises
Mount Raymond, and his peak is the first to kindle.
For a few moments the illumination seems to be

i68 YOSEMITE TRAILS
stationary ; then it spreads slowly down, turning the
blue shaded snow-fields to glistering white. Then it
catches and goldensthe spiry tips of the fir-forest,
and they seem to tremble with delight, striving up
and thrilling with the fervor of life.
As the radiance comes flooding down, the needles
of a sugar pine on the ridge between me and the
sunrise flash and shimmer with white lances of light,
and the great Sequoias smile out, one by one, with
solemn, age-old joy. Wawona lies still sunk in a
bowl of purple shadow, but the sun's brush lays wash
below wash of gold on the mountain-side. Next the
light catches the old white stump that stands on the
point ; then it suddenly streams through the gorge
below him, and paints a long triangle of yellow that
pushes down and down, reaching and grasping, until
in a few moments it comes to the edge of the mead
ows. The quiet is intense and unbroken but for the
voice of the river, which throbs up from the void
below and seems to echo back and reverberate from
the very sky.
To south and west the level plain of the San Joa
quin lies in long streaks of fawn and blue; blue
where every slight inequality of ground spreads an
island of shadow behind it. Farmers wake, horses
stamp and rattle for their morning hay, roosters
shout their insane defiances to creation, car -bells
jangle, newsboys wrangle, bacon sizzles in kitchen
and camp, and I go down to breakfast.

CHAPTER XI
RAFAELITO: AN INTERLUDE
THE law of Nature which is expressed in that
overworked phrase, "the survival of the fit
test," has had a complete, and from the point of
view of the survivors themselves (who are naturally
the best judges) a highly satisfactory, demonstration
in the quick declension of the old Mexican popula
tion of California before the present lords of the
Golden State. The transaction took place with the
automatic certainty of all such natural processes, but
also with a rapidity which entities it to the attention
due to a phenomenon. It was a summary clearing
of the stage for the quick action of the Golden Drama.
Nature needs no apologist for her writs of ejection,
and her outgoing tenants have no recourse or ap
peal. In this case they attempted none, but, gener
ally speaking, sank away as quietly as the streams
that dwindle and seep out of sight under the ener
getic Californian sun. "The hour had struck, and
they must go." And go they did, rich and poor,
gentle and simple alike, bowing with what grace
they might to
" The good old rule, the simple plan.
That they should take who have the power
And they should keep who can."

I70 YOSEMITE TRAILS
But I, for one, have always felt the injustice of the
contempt in which the dispossessed Mexicans have
been held by their heirs-at-law. No doubt, nothing
succeeds like success, and nothing fails like failure ;
but then, the point of view governs all, and one can
always conceive an aspect from which the conquered
might contemn the conquerors. For myself, I own
to a sympathetic regard for " the greasers," whom, in
general, I have found singularly friendly and respon
sive ; — a virtue which, it seems to me, is entitled to
a high rating under the circumstances.
Scattered up and down the multitudinous canons
of the foothills where the Sierra Nevada sweeps out
in fringes of winter green or summer ochre upon
the great central valley of California, an unsuspected
number of Mexicans have found congenial homes.
As miners, shepherds, bee-men, or nondescripts they
live in these sequestered places, performing at least as
well as the rest of us the Symphony of the Quiet Life,
which consists in such matters as "living content with
small means, talking gently, acting frankly, bearing
all cheerfully, doing all bravely, awaiting occasions,
hurrying never."
Troops of children, often lovely as young arch
angels, whose dark eyes and shining tresses have
often disquieted my tough bachelor heart with long
ing, play around these humble doors. Mandolins
tinkle through long evenings after easy days, and the
smoke of everlasting cigarettes mingles with low-
toned laughter and murmured conversation in the

RAFAELITO: AN INTERLUDE 171
most musical of languages. Standing outside the
hurly-burly, these philosophical non-combatants find
leisure for the quiet pleasures and family employ
ments and courtesies which we deny ourselves, or
think we are denied. They have not travelled so far
from Eden as we have. Can we be sure that we who
have come farther have not fared worse ?
When the hottest part of the California summer day
arrives, the boasted energy of the Anglo-Saxon sinks
to zero. The sun-baked rocks and boulders shed out
a violent, blistering heat ; the white sands reflect the
light like a mirror ; the breeze grows listless, flutters,
and dies away ; the traveller grows listless too, and
his affairs become less important than the necessity
of turning aside for an hour's siesta in the shade.
That, at least, was my conclusion as midday ap
proached, when a few years ago the course of my
affairs took me a day's journey into one of the less
frequented caiions of the Sierra foothills, — the San
Timoteo. As I wished to return the same night, I had
started early from the little town in the valley, and
had ridden a good many miles before the heat of the
day came on. My horse, moreover, needed water ;
so when my eyes, following a narrow track that led
off to the right of the trail, fell upon a plank thrown
over a gully which by the debris it contained gave
notice of the proximity of a house or camp, I at once
turned him into the littie side-trail. Riding down into
the gully and up the opposite side, I saw, fifty yards

172 YOSEMITE TRAILS
farther on, a dwelling. It was the regulation " lone "
miner's cabin, — an object which under all its vari
ations constitutes a type ; just as, under all his diver
sities, does the "lone" miner himself. It stood, or
rather stooped, hunched together with that air of pre
mature age which in three months settles upon struc
tures whose builders have attached more importance
to haste and economy than to T-squares and sound
workmanship. A wall of rock of considerable height
rose near behind the house, forming a buttress or spur
of the main cation wall. A few fair-sized live-oaks and
cottonwoods inhabited the littie bench of land, an
acre or two in extent, which, naturally clear of brash,
offered itself as a desirable building site.
On a rough shelf attached to the house was a batea,
— the wooden pan or dish used by Mexican placer-
miners in the operation of " washing out" by hand.
A pick, an axe, and other such articles lay near by ;
a mattress was spread upon the ground in the shade
of a tree ; and if I needed other evidence of the own
er's presence, the sound of music proceeding from the
half-open door, and smoke issuing from the chimney,
undoubtedly afforded' it. Both the air played and the
instrament furnishing the music were familiar. The
air was Za Paloma, a composition as distinctive of
Mexico as Suwanee River is of this country, or The
Blue Bells of Scotland of the land of Burns. The
instrament I recognized as one which was known
to me in my youthful musical enthusiasms as the
mouth-organ, but is now, I believe, more ambitiously

RAFAELITO: AN INTERLUDE 173
known as the harmonicon. I listened until the end of
the tune, and was then about to ride up to the door
when I heard a boy's voice speaking rapidly in Span
ish, answered by a man in the same language ; and
a moment later the air was begun again by two per
formers together. I waited again until the verse was
completed, and then dismounting walked up to the
house. The musicians, after a short colloquy, were
beginning still another performance of the same air,
but ceased at my knock, and an old Mexican pre
sented himself. I use the term old in the qualified
sense in which, it seems to me, it applies to all Mexi
cans of over forty-five years' age ; but he was strongly
built, and his face was remarkably intelligent and
pleasing, though wearing that expression of half mel
ancholy passivity which seems to be a mark of his
race. I explained that I had expected to find water in
the caiion but had failed to do so, and requested per
mission to water my horse at his spring.
"Surely, seiior," and with grave politeness he led
the way behind the house, and pointed out a small
covered well.
"At your service ; it will be three miles before you
reach water, senor."
" You have lived here long ? " I asked, for the sake
of conversation.
" Yes, sefior, it is five years since we came from
Guadalajara. Do you know Guadalajara? It is a
beautiful city, like the fine American cities, senor."

174 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Attracted by his friendly communicativeness, I re
marked upon the music I had heard and asked whether
he had brought his family from Mexico with him.
"Yes, senor; but there is but one boy."
" Then your wife is dead ? " I ventured to ask.
" Yes, senor, in Guadalajara."
" Gracias," he continued, in reply to my expression
of sympathy ; " but it is God's will, senor ; it is not
good to complain ; and I have the boy, and we are
very happy. He is not strong, but he is very good.
And clever, senor I You should hear him play."
" Yes," I replied, " I heard him play."
"Ah I but that is nothing; he was but playing
then to teach me to play, too. It will be fine music,
seiior, when I can play like he can."
We had been walking back toward the trail as we
talked, and I now stood ready to mount and continue
my journey, having given up the idea of resting there,
fearing I should be an intruder.
" The sun is still hot, and there is littie shade,
senor," said my friendly Mexican. "Perhaps you
would like to rest at the house?"
I willingly assented, and he led the way, first slip
ping the bridle from my horse and tying him in the
shade of a tree.
On entering the house I saw a boy of perhaps
fourteen years of age, lying on a roughly made cot.
A glance showed that he was deformed, and a pair of
home-made cratches in a corner stood mute witnesses
to the fact. But his face was remarkably beautiful, the

RAFAELITO: AN INTERLUDE 175
eyes, in particular, very animated and eloquent; and
his smile the most radiant and affecting that I ever
beheld. It seemed to take you at once into his con
fidence ; to love you as if by nature ; almost to kiss
you, in its pure, spontaneous affection. It thrilled me,
and thrills me now when I think of it. I can call it
nothing but heavenly.
" The caballero will rest, Rafael," said his father.
"Si, senor," and the boy looked at me with that
sweet, bright smile.
I love children. One does not usually think of a boy
of fourteen as a child, in that sense ; but Rafael in his
weakness was a child, and a very appealing, respon
sive child ; and Rafael's smile was an invitation to
love him as a child. I sat down on a low box beside
him and took one of his hands in mine. In the other
hand he held his little instrument, playing it softly,
under his breath ; and whenever his eyes met mine
or his father's it was always with the heavenly smile.
" Play, Rafaelito," said his father ; " the caballero
does not know how you can play."
The boy drew his hand from mine, and after a few
preliminary chords launched into the most original
and brilliant variations on the same air which I had
heard him play before. It was astonishing to see him,
and would have been almost weird but for the extraor
dinary beauty of his expression. He lay, rather than
sat, facing the littie window, which was somewhat
high in the wall on the same side as the door, and
looked toward the south. The sun shone clearly in

176 YOSEMITE TRAILS
upon the lad, broken by the blurred, flickering shad
ows cast by the slow-moving leaves of a cottonwood.
His eyes were fixed upon the sky, and shone with
the steady, calm radiance of the evening star ; while
in strange contrast his sunken chest rose and fell as
he played, with the painful agitation of a woman's
breast when she sobs. The boy was rapt, ecstatic.
The little room, with its humble household contriv
ances, took on the enchantment, and glowed with
the spirit of the pulsating music. Jose, the father,
crouched gazing at the floor in a dream, his elbows
on his knees, his hands hanging down and twitching,
one foot beating time. Such passion, such freedom,
were in the boy's playing, — it was not a child playing
a toy ; it was a Paganini, but a heavenly Paganini.
Suddenly he ceased. Jose rose and came forward,
a tremulous smile on his grave face. " Can he not
play, seiior, as I said, my Rafaelito?"
" It is marvellous," I said. "But it is not good that
you play too much, Rafael ; you are not strong, and
it is bad for you."
" Oh no, senor," he said ; " I must play . I love to
play; it is my life." And he smiled his heavenly
smile, his eyes glowing.
" It is true," said Jose. " He plays always, and it
is not well that I stop him. You see, senor, there is
nothing else he can do, and one must do something :
one dies."
He took the water -pail and moved towards the
door. I followed, and when we were outside I en-

RAFAELITO: AN INTERLUDE 177
quired how the boy had learned to play so wonder
fully. " Of himself, senor," Jose replied. " He was hurt by
the train when we came from Mexico ; he fell from
the step, and hurt his back on the iron. Then he was
in the hospital at Los Angeles nearly three months,
but they could not cure him. But they gave him the
armbnico, to amuse him ; yes, they were kind, but
they could not cure him ; it was not God's will. And
when they let him go we came here; and we are
happy. The claim, senor ? no, it is not much, but it
gives always enough. At first, he would come always
with me where I work ; it is on the hill that the claim
is. But it is a year now that he is not so well, and he
stays at the house, and plays and plays. That is how
he plays so well. It is his life, yes, truly, his life, senor.
And then he said I must play, too ; and I try to play,
but I am not young like him, and I cannot learn fast
But he is patient, and teaches me. And when it is
moonlight we sit outside the house, and we play and
play. He loves greatly the moonlight. And I tell him
of Guadalajara, and the music there, and the fine
churches, and he plays always ; and we are very
happy, seiior."
He stopped speaking, and then, with a smile that
was a reflection of the boy's, said again, —
" He is an angel, my Rafaelito ; and we are very
happy, seiior."
It was necessary for me to resume my journey,
and I returned alone to the house, Jose being occu-

178 YOSEMITE TRAILS
pied for a moment outside, to wish the boy good
bye. " Gracias, senor," he said, with his heavenly smile,
as I again praised his playing ; " and my father plays
also ; I have taught him, and already he plays well.
Do you play, senor?"
I had to acknowledge that I had no accomplish
ment in that direction.
" It is a pity ; it is fine to play ; and father says so,
too. Do you know, senor, I can always hear it, yes,
when I am asleep, sometimes. I can hear it running
and running like the water. And then when I wake I
play it so, and it is another way, a new way, senor."
After a pause he went on, —
" And it is such good company for one. That is
why I made my father learn ; and then, if I am not
here, — you see I am not strong, seiior, — then he will
play, and it will be as if we played together ; is it not
so?" " Yes," I answered ; " almost as if you played to
gether. Good-bye, Rafael ; but I shall come and see
you again, and you will play again to me."
" Yes, senor ; adios, seiior." And he smiled his
smile that was like a kiss.
I had finished my business and was riding back
down the caiion in the cool peace of the evening.
As the cold mountain breeze blew past me, it seemed
a different world from that of the morning, with its
throbbing heat and garish light. La Paloma still

RAFAELITO: AN INTERLUDE 179
rang in my brain ; and as the light faded I ceased to
urge my horse, and fell into a reverie in which I
seemed to see again the face of Rafael, luminous and
smiling, or gazing up at the sky with his rapt look
as he played and played. The tall evening-prim
roses that grew beside the trail were like the boy in
their pale, bright serenity ; and with a feeling of ten
derness I leaned down and touched one here and
there, as though it were he himself. The moon rose
above the caiion wall, and poured its still radiance
over the scene. I remembered that Jose had said
that Rafael often played in the moonlight, and as I
came near the place where the littie trail led to the
house I found myself listening quite eagerly. I had
no intention of staying, in any case, but I had a
strong desire to see the boy again, and thought I
would quietly approach the house if I heard any
sound, but without their knowledge, so that I could
withdraw unseen. At a turn of the canon the music
suddenly reached me. They were playing together,
as I had heard them in the morning: Rafael was
teaching his father. I dismounted and tied my horse
to a bush, and quietly walked to where I could
plainly see without being seen. The moon now shone
full upon the littie opening, and its idyll of love and
simplicity. The mattress had been drawn out from
under the tree where I had seen it into the moon
light, and on it lay Jose and Rafael, side by side,
playing. "Did I play well, Rafaelito mio?"

i8o YOSEMITE TRAILS
" It is excellent, yes, excelentisimo," answered Ra
faelito of the Heavenly Smile.
Athough it had seemed likely that I should find
it necessary soon to repeat my journey into the San
Timoteo, two years elapsed before I was again in the
caiion. I was far from having forgotten old Jose and
the boy. On my way up I was pressed for time, and
did not call at the house, but contented myself with
riding near enough to see that it appeared to be still
inhabited, and determining to stop there on my re
turn at night. I recalled vividJ-"^ the vision that my
memory had preserved (as it always will), of the
father and son playing together in the moonlight ;
and I hoped that I might repeat an experience that
was so sacred in its touching simplicity. Perhaps I
was unduly sentimental, but so it seemed to me.
There was a half moon that night, and I rode
quickly down the canon, enjoying the scents that
filled the air from sage, laurel, and the hundred and
one aromatic herbs and shrubs of the California brush.
I passed again the tall evening - primroses, stand
ing in silent beauty like spellbound fairy princesses,
and their pale tranquillity again reminded me of
Rafael. It was still early when I came to the little
trail, and I had no doubt of finding my friends either
in the house or, perhaps, playing in the moonlight
as I had last seen them. But when I came near the
house there was no sound of talking or playing, and
I saw no light, though the door stood open. I tied

RAFAELITO: AN INTERLUDE i8i
my horse, and approaching, knocked, and called
" Jose 1 Rafael 1 " There was no answer, and with
a feeling of disappointment I struck a match and
stepped within. Evidently the house was inhabited,
and by the same owner, for there was but little
change in the appearance of the room ; but when I
looked for the boy's bed, and his cratches, I could
not see them. Something of a presentiment came
over me ; many things may happen in two years,
and the boy had been a cripple. Going outside, I
was upon the point of calling the father's name
again, when I thought I heard, faintly and at a dis
tance, the well-remembered sound of the playing.
Yes, I heard it unmistakably ; it came from beyond
the house, intermittently, as the breeze brought it.
Following it I soon found that I was on a well-marked
path that led up a little side -canon, of which the
gully that one had to cross in reaching the house
from the road was a continuation. The path I was
on led, no doubt, to Jose's placer- claim; but what
could be the reason of his being there at night, and
where was the boy ?
Following the path, which was steep and rocky, I
came nearer and nearer to the music : it was again La
Paloma. Then the trail emerged on a littie opening,
which was, in fact, the top of the spur of rock which
rose behind the house. At a little distance I saw some
one sitting, playing : it was Jose. He had not seen me,
nor heard my approach. When I called his name
he ceased playing, and came slowly toward me. The

i82 YOSEMITE TRAILS
moonlight was on his grave, dark face ; he did not at
first recognize me.
"Jos6," I said, "you remember me?"
I turned my face to the light.
" Yes, senor," he said, " now I know you ; and you
are welcome. I fear it was hard for you to find me."
" No," I replied, " I heard you play. You played
when I was here before."
" Yes, I remember, senor," said Jose.
"And the boy, Rafaelito, who played so beau
tifully," I said : " I have not forgotten, Jose. Where
is he?" "Dead, senor"; he spoke quietly. "You would
like to see the place ? It is here, close by, seiior."
He led the way, talking simply as we walked.
" We were very happy ; yes, that is it, perhaps we
were too happy, seiior, do you not think so? One
must have trouble, and the boy was not strong."
He stopped at the spot where I had seen him sit
ting. There was a littie enclosure, the shape of a
grave, not to be noticed at a littie distance, marked
out with roughly broken pieces of quartz. At one
end a cross was marked upon the ground in the same
way ; and in the centre of the enclosure there was a
small, shallow, wooden box, about a foot square, such
as some articles of food are packed in ; but a piece
of glass formed the top, which was held in place by
four pebbles of white quartz. Something glittered like
metal under the glass ; it was the beloved armbnico,
and Rafaelito of the Heavenly Smile lay beneath.

RAFAELITO: AN INTERLUDE 183
"When I work, — it is over there that I work,
seiior, quite near, — I can look and see the place. And
always I come here in the evenings, and then I play.
He made me learn ; he was very patient, my Rafaelito.
And was it not fortunate that I learned, senor ? it is
as though we played together."
" — Yes, it is hard; but it is God's will, and it is
not good to complain. Vaya con Dios, senor''

PART II
THE HIGH SIERRA

" Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the
night overtake thee everywhere at home,"
Thoreau.

CHAPTER XII
THE HIGH SIERRA: THE YOSEMITE VALLEY TO
THE HETCH-HETCHY
ON a hot, still morning of middle summer I left
the Yosemite Valley for a month's expedition
into the High Sierra. The region I expected to travel
would be entirely new to me, so it was advisable to
take a guide ; and as there would be no opportunity
for re-furnishing with provisions until I reached Mono
Lake, on the eastern side of the mountains, it was
necessary to take enough pack-animals to carry sup
plies for two or three weeks.
The problems of guide and pack-train solved them
selves very satisfactorily, and in this manner : I was
returning one day to camp, after compassing, at the
cost of a broken rod, the overthrow of an experienced
trout who had long defied me in a reach of the river
a mile or so below the village. Near the place where
we settied our account I came upon a man of a cheer
ful and self-helping aspect, who was camped in a
littie meadow that ran to the river-bank. In conver
sation this proved to be one Bodie, who had been
recommended to me as a good man and a capable
guide ; and before we parted a " deal " had been
arranged whereby he and five animals were placed at
my disposal for the month of July.

i88 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Mr. Field, whom I already knew as a pleasant com
rade and a thorough photographer, whose excellent
pictures illustrate these pages, was also to accompany
the expedition, completing a triangular (or perhaps it
would be fairer to say an octagonal) party.
It was the 3d of July when Field and I left the
valley. The village had broken out in a rash of flags
and bunting. Fireworks and a dance were billed to
wind up the exercises of the Fourth, and I confess I
felt no regret in turning my back upon these festive
incongruities. We drove out on the Big Oak Flat road, bound for
Crocker's Station, where Bodie awaited us with the
animals. This is the road which, from the southern side
of the valley, one sees traced like a white ribbon on
the northern canon wall. I found it on the whole dis
appointing in the views it offers ; but the Bridal Veil
Fall was often in sight, and interesting glimpses were
opened up of the wide scoop down which the Bridal
Veil Creek flows to its famous plunge : while the re
markable fractures of the southern wall of the Merced
Canon would compel the attention pf the least geo
logical of men. From this road alsoEl Capitan shows
more magnificently than from any other point of view,
fronting the west with a vast, door-like cliff that is truly
imposing in its unbroken verticality. But many of
the most wonderful features of the valley are not
within the view from this side, while from the spot
that has been ambitiously named New Inspiration
Point, El Capitan itself is completely hidden and

EL CAPITAN FROM THE BIG OAK FLAT ROAD

THE HIGH SIERRA 189
only a small segment of the Half -Dome is in
sight.
Making up, however, for all deficiencies, an unusual
haze that day filled the valley with an atmosphere
like a vapor of opals, and steeped the landscape in
a dreamy beauty, ineffably airy and spiritual. It was
like one of those enchanted valleys of our childhood,
populated by friendly fairies, gigantic genii, and com
panionable birds and beasts, where gallant lovers in
peach-colored velvet were constantly occupied in res
cuing princesses in silver and sky-blue.
The summer, moreover, was at its climax of flowers.
Every forest opening glinted with cyclamens, colum
bines, and wall-flowers, these last of a peculiar sultry
yellow like compressed sunshine. As we rose, the
timber changed from yellow pine to spruce, from
sprace to sugar pine, then to fir, and lastly to tama
rack. At Tamarack Flat we stopped for an hour to
rest the team, fagged with a climb of twenty-five hun
dred feet, and then, after making another rise to Gin
Flat (a natural culmination), began the long descent.
The road passes through the Tuolumne grove of
Sequoias. While we were paying our homage to some
of the most notable trees, we encountered a tall back
woodsman who sat whittling and whistling beside
the road. Your true backwoodsman savors of the for
est as a fisherman smells of the sea, and I was struck
by the wood craftiness, so to speak, of this man's ap
pearance. He looked like a kind of faun, and his
occupation of whittiing seemed almost necessary and

I90 YOSEMITE TRAILS
symbolic. Long, lean, and shaggy, there was a fine
air of wild instinct about him ; he seemed a part of
the landscape ; and it was a shock to find him to be
after all a prosaic and commercially minded creature,
when, in reply to a remark upon the stateliness of the
great trees that rose around us, he cast a calculating
eye over the " General Lawton," and replied, "Don't
know nothin' about that ; maybe they 's fine, maybe
they ain't. That thar stick will cut up two hunnerd
thousand foot of lumber, board measure. To my
thinkin' it 's all dad-blasted foolishness that a feller
cain't cut a stick o' timber like that. What 's trees,
anyway? Ain't they lumber?" He spat viciously to
right and left, throwing up littie volcanoes of dust,
and reiterated, "A dad-blasted foolishness, that's
what it is : two hunnerd thousand foot, board mea
sure." For some reason, the fact of this iniquitous
waste of lumber being estimated by board measure
seemed to aggravate the matter intolerably, and he
continued dad-blasting and spitting angrily until,
when we parted, quite a range of small craters sur
rounded him.
Running down a good road between walls of su
perb forest, we drew up by late afternoon at the little
settiement of Crocker's, or, as it is given on the map,
Sequoia. Without having ever seen, except from
railway cars, a New England village, I thought I
recognized the model of those quaint and sleepy
hamlets which American poets and writers have cast
into a type. A single street, or streetlet, of a hundred

THE HIGH SIERRA 191
yards all told, dawdled past the doors of half a dozen
whitewashed cottages, and then suddenly wavered
off into the forest. A "hotel," a miniature store, and
an amusing post office formed the business centre,
and a few small dwellings and a barn comprised the
suburbs. In this Arcadian spot Bodie awaited us, and thence
convoyed us to his camp half a mile away. Here we
found our animals assembled — a horse, two mules,
a big jack and a small jenny — hard by a lost-look
ing house, the residence of an acquaintance of our
guide's. The goodman was away, but his womenfolk
did the honors, and a couple of choleric dogs, to
gether with a rifle that leaned against the house,
represented him efficiently by proxy.
When the hour of supper approached, Bodie, to
give us a taste of his quality, notified us that we were
to be regaled with hot bread, and produced a brand-
new Dutch-oven which he was contributing on his
own account to the equipment of the party. When
the bread was ready and we drew around the gunny-
sack board, he sprang further surprises upon us : first
a bag of sugared " cookies," then a jar of pickles,
and lastly one of jam. I have no doubt he had pro
vided these exotics with the kindly idea of mitigating
for us the abruptness of the descent to camp rations ;
but I could see that he felt that his own dignity was
compromised by such trifling, and I observed that he
made a point of always referring to them slightingly
as " them little dinkies."

192 YOSEMITE TRAILS
This genteel repast over, Bodie repaired to the
house and the society of the ladies, who, overlooking
our presence, condescended to take the air on the
door-step. It was easy to gather from the soprano
laughter accompanying a bass monologue that our
guide was something of a wag. We, for our part, lay
at ease, smoking lazily and maturing our plans.
A serene rose-cloudy sunset, with a placid white
moon drifting in a sky of Turneresque blue, promised
a truly glorious Fourth. All around stood thickly
"the green steeples of the piney wood," closing us in
with a horizon of restful undulations. At length the
stars piercing the darkening indigo of the sky re
minded us that we were to be up at four, and turning
into our blankets we were lulled asleep by the mur
muring stream of badinage that still flowed on, en
couraged by tributary rills of applause.
There was no sign of movement about the house
when at six o'clock next morning our cavalcade filed
out upon the road, though a rear-guard skirmish be
tween the mules and the dogs plainly advertised our
departure. As we passed through the village a with
ering sun was already bleaching the sagging bunting,
but no sound of toy-cannon or fire-cracker broke the
drowse of Sleepy Hollow. The character of Crocker's
population does not belie the unemotional aspect of
the place.
I watched with curiosity, not unmixed with anxiety,
for the first disclosures of the qualities of our animals.
The horse and the mules were the property of Bodie,

THE HIGH SIERRA 193
and he had guaranteed their dispositions ; but he had
hired the two burros for the trip, and I knew from
severe experiences the surprises that are latent in
these incomprehensible creatures.
Almost before we were out of the village it became
plain that the big jack combined the worst idiosyn
crasies of his species with the solitary virtue of
enormous strength and great tonnage. A big-boned,
knuckly beast with a lowering eye, I never knew him
to abate for an instant the attitude of sullen hostility
which he adopted at the outset. Not that any of us
ever attempted to get into relations with him ; that eye
forbade it, Bodie's feelings toward him fluctuated
swiftly : at one moment he would extol his size and
endurance, averring, truly enough, that he was the
equal of any blamed mule in the mountains ; half a
minute later he could be heard assailing him with
violent reproaches and threatening to break every bone
in his " dog-gone" carcass. To threats and praises alike
Jack opposed the same detestable demeanor, and I
seldom deprecated the sudden strappados which fell
upon him, and which Bodie justified by explaining
that "the surly son of a 'Pache riled him all up."
For strength of will I never met the equal of this
animal ; it was colossal, and pure adamant. From the
first to the last day of the trip he steadfastly refused
to keep the trail with the others. Defiantiy he would
turn off from the plainest path, his great parietals
bulging with obstinacy ; and when a loud hail warned
him that he was observed, he would rash off and

194 YOSEMITE TRAILS
ram himself savagely into the worst thicket or rock-
pile he could find. By practice he had developed an
abominable sagacity, and could judge to a nicety the
space between trees or below branches that would
ensure the maximum of damage to his load. Into
these places he would charge, and stand shoving
and straining with sullen fury, hoping to dislodge
his pack ; and the only way to force him out was by
hammering him steadfastly on the muzzle. Even
under that application he would stand out, until, the
cumulative effect becoming unbearable, he would
bolt back to the trail, trembling with rage, and a hate
ful spectacle of concentrated vice.
The jenny was entirely otherwise ; a confiding lit
tie creature, as willing and placable as the jack was
ugly and difficult ; in Bodie's phrase, " a kind little
divvle," Her we loved, and many were the residual
beans and supernumerary flapjacks that fell to her
lot. One fault she had, but it was so natural, and by
contrast so venial, that we easily forgave it her. It
was a trick she had of hiding. During breakfast she
would stroll about the camp, receiving our remain
ders and enjoying the conversation ; but when the
time came that the detested " chores " engaged all
our attention she would edge off and melt imper
ceptibly into the brush ; and when she was wanted
for packing it seemed as if even her tracks had
evaporated. At hide-and-seek she was a genius;
nothing was too small to hide her; and when we
returned from a fruitless search over half a mile of

THE HIGH SIERRA 195
rough country she was generally discovered drows
ing or browsing close to camp, and would meet us
with a gaze so mild and serious as to quite disarm
our resentment.
Bodie's own mount was a handsome chestnut,
clever, gentie, and self-reliant. In places where the
mules and burros went timidly. Pet maintained his
own bold gait, striding freely over glacial pavements
where even the tap of their own hoofs kept the other
animals shaking with nervousness. Considering that
the natural habitat of the species is a region of plains
and open distances, I admired the more the fine free
dom of his stride on the worst and steepest of trails.
In his intercourse with his companions Pet never
forgot the dignity of his rank. Nor did he refuse its
responsibilities. Nothing pleased him so much as
the opportunity, which came frequently enough, of
rounding-up the pack-animals. Bodie usually rode
in the rear, where he could best oversee the train,
which sometimes was strung out over a hundred
yards of trail ; and it often occurred that the first
warning of foolishness on the part of the pack-mules
or burros would come from Pet, quite independently
of his rider. With his tail switching and a contemptu
ous toss and snort he would check his pace and jump
aside to head the wanderers back into the path. The
rebels, seeing him coming, usually stampeded in all
directions, and Pet would then take them in hand
one by one, outflanking, countermarching, and con
centrating with admirable strategy.

196 YOSEMITE TRAILS
The two mules, one white, or rather of that un
pleasant color known as flea-bitten, and the other
black, were used indifferently for packing or riding.
The black was a passionless sort of beast, a mere nu
meral, vacant even of the elementary trait of obsti
nacy. The other, whom we named Clementine, was
noticeable for a ludicrous physiognomy that gave the
impression of a continual simper. She nursed an
elderly passion for Pet, and could not bear him to be
out of her sight, though he, for his part, detested her
and met her languishing blandishments with un
equivocal kicks. Knowing that nothing would tempt
her to abandon his company, she was often allowed
to fall behind the rest of the pack-train while she dal
lied with the trailside herbage. At such times, when
she became suddenly aware that Pet was out of her
view, she would charge wildly up the line, caroming
off everything that came in her way, until she ar
rived close behind him, whereupon his ears would
flatten and he would gather for a kick.
Bodie's feelings at such moments were those of an
artist watching helplessly the wreck of his handiwork.
Not the securest of diamond-hitches could withstand
the shock of the collisions which her packs had to
endure with trees, rocks, and the other animals. By
the time she reached the coveted place her pack was
usually under her belly, and the whole train must
halt while she was unloaded and repacked. Her
eternal simper was at such times hard to bear, and
you may be sure that her comfort was not much

THE HIGH SIERRA 197
considered when it came to the pull on the latigo-
strap. Our road lay through open forest country, charm
ingly diversified and flowery. The most beautiful of
all the Mariposa tulips grew abundantly in sunny
places, rosy red in color and fantastically painted
with blots of maroon and purple. Golden mimulus,
purple godetias and pentstemons, and lavender lu
pines grew among the brush, itself fragrant and flow
ery, that broke with rounded bosses the severity of
the straight-stemmed pines and cedars. The white
mountain-lilac was still in blossom, burgeoning in
cloudy masses, and providing the last ingredient in
a landscape of perfectly proportioned color. Chamoe
batia also bore us company, like a friendly little
mountaineer setting us cheerfully on our way.
A long, gentle descent brought us to the South
Fork of the Tuolumne, which we found easily ford-
able. Until now I had not made the acquaintance
of this river ; but it had always attracted me, perhaps
simply by the oddity of its name, like a musical
mouthful of chance syllables (Too-ol'lum-ne) ; and
although the stream I saw was not distinguished by
any special beauty among the sisterhood of Sierra
rivers, all lovely alike, still it was an event to meet it,
and, as it were, check it off.
Jack and Clementine had already wasted so much
of our time in stoppages and re-packings that I de
cided to make an almost nominal day's march of it,
and to camp at Ackerson Meadows instead of push-

198 YOSEMITE TRAILS
ing on to the Hog Ranch, which would have been no
more than ten miles. The decision was welcomed by
Bodie, and I found early in our acquaintance that he
had all a good stockman's regard for the comfort of
his beasts. When I announced also that during the
expedition we should not break camp on Sundays I
observed that the fact, though it occasioned him some
surprise, gave him no distress. I, on my side, was not
only willing, but anxious, to fall in with his sugges
tion of early starts, easy marches, and timely camps
on other days, so far as possible ; and when I proved
myself quite his match in the matter of early rising
I believe he came to regard me as almost a paragon
from this point of view. We were nearly always up
by four o'clock. I fancied that Field was not fully in
sympathy with such virtue, but he never complained,
and always turned out ungrudgingly.
It was not much after noon when we rode up to a
littie scorched-up house in a wide meadow, and were
hospitably greeted by a hirsute Irishman who was
"holding down" the ranch for the present owner, the
successor of the original Ackerson. Choosing a spot
for our camp on the edge of a swampy expanse which
afforded good pasturage for the animals, we turned
them loose, and, it being Saturday, made rather elab
orate preparations for a day and a half of unearned
ease. The remains of the " little dinkies " gave a festal
touch to the evening meal.
While we lingered over the coffee, two young fel
lows appeared, carrying guns and heavily encrusted

THE HIGH SIERRA 199
with cartridges. An immature squirrel depended from
the belt of one of the sportsmen. In the course of con
versation they remarked impressively that they had
bear-meat to spare, and offered to share it with us if
we would visit their camp, promising also to enter
tain us with music. Later in the evening, when Bodie
had gone to swap items of news at the cabin. Field
and I were walking over to pay our call and receive
the expected boons when the skirling of a phono
graph warned us away, and we hastily retraced our
steps and turned into our blankets early by way of
compensation. I confess I find it difficult to for
give Mr. Edison for this diabolical invention, and I
even welcomed as a mitigation the vociferous yelp
ing of a coyote halfway down the meadow. The
conjunction of sounds formed what I should sup
pose must be an absolute novelty in tone combina
tions. Sunday passed in a kind of Nirvana of heat and
laziness. Returning from a walk through flowery
glades where beds of pale lilac lupine and foot-high
fern were spread upon a brown floor of pine-needles,
I found the rail-fence which enclosed the meadow
decorated with an extensive " wash." Jenny thought
fully munched the sleeve of a blue jumper, while
Bodie, lightly clad, slumbered in the shade.
About sunset a solitary mallard visited us, flying
three times silently around the vicinity of our camp.
As it vanished with strong, steady wing-beats into
the dusky glory of the west, I fancied that it might

200 YOSEMITE TRAILS
be the spirit of some departed Indian warrior, come
to revisit his old hunting-grounds ; one of
"... the wandering spirits
From the kingdom of Ponemah,
From the land of the Hereafter."
Half-past three next morning found us astir, and
six o'clock saw us on the road, headed for the Hetch-
Hetchy, At Stone's Meadows we rode through a very
sea of some pretty, composite flower with yellow rays
and a black centre, that grew in countless multitudes.
In the hot, still morning these black-eyed Susans, as
they stood silently drinking in the sunshine, seemed
the very type of California's floral intemperance.
The finest city lot is dreary and undesirable in com
parison with these emerald-and-topaz heavens. But
this lovely spot is now uninhabited, and the old cabin,
long disused and sunk into decay, kneels like a bro
ken-backed camel on the flowery sward. These aban
doned dwellings, which surprise the traveller in the
loneliest portions of the Sierra, are the relics of the
days of the sheep-men. By many a mountain meadow
and clearing you will find the littie ten-by-twelve
hutches, doorless and windowless, with a tumble of
stones at one end where used to be the chimney.
Here, in the days when mutton was king, the gay
songs of la belle France were sung by black-bearded
Gascons to the gusty surge of accordions or the thin-
blooded skirling of violins. On the frontiers of the
Forest Reserves you may meet the little dark men

THE HIGH SIERRA 201
now, wandering from pasture to pasture with their
placid charges, attended by two half-wild dogs and a
weird little pack-burro. Whenever I encounter one of
these sauntering pastors I seem to see a Jacob, and
wonder in what Pyrenean village lives the Rachel for
whom he is serving.
We crossed the Middle Fork of the Tuolumne by
a bridge of rough planks, and a few more miles
brought us to the Hog Ranch. The hogs have given
place to cattle, and these, with a few horses, now roam
over the green expanse and wax fat beyond the wont
of their kind on superb pasturage. The ranch is like
an English park, — a lovely valley, wide and grassy,
broken with clumps of oak and cedar ; but the house
is a filthy old shanty which, nondescript and ugly
at its best, and now long fallen into disrepair, is an
offence to the eye and reeks with skunk-like odors.
Thus far we had followed what is nominally a road,
being practicable for robust vehicles ; but at this point
a rougher country begins, and we entered upon our
long trail. It made an inviting beginning, winding
through shaded avenues deep in pine-needles and
flowery with many brilliant blossoms. The most no
ticeable flower of this locality in midsummer is the
godetia, which grows in low, close companies, paint
ing the ground in places with islands of solid purple.
Mixed among them are handsome lily-like brodiaeas
of a deep, pure blue, and the coral-red stars of the
erythroea, with many another. But the character of
the landscape soon changed, and for some distance

202 YOSEMITE TRAILS
the trail led through open, rocky country, clad with a
sparse growth of the unattractive and shadeless Sa
biniana pine, which here appears at a greater eleva
tion than is usual with it, by virtue of some particular
and local conditions.
From an altitude of fifty- five hundred feet the
trail made a long descent towards the north. Sud
denly there opened far below us a valley like another
Yosemite, its cliffs, meadows, and winding river
gleaming through the pearly summer haze. The
white torrent of a waterfall could be plainly seen even
at that distance, creeping down a great cliff on the
northern side. I knew it at once as the Hetch-Hetchy.
Down endless zigzags, " hotter 'n blazes," as Bodie
truly said, among fine oaks and spruces, by creeks
ferny, aldery, willowy, and through meadows blue,
meadows yellow, meadows red, and meadows mixed
of every color, we marched until we debouched at
last upon the floor of the valley. Here met us a rep
resentative of the law in the form of a serious and
taciturn young trooper, huge of limb and yellow of
seven days' beard, a sort of youthful Oom Paul. He
bore a large German pipe with a bowl like a small
nail-keg, and remained canopied in clouds of plug-
cut while he conducted his mild catechism : Names ?
A, B, and C. Good. Come out from the valley?
Sure. Where was we heading ? Could n't say exactly ;
generally, north and east, off there. What was we out
for ? Just taking in the country. Hunting ? No. No ?
No. Guns in them packs ? No, again. Going by way

>aoHaXKuH MK
K

THE HIGH SIERRA 203
of Soda Springs? Might. When? Couldn't say.
Know the country ? Ask him, Bodie. Oh, that Bodie?
Go ahead. And waving his pipe benevolently at us,
Oom Paul turned away and sank into an extempo
rized hammock, while we filed out upon the level in
search of a camping-place.
Any spot in this valley would be well-nigh ideal
for the purpose, but it was still early in the day and
we could afford to be critical. So we prospected for
warm miles, with a special regard to the question of
mosquitoes, which we had been warned might be
troublesome here.
There are two waterfalls in the Hetch-Hetchy.
One of them is a short-lived burst of energy that be
gins and ends with the melting of the snows that lie
above the northern wall of the valley. This fall is
seen by but few people, for the last of its water es
capes before full summer arrives. I looked eagerly
for this cataract, Too'eoola'la, which Bodie reported
as far exceeding the other in power and beauty, de
claring that when in full career it filled the whole
lower end of the valley with its whirling spume. But
we were too late ; not a sign remained of what, per
haps two weeks earlier, would have been so splendid
a sight. A spell of hot weather had upset the pail.
The other fall, the Hetch-Hetchy, is not so transi
tory. It draws its waters from a creek twenty miles
or more in length, and from a number of lakes and
lakelets lying up on the high country to the north.
It does not leap out, as do the various falls of the

204 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Yosemite Valley, from the lip of a sheer cliff, to drift
and dream in vapor ; but pours down a twisted and
precipitous gorge, crashing from ledge to ledge,
writhing and bursting in a terrific catastrophe. Seen
from across the valley it is as if a broad vein of vir
gin silver, running from top to bottom of the two-
thousand-foot precipice, had been laid bare by some
great convulsion : such a treasure of solid metal as
flushed the imagination of the Conquistadores. The
Hetch-Hetchy Fall is thus of a quite different type
from the other great waterfalls of the region, but in
beauty it is fully their equal, and in features of wild
ness even their superior.
Midway up the valley stands the remarkable cliff
called the Kolana Dome. This magnificent rock of
two thousand feet somewhat resembles in outline the
mountain known as Liberty Cap in the Yosemite,
and stands fronting the river with a face almost per
pendicular, and rolling back the roar of the Hetch-
Hetchy Fall. Passing around the foot of this cliff,
and skirting a pretty pool which renders a perfect
reflection of rock and waterfall, pine and sky, we
stopped at a clump of small cedars near a deserted
cabin that stood on the bank of the river, and there
made camp.
The Tuolumne as it flows through the Hetch-
Hetchy takes on a character very unusual in Califor
nia rivers. It becomes a placid, slow-moving stream,
wide and deep, gliding under outreaching branches
of oak and pine. Not a ripple breaks the shining

THE HIGH SIERRA 205
current, except where trout are leisurely dining. It
would be a superb place in which to dream away a
summer. The green and golden air laps one in un
broken content : it is like that land of the Lotos-Eat
ers "in which it seemed always afternoon." And
with a boat or canoe, what afternoons one might
have on that street of charmed water! Still more,
what evenings, watching through the leafy screen
the sunset flushing up the pearly walls ; or drifting
under spandrelled arcades of oak and sumptuous
foliations of pine and cedar, the cathedral gloom
lighted by windows that open on gold and amethyst
skies. And then the mornings, steeped in the in
credible freshness of the California dawn ; brushing
through knee-high meadows where yellow enotheras
stand in companies like pale odalisques ; or through
thickets of ceanothus sweet as hedges of hawthorn,
where robins are bustling and the powdery blossoms
fall like snow ; or fighting duels with chivalrous
trout in the ripple where the gleaming current is
drawn swiftly over into broken water.
The heat of the day had so evaporated our ener
gies that no one would volunteer to build a fire. The
spot where, by Bodie's choice, we had camped, re
vealed signs of recent occupation by another party,
which was objectionable when we had the whole val
ley to choose from ; and as we ate our cold supper and
slapped at the mosquitoes by prosaic candlelight,
we decided to remove next day to the other side.
^^ With this move in view we had engaged to be up

2o6 YOSEMITE TRAILS
by four o'clock or earlier ; but when in the early grey
I rose on my elbow and looked over to Bodie's sleep
ing-place, I was not sorry to see the deep quiescence
of his form, and willingly returned to light slumbers.
Half-a-dozen times at intervals I looked again ; still
no sign. Then Field got up, shouldered the camera,
and went off to keep an appointment down the valley
with a view which must be caught before the ripple
came on the water. Next I arose, and last of all Bodie,
with unnecessary explanations.
After breakfast, leaving him to pack, I retraced our
yesterday's trail for some distance, in order to review
with a fresher mind the features of the lower end of
the valley. A hot sun was already drawing up the
dew that lay on bush and sward. The haze of yester
day was gone, and every scratch and scoring on the
majestic walls showed as clearly as if it were cut on
steel under one's hand. The young leafage of the
oaks shone with a dull, clean burnish, like the skin
of an athlete. The sumptuous tassels of the yellow
pines, which here grow in remarkable perfection of
symmetry, shone with diamond-points that fell in
showers where squirrels leaped from spray to spray.
Birds were foraging cheerfully, in the certainty of
breakfast ; and high up in a brilliant sky an eagle
swung, a mere point of black, like a planet circling
in space. In a corner of the meadow a company of
evening-primroses were gleaming palely in the pro
tecting shade of the oaks. To me there is something
very poetic and sensitive about these flowers, with

THE HIGH SIERRA 207
their slender, moon-like graces : as 't were, I know not
how. Next I chanced upon a bush of ripe raspberries,
and while I loitered with these I was entertained by
a party of lively young king-snakes that were either
quarrelling or playing in the brush, chasing one
another about with a rapidity of movement and a
play of color that were quite bewildering.
I am always meeting people who report of this or
that place that it is "thick" with deer, or bear, or
such things; but I have never yet found the term
justified when I came to the spot. Thus we had been
told that the Hetch-Hetchy was thick with rattle
snakes. As a matter of fact none of us saw one there ;
and the whole time we were out we met only two,
one of which was killed by Field at Lake Eleanor,
and the other by me in the Till-till. In the Yosemite
itself I have never seen a rattlesnake, though I killed
two some distance up the Tenaya Caiion.
In general features the Hetch-Hetchy is a remark
able duplication of the Yosemite. The mountain-walls
are of the same character, though they are not, on
the whole, so high and cliff-like. There are the same
clean-drawn, dome-like outlines, the same quiet beauty
of winding river, the same level meadow-floor, dotted
with stately trees and sprinkled thickly with flowers.
There are the same pine-ranked precipices, and cloudy
waterfalls, and huge cubed shatters of talus; and
though there are no such geological marvels as the
Half-Dome or the Sentinel, no such dominating mass
as El Capitan, it is still a phenomenon that Nature,

bo8 YOSEMITE TRAILS
with her magnificent carelessness, should have chosen
to use two designs so nearly alike.
The upper part of the valley is a park-like stretch
of level grass-land, with fine oaks as the predominat
ing member in a partnership of oak, pine, and cedar.
The characteristic tree of the Hetch-Hetchy is the
oak, which attains there a notable perfection, leaving
the conifers the second place, — a condition which is
just reversed in the Yosemite, with its half-thousand
feet more of elevation. The southern wall rises at
this upper end to a great height, culminating in a
precipitous ridge, with an altitude of seventy-eight
hundred feet, which is named after " a party of the
name of Smith." At this point the valley may be said
to begin; above, it "caiions" to the long gorge that
is known as the Grand Caiion of the Tuolumne. In
this deep ravine the river rushes in continuous cas
cades for twenty miles : here, as it enters the valley,
it widens to a thoughtful stream that glides as peace
fully as the idyll of a summer day.
The main trail crosses the river at the head of the
valley by a plank bridge near where Rancheria and
Till-till creeks join almost as they enter the main
stream. Thence heading east and north it passes
over Rancheria Mountain into the wilderness of laced
and braided canons in which a week later we were
wandering. Near the bridge another trail branches
westerly, and following the northern side of the val
ley enables one to make a complete circuit. This trail
is a particularly interesting one, skirting the river,

THE HIGH SIERRA 209
which flows in a broad stream a hundred feet wide
under overarching oaks and cedars.
About opposite Kolana Dome, the mountain-wall
presses sheer and close to the river, and the trail is
carried on a rocky ledge a few feet above high-water
mark. Then it passes through levels where by mid
summer the brakes stand shoulder-high, and only
the humped loads of your pack-train appear above
the ferny lake. Crossing Falls Creek where it runs,
a lovely white torrent, carrying all the water of the
great Hetch-Hetchy Fall, it next enters wide oak-
glades where every tree is a specimen of oak perfec
tion, reaching out wide, full-leaved branches to join
hands with its fellows. You ride through pillared ar
cades where the very air is green, as in a conserva
tory, and flowers thrive to giant size in the delectable
mingling of shade and sunshine. Here lusty spikes
of lupine drop their pollen on your horse's shoulder,
and there you push through columbines that swing
drops of wine and amber above the level sea of
bracken. I had found, on returning in expectation of dinner,
that my companions had struck camp in my absence,
and gone round by the bridge, leaving me to follow
at my leisure. It was late afternoon when the sound
of an urgent tattoo, performed stringendo on a fry
ing-pan, fell sweetly on my ears, and a few moments
brought me to the new camp, and diurnal but never
monotonous beans. Bodie had chosen a spot close to
the foot of our to-morrow's trail, which climbs out of

2IO YOSEMITE TRAILS
the valley at the northwest corner. A picturesque
log-house, doorless and ownerless, stands here under
giant oaks, where a natural flower-garden of wild-
roses leads down to the grassy meadow. After sup
per I strolled about my garden while the primroses
opened their gentle, moon-like faces, and the hum
mingbird moths came whirring about, thick as cock
chafers under a chestnut tree : and I think that no
proud possessor of famous rosery ever enjoyed a
more delicate entertainment of scents than did I in
this Hetch-Hetchy solitude.
The breeze that had blown during the afternoon
died away; the aspens ceased their excited little
dances ; the sun blazed down a final salvo of heat for
warning of to-morrow ; and after lying an hour gaz
ing up through the starry foliage at the darkening
sky, we took shelter under early blankets from the
mosquitoes which rose in hosts from the wet grass
of the meadow.

CHAPTER XIII
THE HIGH SIERRA: THE HETCH-HETCHY TO
THE TILL-TILL
SIX o'clock next morning found us climbing the
steep trail out of the Hetch-Hetchy, at a point
about opposite where we had entered it. The upper
end of the valley lay in the early sunlight that streamed
between the eastern peaks, while the whole lower half
was eclipsed in the vast shadow of Kolana. A heavy
dew lay grey on the meadows, and the river ran green
in the sunshine and steely dark in the shade. On the
opposite wall the pinnacles of the pines already shim
mered in light of a smoky hotness. I looked over to
where Oom Paul's camp should be for the smoke of
his morning bacon, but I fear he is no early riser.
A climb of some two thousand feet in a distance
of not much over a mile brought us to the top of the
ascent. Early as it was the sun was scorching, and
we congratulated ourselves on having broken the
back of the day's travelling while we were fresh. We
now entered a cool forest of cedar and yellow pine,
with here and there a sugar pine rising in conspicu
ous majesty. Squirrels and blue-jays made a lively
stir. Littie pools of clear water lay in grassy hollows,
reflecting the white and blue of the sky. Purple gode-

212 YOSEMITE TRAILS
tias flocked in every sunny opening, and tall lilies
and larkspurs glowed in the shade of the forest aisles.
A few miles of easy travelling brought us to an
other meadow golden with flowers. Here dwelt in
past times one Miguel, a Mexican who has been
translated by the cartographers of the Geological
Survey into the clan of the McGills. Traces of his
occupancy remain in a rail-fence that wanders in an
irresolute manner about the meadow, the old cedar
rails whitening like bones in the sun, or submerged
a fathom deep in idle herbage. Each of these mead
ows seems more delightful than the last. Sequestered
in deep forest and hushed eternally by its murmur,
they are heavenly places of birds and flowers, bits of
original paradise. The little brooks that water them
ring carillons of tinkling melody as they wind through
shady tunnels of carex and bending grasses. At morn
ing and evening and on moonlit nights the deer come,
no longer even at the trouble of leaping the fences,
to regale on mint and lettuce that has descended
through many generations from the old settler's vege
table-garden. All day the robins and the meadow-
larks repeat their canticles from the last remaining
fence-posts, and squirrels and chipmunks scamper
along the sagging rails, appreciating the convenience
of a literal railway.
A turn of the trail brought us sooner than we had
expected in view of Lake Eleanor. This is a hand
some sheet of water, a mile and a half long and half
as wide, with timbered mountains sweeping down to

THE HIGH SIERRA 213
the shore at all points except the southwest, where
Eleanor Creek flows out of the lake through meadows
brilliantly green. On the northern side fine cliffs fall
sheer to the water, rising at the eastern end to a con
spicuous white dome. The lake was very still, and the
reflection of the dark cliffs perfect, except when the
blue was broken for a moment by wandering flaws
of wind. In the middle a black speck that was creep
ing about warned us that we were not to be entirely
alone. A steep descent led us to the lake level, near where
a small meadow bordered by a creek offered a good
camping-place. Here retribution overtook Jack, who
by this time had earned the hearty ill-will of us all.
Leaving the trail in his usual offensive fashion, he
was trying to push through an opening of the brush
near the edge of the lake, where the ground was more
boggy than he supposed. In a moment he was up
to his belly in black mire. Field ran forward to hold
him by his halter-rope, and Bodie, laying hold of his
tail with one hand, gave him a terrific rope-ending
with the other. The jack, half sunk in slimy ooze,
could do nothing to retaliate, though he was frantic
with passion and actually bit himself in his impotent
rage. Not the least of our guide's accomplishments was
the lightning rapidity with which he could throw a
meal together. The moment we reached our camp
ground he would have the pack off the animal that
carried the cooking tackle, and within five minutes a

214 YOSEMITE TRAILS
fire would be burning and batter mixed for flapjacks.
Amost before Field and I had the other animals un
loaded Bodie would be hailing us that the grub was
getting cold.
Bread needed but littie longer time, though he was
rigorous with himself in this matter, and would criti
cise his product severely for the least shortcoming.
The new Dutch-oven, primarily intended for the bak
ing of bread, came to fulfil many uses : now it became
the vehicle of a " mulligan " ; anon it would hold our
potatoes or coffee. I once happened to refer to it as
the sine qua non, having regard to its varied uses.
The term took Bodie's fancy mightily; it became
then and thenceforth the "sinkienon"; and I have
no doubt it is the sinkienon to-day, to the perplexity
of other travellers under his convoy.
Its shape, a portly spheroid supported upon three
Falstaffian legs, made the sinkienon something of a
problem in packing. By experience we found that it
travelled best seated on the top of one of the packs,
securely lashed to keep it in place. In this position
it resembled some stout captive, or Begum, in a how-
dah. It was always the last to be lifted up, and the
first to be lifted down ; and when Jack or Clementine
ran amuck our first anxiety was ever for its safety.
In the afternoon heavy clouds gathered in the east,
enhancing the solitary beauty of the scene. AI the
natural colors of the landscape seemed to be with
drawn, leaving only black, white, and a full chord of
greys. Leaden masses of vapor drooped over the

THE HIGH SIERRA 215
lake, and lay furled along the line of the black cliffs
on the opposite shore. Far in the east a line of ragged,
spiky peaks stood high up in the sky, lighted now
and then for a moment by the westering sun through
cloud rents of gloomy glory. A group of aspens on
a low point were reflected on the dark surface of the
lake as if drawn in Chinese white, and the heavy
water moved uneasily under the massed lily pads
near the shore. Everything promised a storm; but
no storm came, and I relieved the disappointment by
a swim in water of a delightful temperature, with a
charmed stillness in the air, and the ripples flowing
away from me as I swam in shining curves of black
and white.
Among a clump of tall pines on the shore we found
two soldiers camped. The mystery of the boat we
had seen was explained when we found the old dug
out canoe in which these peaceful sons of Mars went
fishing, or paddled serenely about upholding the ma
jesty of the law. Half-a-dozen times a day they rowed
across an arm of the lake to fill their buckets at an
ice-cold spring. They are happy warriors whose lot
it is to serve their country so.
My plans as to our route were not very definitely
laid down. The intention was simply to strike east
erly from this point, keeping north of the Tuolumne
River, crossing the crest of the Sierra by one of the
two or three passes that I knew to be practicable,
refitting at Mono Lake, and returning by one of the
passes farther to the south. In conversation with the

2i6 YOSEMITE TRAILS
soldiers we learned that the wildest part of the region,
and therefore the most attractive, lay up in the di
rection of the Matterhorn peaks to the northeast. I
had not provided myself with maps of that part of
the Sierra which lies north of the " Yosemite " and
" Mount Lyell " quadrangles of the Geological Sur
vey, nor had Bodie, as it happened, traversed this
part of the mountains. But he had no doubt of being
able to find a way through to the east, by his know
ledge of the general topography of the range.
The name of the Matterhorn peaks had a highly
desirable sound. We pored for an hour by candle
light over the soldiers' maps, and decided that we
must see the country that answered to such a name.
The next morning was clear and sparkling. Early
ducks were breakfasting among the water-lilies, and
the lake was still sleeping in the shadow of the east
ern mountains, when we took the back-trail up to the
summit. The roar of falls on Eleanor Creek, a mile
away, reached us clearly on the still air. The brush
was drenched in dew, and under a genial sun poured
out its most pungent essences, and all the wayside
blossoms had that divine freshness that flowers wear
in early morning, as if they were newly brought from
heavenly conservatories. There grows about here
a giant kind of forget-me-not, with stems eighteen
inches high and flowers three quarters of an inch
across, a forget-me-not of the forget-me-nots, not to
be forgotten.
At the head of the divide we found our new trail

THE HIGH SIERRA 217
bearing away to the northeast, near where it crosses
a rushing stream called Frog Creek. Looking back
to the west we bade a second farewell to the lake,
now showing an oval disk of gleaming blue among
folds of dark forested mountains. Far beyond, a
glimmering haze lay over the arid valley of the San
Joaquin, and a wavy band of neutral -tint just indi
cated the outlines of the Coast Range. It was an
ideal painter's landscape.
On the north exposure of the mountain-sides
around us magnificent firs stood like a picked regi
ment, every individual tall, straight, and handsome :
the southward-facing slopes carried a mixed forest
of yellow pine, sugar pine, and cedar, with stray out
posts of the tamaracks. A waving sea of fern flowed
over all the forest floor, interspersed with tall spikes
of blue lupine and yellow and red columbine. These
two dwellers in the greenwood grow nearly always
in company and seem to have a conscious affinity.
Lupine is a jaunty kind of lad, careless and bold ;
columbine is pretty and rustic, but a bit of a rogue,
too, in her way ; the lightest dancer with the neatest
ankle in all the forest. They make a gallant pair, of
the trae order of lovers in Arcady.
Fording the creek, where ouzels were out-singing
the singing water, a long descent brought us to Lau
rel Lake, a small round sheet of water, not one tenth
the size of Eleanor, delightfully gentle and secluded.
Around the margin grew a rich belt of flowering
shrubs. Azaleas bloomed in billowy masses, and

2i8 YOSEMITE TRAILS
scented the air with their hot-house fragrance. Be
yond the ring of verdure the firs and pines were
ranked thickly on all the slopes, and the little lake
shone like a turquoise in its double setting. To the
north a ridge of bare granite rose above the timber,
glistening hardly less white than the summer clouds
that were beginning to appear above it.
The sight of that barren mountain made me rest
less. There is something in me, and no doubt in
many of us, that longs ungovernably toward the
wild and savage in Nature. It awoke now, and called
to me a hundred -fold louder than these scented
shades ; and after a few minutes' rest we pushed on
toward Vernon Lake, We had been told that there
was a practicable cut-off by making east across coun
try ; but I have seldom found it pay to attempt to
break new country of this kind with pack-animals,
and we took the back -trail to the forks. From here
the new trail continued north and east through fine
forest, where many of the sugar pines measured from
seven to eight feet in diameter near the base.
While Field returned to Laurel Lake to recover
one of his cameras that had been left behind, I aban
doned myself to the deep charm of the forest, here
mainly of firs. It is in the fir-woods that the fullest
peace and calm in Nature abide. The silence is su
perb. It is not the empty, aching silence of deserts
and mountain summits, but a silence that is thought
ful, comprehensible, and companionable. Ever and
anon there rings for a moment through the dim, still

THE HIGH SIERRA 219
aisles the cadence of the "organ-bird," — I know not
what else to call it, — full of an indescribable poign
ancy that is like a pang of memory, or the exquisite
remembrance of lost delight. A phrase, no more, but
always of that haunting sweetness ; now here, now
there. The spirit of some sorrowful, wild nymph is
in that bird.
The trail now trended more northerly, entering a
rough and rocky country with a more open forest.
There was an unusual amount of fallen timber, and
presently we came upon a recent windfall which com
pletely obscured the trail. We made wide detours,
only to encounter everywhere prostrate trunks whose
shattered arms stretched up as if they appealed to
heaven against the outrage of their destruction. One
by one the scattered members of the party trickled
through the huge obstruction. Jack, whom I con
voyed, did himself credit for once by feats of sur
passing agility, and making no account of his load
(which, you may be sure, was not the lightest), leaped
breast-high trunks almost gaily.
We emerged at different points, and after repairing
damages cast about for our trail. It had vanished
from the face of the earth as if it had never been. At
length we discovered faint traces of what might have
been an antediluvian trail, and following it arrived at
a pretty meadow beside which stood a decrepit cabin.
This we recognized as Beehive, — a cryptic designa
tion to which nothing about the place offered any
clue.

220 YOSEMITE TRAILS
A hundred yards beyond the cabin the faint track
we had followed petered out once more. There is
something exceedingly annoying in this behavior on
the part of a trail. Half an hour of the most careful
search left us entirely at fault ; and hungry and dis
gusted we gave up the puzzle and went into camp
beside the cabin. We had breakfasted before five
o'clock and it was then two in the afternoon.
By some peculiarity of land contour the wind at
tains here a specially powerful sweep. While we were
eating lunch a sudden gust overturned a tall tree
close by. It fell with a resounding crash that gave us
a respectful admiration for the wilduproar tha tmust
reign here when winter storms are raging, and in
fected me, at least, with a deep desire to witness such
a Homeric combat. In our sunny, pacific valleys we
know only one side of our mother's nature : we never
see her in severity of snow, nor in her sudden passions
and relentings, and we lose much thereby.
The reaction in our feelings that came with fulness
of bread left usresigned to the breaking of our plans
which had contemplated camping that night at Ver
non Lake. It was necessary, however, to find our trail,
and leaving Bodie to the passive industry of cooking
beans. Field and I walked up the meadow to survey
for the actual location of the missing lake. Its dis
tance from Beehive had been reported by the soldiers
at Eleanor as one mile. Bodie, who had fallen into a
mood of pessimism, declared that we should find it
six ; but I had already observed that our good guide

THE HIGH SIERRA 221
held in scorn any opinion of the military that touched
upon his own province. He was wont, indeed, to
roundly assert that soldiers in the mountains always
got lost if they ventured half a mile away from camp.
On the farther side of the meadow we met our lost
trail, and followed it for two miles through a long
swale of marshy ground where myriads of white and
blue violets and purple cyclamens were rejoicing in
the spring, which at this elevation was in full celebra
tion now in mid-July. The Sierra spring is six or
eight months long : one might almost say, indeed, in
the words of the hymn, " There everlasting spring
abides." Beginning in February or March, when the
foothills blaze with the red gold of eschscholtzias, one
might follow the spring upward, witnessing from week
to week and meadow to meadow the perpetual mir
acle. All through the months when the lowlands lie
parched and gasping, and the evening diversions of
the city householder are reduced to the watering of
his lawn, the green-gowned goddess is climbing the
caiions and benches of the mountains. Resting here
and there beside snow-banks and ice-fountains, she
waves her wand over the sleeping flowery hosts and
draws them up from under their green counterpane.
And when September draws to a close, and farmers
in the valley begin to scan the heavens for signs of
early rains, still around the high alpine lakes, them
selves like azure flowers, she is waking violets, cycla
mens, and castilleias, when winter rushes upon her
and smothers her under sudden snows.

222 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Reaching the summit of a gentle ridge we looked
expectingly for our lake, but in vain. Deep canons
rifted a wilder country than we had hitherto seen. In
one of them the [lake must lie, but to-morrow must
settle in which. We returned to camp, and I could
see that our report gave Bodie a sardonic pleasure,
as corroborating his assertion of the soldiers' lack of
trail-craft. Mosquitoes descended upon us in swarms while we
ate our supper. They also follow the spring, and here
they were in the full zest of the joy of life. Three
smudges and the same number of pipes, all working
industriously, hardly abated their ardor, and we could
but sit and endure while we waited for them to
succumb to the chill of the falling temperature. The
animals, neglecting the excellent pasturage of the
meadow, came and stood with us in the lee of the
smudges, gazing at us with glistening eyes. Our fa
vorite, Jenny, with superior strategy, would invite the
tormentors to settie freely upon her ; then kneeling
quietly down she would suddenly but carefully roll
over upon them, and arise gloriously besmeared with
the blood of the slain.
Upon the trunk of a pine close to our camp I no
ticed some peculiar marks, partly obliterated by the
growth of the bark. They did not look like letters,
yet had evidently been cut by the hand of man. As
I was going over to examine them I found near the
tree two or three heavy flat stones, and guessed that
I had chanced upon the grave of some old back-

THE HIGH SIERRA 223
woodsman. A simple dignity invests such a place of
sepulchre akin to that of the field where the great
triad of Israelitish patriarchs were buried. How much
better than the vulgar haberdashery of undertakers
are the healthy tassels of kindly pine that wave and
sigh over the remains of this nameless squatter.
By six o'clock next morning we were again on the
move, passing up the long meadow among groves of
twisted aspens that were even now only half upright
after their burial under the snows of the previous win
ter. (Bodie's abbreviated name for these trees was
"quaking ass," — so it sounded, — and when I first
heard him use the term I imagined that he was
making some reference to the jack.) Crossing a low
divide the trail passed out on to expanses of barren
granite, polished to a glassy surface by glacial action.
The animals went nervously clattering and sliding
over the glistening rock, from which the sun was re
flected with painful intensity. A few twisted junipers
grasped the crevices and grew into weird conforma
tions that seemed to express equally the pangs of
hunger and the pains of savage storms.
As we rounded a shoulder of mountain, suddenly
our lake was before us ; a true Sierra lake, lying open
and cold in a cup of granite. Its altitude is sixty-
six hundred feet, only a few hundred feet higher
than Laurel Lake ; but it is of a very different char
acter. The bare granite drops unbroken to the water
on the east ; around the west a fringe of trees finds
a footing ; and at the northern end is a strip of vivid

224 YOSEMITE TRAILS
meadow, where should have been our bivouac last
night. At the upper end of the lake an antique raft
was moored, built of a few logs chained together, the
work of some bygone fishermen who would not be
denied of the mighty trout that lounge about the
deep middle of the water.
This all looked inviting enough, but it was much
too early to think of camping ; and, moreover, I knew
that lakes by scores and hundreds lay before us ;
strung like beads along every caiion ; sunk like se
crets in every dark belt of forest; smiling frankly
open on high granite plateaus and under eaves of
perpetual snow. So, leaving the lake at the south
end, and crossing a wild little creek that scours and
swirls away over polished rock at cascade speed, we
climbed by zigzags over a barren mountain to the
east. A magnificent view opened from the ridge to
the south and west, the great cliffs of the Hetch-
Hetchy rising clear and bold in middle distance, with
the forest ocean beyond rolling away and away into
blue infinitude.
Here our trail plunged again into heavy timber.
These abrapt and frequent transitions are a pecul
iarity of the Sierra, dreamy forest and explicit gran
ite alternating continually, and both alike painted
with cheerful meadows and gardens and ribbons of
flowers. In this case, however, the long descent
brought us to a tedious region of brush, through
which we toiled for hours under a sun that beat
down upon us in dizzying blasts of heat. Far below

THE HIGH SIERRA 225
we could see a green and pleasant valley, and wind
ing through it a gleaming creek ; but the trail seemed
to threaten to pass it by, keeping obstinately along
the southward -facing mountain -side. At length a
sudden steep descent took us down' to the level, and
we guessed that we had chanced upon the Till-till, a
small valley lying above and to the northeast of the
Hetch-Hetchy, corresponding in a way to the posi
tion of the Littie Yosemite with regard to the Yo
semite Valley,
The usual abandoned cabin proclaimed some de
parted settler. By preference I always avoid the
neighborhood of these cheerless objects, with their
purlieus of mouldering gunny-sacks and rusty cans,
and crossing the creek we came to a halt under a
handsome cedar beneath which lay the shed antlers
of a deer.
The day being Saturday we made preparations for
a two -nights' camp. The principal difference lay in
our setting up a rough tent by simply running one of
the lash-ropes between a couple of trees and throw
ing the largest pack-canvas across it, anchoring the
sides with rocks or pegs, as convenient. This tent
was really only a ceremonious adjunct, of no particu
lar use, but erected in deference to a convention as
signifying unlimited ease and comparative perma
nence. On this occasion, however, "^it served a real pur
pose. Clouds had been gathering all the morning in
the north, and thunder rambled at intervals. To-

226 YOSEMITE TRAILS
wards evening the storm broke suddenly, while we
were employed over the weekly clothes -washing.
For an hour deluges of rain and hail fell alternately,
while we sat in patriarchal wise in the door of our
tent, or made sallies in turn to sustain the sputtering
fire under the sinkienon. Later, when the mosquito
hordes arose in unusual vigor, we lighted a virulent
smudge at the windward opening of the tent, and
sat looking out at the lee end, reeking and weeping
together in the pungent smoke.
The Till-till is a camping-place of unusual attrac
tiveness. It is an enclosed valley of the richest ver
dure, sown with flowers and planted with a charming
variety of trees. AI around are timbered mountains,
sweeping up on the north to a castle-like summit of
crags. On this high peak the thunder-storm de
livered its main assault, and it was a fine spectacle
to watch the dark gathering of the clouds about it,
and to see the glittering spears of lightning leap and
quiver against its majestic cliffs. A long promontory
of glacial-polished rock divides the valley length
wise, and rooted in its crannies I found a quaint col
lection of dwarfed pines and junipers, as wild of shape
and aged of look as if they might themselves have
been ground under primeval glaciers ; six inches of
knotted stem to six feet of sinewy root. About the
meadow stand delicate aspens and stately pines, and
knee-high cyclamens form fairy groves among the
tall reeds and grasses. The river abounds with trout,
and even the grass of the marshes shivers with wrig-

THE HIGH SIERRA 227
gling fish. I suppose that to rigorous sportsmen such
abundance would be contemptible, but as for us, we
fished and ate with no qualms of that sort.
By sunset the storm had passed, and the clouds
broke into masses of ragged gold and swept gor
geously away like a procession of kings. Then a timid
littie moon came up above the southern wall, pouring
down her silvery peace upon rain-laden grass and
glistening rock and river, a symbol of the meekness
that inherits the earth.
I awoke during the night, and lay for a long time
watching with admiration too deep for that word the
cloudy panorama of the skies. The moon was full
and yellow, and the light about her, combining with
the intense depth of the open spaces of the heavens,
made her seem to be sunk as in a well, dark and
clear, from whence her light streamed down with a
steady, concentrated effulgence. Vast wings of cloud,
feathered with little plumy sprays, rose to beyond
the zenith, and against their lower edges the ranks of
pine and fir on the high mountain ridge were etched
in sooty blackness. The world was very still, as if the
operations of Nature were for a time suspended,
pausing to fulfil the solemn beauty to the uttermost.
I remember that I had at the time, and have had
on similar occasions, a vivid impression of having
been purposely awakened ; and I sometimes wonder
whether there may not be in circumstances of unusual
beauty or impressiveness an actual force or presence,
which in some mysterious manner passes the locked

228 YOSEMITE TRAILS
gates of the senses, and, laying upon us its thrilling
hand, wakes us that we may not miss the unearthly
pageant. Bodie, however, had a simpler explanation
of my wakefulness. He "guessed there was a rock
sticking into me."

CHAPTER XIV
THE HIGH SIERRA: THE TILL-TILL TO
LAKE BENSON
FOLLOWING a Sunday of sheer laziness, day
break found us stirring, and by six o'clock we
had breakfasted, packed, and were passing up the
dew-drenched meadow. At the east end of the valley
the trail divides. One branch doubles back to south
and west, and connecting with the Rancheria Moun
tain trail, enters the Hetch-Hetchy at its upper end.
We took the other, which swings northward and
climbs by zigzags around a peak whose perpendicular
crags are built up in tiers like the pipes of a gigantic
organ. To the west stood the strong cliffs of the
Hetch-Hetchy, and southward a break in the long,
flowing ridge of Rancheria Mountain showed the
gleam of snow on a higher summit, which Bodie
figured would be " off around White Wolf and Smoky
Jack." The morning was cloudless, and blue mist was
pouring into the caiion with the sunshine. Through
it the meadows of the Till-till and the great ledge of
shining rock gave back quick lights like an opal. The
sun waxed hot and hotter, and packs shifted with
disgusting frequency. There was no sign of the trail

230 YOSEMITE TRAILS
having been travelled this year, but tracks of bear,
deer, and mountain-lion were unusually plentiful, and
grouse boomed in the scrawny, low-growing pines
and junipers. A dull and simple-minded bird is the
grouse of the Sierra. You may almost walk upon him
before he will rise, and then he will but fly to the
nearest branch and sit there in plain view, nearly
tumbling off in his anxiety to get a good look at you.
If you stop to pelt him with stones he does but gaze
with deeper interest, quite unable to grasp the idea
that the missiles that whiz past are directed at him.
Crossing the divide after a hard climb we passed
under a high ridge, forested along the crest and
sweeping down in slopes of grass and bracken such
as you may see among the Welsh and English moun
tains. To the east a long barren caiion ran straight
for miles to its head, where a line of snowy peaks
rose sharply against the sky. Then came a long
semi-meadow, edged with aspen and tamarack and
sprinkled with violets, cyclamens, forget-me-nots, and,
most exquisite of all, myriads of the large lavender
daisies {Erigeron), which came to be, more than any
other of my flower companions, my daily delight
while I was in the high altitudes where it grows,
I could willingly devote a chapter to this most
charming flower, so greatly did its beauty enter into
me during my wanderings in the High Sierra, As
with people, so with flowers, simplicity is what makes
them lovable: and the compositae are all for sim
plicity. I suppose there is no flower that is so beloved

THE HIGH SIERRA 231
as the common daisy ; and if it were decreed that all
flowers but one, which we might choose, were to be
taken from us, this would be the one the world would
elect to keep. All over the Sierra these choicest of
daisies stand through the summer in countless my
riads, giving the chance traveller his friendliest greet
ing, or in lonely unvisited meadows and forest ways
smiling lovingly back at the sky. It is the flower
that remains in one's memory the longest, loved far
beyond the rarer beauties of those solitudes.
An old cabin stood decaying on the edge of the
meadow, and a mile or so farther on, another, its
back broken by a tall fir that had fallen across it. A
coyote sat on his haunches near by, so engrossed in
the moral reflections appropriate to the scene that he
did not see us until we were close upon him. Then
he loped away with a ridiculous pretence of believ
ing he had not been seen, though every shout sent
him scurrying faster. A Clarke crow perched on a
tamarack uttered remarkable sounds, expressive, I
thought, of malicious pleasure as he watched his re
treat. There were all the elements of a fable in the
scene. The trail climbed up among rocky ledges where
clumps of pentstemon were blossoming with purple
trumpets. Beautiful flowers are these, too ; but with
out the fearless grace of the daisies with their open
skyward look. Suddenly at a rise there came into
view a long line of notched and splintered peaks only
a few miles away, opening southward on a still higher

232 YOSEMITE TRAILS
and more distant line which marked the crest of the
Sierra. A deep gorge opened below us, with lakelets
and meadowlets strung along it, and lines of timber
tracing every crease and rift of the granite, black on
white, like a charcoal drawing. Down into it our trail
seemed about to plunge, but swung abruptly off to the
north by a littie lake of ale-brown water, half full of
fallen timber. Here I met my first Sierra heather
{Bryanthus), with one spray of rosy blossom still
waiting for me. I had been eagerly watching for the
littie plant which bore such a friendly name, and
recognized it at once. I could not forbear kissing the
brave littie sprig of blossom, and stuck it in my som
brero for remembrance of bygone days on English
moors and mountains.
Entering an amphitheatre of granite cliffs we wound
steeply down a ledge trail into a caiion that trended
northeasterly. Little pools clear as the very air, and
pure and fresh as if just poured from a giant pitcher,
filled all the rocky basins. These Sierra lakes and
streams give one almost a new conception of water,
not as something to drink or bathe in, nor as a
feature of the scenery, but as the very element. It
seems all but intangible, a mere transparent greyness,
through which every boulder and splinter of rock on
the bottom is seen almost more clearly than if there
were no water there.
Passing down a rocky defile we dropped by the
middle of the afternoon into what we guessed to be
Jack Main Caiion, and fording a wide stream just

THE HIGH SIERRA 233
below where it bursts from a gap of the mountains,
went into camp on the farther side with ten or twelve
miles of tolerably hard trail to our credit.
I have not been able to discover who Jack Main
was, but I certainly commend his taste in canons. A
meadow incredibly flowery shares the valley at this
point with a goodly river, — the same, as we found
later, which flows into and out of Vernon Lake, and
which lower forms the great Hetch-Hetchy Fall.
At this time, and for many days following, we were
off the map, and were reduced to the sheerest guess
ing with regard to our whereabouts. Many and long
were the debates around our camp-fires, where three
distinct opinions usually developed, and were argued
with all the obstinacy which is apt to mark discus
sions none of the parties to which have any real
knowledge of the question in hand. In general terms,
our problem was how to reach Soda Springs, some
where away to the southeast. We were separated
from it by a maze of rugged canons, unknown to
all of us, and all running transversely to our desired
course. The close of these discussions was marked, as re
gards our guide, by a docility that was almost child
like. He was willing, even eager, to defer to my judg
ment. Did I wish to follow this caiion farther ? by all
means we would do so. If I really believed we should
cross that divide, he was mine to command. It was
my party. He had told me he did n't know this piece
of country, but he was my devoted guide, and he and

234 YOSEMITE TRAILS
his animals would stay by me. When once he could
get sight of Mount Conness, however distant, he
would be able to locate us with ease and to pilot us
handsomely to Soda Springs.
We camped among a clump of tamaracks at the
head of the meadow. For a quarter of a mile below,
the valley was an unbroken sheet of dwarf lupine,
and was literally as blue as the sky. Botanists would
find in these Sierra meadows an amazing revelation
of Nature's profusion. The wildling flowers stand as
thickly as the grass of a well-kept lawn, waving in
unbroken sheets of color from wall to wall of the ca
nons and around the margins of unnumbered lakes.
In years to come pilgrimages of enthusiastic flower-
lovers will wend to these delightful spots, where now
only wild bees stagger in orgies of honey, and fairies
dance by the light of the moon.
Investigation showed that we had camped better
than we knew. Only a hundred yards above us was
a charming little lake which had been hidden from
us by the screen of trees. On one side it was fringed
with aspens and firs ; on the other, the rocky wall
dropped perpendicularly to the glassy water.
The country about us here was the wildest we had
yet seen, and considered as a prophecy was highly
encouraging. Barren mountains rose high and close
all around us, domed, peaked, ridged, and not even
alloyed with timber except for the few scarred juni
pers that held the ledges, and seemed as old and
gaunt as the mountains themselves.

o<1og

w
<a;o

THE HIGH SIERRA 235
In the evening I climbed to a high point whence I
looked down upon the lake, lying eclipsed almost as
if in a well under the shadow of its western cliffs, but
still mirroring the glory of the sunlit peaks in the
north. Far below, the camp-fire twinkled cheerily.
The sound of Pet's bell floated musically up to me,
Bodie, a black speck in the dusk of the valley,?strolled
down the meadow to review the transport depart
ment, and I caught on the breeze a stave of pensive
sentimentality which seemed to reveal unsuspected
deeps. Slowly the light faded until only one great peak
was left, shining like a beacon, solitary, white, pyrami
dal. As the sky darkened this glowed more brightly,
seeming to collect and focus all the remaining light
in the heavens. Then suddenly the grey shadow
leaped upon it, and it appeared to sink and crumble
like a burned-out log. I climbed down and stumbled
through the darkness back to camp, where I found
my companions transformed into two mosquito-proof
bundles, to which I quickly added a third.
Next morning we marched up the canon, skirting
the north shore of the lake. Granite cliffs still walled
us in, and the trail lay over areas of glacial rock
over which the river rushed in white cascades down
a wild and treeless gorge. Littie half-acre gardens,
shoulder high with grasses and flowers, occur even
in this rough country, providing constantly fresh
subjects of admiration and delight. By way of con
trast I was never tired of noticing the quaint behavior

236 YOSEMITE TRAILS
of the junipers that were sparsely dotted about on
the ledges of the canon walls. There is a general
resemblance in their deportment to the accepted por
traits of Bluff King Hal, but while some are jovial
fellows, holding their sides while they guffaw with in
extinguishable laughter, others are like vicious Quilps
and Calibans, sneering and fleering down so sav
agely that it is a pleasure to remember that they are
rooted to their places.
A few miles and we came to another lake, lying in
a meadow surrounded by rocky walls, and with a
fine pyramidal peak at its eastern end. As we reached
the higher altitudes, the mosquitoes became constantiy
more malicious and diabolical. Here they came at us
ding-dong, like very Bedouins, biting savagely at
every exposed part, careless of death so they could
but once taste our blood. There is a deep pleasure
in the reflection that untold millions of the creatures in
these solitudes must live and die with that intolerable
craving never once gratified.
The country here was sparsely wooded and the
trail partly blazed and partiy " monumented," There
is a humorous disproportion between this high-sound
ing word and the frail thing it represents. Two or
three scraps of rock leaned together or placed one on
the other to a height of a few inches, or a loose frag
ment perched on the top of [a. permanent boulder,
constitute a "monument" in the language of the
trail. It is by these feeble tokens that the track is
marked through treeless country and over expanses of

THE HIGH SIERRA 237
rock that hold no more sign of having been travelled
than would a city pavement over which half-a-dozen
persons a year might pass ; and as they are often so
far apart as to be hardly visible from one to the next,
it behooves the traveller ignorant of his way to bear
a wary eye. At the parting of main trails the monu
ment may tower to three or four feet, but in general
and over wide areas it is " like a tale of little mean
ing, tho' the words are strong."
From time to time I had caught glimpses of the
great peak which I had watched at sunset. Now, ford
ing the creek in rather deep water with a powerful
current, that threatened for a moment the safety,
without disturbing the equanimity, of our brave little
Jenny, we made straight towards it. A white torrent
came roaring over a cliff-like rise that fronted us, and
beside this we climbed, the trail ascending like a
stairway, I fancied that our straining animals eyed
us indignantiy as they clambered from ledge to ledge,
all but Pet, who strode along as freely as if he were
on a boulevard. Even here parterres of flowers, mimu
lus, pentstemon, and columbine, grew among the
tumbled rocks, and mats of bryanthus hung in eaves
over the margin of the stream.
As we gained the summit of the divide yet another
lake came in sight, lying against the shoulder of
the peak we had just rounded. From its shape we
guessed it to be Tilden Lake, — a winding, river-like
sheet of water, romantic to a degree, nearly two
miles long, running in bays and reaches of placid

238 YOSEMITE TRAILS
silver between rocky shores. Files and companies of
hemlock, dark almost to blackness, marched out on
the promontories and clouded the magnificent sweep
of the mountain sides. Looking up the lake to the
northeast, there rose my great mountain, a superb
shape, massive but symmetrical, beautifully sculp
tured with pinnacles and turrets and marbled with
clots of snow. It was Tower Peak, rising to an alti
tude of 11,700 feet, one of the summit crests of this
part of the Sierra. A littie to the west stood another
stately mountain, built up in unbroken slopes of
granite that ridged up to a culminating precipice
like the climbing surge of an ocean wave.
Bird-life is scarce in this high region, and I was
surprised to see two swallows playing over the lake,
which lies at 9000 feet. [A fine adventurous spirit
they must have, and a brave spring'of romance there
must be in their sturdy little hearts, to find out this
lonely spot for their summer idyll. "Even thine
altars," said the Psalmist. Most true.
In the absence of maps we had no idea how near
we were at this point to the divide of the Sierra.
Tower Peak was not more than four miles away in
an air-line, and on its northern face were the head
waters of the Walker River. I had not taken suf
ficiently into account the westerly trend of this part
of the range, and we had all been misled by a pre
conception that the ran of the caiions was more east
erly and westerly than in fact it is.
The lake continued in a chain of smaller lakes, and

THE HIGH SIERRA 239
leaving these our trail swung to the south down a
long, rocky caiion. We found ourselves now in a
perfect maze, marching and countermarching, cross
ing divide after divide and creek after creek, until
about two o'clock, tired, hungry, and puzzled, we
straggled down a long descent and went into camp
beside a loquacious stream in a grove of aspen and
tamarack. By the simple mathematical feat of moving the
decimal point of supper two hours forward we secured
a long evening of unbroken leisure. O the delight
of those Sierra evenings ! The blessed quietude, that
lies on you like a soft pressure, and cools like a
woman's hand ; the hushed talking of the stream as
it runs around the bend, or laps and drains under
sodden eaves of moss ; the delicious rose of sunset-
lighted snow-peaks ; the always friendly companion
ship of trees ; the purling soliloquy of the fire ; the
surprise of the first star, and the wistful magic of
moonlight; the pleasant ghosts that sit with you
around the fire and call you by forgotten nicknames ;
the old regrets that hold no sorrow ; the old joys that
do ; the good snow-chill of the wind drawing stead
ily down the canon ; the quick undressing and turn
ing in, and the instant oblivion —
— And the offensive suddenness of four o'clock
in the morning, when we got up by half moonlight
that cast our reluctant shadows on frost-whitened
ground. Before six o'clock we had forded the river
and were scaling the southern wall of the caiion,

240 YOSEMITE TRAILS
amid a heavy forest of fir, mountain-pine, and hem
lock. The divine freshness and zest of the morning
combined with the genial exhilaration of coffee and
the cordial of the first pipe to raise our spirits to the
point of song, and we were not surprised nor yet
abashed, when Jack for once broke silence and halted
the cavalcade while he joined our chorus in lugubri
ous octaves.
Crossing the first divide we were in full sight of
a deeply cleft crest which we took to be the Mat
terhorn peaks, but later found was the Sawtooth
Ridge. We were near enough to them to note the
terrible precipices that fall from the spiky pinnacles,
trimmed even now in mid-July with snow-fields.
The opposite wall of the next canon rose impos
ingly high and sharp, crowned with two dominating
peaks. At each ridge we hoped to secure an outlook
to south and east, by which we might gain a rough
idea of our position from the bearing of the peaks
of the Cathedral and Lyell groups ; but always the
high wall closed in our view, and we were fain to
plunge into the caiions and climb the ridges one by
one, with very little idea of how many more awaited
us. It was a day of flowers, especially a day of daisies,
Amost equal to the impression produced by the
power and magnificence of the mountains them
selves was the pleasure I found in the continual
appearances of these companions of the way. The
characteristics of climate that render California re-

THE HIGH SIERRA 241
markable for her abundance of flowers are not con
fined to the valleys of the state, but invade the
mountains even to the limit of perpetual snow. Nor
is it only in the forests and mountain meadows that
the flowers congregate. Every ledge and cranny has
its bush of pentstemon, or sprinkle of mimulus, or
waving fringe of daisies. Around each pool and lake
grow bryanthus and cyclamens, and from the midst
of uncompromising boulders the great willow-herb
{Epilobium) bursts in torrents of lively purple. Even
on wind - scoured pavements the inch - high dwarf
phlox will contrive to flourish, covering itself with
pathetically tiny blossoms like pale little faces of
children. A dwarf variety of the manzanita also appeared
here, blooming at this altitude two months later than
in the lower valleys. Instead of the strong, elbowy
shrub of the foothill and Yosemite levels, it is here
a flat - growing, matted plant, creeping horizontally
along the ground, its brittie twigs interlaced like a
basket. Its Greek name of Arctostaphylos matches
well with the brushy tassels of bloom, that are like
little classic vases cut in alabaster.
In the next carion the trail divided just before
reaching the stream, and again we were put to guess
ing. The usual difference of opinion was in evidence,
and on Bodie's advice we took the westerly branch,
which climbed through a gap and rounded a pinna
cled peak. Here a cluster of lovely lakelets lay in deep
pockets of the mountains, ringed with hemlocks.

242 YOSEMITE TRAILS
The beauty of these high Alpine lakes is perfect and
delightful ; but awful, too. There is a solemnity in
their high-raised, unsullied purity and quietude, a
divine openness like that we see in the faces of chil
dren. Why does complete beauty, in which there is inno
cence, make us sigh ? Is it that we are conscious of
separation and reproach, and sigh, perhaps, less for
the innocence that must be than for that which has
been lost ? There is solemnity, too, in the changeless
passage of Time in these high solitudes. Like per
petual flowers these lakes have lain for unmarked
centuries, giving back blue to the blue heaven or
whitening to sudden silver as the roaming wind goes
by. Through innumerable nights the slow courses of
the stars have passed over the dark crystal of their
waters. Years go over them like hours, seasons are
no more than beats of a pendulum. Possibly the whole
course of human history has run while these unno
ticed pools have lain watching the inscrutable sky,
awaiting the world-changes that to us are science, to
them, perhaps, life (for how impossible it seems that
through all the slow birth and growth of human in
telligence, age by age, the earth itself should contract
no consciousness, and suffer only passionless change).
Circling around the base of the pinnacled monster
that guards the pass, the trail dropped steeply by a
wild caiion where the ground was boggy with runnels
of water from melting snow-banks just above us, and
entered unexpectedly a dense growth of timber, where

THE HIGH SIERRA 243
it was lost among windfallen trees. Casting about for
it we came upon a larger oval lake, under the east
shoulder of the mountain. This we found later to be
Benson Lake, lying at 8000 feet, and the mountain
Piute Mountain, with an altitude of 10,500 feet ; but
at the time we knew nothing of names or elevations,
and every lake was a new surprise, so that our wan
derings had almost the zest of original explorations.
Our geographical senses were exercised continually
in forecasting the probable run of the streams and
caiions we encountered ; and we were beginning to
be occupied also with the question whether our sup
plies would hold out until we found the means of
replenishing them either at Soda Springs or at the
settiements on Mono Lake.
Here we pitched camp on a blue carpet of lupines
and under the lee of a curving beach of white sand.
This lake is about two hundred acres in extent, en
closed on three sides by rocky walls, quite precipitous
in places and rising to four conspicuous peaks. The
other side, the northern, is a beach of fine hard sand
backed by a strip of meadow that merges into dense
forest. One or two clumps of fir are wedged into
gorges of the eastern wall, and push down to the wa
ter's edge. A stream lively with trout rushes into the
lake at the east end of the beach, which lies in cres
cent bays. A strong breeze blows continually from
the south, sending the waves lapping noisily up on
the beach, the wet sand of which bore a remarkable
collection of autographs in the tracks of bear, deer,

244 YOSEMITE TRAILS
and other game, together with those of large wading
birds. The smaller birds also were more in evidence
here than we had lately found them, and the place
seems to have attractions for a variety of creatures
usually of very different shades of opinion. While we
sat at supper in the dusk, a heron came sailing above
our camp and alighted sociably in the top of a small
tamarack close by, where it remained for some time
observing our arrangements with interest, and quite
careless of our notice.
Sitting on the shore of this delightful lake as night
came down I revelled in the deep quietude of the
place, while I watched the wavelets creeping in end
less ranks out of the dusk and running playfully at
my feet like kittens. The tree companies behind me
seemed to move back and withdraw into the gloom.
At half-past eight, one peak in the east, a sort of
prong or tooth of granite, still caught the sun-glow,
and towered up, a pile of rosy magic, into the clear,
cold sky of early night. After my companions had
turned in I sat for an hour or two by the fire, seeing
again in the embers the long sunlit caiions, the
grateful shadowy aisles of forest, the daisied mead
ows, the headlong cascades, the strong free sweep
of the granite sea ; and up there, two thousand feet
overhead, where the bulk of Piute Mountain im
pended over me like a cloud, those little lakes, stark
and open to the cold sky, with the ghostly snow-
glimmer around them, waiting for the slow dawn of
another day of the eternal solitude.

THE HIGH SIERRA 245
Before I turned in I took another look at the lake.
The wind had changed to northerly, and the nearer
half, sheltered by the ridge of sand, reflected placidly
the surrounding mountains and the diamond glitter
of the stars. The farther part was a dull gleam of
steel. The moon was not yet up, but the high western
peaks were beginning to catch her first light, and
glimmered from an enhanced height with a look of
unutterable age. The whisper of the creek pushing
out into the lake kept all the air quietiy athrob.
Then from far up on the western precipice came the
sharp report of a falling boulder, pried over by the
sudden leverage of the frost. The sound grew into a
hoarse rattle, and then to a thunderous tumult that
reverberated in the hollow cup of the mountains like
the roar of a monster trying in vain to escape. Gradu
ally it lessened and sank into murmurs and mutter
ings, with word-like pauses and replies, dying away
at last under some black rampart far down the lake.
Then the singing voice of the creek took up again
its quiet recitative.

CHAPTER XV
THE HIGH SIERRA: LAKE BENSON TO
LAKE TENAYA
WE breakfasted next morning by half-moon
light, and by six o'clock broke camp. Field
and I had prospected out the trail, the losing of
which we nowise regretted, since it had thrown us
upon this delightful lake, destined, I am sure, to
become one of the favorite lakes of the Sierra.
The trail bore at first due east, and we started out
upon it with confidence, believing that our perplexi
ties were over. Fording the stream and crossing a
low divide, we passed close under a remarkable
peak, in shape a vast arch topped with a transverse
elongated dome which terminates in a cliff of not far
short of a thousand feet. A broad belt of snow lay
along the foot of the cliff, and below that a huge
promontory of talus ran off at a keen angle.
Rounding this mountain, my rose pyramid of last
night appeared straight ahead. A snow-field lay un
der its summit, and from this the water streamed in
countless rills, falling from slab to slab and filling the
air with musical murmurs. Along the gullies flowers
still grew thickly, columbines and larkspurs waving
above thick beds of bryanthus and purple pentste-

THE HIGH SIERRA ^47
mon. This latter is a handsome, generous-looking
flower, larger but more ethereal than the much-ad
mired crimson species of the lower valleys. Daisies
sprinkled all the grassy hollows, adding a lovable
grace to the stately gravity of the mountains.
It was not without a vast amount of grunting and
complaint on the part of the animals, and several
repackings, that we reached the top of the pass, for
the trail was the steepest we had encountered. In the
very neck of the pass was a small round lake sur
rounded by a meadow of the usual " short - hair "
grass of high altitudes. It was intensely silent, lonely,
and desolate. Three plovers were flying to and fro
over the water, silently playing some ghostly kind of
game ; the wind silently trembled the brittle heather;
the sky silently watched the lake, and the lake si
lently mirrored back the sky ; the mountains stood
silently around, pondering and intent. There was
something spell-like in the absolute soundlessness, as
though it never had been and never must be broken.
Even the mosquitoes came silently to the attack,
rising in grey, imp-like clouds from their ambush in
the grass, and settling on us in a gloomy, predes
tined fashion that was most demoralizing.
This, as we later found, was Murdock Lake, lying
at 9500 feet of elevation. At its north side rises a thou
sand feet higher my sunset pyramid (Volunteer Peak
on the map of the Geologfical Survey). On the other
side the trees march down to the water's edge, and
framed between mountain and timber rans the rag-

248 YOSEMITE TRAILS
ged line of the Sawtooth Ridge, Field and I climbed
up on the shoulder of the hill to the west of the lake,
and obtained, as we expected, a wonderful outlook,
— an uninterrupted view for many miles of the crest
of the Sierra, a tumult of peaks and precipices that
rose and fell with the wild passion of the waves of a
stormy ocean. The foreground and middle distance
were a rocking sea of granite, running in abrupt
points and hollows, and clouded with patches of
forest. On leaving the lake at the southeast end, the trail
divided once more. One branch turned northeasterly,
the other to the south. Knowing that we were al
ready farther to the north of the Tuolumne River
than we wished to be we took the latter, which we
followed first down a wooded caiion and then along
a grassy valley with a pretty, winding stream, I soon
observed that the trail was making more westerly
than I liked, but contented myself with keeping a
look-out for any sign of a cross-trail. Mile after mile
we went on until we reached the foot of the cafion.
There the trail, throwing off all disguise, turned
frankly westward and then northwestward, exactly
contrary to our required direction. Still, with a mis
erable perversity which it amuses me now to recall,
we kept on. It appeared later that we all had been
possessed by the same insanity, each of us perfectly
aware that we were heading the wrong way, and
each doggedly keeping the knowledge in his own
breast.

THE HIGH SIERRA 249
A few miles to the south I could see the precipi
tous walls of a gloomy gorge which I felt sure must
be the caiion of the Tuolumne. I pointed this out to
my companions, but they were gloomy too, and we
marched on in devoted obstinacy. Then came a long,
steep descent, down which we scrambled wearily ;
and threading our way through a jungle of vegeta
tion, found ourselves in a small, aspen-bordered val
ley on the margin of a considerable stream spanned
by a bridge, near which were traces of a recent camp-
fire. Ignoring the bridge we forded the stream, and
hastily unpacking our weary beasts went into camp
once more in No Man's Land.
We had seen from above that the trail, after cross
ing the stream, climbed the steep side of a forested
mountain on the west. After an hour's rest and a
light meal Field and I explored this continuation of
our trail for a mile or two farther, hoping, if not to
find a cross-trail, at least to get some light on our
whereabouts. As we gained an outiook to north and
east we confirmed our suspicions that we had been
travelling all day nearly in a circle, and that the
creek we were camped on was none other than the
one that flowed through Lake Benson. We were
in fact again on Piute Creek, and only a few miles
southwest of our last camp. We also suspected that
the wooded mountain over which the trail continued
to the southwest was Rancheria Mountain, and we
knew that if that was so, by following it we should
certainly find ourselves back in the Hetch-Hetchy.

250 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Near the summit a new trail led off to the northwest,
but that promised nothing better than a return to the
maze of mountains and canons among which we had
lately been wandering.
Two or three times in the last few days we had
come upon scraps of pencilled writing left wedged
between boulders, or stuck into crevices of the bark
of trees. They had been sometimes in the nature of
serio-comic soliloquies, sometimes of complaints or
disparaging comments upon the topography of the
country : such as, —
"What the blazes am I going to do now? H, J,"
I " Oh, where is the old trail at? H. J."
" This is something fierce. H. J."
It was here that we found the last wail of this
unknown brother in distress. A leaf of a note-book
was stuck among the stones of the monument that
marked the fork of the trail, and on it was written, —
"All in. Can't get through. Going back to the
valley, H, J."
With these somewhat gloomy items of intelligence
we returned to camp, Bodie, with fine recklessness,
had prepared a thumping dinner, topping off the hot
bread, steaming murphies, and sustaining beans with
a fancy course of rice and syrup, in which he had let
his imagination run to the length of stirring in a
short dozen of prunes which he had excavated from
some corner of the grub-pack. Then, in a comforting
scarcity of mosquitoes, we made a noble camp-fire,
discussed the situation, and determined that we must

THE HIGH SIERRA 251
retrace our steps in the morning and hunt out the
easterly trail which we had somehow missed.
It was not without disgust that we started next day
on our back - trail. Breakfast had revealed the fact
that it was becoming a matter of urgency for us to
make Soda Springs quickly. Our last potato stared
us rudely in the face, and Bodie reported flour for
only two more loaves. We looked carefully as we
went along for any indication of a cross-trail. The
scanty timber was all tamarack, a tree which, with
its thin bark and excessive resin, is a simple one to
blaze, but also easily becomes a snare to the travel
ler, since any scar made by falling trees or branches
quickly fills with resin and is then difficult to distin
guish from an orthodox blaze.
Coming nearly to the head of the long valley we
found a distinct blaze marked on a tamarack on the
farther side of the creek. This, then, was our clue ;
but a huge barricade of windfallen timber had wiped
out every other trace of a trail. For an hour or more
we worked like foxhounds at this problem, feeling
sure that we were on the right track, but unable to pick
up the trail beyond the windfall. At last Bodie, skir
mishing far ahead on Pet, struck faint signs of an old
track, more like a deer-trail than anything else, and
we took to it with some misgivings. It headed up
by the south side of our pyramid, passing close be
side and around it, I now observed that the upper
one thousand feet or so is built of thin perpendicular
slabs, regular in size, and squared as if cut by a

252 YOSEMITE TRAILS
mason ; the same formation, I suspect, as is found in
the so-called Devil's Post-piles, The top slabs had
weathered apart, and some of them were leaning
outwards ready to fall and add to the vast accumu
lation of debris at the foot.
Crossing a snow-bank we came upon another charm
ing Apine lake, narrow and winding, and dotted
with rocky islets, Dark-foliaged pines stood about
the margin, and on the south towered a great moun
tain, its rifted seams and gleaming snow-fields re-
fleeted deeply on a surface like liquid steel. It was
Rodgers Lake, lying at an altitude of 9500 feet : a
true Sierra lake, lost and inviolate among a wilder
ness of stately peaks. It stands high on my mental
list of the places I hope to revisit.
The trail leaves the lake at its northern end and
enters an amphitheatre of granite cliffs. The ground
was soaked with snow-water that trickled down on
every side, and some care was necessary to avoid
getting our animals mired down. Then came another
lake (Smedberg), hardly less delightful than the last.
In the meadow surrounding it a few long-stemmed
buttercups greeted us, though the lupines were not
even yet in bloom. Here we ate a frugal lunch, drink
ing from the drip of a friendly snow-bank.
The scenery here is of the wildest, the very scrap-
pile of Nature. Even the trees are of strange and
painful shapes, a few dressed scantily with shivering
scraps of foliage, but for the most part barkless,
white, and polished like bone by scouring storms.

THE HIGH SIERRA 253
Their appearance would call up one's pity, but that
they are pines ; sympathy for that royal race seems
a superfluous impertinence.
As we rose from our meal I became aware that a
group of five buck, with horns in velvet, had been
standing overlooking us from a rock hardly fifty feet
above where we sat. There was the click of twenty
hoofs on the granite, and in a moment they had
vanished " into air, into thin air."
A few miles more of strenuous climbing, and we
crossed the high divide of Benson Pass at 10,130
feet. There occurs here a curious ridge of loose white
sand, the result, I suppose, of an extreme degree of
disintegration due to unusual stress of weather in this
bleak pass. Once more we looked out upon a sea of
mountains, no whit less rugged and intricate than
those we had threaded. The air rang with the metal
lic tinkle of a thousand rills that streamed from the
snow-fields around us. A curious effect is produced
by the melting of the surfaces of evenly sloping sheets
of snow under the direct rays of the sun. The crust,
harrowed by the constant trickling of water, appears
as though a fine comb had been drawn over it, the
myriad channels all maintaining a perfectiy parallel
alignment. Turning then southeasterly we entered a narrow,
bouldery gorge with high, snow-laced cliffs on our
right, somewhat lower barren ones on the left, and
a bold white ridge barricading us in front. Isolated
pillars of rock of grotesque shapes rose from the

254 YOSEMITE TRAILS
sandy floor of the caiion, which from its peculiar
character we hoped might be Alkali Creek Caiion,
debouching upon the Tuolumne River a few miles
below Soda Springs. But at the foot the trail swung
again to the north, and we had no choice but to go
on, anxiously scanning the east side of the caiion for
a cross-trail. At last we espied the blaze on the far
ther side of the creek, forded, and with fresh heart
strack once more southerly.
But another disappointment awaited us. After
climbing a steep ridge the trail headed again north
east, dropped into yet another caiion, and crossed
another divide. Mile after mile and hour after hour
passed in this puzzling work. We were making east,
certainly, which was so far to the good, but north
ing also, which was entirely to the bad. So on we
marched, fording creek after creek, crossing ridge
after ridge, hemlocks giving place to tamaracks and
tamaracks to hemlocks as we wandered up and
down. About sundown we emerged in a new caiion with
a wide, strong stream, and, completely tired out, de
termined to camp, leaving to-morrow or some later
to-morrow to solve the riddle. We had been twelve
hours out, on the very roughest trails in the moun
tains, and had eaten hardly anything since five o'clock
that morning.
A supper of flapjacks (no longer, alas, " men's
sizes," — ^jeu d' esprit of our good Bodie by which
he was wont to designate the plump " jacks " that he

THE HIGH SIERRA 255
delighted to deal out to us in times of plenty), and a
grateful pot of tea brought us quickly refreshment of
body, and, more gradually, peace of spirit. A miser
ably cold wind blew strongly down the canon, but
not strongly enough to quiet the mosquitoes. Light
ing a trio of smudges we spread our blankets be
tween them and turned in, still out of our reckoning,
but somewhere in the United States, as we supposed.
We were astir at dawn, — by this time a matter of
habit, — and made a leisurely breakfast. Since we
did not know where we were, nor yet where we were
going, it seemed superfluous to hurry. Moreover,
there was a feeling in the air that to-day would al
most certainly bring us into the neighborhood of
Soda Springs and fresh supplies. At the lowest com
putation, the distance we had made must have put
us well into the angle that is formed, roughly speak
ing, by the main crest of the Sierra and the Tuo
lumne River. Still, it was a solemn moment when we
saw Bodie convert the last of our flour into the morn
ing flapjacks, and we gazed upon each spreading
disk with some emotion.
Again we betook ourselves to our eternal caiions,
ridges, and divides. The trail led through a dim for
est of hemlock and fir, where mats of the dwarf blue
lupine in the openings gave back the hue of the
sky in almost solid sheets of color. In damper places
the giant variety grew to a remarkable size, waving
heavy clusters of blossoms head high to the animals.
Here I noticed the first appearance of a new kind of

256 YOSEMITE TRAILS
heather, which I identified as the Cassiope to which
Mr. Muir refers so often and so lovingly. It is a
delightful plant, graceful and delicate, yet with the
sturdy demeanor of the mountaineer. The blossom
is a white bell, borne in clusters in heather fashion,
but larger and rather more open than the Erica of
Bonnie Scotland. My much loved daisies grew pros
perously in every glade and meadowlet, enchaining
my affections daily more and more by their air of
high-bred simplicity.
To our great comfort the trail, after traversing a
succession of open meadows strewn with boulders,
headed straight southeastward, and persevered in
that direction, following a long, straight caiion. Re
membering the past, we held our spirits in check
until, after some miles of steady marching, we came
in sight of a group of splintery peaks with a quaint,
pencil-pointed horn beside them. We recognized
them at once as the Cathedral and Unicorn peaks,
and knew that Soda Springs, the much desired, the
necessary in fact, lay a few miles on their hither
side. With light hearts we pushed on down a gentle
slope, and about noon arrived at the foot of the
caiion. Crossing a trouty stream, another mile
brought us to the Tuolumne River at a point where
there occurs a wide fall known as the White Rapids,
— the first of a succession of falls and cascades by
which the river begins to drop from the high levels
of its upper course to enter the great gorge which

THE HIGH SIERRA 257
widens lower down into the Hetch-Hetchy Valley.
Here Bodie was himself again, and willingly resumed
his abrogated functions.
Now that Soda Springs was within reach I was in
no hurry to get there. I loved it not for itself but for
the supplies it afforded ; and in any case we should
have to pass through the Tuolumne Meadows in
order to reach Bloody Caiion, the pass by which we
intended to cross to the eastern side of the Sierra.
But we were here within a few miles of Tenaya Lake,
one of the most renowned, because one of the few
visited, lakes of the Sierra. So while Bodie with
Clementine rode to the Springs, a few miles to the
east. Field and I forded the river below the rapids
and struck into a southwest trail for the lake, where
Bodie was to rejoin us.
A change came over the scenery at this point by
which we might have guessed, if we had not known,
that we were not far from the Yosemite. In the six
teen days we had been out we had described what
amounted in effect to a circle (though of a highly
irregular kind), of which the Yosemite might be re
garded as a narrow southern chord. We entered
now upon domes and swelling contours, imposing in
their gravity of line, though far less stimulating to
the fancy than the wilder peaks among which we
had been wandering. To a geologist no doubt every
half-mile of all this cliff and canon would be as a
page of a book. I only see the vast aspects, and
wonder at the finished product.

258 YOSEMITE TRAILS
It is an overwhelming thought that in the view of
Him to whom " one day is as a thousand years, and
a thousand years as one day," the age-long processes
of Nature may appear but momentary. How sublime
would be the spectacle, so regarded, of the tremen
dous plane of ice, shearing with irresistible sweep
these knotted mountains, and casting off to right and
left like shavings the forest-bearing moraines I
A mile after crossing the river the trail skirted a
narrow lake, of a peculiar greenish hue, named after
some forgotten scion of the tribe of McGee. Then
for some miles we traversed a rough tract of country
where huge boulders powdered a granite plateau,
mixed with a thin tamarack forest which in some mi
raculous manner has secured a foothold and forces a
subsistence from this unpromising inheritance.
I was much entertained by the sagacious behavior
of Pet, whom in Bodie's absence I was riding in
place of my regular mount. Field was in the lead
on the black mule, who was usually assigned to that
post for his virtues as a trail-finder, — his only, but
admirable, characteristic. Following him came Jack
and Jenny. Probably Jack noticed that Bodie was
away, and presumed upon my milder rule ; anyhow,
he was particularly disagreeable, and pointedly re
fused to keep in the trail. Contumacy was in the
very flop of his ears. After I had headed him off
several times he became violently angry, and re
venged himself by charging about among the trees
and rocks with the plain intention of doing as much

THE HIGH SIERRA 259
damage as he could to his packs. It was deliberate
malice, and I rope-ended him accordingly.
Pet, who at every opportunity asserted his superi
ority to his four-footed companions by ranging him
self with the bipeds, entered into the quarrel with
great enjoyment. With tail switching he closed up
on the recalcitrant burro, almost treading on his
heels, and harassing him by biting him on the
flanks: all the while keeping a sharp eye on his
heels, you may be sure. Whenever the miserable
jack, wrought to a pitch of frenzy, bolted from the
trail, Pet would toss his head with malicious de
light, gather himself for a jump, and waltz over the
obstructions in the gayest of spirits, appearing un
expectedly before the enraged animal whichever
way he turned, and crowding him backwards with
his neck twisted almost to the point of dislocation.
AI that I had to do was to attend to the protuber
ant parts of my body, ducking my head to avoid
branches and shielding my knees as best I could
from contact with the huge boulders. It was as good
as polo, but it was hard on the packs. The sinkienon,
bound <J la Mazeppa, and wedged between the horns
of the pack-saddle, rode out the storm in safety, and
the photographic plates, packed in strong wooden
boxes, also came through undamaged; but the
weaker brethren suffered some contusions, and the
coffee-pot sustained a compound fracture of the han
dle, necessitating amputation.
Jenny's behavior was correct and ladylike as ever.

26o YOSEMITE TRAILS
Her place in the line was always following Jack, and
I believe the meek little thing had a real feeling of
loyalty to him. Whenever he became obstreperous
she would turn off the trail after him for a few paces
and then stand looking on with cocked ears, and an
embarrassed expression like a third party at a quar
rel. Once when I had to make a long detour in
heading Jack into the trail, we had gone on for some
distance before I noticed that Jenny was missing. I
rode back half a mile, and was beginning to think
I had missed her when I caught sight of her stand
ing on a big boulder upon which she had scrambled,
certainly with some difficulty, in order, I suppose, to
be in plain view. She was patiently waiting to be
called for.
As we neared Lake Tenaya the mountains showed
more and more the capped and plated formation that
is so noticeable in the domes of the great valley.
The " monumented " trail passed over wide expanses
of glacier-polished rock that glittered like glass and
reflected the sunlight and the heat into our faces with
unpleasant ardor. It was a relief to see the glint of
blue water between the tree-stems, and shortly we
emerged at the lake side. Following the edge of the
lake to its northern end, we made camp in a thin
grove of pines that fringed a meadow, and had
hardly got things shipshape when Bodie appeared.
He had made a quick trip of several miles more than
we had covered, and had secured the needed sup
plies : not much, nor luxuries, but enough to restore

THE HIGH SIERRA 261
the valuable flapjack to the bill of fare, together with
sundry other items which had passed into history.
Lake Tenaya is one of the largest and most acces
sible of the Sierra lakes, and its repute stands high
for beauty. Certainly it is a lovely sheet of water,
clear as the element can be, and surrounded by fine,
and at one end striking, mountains. Directly from its
eastern side Mount Tenaya towers up two thousand
feet above the lake, whose altitude is 8100 feet. To
the northwest, a smoothly sculptured mountain of
granite called Murphy's Dome sweeps up to almost
an equal height. Between them, at the head of the
meadow, stands a quaint little truncated cone some
eight hundred feet in height, shaped like a fez, or a
candle extinguisher. A winding creek steals through
the meadow, carrying the water of Cathedral Lake.
Farther to the west Mount Hoffman rises magnifi
cently to close upon 11, 000 feet, and almost due south, jj
and only five miles away in an air-line. Clouds' Rest
marks the eastern end of the Yosemite Valley. From
the lower end of the lake issues Tenaya Creek, the
stream which as it enters the valley widens into the
pretty pool that is dignified with the name of Mirror
Lake, and which joins the Merced River at the upper
end of the valley itself.
With all my admiration of Lake Tenaya, however,
I invite the appreciative tourist who may visit its
charming shores to believe that along the almost
unvisited High Sierra there lie scores of lakes equally
or more delightful. I do not forget that tastes in

'!*

262 YOSEMITE TRAILS
scenery differ, but I think that the genius of a lake,
unlike that of a river, accords best with the wild and
desolate aspects of Nature. It is quietude embodied,
and the voiceless solitudes of the upper world of
barren peak, high thin air, and stainless snow-field
are best suited to its lonely spirit. So I can hardly
believe that any lake -lover would not agree that
those lost, solitary, created-and-forsaken pools of si
lent loveliness, hidden away among the crags and
fastnesses of the high back ranges, exceed in true
lake charm even this handsome sheet of more ac
cessible water.
To-morrow would be Sunday, so we should not
move camp. Field, nevertheless, turned in early, with
a sunrise picture on his brain. Bodie soon followed,
soothed by the knowledge of being again in his own
territory, and of grub-packs replenished to a point
which would carry us safely to Mono Lake, where
there are stores and civilization, of a kind. I for my
part sat by the hour at the camp-fire after the last
mosquito had retired, watching in the still mirror of
the water the heavens and the earth gazing at one
another, like lovers entranced. Every star was dupli
cated, and breathed with the breathing of the lake.
The Milky Way was reflected in a dull smear of
grey. The mountains merged and ran into grotesque
shapes ; at the lower end they became alligators,
lying snout to snout. Once the silence was broken
when a grouse drummed on the mountain side : I
imagined him gazing in sleepy wonder from his

THE HIGH SIERRA 263
roost at the red fire with its winking double in the
water. I walked around the littie bay on the white,
crunching sand, to note for myself the impressionist
effect, and found it rather fine : — red, yellow, black,
and grey, with murky brown lights on the under side
of the smoke that trailed away over the lake. It was
very quiet, and Nature was very big. It seemed an
impertinence for man to light his puny picket-fires
on her frontier. Pale sheet lightning began to play,
flickering over the great mountain opposite like fire
light dancing on the walls of a room. It reminded
me of how I used to think, as a child, that when I
was rich and grown-up (the same thing), I would al
ways have a fire in my bedroom to lie and look at.
For once, at least, I had two ; and luxuriously I
threw on another log to make a blaze to undress by.
It is even so that many of our childish dreams come
true, — with a difference.

CHAPTER XVI
BODIE : " WELL, SIR — "
THE town of Bodie, — or is it, perchance, a
" city " ? — lying a score of miles to the north
of Mono Lake, was in its earlier days a place of
ferociously bad repute. Although, so far as I am
aware, Bret Harte does not mention it, his genial
ruffians must have known it well. But in these dull
times, when not only law but order reigns over
the Sierra, the place subsists, so far as pungency of
reputation is concerned, upon its past ; the real has
toned into the realistic; and bad men are spelled
with capital letters in a poor attempt to revive the
glories of the past.
Some local patriot with a fancy for alliteration,
bent upon retarding in this case the obliterating pro
cess, has promulgated a legend of a " Bad Man from
Bodie with a Butcher-knife in his Boot." I had been
entertained with this epic, and when I encountered
an individual who actually bore the name of the re
probate town I was naturally interested, and my
eyes sought his boots in an endeavor to identify him
with the Bodie " of that ilk." A very short acquaint
ance showed, however, that in his case the badness
and the butcher -knife were mere pleasantries of

BODIE: "WELL, SIR — " 265
speech, and fuller knowledge resulted in a sincere
liking which the critical intimacy of camp-life has
confirmed, and cemented with respect.
I think it was when we were camped in the Till-
till that, glancing over one Sunday morning about
five o'clock to Bodie's sleeping - place, I saw the
smoke of reverie already ascending from his placid
form. It came out in subsequent conversation that
he had been engaged in benevolent reflections upon
how he would like to " dump a thousand or more of
them young monkeys out of the Bowery and them
places down in a medder like this here, kind of on a
suddent, so 's they would n't know it was coming.
And, say, how 'd it be to put in a bunch of milk cows,
and a band of burros for 'em to ride? Whoopee ! "
It appeared from occasional similar remarks that
the Bad Man's thoughts somewhat frequently took
this peculiar range when they were for a time re
leased from the cares of his profession. To a remark
bearing upon the beauty of the scenery or the wea
ther, or the goodness of the water or the beans, this
sympathetic human chord, or vox humana, in him
never failed to respond, though in an oblique and
apologetic manner. Once, indeed, he recounted to
Field and myself an instance of practical philan
thropy on his part, discounting it at the start by giv
ing us to understand that it was only a sporadic out
break. Grasshoppers were under discussion in some con
nection. " Well, sir," Bodie remarked, " there 's one

266 YOSEMITE TRAILS
good act, as you might say, that I did once in my
life, and them insects remind me of it: though I
don't blow about it, you understand." Being assured
that we understood, and urged to relate the particu
lars of this solitary episode, he continued : —
" It was when I was up in Montana, in the Big
Hole River country, along in the eighties. I had
quite a Uttle bunch of cattle in them days, and it so
happened I had four or five cows come fresh along
about together, and of course the calves was little
and could n't take near all the milk, so I had a heap
more than I could get away with ; that is, until the
calves should grow bigger. I used to take and milk
them cows on to the ground, for to free them of the
milk they carried that would have hurt them. Many 's
the gallon of good milk I 've seen run away down
them prairie-dogs' holes : it was sure a bonanza for
them littie cusses, unless some of them got drownded
out. " It happened one day, branding, I threw a steer
kind of awkward so he broke a leg, and of course I
had to butcher him. Well, sir, that day, or the next,
— I forget which and it don't matter, — along comes
a family that was in mighty bad shape. They was
driving, of course, and the whole outfit was as poor
and peakied and pitiful as ever you see. There was
seven of them, father and mother and three girls, all
well growed, and two younger boys, and they was
all thin, and dirty, and their clothes was all dirty and
tore. Say, d' you ever notice that people what 's dirty

BODIE: "WELL, SIR — " 267
is generally thin ? I don't say always, mind you, but
generally. Well, that 's the way these people was.
Good people, too, they was, honest and decent : aye,
and the man he told me, — and I believe it, too, —
that two years before he would n't have took twenty-
five thousand dollars for his holdings, away down in
Kansas somewhere. Them grasshoppers had done
him up. Two years running they came, and they
cleaned him out like a tenderfoot in a 'Frisco poker-
joint, » " Well, sir, the whole family was moving along,
going anywhere to get out of that country ; and if
you '11 believe me, they was bringing along with them
an old runt of a cow that was poor as sin, like the
rest of them, and give no more milk than what you
could milk into that lard-pail over there, the littie
one. They had that and they had some com meal,
and that was dead plumb all them people had to eat ;
literally nothing else on earth did they have. And
their horses was poor, and the old wagon squeaked,
and they was all naturally broke up.
" Well, sir, I see this outfit coming along, and I
calls out to them and asks them where they come
from and where was they going ; and they up and
tells me the whole rigamaree. So I says to them,
' Turn in right here,' I says, ' and bring your horse-
pail, and here's another horse-pail of mine, and
them young women had best go over and milk
them heifers over there. And,' I says, 'I killed a
beef yesterday, and you can take all you want of

268 YOSEklTE TRAILS
the meat, for there 's a heap more 'n I can begin
to use,' Well, sir, say, you 'd ought to have seen
that outfit ; it did me good to see 'em get busy. They
stayed by me and camped four or five days, and
washed up, and mended up, and heartened up, and
filled up, — say, I wish 't I 'd thought to have mea
sured them : it was sure wonderful how they fattened
on that range.
" And then it come to be, what was they going to
do next ? Well, sir, right then I thought of old John
Goldfinch, that lived away down thirty or forty miles.
He was an Englishman, and a good, straight, square
man as ever I see, and I knew him well. He had
two ranches, John had, with houses and barns on
them, and all a man would want ; and I says to this
outfit, ' Go over to old John Goldfinch,' I says, ' and
you tell him just what you told me, and tell him I
told you to tell it to him, and he '11 sure help you out.'
And so they did ; and John, he says to the man,
'Why, you're the blooming feller I 'm looking for ' :
and he puts them in one of them houses, and gives
the man and the oldest boy a contrack right off for
a thousand of poles he wanted cut up in the hills,
and grab-staked them, and started them farming on
shares. " Well, sir, I was over that way a year or so after,
to old John's. I 'd forgot all about them people ;
never give 'em another thought. There was a girl
about the yard, and when I looked at her I kind of
thought I 'd seen her face somewheres before, but I

BODIE: "WELL, SIR — " 269
could n't just place her. And then she goes in, and
out comes a woman and another girl. It was them
same people, clean, tidy, prosperous, and smiling all
over their faces and round to their backs with good
living and kind feelings. They knew me, and say,
maybe you think they was n't glad to see me. Why,
that man, he said he 'd struck luck right from the
time they'd met me, d' you believe it? He'd had
good crops, and potatoes was worth ten and twelve
and a half cents a pound that year, paid right there
at his own dooryard. And flour was twenty dollars
a hundred then, too, and he'd got potatoes and
flour to sell, and a plenty to eat besides. And that
old cow, say, she 'd have took a prize ; she was a
Holstein, and milked like an artesian well as long
as she got her wages. And that 's how it was with
them ; I had to go over and eat supper with them
that night, and they gave me the whole song and
dance. " Durn them mules, I hain't heard the bell for half
an hour. If they 'd get headed up the trail we 'd be
in a divvle of a fix."
The native modesty of this ministering angel for
bade, except in this instance, his relating any incident
that threatened to reflect credit, even indirectly, upon
himself. But his occupation for many years as a
" packer " on the mountain trails had often brought
him across the tracks of those historic bears of the
Sierra, some of whom were known not only by sight
but by name to the exasperated sheep-men whose

270 YOSEMITE TRAILS
mutton they slew and whose rifles they held in
disdain. " Well, sir," he remarked one day when the de
generacy of the present muttonless race of Yosemite
bears was under discussion, — " well, sir, I remem
ber when there was sure -enough bears in these
mountains : bears I mean, not woodchucks. Once
down in Kern County, in San Emigdio Canon I
think it was, twelve or fifteen years ago, I was pack
ing for some sheep-men ; that is, carrying the sup
plies for the herders' camps. There was a Mexican
herding a band of sheep at a dry camp, — good feed
but no water. We wanted to use that mountain for
the feed while it was green, on account that sheep
don't need water so long as there 's good green feed.
The herder kicked about the bears bothering him a
whole lot : he said they got in the corral 'most every
night, and killed his sheep and scattered the band.
It made it hard for him, you understand, for it would
take him all day to get the sheep together again,
and then he could n't be sure that he got them all.
" So one day he says to me, ' You 've got to give
me a man to help me as long as I 'm on this moun
tain, or else I '11 have to be moved to some other
place.' Well, sir, it happened an Irishman comes
along. He had n't never herded sheep before, but I
took him to the camp anyway, more to make com
pany for the Mexican than for any good he 'd be with
the sheep.
"That same night a she-cinnamon comes into

BODIE: "WELL, SIR — " 271
camp with two cubs about half-grown. The Mexican
had got his bed by an old pine tree that was broke
down : he 'd built him a rail platform out from the
tree, and he slept on top of that, not to be bothered
by the sheep and skunks. I don't know where the
green Irishman was sleeping, but it was somewhere
close by. Anyway, the herder's dog runs out at the
bear, and she chases him back into camp, pronto.
Then the dog runs under the bed to get out of the
bear's way, and the bear goes after him ; but there
was n't near room enough under there for a bear and
dog fight, so the bear she just took and fired the bed
and the man and the whole shooting-match up in the
air, and scattered them all over the ground. Then
she began slapping and cuffing at the man, like it
was a prize fight, but the greaser was on to bears,
and he sabed enough to cover up his head and
make out he was dead.
i " While all this was going on the Irish runs up to
where there was a big pine tree, about four foot
thick, and begins grabbing and hugging at it, trying
to climb up out of the way. It would n't have helped
him any if he could, for that matter, because a bear
will climb a big tree, though he can't climb a little
one. But the Irish did n't know nothing about bears,
except he knew he hated to be eat up by them. The
Mexican he calls out, 'Throw some fire at her;
throw some fire at her, why don't you?' But the
Irish was busy trying to skin up the tree about then,
and he calls back, ' I '11 not do it : I 'm a-doing well

272 YOSEMITE TRAILS
enough where I am.' By that time the bear had gone
back to where the cubs was. They was acting kind
of dazed with the excitement, and the old bear cuffs
them and hustles them to make them run away;
that 's how they do ; and then they all skinned out.
" Well, sir, next morning I was eating my break
fast at my own camp down in the lower canon, and
I see a man coming down to the meadow. He was
coming down a big high mountain, and making fast
time. ' Hullo I ' I says, it being the Irishman, with his
blankets on his back : ' Hullo, where are you going ? '
' Going? ' says he, ' I 'm going back to where I come
from, that 's where I 'm going. I would n't stay up
on that mountain not if you was to give me the
whole Kern County. Why, there was four big
bears come in there last night and chewed the greaser.
No, I don't want no breakfast,' says he ; ' how far
is it in to Bakersfield, that 's what I want to know?'
' Sixty-five miles and better,' I says. ' So long,' says
he, and off he goes on a two-twenty gait.
" I was in Bakersfield myself, a day or two after,
and, say, that Irishman had sure enough got in there
the same night when I saw him in the morning. He 'd
walked forty miles, and a rancher with a wagon had
give him a lift the last twenty-five.
"Anyway, I never knew an Irishman have any
luck herding sheep, or killing bear either. There was
Johnny O'Donnell, up in the Big Hole country ; a
bear had got into his corral one night, and picked up
a hog that must have weighed all of two hundred,

BODIE: "WELL, SIR — " 273
and hopped out again and never so much as knocked
a rail off. So Johnny baited for him the next night
with another hog, and he dumb up into a big tree
right over the corral to get the bear.
" Well, he waited and waited. It was pretty quiet
and lonesome, and after a while what does he do but
go to sleep, up there in the tree. Well, the ^bear come,
sure enough, and Johnny he wakes up sudden and
scairt, and falls down out of the blame tree and breaks
his arm, and the gtin, too. The wonder is he did n't
shoot himself instead of the bear ; that would have been
the real Irish of it, to a finish. But he did n't, and he
scared the bear and saved his bacon all right, and
Johnny and me used up the hog that he had baited
with. " But you 'd never believe how plenty they used to
be, specially down lower in the sheep country. There
was a man down there I knew that killed five one
night. He was another Mexican, too. It was down on
the old Tejon Grant, and he was always complaining
to the foreman about the bears coming into the corral
every night, killing his sheep and crippling and
wounding them. You see, it is n't only what they kill
first-hand, as you might say, but the sheep get scared
and stampede, and pile up and suffocate against the
corral, like I 've heard people will do at a theatre fire.
" Well, the foreman fixed him up with a rifle and
about fifty rounds of cartridge. He had got his bed
set up on four posts in the middle of the corral, about
ten feet clear of the ground. That 's the way herders

274 YOSEMITE TRAILS
mostly do, and it 's a good way, too. I never have no
use for skunks, and they are always plenty around
sheep-camps. This herder had got his bed up extra
high just on account of the bears, they was so an
noying. "Along about eleven or twelve o'clock, — moon
light it was, and clear, — a bear hops into the corral,
and he ups with his gun and he hits him the first shot
and wounds him. The bear rolls over and commences
to holler and scream outrageous. Then another bear
jumps over to see what all this hollering was about,
and the Mexican lets drive again and gets him : that
was number two. About that time number three hap
pens along, and he plugs him. Then along comes
number four and passes in his checks, and pretty
soon number five chips in and cashes his.
" The Mex. had been doing considerable shooting,
on account he'd plugged them half-a-dozen shots
apiece all around, so as not to make no miscue when
he got down on the ground. His ammunition was
pretty near gone, and he could n't tell but what there
was more bears out on the warpath looking for a
scrap. So he waited for half an hour or an hour,
maybe, but no more bears come along ; and he climbs
down at last, pretty much excited, and without so
much as waiting to put his boots on he starts down to
the ranch-house, three miles away, and wakes up all
the men on the ranch and tells them what he 'd done.
"Of course they all thought he was lying; but
young Neale (that was the son of one of the owners

BODIE: "WELL, SIR—" 275
of the ranch), him and some more of the men con
cluded to go up and find out how much of a liar he
was. So they went and looked, and sure enough there
was the five bears dead in the corral, and as many as a
dozen or fourteen sheep lying around trampled and
suffocated. " I knew young Neale myself, and he gave me the
straight story, so I know it 's a fact.
" One other time down in Kern I had planted a
herder in a new camp. That afternoon he butchered
a sheep at the foot of a tree and hung the carcass up
to one of the limbs. His camp was made at the foot
of this same tree, and he meant to come along next
day and get part of the mutton. Well, sir, along in
the night in come three good-sized bears into camp,
and commenced chewing up the sheep. The herder,
(an old man he was), and his dog ran out at them,
thinking in the dark they was cattle ; but he soon
sees his mistake when one of the bears hits the dog
a lick and breaks his leg.
"There was a little table arrangement at the foot
of the tree, built out of small logs. It might have
been twenty feet from the table up to the first limb,
that the meat was hung from, and the old fellow
jumps up on the table and catches hold of the tree
and the rope both, and climbs up in his night-clothes.
The wind was blowing hard, and it was bitter cold,
near freezing. But there he was, and there he stayed,
shivering with the scare and the cold till them three
bears made a clean-up and vamoosed. Then he

276 YOSEMITE TRAILS
comes down and builds three or four big fires to
warm himself and keep the bears away. That day
he built him a crow's-nest in a live-oak, about fifteen
feet up from the ground, and after that he used to
sleep there as long as he stayed.
" The next year it happened I had to plant another
herder with a band of sheep in that same camp. He
was a French boy, and a greenhorn, just out from
the old country : did n't speak a word of English
even. He 'd butchered a sheep and it was hanging
from this same crow's-nest in the live-oak, and the
boy was sleeping there too, like the old man used to.
The mutton was hanging maybe eight feet clear of
the ground.
" Well, the first or second night an immense big
grizzly jumps the corral and first of all eats up the
offal. Then he stands up on his hind feet and com
mences on the carcass, and eats off the head and
neck and the fore-shoulders, clear up to the liver.
The boy was all the time lying in bed, five feet or so
above the bear, watching him chew the mutton. I
guess the bear did n't see the boy ; if he did he
did n't take any stock in him, and the boy laid there
mighty quiet and still, you bet. Anyway, there was
the big grizzly so close he could pretty near touch
him, chewing away and cracking the bones like they
was walnut shells. When he gets through he walks
off, and leaves the other half of the carcass hanging.
I tell you that was a pretty badly scared boy, and
him a parlyvoo and a greenhorn, too.

BODIE: "WELL, SIR — " 277
" Well, sir, I was past there that day to see how
the new boy was making out, and he showed me the
half mutton all chewed up, and tried to tell me about
it. He was so excited I could n't make out much of
what he said, but it was all ' Hours ' over and over, and
I knew a little French from being Canadian. Any
way I could easy see what his trouble was. I knew
the bear would surely come back that night to finish
the mutton ; so I got two other men with me, with
rifles, and we went over to the camp and built an
other crow's-nest about thirty yards away.
" About dark we got up in the tree. I had fixed it
that we would all shoot at the same time, and I was
to give the word. The boy was down at a little
spring to get a pail of water while the daylight lasted,
when along comes the bear. The boy hollers in
French, ' Voilh Hours qui vient I ' and the bear raises
up and looks ugly at him. At that I gave the word
and the three rifles popped all together. The bear
fell over, and the boy lit out lively for his tree. No,
he was n't carrying no water-pail.
"The bear rolled over and over, hollering and
yelling most unearthly, and after a while he got
away into the brush. It was too dark to trail him
that night, but next morning we went after him with
dogs. We found him two or three hundred yards
away from where we had shot him. He was pretty
much crippled up, and we easy finished him.
" He was quite an old bear ; his teeth was all wore
out, and his claws was wore short down, and the fur

278 YOSEMITE TRAILS
was rabbed off in places. He was a bear what had done
a heap of mischief, too : Pinto they called him. The
sheep-men all knew him, and they used to say Pinto
killed more mutton than all the butcher-shops in Ba
kersfield. We gave the skin to the boy, and he sold
it for twenty dollars. That was quite a strike for a
sheep-boy, and like a loony he had to go showing
the money around. So in about a week I heard that
Curly Ike down to Swiftwater had got it away from
him." Thus far the good Bodie. But the two grizzlies
most eminent in their time, and whose legends cir
culate most regularly around Sierra camp-fires, were
Clubfoot and Old Joe. The former had the misfortune
early in his career to put his foot into a trap, and paid
for his freedom with a toe. But the incident taught him
caution, and his amorphous imprint soon became
dismally familiar to ranchmen over a wide extent of
the foothill region. His history has already become
nebulous, and I found that the glamour which is fatal
to moderation of statement has settled about his
name. Only the last scene of his life emerges plainly
from the trailing clouds of glory into which he van
ished. It is known that he made a brave end, turning
up his remaining toes somewhere " up north," where
he was taken at a disadvantage in the act of dining
royally upon beef of his own killing.
Old Joe reigned about the same time over a region
a littie to the s.outh of Clubfoot's territory, and there
his twelve-by-nine footprint was recognized with re-

BODIE: "WELL, SIR — " 279
spect by backwoodsmen and cattlemen of the Mari
posa country. The famous hunter Jim Duncan was
engaged about that time upon his stint of a hundred
bears, and was particularly anxious to check off Old
Joe on his rapidly increasing tally. As John Conway,
now the patriarch of Wawona, who was himself a
crony of Duncan, expressed it to me, —
" Jim's score was doin' nicely, but they was mostly
blacks and cinnamons, and Jim he just naturally
hankered after Old Joe. One dark cloudy day, down
on Ader Creek, Jim was out hunting with his old
muzzle-loader. He stopped along by some big pines,
just resting and standing quiet, and he looks up and
there comes Old Joe, walking along in easy range
and not seeing him. Jim he looks at Joe, and he puts
up his gun, and draws a bead, and — and then, by
thunder, he crawfished ! Yes, and I would too, if I 'd
have looked at Old Joe along any old muzzle-loader."
Thereafter, the terror of Old Joe lay heavier than
ever on the foothills, and the ranchmen paid their tolls
almost with alacrity. At last, however, his oppressions
roused the sheep-men of the Hornitos region to fury,
and they conspired under the leadership of one Had-
lick to overthrow him. Half-a-dozen of them pro
ceeded to Pothole Meadows, whence he had been last
reported, and where there was a big corral, the traces
of which remain to this day to vex the souls of tourist
gentlemen interested in mutton. A couple of sheep
were killed, and the carcasses, after being trailed
around, were hung up in an oak tree about ten feet

28o YOSEMITE TRAILS
above the ground. Then, having staked their mules
out in the meadow, the men gathered around the fire
and passed an hour or two in a symposium of verbal
bravery at Joe's expense.
When darkness fell they stopped talking and lay
down quietly with rifles ready to hand, and waited
for events. About nine o'clock the jacks came tearing
into camp on the lope, trailing their picket-ropes, and
stood with their tails to the fire, their necks stretched
forward, and their ears working like metronomes,
gazing out into the darkness. Presentiy Old Joe ar
rived and walked up into the light of the fire, while
the mules bolted back into the meadow, where they
stood shivering and snorting, their terrified eyes
shining greenly in the firelight. But Old Joe was not
the bear to take tough mule when there was fresh-
killed mutton hanging in plain view. After a few
moments of what looked like ostentation, but may
have been only indecision, he walked up to the tree
where the sheep were hanging, reached up and took
down a carcass as if he were a butcher, and walked
thoughtfully away. And all the while Hadlick and
his merry men lay watching, and no man durst put
finger to trigger.
I ventured to suggest to Mr. Conway, in extenua
tion of their inaction, that I had heard similar cases
ascribed to a species of hypnotism. " I don't know
about that," he rejoined, "but if that's what you call
being scared plumb out of your senses, I reckon
that's what them fellers had."

BODIE: "WELL, SIR — " 281
" No," he added, in reply to my inquiry as to the
circumstances of Joe's departure, "no one knows
what came of Old Joe. He was never killed, anyway
not in this section of country. I reckon he just natu
rally got old, and went off up into the jimmy-sal,' and
died, as you might say, in bed. But you can bet he
died with his boots on."
' Jimmy-sal: chamisal, i, e., greasewood-brush.

CHAPTER XVII
THE HIGH SIERRA: LAKE TENAYA TO MONO
THE old Tioga road winds its tortuous length of
fifty miles through as rough a stretch of country,
I suppose, as any road in the United States. Leav
ing the Big Oak Flat road near Crocker's Station,
some fifteen miles northwest of the Yosemite, it
makes for its objective point, the derelict Tioga Mine,
on the crest of the Sierra, in a whole-hearted style
that comports well with the spirit of the boisterous
days in which its lines were run. Its main direction
is easterly, parallel to the courses of the Merced and
Tuolumne rivers; but in mid -career the opposing
bulk of Mount Hoffman forces it to a wide southerly
detour where it skirts Lake Tenaya. Then swinging
again to the northeast, it crosses the Sierra at Tioga
Pass, 9940 feet above sea-level.
Ater a quiet Sunday, enlivened by a brief but
stirring thunder-storm, we marched out early on
Monday morning upon this rude highway, heading
for Soda Springs. Passing under the eastern shoul
der of Murphy's Dome, it was seen to be continued
in two or three subsidiary flatted domes. Bodie's
archives of local lore failed to yield any record of
the departed son of Erin who has bequeathed his
name to this barren mountain and the creek which

THE HIGH SIERRA 283
comes down on its farther side. He or some other
patriot has taken care to commemorate his friends
pretty thoroughly in this part of the Sierra : the Raf-
fertys, Delaneys, McGees, Brannigans, and Donohues
are all remembered in the names of lakes, mountains,
and creeks, while Ireland herself has both a creek
and a lake "named for her." I own that I prefer
even these uncompromising names to the sentimen
tal titles that are attached to many of the points of the
Yosemite Valley itself.
As we passed close to the littie conical point of
granite which was so conspicuous at the head of the
lake, there was an excellent opportunity to study the
peculiar Yosemite formation at close range. One has
a vision of Nature in the r61e of housemaid, scouring
away through patient centuries at these granite blis
ters with a glacier in her hand, polishing and finish
ing them to perfection. At the north end of even this
littie mountain a vast quantity of talus has accumu
lated, much of it looking as white and clean as if
it had fallen yesterday ; as probably it did, speaking
in centuries. On all the surrounding slopes great
rounded boulders lie about by thousands, the untidy
emptying of the pockets of the ancient glacier.
We were reminded by the appearance of four va
queros that we were now for a few miles in more
travelled country. Soda Springs is the farthest out
post of civilization in this region, and hither all the
trails of this part of the mountains head in. The men
were Mexican sheep-shearers, who, as we learned in

284 YOSEMITE TRAILS
five minutes' exchange of news, had come up from
Inyo by one of the southern passes, bound for the
ranches of the San Joaquin.
Cigarette - ends were shed around them as we
talked, like autumn leaves. One of them, with an
amount of forethought unusual in his race, had used
some interval of rest to provide himself with a stock
of " tabacos," which were disposed, in readiness for
instant use, in the band of his sombrero. This store
was freely drawn upon by his companions, who when
they needed a new cigarette had but to jerk their
horses over and pluck one from him, as if he were a
tree yielding that desirable fruit. They rode tough,
undersized ponies with enormous Spanish saddles
which clothed the little animals like overcoats, and
gave them a tournamental appearance that, in con
junction with the slouching negligence of their riders,
was highly comic.
In conversation with them we were able to assure
ourselves that we should find any pass by which we
might elect to return, after our visit to Mono, open
from snow ; which is not always the case, even by
the end of July, unless the preceding winter has been
a mild one in point of snowfall. Bodie also refreshed
his knowledge of the movements and general well-
being of sundry Jims and Bills "down Inyo," and
" over Mono " ; after which, with the inevitable vale
dictory, " Well, guess we '11 have to be moving," and
a choras of "Adios I " the cavalcades sorted them
selves and parted east and west.

THE HIGH SIERRA 285
Like huge blisters the domes rose on all sides,
each more remarkable than the last. A very notice
able one is Fairview Dome, along the base of which
the road passes, with another facing it, on the ex
treme summit of which a great pebble of perhaps
fifty tons has been left by the ancient glacier, care
fully balanced, like a pea on some prodigious ostrich
egg. On both these mountains, which rise about a
thousand feet above the general level, the glacial
polish can be seen glittering to the very top.
Bodie was that morning a man of many moods.
First of all snatches of Ben Bolt were borne past me
upon the breeze. This outbreak of sentiment I had
just succeeded in tracing to the pensive influence
of the hemlock forest through which we were riding,
when the theme of his song abruptly changed, and I
heard him relating, in a novel kind of allegro recita
tive, the prowess of one Casey, a Hibernian Ulysses
of strange and varied exploits. This, too, seemed ap
propriate enough, in the haunts of bygone Murphys
and McGees ; but when he broke next into A Life on
the Ocean Wave, I abandoned the attempt to follow
his mental processes.
It was a saddening feature of the scenery along
many parts of our route that we passed frequently
through wide areas of tamarack forest where the
trees were dead, as the result (so I afterwards found)
of fire, though at first sight the cause was not appar
ent. This was the case in parts of the region we
were now traversing. On questioning Bodie as to

286 YOSEMITE TRAILS
the cause, his brief reply was, " Insecks " ; and he
proceeded to express his contempt for certain " Gov
ernment gTiys " who, he said, came out every year or
two from Washington to examine and report upon
the matter. This seemed to confirm the statement
which I have sometimes heard advanced, that the
man of action is prone to hold him of mere theory
and investigation in slight regard.
I found the same principle illustrated when, glid
ing the conversation into his own field, I took occa
sion to quote Kipling's line about " the mule-train
coughing in the dust." " The feller what said that,"
he rejoined, "don't savvy what he wants to say.
Mules don't never cough, not unless they 've got a
cold on 'em. Sneezing 's what he means, and I don't
care who the jay is." As I seemed to recall having
myself experienced a kind of compound of the two
operations, I was not prepared to argue the point,
and judged it best to abandon this field also to him.
Discoursing thus of many things, at five-animal
range, I being, as usual, in the lead and he in the
rear, we found ourselves emerging upon a wide ex
panse of level grass-land. This was the Tuolumne
Meadows. Here comes in from the south the so-
called Sunrise trail, which is the direct route to this
point from the Yosemite Valley by way of the Little
Yosemite and the high mountain region east of the
Tenaya Canon. Straight ahead rose Mounts Dana and
Gibbs, with Kuna Crest a little to the south and the
point of Mount Conness, more distant, in the north.

THE HIGH SIERRA 287
Dana was our to-morrow's quarry, and we marked
him for our own. Cathedral and Unicorn peaks also
came now suddenly into full view, close on our right ;
the former crested with half-a-dozen splintery pinna
cles, the latter with a single sharp, horn-shaped cone,
and both broadly banded with snow. Out yonder to
north and east, under a hood of pale, hard sky, lay
the Mono country and Nevada's dry and burning
plains. Fording the river, which here runs a wide, hand
some stream, we made for the camp of the little de
tachment of soldiers, four in number, who are kept
here during the summer on outpost duty. On the
way we passed the springs themselves, an outflow of
cold mineral water, bubbling up generously, close to
the bank of the river.
It was with no little interest that we traced by the
soldiers' maps the course of our wanderings all the
last week, locating the cut-offs we had left undone
that we ought to have done, and the trails we had
done that we ought not to have done.
Striking again into the road we followed it, rising
steadily, for five or six miles. At about 9700 feet we
found a southerly trail which we held for a mile or
so, and then camped on a small creek which comes
down from the saddle between Dana and Gibbs, and
at the very base of Dana himself. On the west rose
the magnificent shape of Kuna Crest, plentifully be-
snowed. Along the base stretched the moraine of
the old glacier, the most perfect instance of a lateral

288 YOSEMITE TRAILS
moraine that I have seen. By the trees growing upon
it I gauged its average height as not far short of a
hundred feet
It was somewhat too late in the day for us to make
the ascent of Dana, so Field went off to look for a
small lake which Bodie reported as lying under the
northern face of the mountain. A sudden rain com
ing up, Bodie and I rigged up our big canvas and
sat tight Our guide was in a rare literary mood, and
buried himself in our travelling library of three elderly
magazines : I devoted myself to the pleasures of an
ticipation, for to-morrow I was to taste my first au
thentic mountain of this region.
There he was, 13,050 feet undeniable, showing
from our camp a handsome red-brown cone with its
longest side thrown out to the northeast, where it
terminated in a fine precipice. Forests clothed its
lower buttresses, and sheets of snow gleamed on the
higher slopes. On the northern side much more snow
must be lying, as I could see was the case with his
lesser brother Kuna, whose north and west faces
were in view. I acknowledge I felt some excitement,
though Dana is held to be a very easy mountain to
climb, and Apine Clubs would no doubt deride it.
But after all, one's first thirteen - thousand - footer
ought to be something of an event, and I hope
never to be blasi of my mountains.
A vivid after -glow flushed the snow on Kuna
Crest to a delicious rose, and burned on Gibbs and
Dana in a strange, deep, rusty red that needed ex-

MT. DANA AND JESSIE LAKE

THE HIGH SIERRA 289
plaining. It was entirely a new note of color among
the all-prevailing granites, and seemed to signify
that a change might be looked for in geological
features. Lying snugly rolled that night in my blankets, I
noticed the sky, which was now clear of clouds,
filled with a greater myriad of stars than I ever ob
served before. The velvet firmament was almost
white with their innumerable multitudes. I suppose
that there are countless numbers of stars yet unre-
vealed in the empty spaces of the sky, and I won
dered whether we may not be in fact surrounded
with an unbroken curtain of light.
The next morning Field discovered that he had
left one of his lenses behind, halfway up Alkali Creek
Canon, where he had last used it. Bodie hand
somely offered to ride back for it by way of Soda
Springs and a cut-off trail. We appreciated this
friendly proposal all the more since we knew that
he entertained grudging sentiments with regard to
photographic implements in general, as being ob
jects unruly to pack, and the occasion of frequent
stoppages and disarrangements of loads. As to
climbing the mountain, he had done that once be
fore, and "climbing wasn't his long suit, anyhow."
So at half-past six Field and I started for the sum
mit, while he mounted Clementine and by diligent
rope-ending persuaded her away from her attend
ance on Pet, who I could almost fancy fetched a sigh
of relief.

290 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Under a cloudless sky we followed upward the
course of the Uttie creek. If I had not known that I
was in California I could easily have believed that it
was a Highland burn that came shouldering down
between bossy, over-curving banks of rough moun
tain grass, pouring steadily over ledges and boul
ders, swirling in elbows, draining and sucking through
matted roots of heather, and tossing crisp, hissing
drops a yard into the air. Then into the blessed for
est, with its million-and-one friendly presences, trees
and birds, flowers and roving zephyrs, and that old
feeUng of interrupted action, and hidden, whimsical
woodland creatures.
Gradually the forest thinned until we passed out
on to the open mountain-side, clothed with mats of
dwarf willow and tussocks of wiry grass, and with
ribbons of water furrowing the ground in a network
of pipe-like channels. A few dwarf pines were scat
tered here and there, holding their hard-won ground
determinedly, like the advanced outposts of an army.
The stark poles were tossed about the ground where
the storms had wrenched them down, and many of
those that stood erect were like skeletons, white and
bony. At eleven thousand feet, even the Old Guard,
that dies but never surrenders, had been beaten down
to the ground, but still they fought upon their backs,
under impenetrable shields of flattened and felted
foliage that a man might walk upon.
Small rugs of meadow were spread in hollows,
spotted with daisies, small but precious. In one of

THE HIGH SIERRA 291
these meadowlets a few thistles were growing stur
dily, looking as much at home as if they were on
Ben Nevis ; and among the boulders an alpine
phlox formed little round cushions covered with hun
dreds of blossoms, ridiculously tiny but marvellously
perfect. So far the way was remarkably easy ; it could hardly
be caUed climbing, being nothing but a straight
forward march up the saddle between Mounts Dana
and Gibbs. At 11,800 feet we gained the crest of the
divide, and with extreme curiosity I looked over to
the eastern side of the Sierra. From where we stood
a caiion broke steeply down between walls of brick-
burned rock. Sheets of "screes " swept down on either
side, laced with streaks and pennons of snow. Amost
at the head of the caiion lay a small lake of a strange,
peacock-blue color, the bluest thing I have ever seen,
as Bodie had predicted I should find it. Dark masses
of timber filled here and there the hollows of the
southern wall. Below and in the middle distance was
a confused tumble of buttes and foothills ; and be
yond that lay a pale, circular sheet of blue-grey water,
with a white island in the middle. It was Mono Lake,
and strange and ghostly it looked. To the south of
it stretched a line of grey volcanic craters, and be
yond again, the uneasy ridges of the Nevada desert-
ranges faded into the distance.
It was a sight that I had long wished to see, —
mysterious Mono; and that day, under a bleached
desert sky pencilled with lines of pallid whitish cloud.

292 YOSEMITE TRAILS
it looked mysterious, solitary, and desolate enough
to satisfy my best expectations.
We were still twelve hundred feet short of the peak
of Mount Dana, which rose to our north above a vast
slope of broken rock, interrupted here and there by
cliffs. It is certainly an easy mountain to climb ; I
can hardly conceive that there is anywhere a peak
of equal height that is so easy of ascent. To reach
the summit was simply a matter of pegging away
at the tiresome slope, using a reasonable degree of
care in picking our footing, for the blocks were of
every shape and size, and often shifted under our
weight. A broken leg would not be difficult to come
by. The strange color of the mountain as we had seen
it from camp was now explained. Both Dana and
Gibbs are entirely different in formation from the
country we had heretofore traversed. They are not
built of granite, but of metamorphic slates, red, green,
and purple in color, often handsomely veined and
marbled, and splintering smoothly into large cubes
and rhomboids, and tile-like smaller fragments. It is
an interesting formation, and its rich display of colors,
contrasting with the brilliant green of the meadow-
patches, makes up a fine combination from a landscape
point of view.
As we neared the summit we encountered ever
larger snow-fields. The sun was hot, and the water
ran in a myriad streams, clinking merrily among the
rocks under our feet as if a hundred kobold black-

LOOKING EASTWARD FROM MT. DANA, MONO LAKE IN THE DISTANCE, 6000 FEET BELOW

THE HIGH SIERRA 293
smiths were laboring there. To me there is something
very delightful in the subterranean voices of hidden
water, songs almost with words, liquid lyrics of de
light. When I knelt down and put my ear to a splinter
of stone that hung suspended like an inverted cone
between larger blocks in one of these music gal
leries, I was quite charmed at the exquisite tone that
sounded from it. No silver bell nor string of violin
ever gave out a purer note. There was something
solemn in the crystaUine earth-music, solemn and
sweet and lonely, and I went on with a feeling of
pleasant awe.
Climbing at last along the edge of a snow-bank that
followed a northwesterly ridge, we gained the sum
mit, A wonderful view rewarded us, — a complete
circle, three hundred and sixty degrees full, of
mountains and lakes, with a strip of desert to the east
where the plains of Mono flickered in parching heat.
Immediately under the peak to the northeast is a
remarkable plateau, about two square miles in extent,
almost perfectly smooth, and covered with small bro
ken rock. This plateau breaks away precipitously to
the east, and slopes more gently on the west to a nar
row snow-filled caiion that divides it from Mount Dana
itself. At the head of the caiion lies a small glacier.
To all other quarters of the compass the whole
prospect was a sea of peaks and ridges, whitened
with snow, gloomy with precipices, and sprinkled with
lakes of every size and shape. One long, trough-like
valley led away westward toward the peaks and

294 YOSEMITE TRAILS
domes of Yosemite. Over all, the sun shining in a
sky of broken clouds sent a thousand purple shadows
flying like flocks of swallows. Southward a blue haze
half obscured and half revealed a multitude of splen
did peaks. Among them Mounts Lyell and McClure
gleamed whitely glorious, cuirassed with glaciers, and
Ritter, knight of the black shield, overtopped even
them and us by a few score feet.
It is remarkable how nearly alike in height are the
main summits of the Sierra in this middle part of the
range. There are four mountains that rise above
thirteen thousand feet, — Dana, McClure, Lyell, and
Ritter, — yet the last named, which is the highest, rises
to only one hundred and fifty-six feet above the thir-
teen-thousand mark; while a considerable number
of peaks have an altitude of over twelve thousand
five hundred feet.
The comparison of this mountain topography to
the sea is so essentially true that its triteness may be
excused. The resemblance is exact and vivid to the
broken forms of ocean water at the first lessening of
the violence of a storm; and when now I looked
out over the vast extent of mountains, I received the
same impression of confused but powerful action, of
the leaping of passionate surges, the suck and sob
of streaming hollows, the implacable gathering and
advance of ridges in infinite Echelon, that I have
experienced in looking out from the deck of a ship
in mid-ocean the day after a gale had blown.
It was strange to find among the blocks and boul-

THE HIGH SIERRA 295
ders of the very summit a lovely plant growing. It was
polemonium, bearing a beautiful flower of that hea
venly pure blue that I know only in the forget-me-not
besides. The blossoms are large, profuse, and clus
tered, and have a delightful scent. For its luxuriance
of size, color, and perfume, it might well be the trophy
of a hot-house ; and to find such a plant at this alti
tude, when all other flowers, even the hardy alpine
phlox and daisies, had dwarfed and dwindled until
they ceased, was a notable surprise. Some angel, no
doubt, comes to take earth-pleasure in this lonely
garden of the mountains.
We lingered for two hours about the summit, rev
elling in the superb prospect and the serenity of this
heavenward station. Then, having duly contributed
to the monument of piled rocks that marks the point
of the mountain, and waving au revoir to Mono in
expectation of being there to-morrow, we started on
the return. The first part was accomplished in chamois
fashion, leaping down from slab to slab in erratic
courses, and only stopping to recover breath and the
perpendicular when knees and nerves became shaky
together. The ascent had taken five hours, the de
scent occupied two. Neither Field nor I is of the
number of those who consider mountains as a sort of
gymnastic apparatus, except incidentally ; and we suf
fered no distress when we learned that the mountain
has often been climbed in two hours from the locality
of our camp. We had done just two and a half times
as well.

296 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Bodie had returned from his twenty-five-mile ride,
lens recovered and supper already under way. Sur
passing appetites, coinciding with the knowledge of
unlimited supplies near at hand, justified a lavish re
past in which the last precious dust of the tea-canis
ter was involved. A transcendent fire, fanned every
moment to leonine roaring by blasts that roamed
down the eastward pass of the mountains, hardly
tempered the chill of ten thousand feet of altitude.
We unrolled our blankets early, and, discarding only
our boots, crept in and lay, feet to the fire, chatting
and smoking in tolerable comfort.
By half-past six the next morning we were passing
around the eastern face of Kuna Crest, where it rises
to a handsome peak. It is altogether a fine moun
tain, with a long ridge trending southeast and north
west, and maintaining an average height of over
12,000 feet. A faint trail led at first through rough
meadow country, and then passed into tamarack
forest which here showed no sign of disease, though
the trees were whitened and scarred by storm and
stress of climate. This hardy conifer has an unusual
range of habitat. There are trees of the species in the
Yosemite Vadley at four thousand feet, and here they
were growing at over ten thousand. Though uninter
esting in appearance and below the level of its family
in physique, one gets to like this tree as one lives
with it, for its every-day virtues. It fills the part of
the ordinary citizen or man-in-the-street, unpreten
tious and undistinguished, but carrying on the rou-

THE HIGH SIERRA 297
tine work of the tree-world in a conscientious, me
thodical manner, leaving the choice places to choicer
spirits, and populating great expanses of unhopeful
mountain with its serviceable armies.
One or two old cabins, long tumbled into ruin,
stood beside the trail. Heaps of stones and rubbish
were piled against them, the remains of capacious
chimneys. A glow of sentimental warmth seemed
still to hang about these mounds of debris. I con
jured up again the figures of the bygone miners
and sheep-herders who had sat around the fires that
once roared in them, — swart Gascons from the
Landes, out-screaming the wind with impish picco
los and boisterous accordions ; down-east Yankees,
"sudden and quick in quarrel," mitigating the soli
tude with euchre and deep potations ; the ubiquitous
Briton, dreaming over Fleet Street or the old village
in Surrey or Connemara as he stared into the glow
ing caverns of the fire. Now it is the little striped
chipmunk that sits ruminating there, if such a bundle
of nerves can be imagined ever to be in such an at
titude of mind ; and the only sound is the voice of
the Clarke crow, uplifted in soliloquy as weird as that
of the Raven.
Some three miles of steady but easy climbing
brought us to the head of Mono Pass. A pile of rocks
marks the summit, and the bench-mark of the Geo
logical Survey gives the altitude as 10,599 feet. A
trail comes in here from the south, leading by way
of Parker and Agnew passes to the so-called Devil's

298 YOSEMITE TRAILS
Post-pile, and so out by Mammoth Pass to Pine City
on the east side of the Sierra. In the neck of the
pass lies a small lake fed by snow-banks, and beyond
it a group of long-deserted shanties, a windlass, and
a mound of tailings mark the grave of somebody's
hopes and capital. Here blows an eternal wind,
strong, steady, and hissing cold. I always feel a so
lemnity in these great airs of the mountain summits,
these winds of God. Like formless but mighty
presences, the great sighing billows of the air-ocean
surge on their vast courses, singing in majestic re
citative their Benedicite, Omnia Opera !
We halted to cinch up saddles and packs as se
curely as might be before beginning the four-thou
sand-foot descent of Bloody Cafion. Then with a
final backward look to the west we plunged down
the steep eastern face of the Sierra. A few hundred
yards below we encountered a considerable snow-
field. The snow, softened by the midsummer sun,
was treacherous and annoying, and it was with diffi
culty that we prevailed upon the animals to commit
their precious bones to the uncertain footing. Several
times they all. Pet excepted, made a concerted bolt
back up the trail, and for a time the welkin rang with
sounds of battle, castigatory drummings upon equine
ribs, and all the confusion of a general m^lee. At last
they went floundering and staggering across, sink
ing to the hocks in the rotten snow-ice. A quarter-
mile brought us to another but smaller snow-field.
This we skirted ; and escaped catastrophe thereby.

THE HIGH SIERRA 299
for it turned out to be hollow beneath. The water
running from the upper snow had cut its way under
this bank, leaving it a mere shell from wall to wall
of the canon. In its present softened condition it
would certainly not have supported the weight of the
loaded animals.
Just below lay a charming little lake, blue as hea
ven, and swept ever and anon with handfuls of wind
that sent delightful gleams and shudders over it. It
bears the inscrutable designation of Sardine Lake. I
hailed Bodie with an inquiry as to the reason for the
name, and received his illuminating reply in one
word, " Canned." I learned later that years ago an
ill-fated mule bearing a cargo of the delicacy con
signed to a merchant in some mining-camp of the
Walker River region had fallen off the trail, and after
a series of spectacular revolutions had vanished in
the icy waters.
In the upper course of the caiion the walls rise pre
cipitously. It is in fact a gorge rather than a caiion,
and it is easy to guess how it came by its name in
the days when great bands of cattle were driven
across the Sierra by this route, lacerating themselves
as they scrambled among the jagged rock-debris
through which the so-called trail is laid. When one
recalls the behavior of a herd of excited cattle driven
along an ordinary highway, and then imagines the
scene of action transferred to this fearfully steep de
file, filled with shattered rock and narrowing at the
top to a mere cleft, with yelling vaqueros urging the

300 YOSEMITE TRAILS
bewildered and terrified beasts into a panic, it be
comes a marvel that any of the animals should arrive
at the head of the pass alive and unmaimed. The
bones that still lie strewn up and down the trail tes
tify to the fate of many a victim of Bloody Canon.
I was charmed to find growing in this wild place
a great variety of flowers. In the drip of snow-banks
and among the tumble and shatter of slaty rock, there
bloomed the choicest specimens that I had seen
of many varieties, and with a remarkable range of
colors. In particular I noticed columbines of pale
rose and yellow, and even pure white ; pentstemons
crimson, pink, purple, and blue of various shades ;
and yellow and red mimulus, all surprisingly large
and perfect, as if grown in a hot-house. A botanist
would be enraptured with them. Here I met also an
other conifer, the limber pine {Pinus fiexilis), a spe
cies which is confined, I believe, to the eastern flank
of the Sierra. Its whitish twigs and its foliage are
very similar to those of P. albicaulis, but the cone
is larger and clay-yellow when ripe, and the tree is
altogether bigger and more pine -like in habit of
growth. Below Sardine Lake the caiion began to open and
the blue hills of Nevada came in sight. Then the
forest began in earnest. Owing to the rapid fall
in altitude the various conifers meet and overlap
very interestingly. Within a short range one passes
through the successive belts of the albicaulis, con
torta, flexilis, and Jeffrey pines and the two firs. The

THE HIGH SIERRA 301
juniper also grows here to a handsomer tree than its
stubborn wont, and it appeared to me that all the
vegetation inhabiting the locality attains an unusual
perfection of growth.
Two miles and two thousand feet below Sardine
Lake lies Walker Lake, a beautiful sheet of water,
narrow and winding, nearly a mile in length, and
wooded on all sides. Along its northern margin
spreads a delightful meadow, fringed with aspen and
willow, and exuberantly flowery. Long grasses were
mixed with pale blue iris, larkspurs, lupines, daisies,
and half-a-dozen kinds of those yellow compositae of
which, for some reason which seems to have to do
with their color, none but botanists take the trouble
to learn the names. Wild roses also there were, of a
color as deep as was the joy of meeting them ; and
evening primroses, stately-tall.
The lake is a beautiful one, partly rocky and ro
mantic, partly reedy and rural. Looking back, the
mountains towered grandly, snow-laced and stern,
close above this Eden ; while from this point eastward
began the domain of the sage-brush and the desert,
hardly more than an hour's travel from snow-banks
and alpine crags. It is a condition highly interesting,
and entirely characteristic of California, the land of
violent contrasts.
At the lower end of the lake a band of cattie were
feeding. To us they wore a pleasing air of novelty.
For three weeks we had had neither meat nor milk
of them, except the canned apologies, and at the

302 YOSEMITE TRAILS
sight the latent butcher within the breast awoke and
whetted his tools.
After leaving the lake the northern waU of the canon
becomes bare of timber, except for a sprinkling of
small oaks, and is dotted with the usual desert brash.
The southern waU continues well forested, and Jeffrey
pines and tamaracks kept us company along the trail,
each striving to outdo the other in endurance as they
approached the desert level. I backed the Jeffrey, as
being the nobler, more pine-like tree, and was grati
fied to see him eventually win out, growing sturdy
and green far out on to the Mono plain.
Suddenly we encountered a barbed- wire fence, and
the trail widened into a sandy track that no doubt
calls itself a road. A clear brook ran beside it, bor
dered with wild roses and tiger-lilies. Then appeared
cultivated enclosures, and in the distance a few scat
tered farm buildings were visible. An Indian woman,
pappoose on back, was performing some primitive
agricultural rite about a plot of garden ground fenced
with willow poles, where nothing could be discerned
to be growing. A girl in a trailing blue " wrapper "
turned upon me a countenance of such intense black
ness that I at first mistook it for her hair. My sal
utation, first in English, then in Spanish, elicited no
response beyond a grunt staccato and a stare so sincere
and prolonged as to become embarrassing. The Mono
Indians are famous for their skill in basketry, and this
stolid woman, it was likely, could weave baskets of
amazing fineness of texture and admirable shape and

THE HIGH SIERRA 303
design. I was anxious to secure a specimen, but felt
myself at a disadvantage and was fain to abandon my
intention so far as these representatives of the tribe
were concerned.
Crossing a meadow of knee-high grass watered by
a network of rivulets, I found my party, whom I had
allowed to out-travel me by a mile or two, just going
into camp at Farrington's Ranch. So great is the to
pographical contrast between the eastern and western
faces of the range that while on this side it had taken
only a few hours to descend from the crest to culti
vated plains, on the other it would have taken as
many days.
I despatched Bodie straightway to the ranch-house,
where he was no stranger, to buy a loaf of stove bread
and a pitcher of milk. We ate and drank our fill of
these simple rarities with enormous gusto. Then I lay
at length among willows, wild roses, ants, and sage
brush, and gazed dreamily off at the line of volcanic
craters a few miles away across the valley. Unmis
takable craters they are, grey and ashy, topped with
burnt-looking rocks, the lips that once spouted the
imprisoned flame and fury of the earth up into that
blue sky that now smiles so serenely. Will they ever
again break silence? Stranger things have happened
on this old earth.
Suppose that as I lie here, indolent with ease and
the fullness of bread, I should fancy that I see a faint
smoke ascending from that grey cone. It cannot be :
and yet, it certainly is. Strange : what next ? The

304 YOSEMITE TRAILS
smoke grows thicker and is unmistakable. After a
few minutes a deep sigh or moan of the earth, such
as I have heard preceding earthquakes, breaks the
heavy hush of the air. I gaze fascinated at the smoking
peak, awaiting I know not what. My mind is filled
and teeming with all the unimaginable horrors which
since childhood I have associated with earthquakes
and volcanoes, — Pompeii, Lisbon, Sodom and Go
morrah, Pel§e, The Revelation. And then — but never
mind what might happen then. What does happen is
that Field sits serenely smoking the while he peruses
the five-days-old newspaper brought by Bodie from
the house for our deUght ; the bell on the black mule
tinkles with a cracked, High-Church sound behind the
bush under which I lie ; the wind blows, the clouds
sail. Still, I remember that the wise man who, sadly
reversing thebetter order, became foolish, wrote before
the melancholy change that there was no new thing
under the sun (he might have said, or old either), and
that what had been would be again. So after all, who
knows? We had received friendly welcome to supper at the
ranch-house, and revelled again in stove bread, with
butter sweet and cool as primroses, steak of the juiciest,
lettuce of the crispest, onions the most seductive and
undeniable, and such a platter of potatoes as may
not often be seen upon this planet, towering in plump
spheroids of dazzling whiteness and discharging fra-
gfrant cumuli of steam that assailed the very ceiling.
The atmosphere abounded in taken-for-granted hos-

THE HIGH SIERRA 305
pitality and friendly badinage, in which certain leg
endary love-passages of Bodie were haled into the
light, he nothing loath although professing ignorance.
Later in the evening Field and I were summoned
from photographic labors to partake of — pineapple
sherbet I frozen with snow brought from the moun
tain peaks. Stumbling back to our camp thereafter
through the soft, warm darkness, we contemplated
with deep joy the prospect of a night sans mosquitoes,
and an extra hour of sleep, or of that pleasant semi
coma which refreshes the mental faculties even more,
in the morning.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE HIGH SIERRA: MONO TO GEM LAKE
PHYSIOLOGY and psychology meet in the border
land of dreams, and the onion is a potent and
treacherous vegetable. All night I walked precipices,
'scaped hair -breadth 'scapes, and glissaded down
league-long slopes of pineapple sherbet into sardine-
populated lakes ; and when the sun rose sudden and
red above the low Nevada mountains, I fortified my
self behind my knees and slowly returned to myself.
I remembered having once been awake and seen the
narrow waning moon swimming low down, like
an ancient galley -boat, in the early morning sky,
while a band of horses galloped and thundered
around me, neighing wildly over some nocturnal ex
citement. I remembered, too, that I had had a bad
headache. But a dip in the creek changed all that ;
and with shining morning faces we presented our
selves at the breakfast - table, ready for fresh im
prudences. During the morning Bodie and I drove over to the
store at the lake to lay in fresh supplies for the days
to come. One meets out-of-the-way characters, natu
rally, in out-of-the-way places. As we ploughed
along the dusty road we came up with a wagon and
team driven, as it appeared from the rear, by a stout.

THE HIGH SIERRA 307
grey-haired woman, wearing a man's soft felt hat.
Her knot of greasy hair wagged with the wag of the
conveyance upon a villainously dirty yellow neck-
wrapper, and her broad back somehow expressed an
ignominious and abominable complacency. As we
passed the wagon we found that the driver was a
man, with a swarthy, clean-shaven countenance of
the fakir type. The swarthiness was principally the
result of dirt, and I use the term clean-shaven as ap
plying to the manner of shaving, and having no
reference to real cleanliness.
A hundred yards ahead we passed another wagon,
driven by an older man, less completely obnoxious,
perhaps, in feature and person, but of a truculent
and bullying aspect. The two " outfits " seemed to
bear a sneaking relation, though there was nothing
that could be said actually to indicate any connection
between them.
I found that the sentiments of repugnance aroused
in me by the men were strongly shared by Bodie.
On my asking for a diagnosis, he unhesitatingly
classified them as " wagon - tramps," a profession
whose name was new to me, but of whom he averred
the existence of a large fraternity, well organized for
purposes of mutual aid and protection in the practice
of their calling. This consists in thieving in the
grand larceny manner. Where your foot-tramp ven
tures to pick up a bridle, the wagon variety boldly
steals the horse: where the smaller rascal demands
the housewife's pies and coffee, this comparative de-

3o8 YOSEMITE TRAILS
gree appropriates half-a-dozen sacks of barley from
the barn.
"The woods is full of them," Bodie poetically
complained, " Aong about March or April, spring
anyway, these skates start out with their wagons.
They just keep moving along, moving along, beat
ing their way ; always fat and hearty, never paying
for nothing they can steal, and that's pretty near
everything they want. See that dirty, long-haired
blatherskite behind there : ever see a feller of that
pattern farm? keep store? work honest with his
hands ? No, sir, not with that hair and hide. Say,
them cattle ought to be roped on sight and the hose
turned on 'em, or the crick, and the hair clipped off
'em way down to their teeth. And I 'd like to handle
the shears, I would." Thus honest Bodie ; and I fully
agreed, though with a reservation as to the last
article. It was a weird yet fascinating land through which
we drove. Mono Lake and the region surrounding
it are unique within the United States. Here, at an
elevation of sixty-four hundred feet, is a body of
water eighty or ninety square miles in extent, highly
mineralized with the alkalines, borax and soda. Many
streams from the mountains pour into it great quan
tities of pure fresh water, but without mitigating in
any degree its peculiar quality. It is a veritable Dead
Sea. No fish nor reptile inhabits it, nor does any
wandering bird or animal come to its margin to
drink its bitter waters. The shores are whitened with

THE HIGH SIERRA 309
alkaline incrustations, and the branches and twigs
of dead trees that rise above the surface are petrified
to the semblance of bone.
The lake was anciently of much larger extent, and
the old shore-lines are still plainly marked upon the
higher ground, the highest one that is clearly distin
guishable being nearly seven hundred feet above the
present level of the water. Two islands and a num
ber of islets lie out in the middle of the lake. The
largest, Paoha or Herman Island, is about two miles
long by one and a half wide. It is largely made up
of volcanic ashes, and hot water and steam issue
from a number of vents at the southern end of the
island, hard by where rises a spring of fresh cold
water. The smaller island is purely volcanic, of black
basalt, with a crater of three hundred feet height.
On the principal island indications of oil have
recently been found, and the inevitable derrick is al
ready in evidence, with millionaires, diamonds, Paris,
and divorce courts looming in the mental back
ground. It did not enhance for me the attractiveness either
of the lake itself or of the Indians of the locality to
learn that these latter subsist in part upon the larvae
of a fly which breeds in this blighted water. The
larvae are washed up at a certain season on the
shore in such quantities as to form, I am told, heaps
and windrows two or three feet in height. Lo, the
omnivorous, has discovered a weird gusto in this
unholy edible, which he dries in the plentiful sun

3IO YOSEMITE TRAILS
and then grinds to a powder which he denominates
cuchaba, and mingles with his flour of acorns and
other heterogeneous aliment.
To the south of the lake stands the range of dead
volcanoes, grey and menacing, their sides covered
with powdery ashes mixed with pumice and obsidian.
Even these forbidding slopes some varieties of plants,
and even trees, contrive to inhabit. The highest of
the volcanic peaks rises twenty-seven hundred feet
above the plain. Facing them on the west rise in
strongest contrast the splendid peaks of the Sierra,
laced with joyful streams, spangled with lakes, and
glorious with forests : life against death ; water against
fire ; beauty for ashes.
The road was deep in sand, merging into inter
minable wastes of sage and greasewood brush. Rab
bits and doves abounded. Here and there lay huge
isolated tufae, covered with ugly blisters, knobs, and
corrugations. One of them that was near a settier's
cabin had been ingeniously converted into a storage-
room, or it might even be called a house, for it was
nearly as big as the cabin. The inside had been
hoUowed out and a door fitted to the aperture. It
resembled an enormous mouldy chocolate-cream,
and would have been a handsome dwelling for Dio
genes. On the hillsides grew scattered trees, mostiy a new
variety of pine, the monophylla, single - leafed, or
pinon pine, from which the Indians gather great
crops of those sjnall edible nuts which I have ob-

THE HIGH SIERRA 3"
served in frait-stores waiting long for purchasers. It
is a useful-looking, bushy little tree, thickly foUaged
with greyish-green needles. The cones are small and
compact, and by no means generous in appearance ;
but they are fiUed with large seeds which form al
most the staff of life of the Indians of the region.
The post-office for this locality bears the appropri
ate name of Crater. I was expecting to receive let
ters there, and found Uncle Sam established in a
rather pitiable little shack of a house, the only one
for a mile or more in every direction. He was a
genial soul, however, and discoursed with us in
friendly wise, while he sorted out my mail, upon such
matters as should be of universal interest : as, the
price alfalfa hay was fetching over to the San Joaquin ;
and, had Bodie " heerd how was Jedge Dickerman's
bay mare as had cut herself to slithers on a ba'b-wire
fence down to Bishop ? " Further, he opined that
Mono must look good to us after what he called,
with a probably unconscious Biblical allusion, " them
etarnal mountins." In this Arcadian post-office one
mails one's letters in the bureau drawer, and from
the excitement aroused by my request for a five-cent
stamp I gather that they are regarded as philatelic
rarities of high finance.
There are one or two littie settlements along the
lake-side, situated naturally at the points where
streams from the mountains enter the lake. These
hamlets are quite idyllic spots, riotously verdant,
with neat houses and every appearance of modest

312 YOSEMITE TRAILS
prosperity. Thickets of wild rose six feet high, and
heavy crops of alfalfa, clover, and timothy give proof
of the magical effect of water upon this otherwise
dreary desert. Yet to me there seemed always some
thing menacing in the neighborhood of that blue,
sinister lake, like the inscrutable smile of a poisoner.
By the roadside an Indian woman was sitting, sur
rounded by children, dogs, pots, gunny-sacks, and
ashes. To my enquiry whether she had baskets for
sale she replied briefly, " No makeum basket," and
closed the incipient transaction.
While we attended to our business at the store,
which is also a saloon, there entered our two sup
posed wagon-tramps, bearing demijohns and other
accoutrements proper to bibulous travellers. These
and themselves they proceeded with a businesslike
air to fiU with strong liquors, and after haunting the
"stoop" for a few minutes in a furtive manner,
climbed into their respective rigs and passed upon
their way. I did not grieve that ours lay in the op
posite direction.
Next morning I awoke at half-past three, and lay
luxuriously smeUing the morning scents and watch
ing the dawn. I might have been in Syria or Egypt.
A long narrow line of burning desert red ran along
the low east, shading suddenly into the ultra-blue of
the night sky, hardly yet lightening to the day. The
moon and the morning-star shone together, clear and
earnest, with a few other stars of the greatest magni
tude still beaming in the zenith. It was almost the-

THE HIGH SIERRA 313
atricaUy scenic, but for the heavenly largeness and
purity of the air, and the low cool blowing of the
dawn-wind. I saw the Pyramids, and the Sphinx,
and the Flight into Egypt. Then I got up and re
versed my bedding, and lay down again to revel in
the phantasmagoria of the high mountain wall to the
west, turning from night dimness to shadowy grey,
then flushing and burning to red, redder and yet red
der, as the level arrows of the sun began to stream
between the peaks of the distant Nevada ranges.
And when the flashing disk came soaring up, and
turned his shrivelling rays upon our bivouac, I sighed
to think of that long, toilsome climb back to the
High Sierra levels, which lay before us.
Leaving the hospitable Farringtons with kindly
farewells, and little dreaming how soon and how
strangely the charming young daughter of the house,
whose brightness and gaiety bloomed like a rare
flower in that sequestered spot, was to be summoned
away, we took the road to the south. It passed at
first through a long valley meadow, with the living
snowy mountains on one hand and the dead grey
ones on the other. Behind lay Mono Lake, flicker
ing mirage -like under the desert sun. Swallows,
most beloved of birds, skimmed joyously over the
pastures, and meadow-larks bubbled and blackbirds
chirruped from every fence-rail.
After a mile or so we left the road for a trail that
struck more westerly, and were soon skirting the
grey, sage-covered foothills. Then the pines met us,

314 YOSEMITE TRAILS
their long picket-lines thrown bravely out far into
the enemy's country. Parker Peak and Mount Wood,
straight ahead, towered up magnificently, soUdly
snow-covered for half their height. These mountains
form a noble gateway to Parker Pass, the next pass
to the southward of the one by which we had crossed
the range.
A handsome stream. Rush Creek, came pouring
down, clear and arrowy. We were to keep it com
pany for some days, and excellent company it proved
to be. I do not know a more attractive stream in the
Sierra. Even here on the lower levels it flowed full
and strong and whole-hearted, and I wished that its
fate had been rather to sink away into the desert
sand than to merge and stifle in that dreary lake.
Crossing a slight rise we came unexpectedly upon
Grant Lake, lying unlakelike among rolling, sage-
covered hills, but with fine snow-clad mountains be
yond to the south and west. A little square cabin
stands by the shore, half lost among the tangle of
brush and boulders. The door was open, and I went
inside. There were tokens of recent habitation in the
new ashes on the hearth, though furniture there was
none except two plank shelves attached to the wall.
The fireplace was a quaint concern, built of slabs of
rock set between natural rough posts of wood. The
little habitation might have been transplanted bodily
from the plains of Langnedoc.
The lake shades off at its southern end into a wide
swamp of tules, bordered by a meadow of waving

RUSH CREEK AND THLjp.

^Bli

E CREST OF THE SIERRA

THE HIGH SIERRA 315
grasses mixed with wild roses, iris, and many other
flowers. A solitary sandhill-crane stood among the
twinkling shallows of the lake-end, philosophically
waiting, secure that his own should come to him.
The crane seems to be a bird of admirable patience
and quite gigantic leisure.
Grant Lake is altogether a pleasing and peaceful
spot, with a quiet, unexciting beauty of its own. Pass
ing down the meadow where a bunch of portly cattie
were grazing, or, having grazed, were considering the
possibility of grazing again, the trail wound among
sandy flats where grew myriads of the thistle-poppy
{Argemone), mixed with the common low-growing
thistle. The creek accompanied us in a friendly man
ner, running with a smooth, swift flow between banks
lined with quiet willows and whispering aspens. As
we began to rise more steeply the sage-brush ended,
unregretted, and the pines received us once more into
their illustrious kingdom.
Conversation flagged somewhat. I think that in
my own case this was due to a feeling of regret that
we were now inward-bound, complicated possibly with
a slight indigestion. Bodie's voice reached me occa
sionally, rebuking Jack, who insisted upon marching
alongside instead of in the trail, and some twenty feet
away, as if he were an officer. This preference resulted
frequentiy in his encountering some impediment which
his obstinacy would not brook to evade but urged him
to push through, with disastrous effects upon his pack.
When the barrier was plainly impassable his habit

3i6 YOSEMITE TRAILS
was to turn round three times, as if he worked on a
pivot, and then stand looking at us with a coldly in
different air which implied, "I don't care; you've got
to get me out ; and I 'm going to do it again, too."
A grove of unusually large aspens merged sud
denly into pines and junipers as the trail entered a
narrow canon, with rugged mountains closing around
us. After a mile or two the canon opened to another
irised meadow where a cascade foamed down a side-
caiion ; and half a mile farther we could see the whole
river pouring wildly down the western mountain-side
in a broad scarf to enter Silver Lake.
This lake lies under a fine craggy mountain, whose
steep gullies were laced with snow almost to the water.
It appears to be visited by a good many people from
this eastern side, being easily accessible (it lies at
seventy-two hundred feet of elevation), and a nota
ble fishing ground. At the lower end were two or
three tents, and on the lake was a boat from which
two anglers were industriously casting. We sought
a camp-ground at the upper end, and with some diffi
culty found a few square yards of level on the river-
bank above the lake and close to the foot of the fall,
which provided an eloquent background of sound
for the meditations which an early camp and inspir
ing surroundings invited.
The mountains were sombre, rugged, and finely
turreted. On the eastern side of the lake they plunged
in precipices almost to the water's edge ; to south and
west they were equally imposing and rose in cliffs

THE HIGH SIERRA 317
of uncompromising verticality for three thousand
feet. While Field photographed and Bodie succumbed
to a siesta, I fished the stream with good success.
The trout rose well to both fly and spoon, and were
of good size and mettle. Bodie had recounted to
me legends of trout of two feet length and over, and
that such magnificoes do navigate the deep, still
waters of this lake I see no reason to doubt. More
over, the flesh of these trout is salmon-red, as becomes
a lordlier race, and is of surpassing flavor, as we all
agreed at breakfast next morning.
When I returned to camp I found it pervaded by a
novel and grateful odor which proceeded from the
sinkienon. I cautiously raised the lid, and beheld a
semi-liquid conglomerate of ruddy or saffron hue,
such as I have seen in the unlawful flesh-pots of
wandering Egyptians. It was a " mulligan," long-
expected, come at last ; and as we ate we blessed once
more the kindly hostess of Farrington's, and came
and came again.
When we turned in, a south wind was blowing
strongly, with a scent of rain in it, whereat I some
what rejoiced. Thus far the whole trip had been made
in sunny weather except for two or three spasmodic
thunder-showers; and I longed for a day or two of
storm, or at least of cloud, so that wild scenery might
receive the enhancement of wild weather.
I awoke to a glorious cloudy morning. Lowering
vapors were lighted redly on their fringes by a sun

3i8 YOSEMITE TRAILS
that struggled to raise an excited countenance above
the opposite wall of mountains. Hardly an hour
ahead of him the littie thin moon was slipping
through the wrack as if she thought herself pursued.
Evening primroses, like other moons, gazed mildly
down at me as I lay and watched the changes oi the
sky reflected in the smooth-flowing river six feet
away. The wind had ceased, and even the aspens
stirred not a leaf.
By seven o'clock we were on the trail. It led at
first up the steep face of the western mountain,
among junipers and open brushwood, and close be
side the fall. The lake lay leaden grey among the
gloomy hills, and rain was already falling from the
eastern clouds. The wind had risen again, and
boomed softly in our ears, mingling with the rush
and roar of the fall. It was a morning full of half
tone poetry and clear but not acute sensations. I
wonder whether I am singular in finding myself, as
I always do, ten times as much alive on a soft grey
day, or even on a hard grey one, as on a sunny
blue one. If, I thought, I were a poet, or a painter,
now, now I could do great work.
And then came the blessed rain, driving down,
driving down. Ah, welcome, welcome I O wild, free
spirit of my beloved Cumberland mountains, I feel
thee near ! O friends, long departed, with whom I
knew them, ye are near, too ! Now, see, far off the
sun is pouring down a grey-gold flood of light upon
some lonely lake, — I see it by an inward sense ; nay.

THE HIGH SIERRA 319
I am there. How still it is, and holy : the vision of a
vision. We rounded the head of the fall in a wild amphi
theatre of castied cliffs that poured off into vast
slopes of screes. A few junipers huddled on the
rocky ledges. The rain streamed fervently down.
Our animals scrambled and staggered upwards with
bitter complaints, but mercy there was none. As we
reached the crest the wind rushed heavily against us
in angry surges as though it would sweep us over
the cliff, and flung the stinging rain and hail level in
our faces. Wild water, wild sky, wild earth, wild air,
— it was superb, the pure - drawn joy of life. And
here, in the neck of the pass, lay Lake Agnew, darkly,
wildly beautiful. High mountains closed it in ; at its
head a long white torrent thundered down over black
ledges of slate ; and over all crouched a sky shred
ded into grey rain. Ever and anon the wind swooped
screaming'down, and the littie lake seemed to shrink
and shiver like a terrified child.
At the head of the long cascade yet another lake
let was hidden, with rocky islets breaking its surface.
This connected with still another, lying under a black
precipice, and surrounded with huddled clumps of
tamarack. Opening from this is a larger lake with a
magnificent snowy peak showing beyond it to the
west. It was Gem Lake, and the great mountain was
Lyell, king of the middle Sierra.
The trail ran high above the water around the
northern end of the lake before it dropped to a small

320 YOSEMITE TRAILS
meadow at the western end. Huge junipers were
scattered along the cliff ledges, many of them mere
skeletons, white and polished to the bone by the
storms of many centuries. At this altitude of nine
thousand feet winter reigns and rages for half the
year; and the weird brothers stand grappling the
rock with literal death-grips, their aged arms stream
ing out with horrified gestures, as if they would fight
off the grisly enemy to the last.
By a rocky point where a few clustered pines
made a shade which, however unnecessary to-day,
might be grateful to-morrow (which would be Sun
day), we pitched camp. Bodie, good man, rejoicing
in abundant pasturage for his beasts, opened the
grab packs with alacrity, and, outdoing himself in
despatch, quickly hailed us to a majestic steak, re
plete with the juices of Mono's best herbage.
The evening was mild, threatening more rain. I
set fire to a sizable log that lay on the shore, and
sat for an hour or two listening to the pleasant mono
logue of the lake. The wind, which had ceased about
sundown, now rose again, and sent the ripples first
whispering and then chattering up on the little beach.
The sky was overcast, and occasional drops of rain
fell hissing into the fire, which throbbed and roared
like a blacksmith's forge under the heavy swirls of
wind. The sparks blew out in a steady stream over
the black water. It was a fine, hearty end to a splen
did day, and I brought my blankets down from
camp and spread them close to the water's edge, so

PSU

a

>•
l-lH

THE HIGH SIERRA 321
that I could easily lift up and see what might be going
forward in the way of weather or scenery if I should
chance to awake during the night.
As it happened there was a good deal going on
in the way of weather. I might have slept an hour
or two when I awoke to find the rain pouring down
heavily, and distant thunder rumbling in the south.
Pulling up an extra canvas over my head I lay and
listened for a while to the tattoo of the rain and the
muffled growling of the thunder ; then gradually I
dozed off once more. A terrific burst of thunder right
overhead awoke me again, followed by others that
roared and crackled all around the lake. I almost
seemed to see the shattering impact of the sound
waves as they broke against that black precipice, as
I have seen great breakers burst on a stormy coast
and rash wildly up the face of some high cliff.
The rain poured steadily down, and I retreated
further into my fastness, in present comfort but with
some anxiety as to how long it was going to last. I
was fearful of damage, moreover, to our photographic
properties, which were not protected against such
heavy rain ; but I was a hundred yards away from
camp, and the prospect of a dash through rocks,
darkness, and a deluge was depressing. So I lay and
suffocated myself into a state of coma, in which I was
dimly aware of the tumult without and of a small
but determined stream of water trickling down the
bed within. I sleepily followed its course with my
mind's eye, like a demonstration of the elements of

322 YOSEMITE TRAILS
hydraulics, observing how it slowly filled the hollows
and ran rapidly down little canons, intent upon find
ing its level, which coincided with the position of my
feet. When next I awoke there was no sound of rain,
and I could see grey light marking the squares of
my plaid blanket. Molishly emerging I beheld a sod
den earth, a scowling sky, and Field, driven untimely
from his soaking bed, standing like a fire-worshipper
on the highest coign of the adjacent rocks, eager to
embrace the first rays of a melancholy sun.
Breakfast put a better face upon matters, and a
warmer sun allowed us to dry our clothes and bed
ding, though much after the fashion of Irish haymak
ing, dashing in and out between showers of rain and
hail that kept dropping upon us as soon as ever we
spread them out.
Wandering up the course of the stream in the af
ternoon, I encountered a shepherd with his band of
innocents. I had seen yesterday with some surprise
a cloud of dust rising from a shoulder of the moun
tain a mile or two to the north, and after much cogi
tation had decided that it must be caused by a land
slide. Later in the evening, however, I had heard,
borne on the wind, the deep loom, toom, of the great
French sheep-bell, and knew that the dust that had
puzzled me marked the passage of a band of those
" hoofed locusts " (as Mr. Muir calls the unconscious
devastators), which, denied entrance into the Na
tional Park, range all summer about the eastern
flank of the Sierra. These animals seem to have a

THE HIGH SIERRA 323
ventriloquial quality of voice that disguises their
exact locality, and the first notice I had of their near
approach was the barking of the two dogs as they
caught sight of me and rushed to the attack. One
of them was a superb collie of an unusual silver-grey
color and of great size ; the other a composite canine,
simply a dog. I was not sorry to hear the voice of
their master crying, "A bas, Roland! Suzette!"
The shepherd was a pastoral-looking youth, French,
blue-eyed, with a pleasant slow smile and a langfuage
mixed of his native tongue, English, and Spanish.
With his wide-brimmed hat and sauntering, country
air, he would have made a pretty Silvius if fitted out
with a beribboned crook in place of the stout cudgel
he carried, with which he mechanically thumped the
log of fallen timber across which we conversed.
" It was rain the night that is pass6, ver mooch
rain." "But yes, it is certain: and we got wet. And
you?" " Ma foi, yes, m'sieu'. Sacre ! quel tonnerre I quel
6clair! quelle pluie! I was — how you say? — droon,
moi." " It is said that to drown is not unpleasant," I ven
tured. " Eh, bien, to me I do not like it. It wets."
" It is trae. Think you the rain is over?"
"Quien sabe, senor?" And after some further de
bate, and with gesticulations of profound considera
tion, we parted.

324 YOSEMITE TRAILS
It is a strange life that these wandering shepherds
lead. In the spring they leave the vaUeys with their
flocks, a couple of dogs, and a burro loaded with
simple provisions, among which is sure to be in
cluded one of the great round cheeses made by lov
ing hands of mother or sister in dear France, and
brought or sent to console the absent Jacques or Ar-
mand in his exile. For half the year they wander
from valley to mountain and from canon to meadow,
in and out and up and down, each night gathering
their slow-moving flocks around them, and camping
patriarchaUy with their faithful lieutenants, a true de
mocracy of labor. The only sounds they hear, beside
the great monologue of Nature herself, are the ever
lasting conversations of the sheep, the bark of their
dogs, and the deep boom of the sheep-bell.
The bells, like the cheeses, are characteristic ; —
solid, old-world things compounded of steel and sil
ver, and often curiously ornamented. Their tone,
whUe it is of great carrying power, is musical and
mUdly melancholy. Often, too, the herders carry
with them some beloved instrument, — flute, or ac
cordion, or even violin ; and you may chance to hear,
in some lost canon or by some lonely lake, the Mar
seillaise, or some wildly sweet Provencal air, played
with a fervor of love and longing that exceeds the
utmost of skiU.
Near by our camp was a heap of stones that sup
ported a rough cross, made of straight pieces of pine-
bough fastened loosely with baling-wire. This hum-

THE HIGH SIERRA 325
ble monument marks the grave of a solitary who
came years ago to this high and lonely spot, seeking
to evade arrest by the grim sergeant. But the hand
was on his shoulder, and here he died. Through the
short summer the birds whistle and the grasses wave,
and all the long winter the sUent snow falls and the
storm whirls, over his place of rest. I noticed that a
few wild forget-me-nots were blooming among the
stones of this tiny cemetery. Some friendly angel
may have planted them there, out of pity and such
strange sorrow as angels may feel.
The evening clouds were remarkably beautiful, of
golden-rose, smoky greys and purples, and greenish
yellows, with a further background of dull, thundery
blue. Again I sat late by the ruddy fire. It was
pleasant, drawing toward the end of my Sierra wan
derings, to think how many of these friendly pines
and hemlocks had been reddened by my camp-fires.
And will be again ? Quien sabe ? as Armand says.
But the little black wavelets plashing on the beach
keep saying again and again. Yes, yes ; — yes, yes ;
— yes, yes. So be it, with all my heart.
A few showers fell again during the night, but we
had rigged up a shelter, and Field and I were only
aware of them to the extent of turning over, smiling
comfortably, and going to sleep again. Bodie, who
had declared that there would be no more rain, suf
fered the fate of the prophet who is rash enough to
back his opinion to the length of acting upon it.

CHAPTER XIX
THE HIGH SIERRA: GEM LAKE TO THE
LITTLE YOSEMITE
THE moming dawned propitiously for a move
over the Donohue Pass to the Lyell Fork ; but
while we were in the act of packing, clouds again
came driving up from the south ; the mountains be
came grey and veiled ; and in a few minutes rain
was falling heavily. For myself, I wanted nothing
better than a long rainy day in such a spot. Promptly
unpacking, we raised our canvas shelter, and, seated
on our bedding roUs, settied down to enjoy ourselves
with the virtuous feeling of having been willing to be
energetic but denied the opportunity.
It was very, very lovely. The lake was silent, drift
ing toward me and meeting the grey margin with a
mysterious soundlessness. A solitary water-bird flew
with sharp, curving wings over the water, and the
sound of the creek running into the lake beyond the
stony point, where the ripples spread in shining arcs,
was mixed with its own echoes. The clouds gathered
and parted, ever pouring up from beyond the south
ern mountains. Is there no end, dark angels? On
the soft wet green of the hills sudden shifting gleams
were cast from a sky broken by wan, troubled lights.

THE HIGH SIERRA 327
Black slate glistened on the mountain-sides, and the
long screes plunged into the water in purple ava
lanches. It was Scotiand or Dartmoor.
The tamaracks' dark foliage glowed unwontedly
bright against the sodden black of their bark, and
the little tufts of alpine phlox growing matted among
the upturned slates waited with half-opened blossoms
in patient shyness. Lichens and mosses, yellow, grey-
green, and Indian red, touched the cold stones with
disks of strongest color. The red twigs and sallow
leafage of the willows twinkled with diamond lights
when a beam of pallid sunlight struck athwart them.
Where a two-minute shower fell between me and the
hazy sun, a silent dance came on the surface of the
lake, like the short second movement of the Moon
light Sonata, and beginning and ending as suddenly.
On the wet wind came the distant sound of the sheep-
bell and the far-off, dreamy cry of the sheep. I could
see them streaming endlessly over a pine-clad shoul
der of the mountain half-a-mile away, making to the
next valley.
The weather clearing somewhat by the middle of
the moming, we packed again and started for the
pass, leaving the lake and its lonely grave desolate
under brooding clouds. Farewell, unknown friend;
sometimes I shall revisit in memory your quiet place
of rest. Farewell ! farewell 1
We now started westward through tamarack for
est, foUowing generally the course of the stream.
Rising rapidly, and skirting two or three lakelets, we

328 YOSEMITE TRAILS
entered a wUd and rocky gorge. The trail, poorly
blazed and showing no sign of having been travelled
that year, taxed all Bodie's traU-craft to follow it. As
we reached the first divide a glorious sight burst upon
us. Right ahead rose Mount LyeU and his fellows, —
McClure, Ritter, Kellogg, Banner, and half-a-score
beside of the giants of the range, more clustered and
heaped together than at any other point of the whole
chain. Over the majestic prospect was poured a tu
mult of light and shade that raised it from a land
scape to a pageant.
The storm-clouds that wrapped the peaks revealed
every moment, as they changed and parted, black
crags and high-flung summits, or snow-fields massed
in unbroken sheets of gleaming white. The unusual
quietude of the river, which here, moving through
level meadows, reflected the mountains in its dark
waters, enhanced the dreamlike feeling of the place ;
and the silence, in contrast with the impetuous move
ment of the clouds, seemed a fine summary of the
eloquence and power of Nature.
At this spot it began again to rain upon us, and
the immediate prospects were for more. So we went
early into camp beside the creek, rather than cross
the pass in the face of a possible heavy storm, which
at nearly eleven thousand feet might prove a severe
experience. We had heard at Mono that a party of
people who had tried to cross a few days before had
been forced to abandon the attempt through stress
of weather and the difficulty of crossing the treach-

THE HIGH SIERRA 329
erous snow. Thunder boomed among the peaks and
the rain thrashed down in staggering drifts, setting a
thousand rills coursing among the channels of the
granite. Bodie somehow accomplished a loaf of bread,
under circumstances which he truly said " gave him
no show " ; and we sat snugly dining, smoking, and
congratulating ourselves under our improvised shel
ter. The afternoon passed in alternate rain and clear,
but without any glimpse of the sun. It was dismally
cold. The mountains changed and changed, from
glorious gloom to gloomy glory ; the river swirled
and roared along; and the clouds trooped sullenly
past, like that line of kings that frighted Macbeth.
By evening the weather cleared, and I wandered
in the gathering dusk about the neighborhood of our
camp, smelling the vigorous piny essences poured
out from rain-soaked bark and foliage, and feeling
the thrill of intense life in the hardy dwarf pines and
tamaracks. I am constantly surprised, in spite of
experience, at the flowery and luxuriant vegetation
which one meets in these high places. Exploring up
a littie creek that entered the main stream beside the
camp, I found myself among cyclamens, columbines,
daisies of wonderful size, and many other delicate and
beautiful flowers, growing with long waving grasses
in gardens set among a tumble of granite boulders.
Here, at the end of July, a Californian would think
himself in April or May. It is like the quick summer
of Arctic latitudes, sudden, vivid, and brief. It is

330 YOSEMITE TRAILS
hardly a month since winter ended, and six weeks
hence the snows may again be falling. A few miles
away, and but two or three thousand feet above, are
glaciers, and snow-drifts fifty feet deep. (Bodie says
a hundred, and perhaps one may as well guess gen
erously ; it is stimulating and yet harmless, which is
unusual.) Even the sturdy dwarf pines hereabout are
close upon their last straggling verge. Yet in this
little sheltered caiion early summer is in fuU career,
rank and riotous.
It is this pecuUarity which gives to the High Sierra
its most unique charm. It may be that in the Hima
layas, or the Mountains of the Moon, or some other
such place of legendary import to most of us, the
same condition might be met with ; but it is a constant
delight and surprise to encounter this rare conjunc
tion in our own friendly mountains.
The next morning dawned heavy and rainy-look
ing, with the fiery sunrise that an old rhyme, by
which I used to divine the weather prospects of school
holidays, declares to be the shepherd's warning.
However, by the time breakfast was over it looked
more promising, so we hurriedly packed and started
for the pass. The trail here is the mere ghost of a
track, the shadow of a shade, and Bodie, who had
covered the ground before, took the lead. A perpen
dicular ridge pinnacled with seven sharp spires shot
up superbly on our right, and I passed it with regret;
but in view of the weather, time was just now an im
portant consideration, and the snowy monsters ahead,

THE HIGH SIERRA 331
growing every moment nearer, consoled me, and we
pushed rapidly forward.
The way led alternately through masses of piled
and shattered granite and brilliant little meadow-
patches, sparkling with rain and starred with hosts
of flowers. At last the sun shone weakly, but we re
joiced with trembling, for July here is as changeful as
April on the plains. Over broad areas of glacial rock,
strewn with boulders and laced with gushes of snow
water, we picked our way with the precarious aid of
so-caUed monuments, hardly discernible in the gen
eral wreck and shatter.
We were here at timber-line, where only the dwarf
pines, tough as whip-cord, can endure the winter's
rage, and even they are beaten and felted down into
mere rags that spread horizontally a foot or so above
the ground. The flowers that grow in these highest
meadows are astonishingly rich in color. Lupines of
the bluest, and daisies of a deep lavender approach
ing purple, mingle with glistening buttercups, and
castUleias of scarlet at its highest power. I have hith
erto refrained from mentioning the last-named flower
(generally caUed Indian paint -brash), having con
ceived something of an aversion to it at the outset.
Its construction is peculiar and unflowerlike, and it
is somehow uncongenial to me ; while the astonish
ing profusion of the plant, which accompanied us
everywhere in our wanderings, high and low, irritated
me with a sense of almost persecution. But I am
compelled at last to do justice to its color-power, in

332 YOSEMITE TRAILS
which regard it outdoes even the geranium and nas
turtium. It was here of a red so fierce and refulgent
as to really require a new word to express it. The red
poppy is a pale invalid beside this roistering gypsy.
It pours out color, throbs with it, seems to shed it off
like something palpable ; and I can imagine that an
essence or sublimation, too fine for our senses to
perceive, goes up from each of these myriad blos
soms which could be kindled into flame, — the es
sential, elemental Red.
Passing through a turfy valley, where the stream
widened into still pools, clear as air, we were in full
view of the great cluster of mountains known as the
LyeU group. A solemn and magnificent company
they were, and I felt much as if I looked upon a gath
ering of the kings and emperors of olden history, —
Charlemagne, the Great Rameses, the greatest of the
Caesars, Alexander, Sardanapalus. Farthest to the
south one splendid peak ran up in a steep, swinging
curve that, as the eye followed it, seemed to over
balance, like a toppling volcano. It was Black Ritter.
Close behind us stood the seven-pinnacled ridge,
and to the right, knife-like edges of granite gleamed
hard and clear against a darker sky. On every side
there was nothing but rock, water, snow, and sky,
nothing but the wUd, savage, stern.
A long expanse of soaking bog kept my eyes un-
wUUngly on the ground. It required the greatest
care to find safe footing for the animals, especially
the pack-mules and burros. Nothing is so demoral-

THE HIGH SIERRA 333
izing to a pack-animal as a stretch of boggy country,
with its risk of miring down, and a detour, however
wide, is apt to be the best of policy. With extraordi
nary squelchings and snortings we picked our way
through half-a-mile of the greenest of turf which
turned to blackest ooze at every step. The lovely
cassiope, somewhat rare in general, grew here in
abundance, but was not yet in flower ; nor was the
bryanthus, which two thousand feet lower down had
been withered for a month past.
MUe after mUe the trail climbed over barren gran
ite, sometimes hard and polished, sometimes disin
tegrated on the surface to a coarse sand as large in
grain as peas. At last we stood at the top of the Don
ohue Pass, at eleven thousand feet altitude. Below
and near us lay several smaU lakes, half frozen over,
into which snow-fields plunged steeply ; and crossing
a wide stretch of softened snow we rounded Mount
Lyell in full view of and close under the glacier
which lies as in a great shell all along the moun
tain's northern face. From the foot of the glacier the
water ran in a fair-sized creek, which, gathering force
from its rapid fall and the accretion of innumerable
rills, raced away northward to become the Lyell Fork
of the Tuolumne.
Bursts of dazzling sunshine alternated with gloomy
shadow as masses of cloud rolled up from the south.
The last tree-life was left behind. The arms of the
glacier ran up into the canons and draws of the moun
tain like surf of the ocean surging into a rocky bay.

334 YOSEMITE TRAILS
I felt a strong temptation to make at least a partial
exploration of the glacier; but the threatening weather
put it out of the question at the moment, and the
complete absence of forage for the animals forbade
our making camp in this wild spot. Reluctantiy I
turned my back upon Lyell for this time, with the
hope of revisiting the noble mountain another year
and making the ascent.
The trail from the Donohue Pass to the LyeU
Caiion offers the hardest piece of work that I know
of in this part of the mountains. In two mUes it drops
two thousand feet, and, being but little used, each
traveller finds its passage much the same thing as
breaking a trail through new country. The famous
Bloody Caiion Pass, by which we had gone over to
Mono Lake, is tame in comparison. We tumbled and
stumbled our way down somewhat recklessly ; but
by good fortune and good packing we made the de
scent without disaster, and by noon came, breathless
and perspiring violently, to the head of the remarka
bly long and level caiion which debouches ten miles
to the northwest at the Tuolumne Meadows.
The eastern wall of this canon is formed by the
long, barren ridge of Kuna Crest, under whose other
slope we had camped a week before. It here rose
in an unbroken rampart from the nine-thousand-foot
level of the canon to twelve thousand feet at the
ridge. The west wall is somewhat less high but
more broken and timbered. The river was already a
handsome stream, winding and looping about in a

THE HIGH SIERRA 335
manner suggestive of a deputy sheriff earning mUe-
age ; and the fords were sufficientiy wide, deep, and
rapid. Flowers of a score of kinds blossomed about us,
the castUleias in particular being of giant size and
astonishing brilliance of color. I notice that having
at last brought myself to speak of this plant, I am
beginning to find excellences in it hitherto unknown.
Probably it is often so ; half of our antipathies might
be likings if we would, and half of the rest mUd ap
preciations. Still, I do not really care for this flower,
any more than I should care for Carmen ; but I can
not refuse my admiration.
Steady travelling for several miles brought us to
the mouth of Ireland Creek, where we proposed to
take a new trail to the southwest over the Tuolumne |
Pass ; and we went into camp by mid-afternoon. The
stream looked ideally fishable, and Field and I rev
elled in the experience, new to both of us, and of
which I had felt doubts of the possibUity, of catching
trout by twos and threes, for there were candidates
for as many flies as we chose to put on our leaders.
Certainly the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne is the hea
ven of the not-too-skilful fisherman ; — as such, that
is to say ; for I must add that our trout-supper was
embittered by a constant skirmish with the mosqui
toes. They rushed upon us in such numbers and
with such diabolical audacity that I found it neces
sary to force a passage for each morsel as it ap
proached my mouth by gyratory manoeuvres with

*r.

336 YOSEMITE TRAILS
my left hand, and even then one or two grey imps,
I suspect, penetrated my guard and by an unwilling
act of justice were miserably incorporated with the
food they defiled.
Next morning we were once more climbing to the
high levels. Our new traU led up through a forest
of unusual density and stateliness, every opening in
which was sprinkled with flowers, from the colum
bine of high degree to the lowly but best-beloved
daisy. Giant lupines tumbled in big blue masses
across the traU, and bryanthus grew in rounded
bosses by every creek-side.
I was in the lead, and rode far ahead. The voices
of my companions were wafted to me from time to
time by the lazy forest breeze, usually in reprobation
of the pack-animals, but otherwise in snatches of
song attuned to a pensive minor key. It was one of
those blessed mornings of long silences, when the
trail is easy to keep and one's thoughts turn inward
and revolve upon themselves. One whistles, sotto
voce, smokes with a deeper peace, notes a million
things, infinitely small and precious, and receives
freely those little clairvoyances of the past which
shake the heart for the moment but leave it calmer.
Precipitation takes place rapidly, and the mind is
clear and cool like the wind. One praises God, but
only occasionally becomes aware of it. The golden
sUence sings in one's ears, and the inward symphony
goes quietly on. P., old fellow, K., old man, I wish
you were here ; not to talk to, just to commune with

THE HIGH SIERRA 337
at quarter-mile distances. Is that the wind, or the
river, booming softiy ten thousand mUes away ? or
can it be, in truth, cosmic sound, the very sound of
the earth ? It might be, it might be.
Two hours had brought us again to timber-line, at
between ten and eleven thousand feet. The view
opened upon a boulder-strewn plateau rising in ter
races to the summit of the divide, where we stood
completely encircled by the mountains, with Lyell
and McClure to the southeast. The glare of the sun
on snow and rock was blinding, and we hastened on
to where the low and matted dwarf pines offered
some relief to the eyes. I cannot conceive of a more
luxurious bed than one of these rugs of Pinus albi
caulis would make. Beaten and flattened by snow
and clipped by the wind as if by a mower, they are
so thick and close and springy that they hardly yield
to one's weight. The rich, resinous smell of them
rises like a spirit. It would be worth whUe coming
to camp at this altitude just to sleep on such a bed.
Crossing the divide, a lakelet lay under a snowy
ridge, which we skirted, and continued over a wide
stretch of granite pavement. The scene here is wild
enough to satisfy the most exacting taste for the sav
age and desolate ; bare rock, terrified trees, air, and
sky, these make up the whole prospect. Another and
larger lake lay near the top of the pass, the crisp
purple ripples travelling steadUy across its surface
with that unceasing but soundless motion which is
one of the most attractive actions of Nature.

338 YOSEMITE TRAILS
As I rode across a small meadow my attention was
caught by what was to me a phenomenon in natural
history, — a green butterfly, grass green from head
to foot. I know nothing of entomology, to speak of :
such insects may be common enough ; but I am sure
that I never encountered one before. I reined up and
pondered. Was I missing the chance of my unen-
tomological life ? Was this some hitherto unknown
species that should be captured at all hazards, and
that would convey me safely down to posterity with
a Latin termination? But while I debated he flew
down the mountain and was gone, "and," as Bunyan
says, " I saw him no more."
The trail here debouched into a broader meadow,
scattered with slabs and boulders of granite, and with
a circular lake lying close under a precipitous moun
tain with snow-drifts creeping in its gorges down to
the water's edge. To the north rose high peaks, the
crests and ridges finely broken and piled in fantastic
masses. Westward the view was bounded by tim
bered ridges fading into the distance, where the Yo
semite gorge lay hidden. It was a delightful spot,
wUd, spacious and lonely ; a blue, rippling lake with
the purest of snow-water rushing into it in cataracts,
snowy themselves, over gleaming rocks ; cliffs scored
black with shadow, white with snow, a fitting home
for eagles ; a wind as free and bold as the eagle, too ;
a meadow flowery and heathery to delight; and to
crown aU, sky scenery that day which was truly
majestic in color, line, and motion.

THE HIGH SIERRA 339
My mind was exercising itself with conjectures as
to the reason for the name of this peak and the lake
lying under it, — Vogelsang. I was on the point of
giving up the riddle when the strident voice of the
Clarke crow, almost the only bird that inhabits these
highest solitudes, gave me a clue, and I perceived
that a spirit of irony had suggested the name.
Crossing the small creek that carries the water from
this lake, we turned southward over a divide among
a vast wreckage of debris. Far to the west could be
seen the top of a huge split mountain ; there was
no mistaking that strangest of mountain shapes, the
Half-Dome. Another lake lay close on the left, and
a deep snow-bank ahead. Skirting these we crossed
the head of the Tuolumne Pass at 10,700 feet, among
a wild conglomeration of toppling, tottering, stagger
ing rock-shapes piled against a sky across which
great clouds were momentarily hurtling.
We were on the main line of watershed of this part
of the Sierra. To the north a hundred streams ran
toward the deep gorge of the Tuolumne, while south
ward all drained to the Merced and the San Joaquin.
The outlook here again was superb. To the west that
fine group of mountains of which Clark is the centre
lay under a brooding sky. In the near south and east
rose the great barrier which sweeps up to Mounts
Florence, Lyell, and McClure. On a shelf of this wall
of mountains lay a strangely beautiful lake. Broad
snow-fields swept gloriously into it on the south : a
fringe of torn pines drew around its northern and

340 YOSEMITE TRAILS
western margins. It was my ideal lake, and I then
and there marked it for my own, setting it deep in
my affections as a lake of lakes, by which some future
time I hope to camp for days and nights of pure
Sierra delight.
The trail now descended steeply to the McClure
Fork of the Merced, which flows through a long
flowery canon. We had not seen much sign of game
of late, but here again tracks of deer were plentiful.
The caiion narrowed to a gorge, and scattered tama
racks gave place to a fine forest of hemlock. Among
these noble and beautiful but mournful trees a heavy
StUlness reigned. The great plushy fans of foliage,
almost black in the gloomy air, but fringed with
grey silver, were indescribably rich and sumptuous.
The walls closed in, dark and high. Thunder rolled
along the northern heights, where twisted junipers
clung upon the ledges, and a few drops of rain
fell. The river rushed whitely far below, where the for
est swept steep and black to the bottom of the gorge.
It grew darker, and still darker. The trees stood lis
tening and longing for the rain, and the meek flow
ers looked timidly up. Black thunder crackled and
roared, and in its pauses the raving of the river as it
rushed wildly over boulders and slides of granite rose
loud and fearful, like a cry. Still the rain withheld :
is it sparing us ? I wish that it would not ; I love not
to be made a weakling by my mother : and. Spartan
like, I grudge that I should not be scourged. But so

THE HIGH SIERRA 341
it proved: the thunder continued, the great clouds
met and parted, but no rain came.
Again the caiion widened, and a change came over
the spirit of the scenery. We were once more in the
Yosemite region, surrounded by domes and ice-planed
mountains. To the north was a rounded cone of bare
granite with a white cascade clasping its base. Every
ledge and buttress of every mountain was rounded
and polished like a woman's shoulder. Half-Dome
was again in view, and again I wondered at him, as
I never tire of doing. Far ahead lay a steely sheet of
water into which granite slopes plunged steeply : it
was Lake Merced.
The miles strung out. Forest alternated with rock
and rock with forest. We entered a pretty grove of
aspens, mixed with saddle-high lupines and bracken.
Then we came to the lake, a lovely piece of water
lying at seven thousand feet, fringed with forest, but
with slopes and domes rising two thousand feet
higher, except where, to the west, the Merced River
flowed out in a wide cascade of whirling foam.
We made camp on the edge of the lake, among
aspens, with a fir or two for love; and had hardly
finished unpacking when the delayed storm broke.
Thunder boomed and lightning flashed continuously,
and the quiet littie lake was struck into sudden panic.
Up went our shelter, and we sat on our bedding and
watched the pots boiling over the hissing fire just
outside, while the rain poured merrily off the canvas
and the trees rocked and strained in the gale. It was

342 YOSEMITE TRAILS
twelve hours since breakfast, and our meal was ex
tended to the proportions of a banquet. Not even
dessert was beyond our resources when Bodie pro
duced from some unsuspected cache of his own a
handful of dried apricots.
The storm passed away and the evening was a
pastoral of quiet beauty. The last shreds of cloud
drifted in films and smirches of gold and rose in a
steel-blue sky. A famUy of wUd ducks paddled about
in the middle of the lake, quacking happily. Birds
chirped and bustled in the wet brush. The earth had
been visited and watered, and it was as when one
saunters in his garden at home whUe the scents and
the colors sink deeply in, and do their peaceful
work. The next day's travel was to be the last of our
trip, for it would bring us to the Littie Yosemite.
Breaking camp early, we followed the traU along the
northern side of the lake, passing over a sheet of
polished rock which slopes to the river and rises be
yond, forming a narrow trough through which the
stream rashes at terrific speed in vertical wheels of
white water. These great slopes that slant away
steeply from many of the domes are very impressive
in their fine simplicity of line. For hundreds of feet
they sweep down smooth and unbroken, with some
thing the same suggestion of powerful ease and
steadiness that one receives in watching the saUing
flight of eagles.
Turning northward the trail foUowed the west

THE HIGH SIERRA 343
bank of a pretty, brown stream, and climbed over a
high ridge, finely timbered, at nine thousand feet.
Little scraps of meadow hung here and there on the
steep side of the mountain, and here I first found the
Alpine lUy {Lilium parvuni), swinging its campanile
of tawny-ruby bells. The mountain pine attains in
this region its noblest growth, its sturdy red trunk
and powerful arms showing finely against the slen
der symmetry of the firs,
I was partiy glad and partly sorry to find again
the ceanothus, manzanita, and chinquapin growing
thick and high as we neared the valley, betokening
a milder soil and climate than that of the inner Sierra
which we were leaving.
At a pretty meadow which keeps alive the memory
of some departed worthy of the name of Hopkins,
Field and I left Bodie to take the animals on to camp
in the Littie Yosemite, while we diverged to ascend
^"Mriouds' Rest, two or three miles to the west. An easy
climb through a forest of fir and mountain pine took
us to the summit at 9925 feet, and from this admi
rable standpoint we were able to review as on a re
lief map the wanderings of the past month. To the
northwest lay the Hetch-Hetchy country and Lake
Eleanor, where the long folds of timbered mountain
faded into dreamy distance. Straight northward the
Matterhorns rose like the peaks of the Enchanted
Mountains of our chUdhood. Farther to the east was
Mount Dana, and beyond, the far Mono country with
its grey volcanoes and beautiful, deadly lake: I

344 YOSEMITE TRAILS
seemed to feel again the shimmering heat, and see
the paUid desert sky.
Yonder, where the mountains were clustered most
thickly, stood Lyell and his great brethren, the kings
of the mid-Sierra, To the west lay the gorge of Yo
semite. Sunk in the summer mist, her majestic walls
and precipices, washed in pale amethyst, were airy
and unsubstantial as a fairy vision : but close beside
us stood like a solemn hooded figure the Mysterious
Mountain, great Half-Dome. From this point the
mountain is in profile, and the splendid line of the
southern side rises unbroken in its grandeur and se
verity ; while from its nearness, the huge bulk of that
mass of solid granite overpowers one with an almost
nightmare feeling of vastness and oppression.
The top of Clouds' Rest itself is built up of weather
worn slabs of granite laid one on another in steps and
ledges. The mountain is heavily forested on its whole
southern side, the conifers rising in well-marked
belts, ending with a few dwarf pines at the summit.
The northern slope is barren, sweeping down in one
long, unbroken wall to the Tenaya Canon, with
Tenaya Lake in plain view at its head. There is
something of an anomaly in the distribution of timber
on this mountain, for it is an almost invariable rule
that the northern slopes are forested while the south
ern, more exposed to the sun, are comparatively
barren. A swift downward march of two hours brought us

THE HIGH SIERRA 345
to the Little Yosemite, where we found Bodie already
camped, and mighty preparations going forward for
a meal worthy of the occasion. The sinkienon, stand
ing like an obese martyr among the glowing coals,
was almost ready to deliver a fragrant loaf ; beans,
the perfect gold of whose hue equalled but could
never surpass in charm the melting smoothness of
their flavor, smoked on a carefully contrived hob, and
even a scratch " mulligan " was in process of con
coction. Sitting that evening by our last camp-fire, I passed
in pleasant review the experiences 6f our expedi
tion : mornings of heavenly freshness on the trail ;
caiions on caiions, peaks beyond peaks, ridges be
yond ridges ; sweet scents of balsam and pine ;
stormy sunrises and wistful sunsets ; heat and dust ;
luxurious turnings-in by firelight, and reluctant turn
ings-out by moonlight ; lakes round, lakes long, lakes
little and big of every shape and no shape, lying
blue in hidden hollows or trembling to sudden silver
as the wind went by ; breathless climbs and clatter
ing descents; cheerful pipings of early birds and
sleepy twitterings of late ones ; conundrums of trails
mysteriously vanished from the face of the earth ;
silent hours of camp-fire meditation ; loquacious hours
over errors of the trail ; pleasantries of Field and
Bodie ; unaccountable aberrations of pack-animals ;
exultations at new discoveries ; daisies ; mosquitoes ;
quiet lyings awake by night ; solemn glories of sunset

346 YOSEMITE TRAILS
peaks ; communions with friendly trees ; chatterings
of brooks, singings of creeks, and roarings of rivers ;
dim alleys of forest and aching white rock-highways ;
ghostiy snow-glimmer by starlight ; peaks in solemn
rank against the sky . . ,
The next morning we went down to the valley.

To\-'er P<a1^

INDEX

INDEX

Abies concolor, 9, 112.
Abies magnifica, 40, 112.
Ackerson Meadows, 197.
Agnew, Lake, 319.
Agnew Pass, 297.
Alkali Creek Caiion, 254.
Alpine lakes, 221, 242, 252, 262.
Arrastra, 145.
Artists' Point, 29, 39.
Aspen Valley, 73.
Azalea, 11, 42, 114, 217.
Banner, Mt., 328.
Basket Dome, 49.
Bears, 38, 42, 93, 162, 230, 243.
Bear-stories, 270.
Beehive, 219.
Benson Lake, 243.
Benson Pass, 253.
Big Oak Flat Road, 99, 188, 282.
Birds, 12, 61, 65, 133, 142, 166.
Blackbirds, r66, 313.
Bloody Canon, 257, 298, 334.
Blue-jay Meadows, 99.
Blue-jays, 43, 61, 133, 211.
Bodie, guide, 187 et seq.
Bodie, town of, 264.
Bret Harte's country, 144, 264.
Bridal Veil Creek, 6, 42, 188.
Bridal Veil Fall, 4,
Broderick, Mt., 49.
Brodiaa, 201.
Bryanthus, 67, 232, 237, 241, 246,
333. 336-

t, 6, 42, 188. V
4, 7, 29, 188. \

Buena Vista Peak, 164.
Bunnell, Dr., quoted, 30.
Burros, behavior of, 38, 40, 56, 63,
70, 71, 75, 100, 193,213,222, 240,
258, 298, 315.
Cabins, abandoned, 99, 160, 200,
201, 204, 210, 219, 225, 231, 297,
314-
Cassiope, 256, 333.
Castilleia, 221, 331, 335.
Cathedral Lake, 68, 261.
Cathedral Pass, 66, 122.
Cathedral Peak, 64, 67, 71, 84, 256,
287.
Cathedral Rocks, 23.
Cathedral Spures, 22.
Ceanothus, 11, ^^, 114, 166, 205, 343.
Cedar incense, 8, 58, iii.
Chatnoebatia, 125, 153, 166, 197.
Chilnualna Creek, 152, 156.
Chilnualna Falls, 152, 155.
Chinquapin, 343.
Chipmunks, 212, 297.
Chowchilla Mts., 23, 165.
Clark, Galen, 160, 162.
Clark, Mt., 45, 47, 57, 65, 87, 92,
339-
Clark's Station, 144, 160.
Clouds' Rest, 30, 58, 62, 84, 116,
261, 343.
Clouds' Trail, 55.
Columbine, 12, 189, 209, 217, 237,
246, 300, 329, 336.

350

INDEX

Columbia Finger, 65.
Conness, Mt., 234, 286.
Conway, John, 23, 279.
Coyotes, 139, 142, 199, 231.
Crane, Sandhill, 315.
Crescent Lake, 160.
Crocker Point, 41.
Crocker's Station, 190, 282.
Crow, Clarke, 31, 63, 120, 231, 297,
339-
Cyclamen, II, 45, 152, 189,221, 226,
230, 241, 329.
Daisy, lavender, 68, 72, 85, 230,
240, 247, 256, 301, 329, 331, 336.
Dana, Mt., 72, 286, 287, 288, 291,
343-
Dark Hole, 73.
Deer, 38, 52, 57, 142, 153,212, 230,
243' 253, 340.
Devil's Peak, 165.
Devil's Post-pile, 252, 297, 298.
Dewey Point, 41.
Dogwood, II, 12, loi, 114, 166.
Dome formation, 6, 23, 257, 260,
282, 285, 341.
Donohue Pass, 326, 333.
Duncan, Jim, bear-hunter, i6o, 279.

Eagle Peak, 43, 89, 91.
Eagles, 92, 206.
Echo Peak, 64.
El Capitan, 6, 16, 18, 19,20,23,25,
27. 30. 39' 40, 92. 94. loi, 188 ;
night on, 95 ; meadows, 97.
Eleanor Creek, 213, 216.
Eleanor, Lake, 212, 343.
El Portal, loi, 105, 124.
Epilobium, 42, 43, 241.
Erigeron, 230.

Erythraa, 201.
Evening primrose (Enothera), 205,
206, 301, 318.
Evening in the Sierra, 205, 235, 239,
345-
Fairview Dome, 73, 285.
Falls Creek, 209.
Farrington's Ranch, 303.
Fir, red, 40, 46, 58, 112.
Fir, white, 9, 58, 112.
Fir-woods, 91, 112, 218.
Fires, forest, 69, 74.
Fissures, The, 43.
Flickers, 166.
Florence, Mt., 339.
Flowers, see Azaleas, etc.
Forest, the, 8, 40, 42, 58, 68, 73, 103,
126, 146, 154, 211, 217, 30o;dead,
74, 285; Wawona, 114, 166.
Forget-me-not, giant, 216, 230, 325.
Fort Monroe, 39.
Foxes, 1 58.
Frog Creek, 217.

Gem Lake, 319.
Gentian, 72.
Gentry's Saw-Mill, loi.
Geological formation, 5, 24, 260,
292.
Geranium, wild, 43.
Gibbs, Mt., 72, 286.
Gin Flat, 189.
Glacial action, 24, 64, 84, 88, 89,
223, 260, 283, 285, 341.
Glacial period, 25, 87.
^.Glacier Point, 31, 47, 88, 96.
Glaciers, on Mt. Dana, 293 ; on Mt.
LyeU, 333.
Godetia, 12, 197, 201, 211.

INDEX

351

Goldenrod, 12, 43.
Gooseberries, wild, 93, 166.
Grand Caiion of the Tuolumne,
208, 249.
Grant Lake, 314.
Graves of backwoodsmen, 222,325.
" Grizzly Giant " sequoia, 135, 139,
140.
Grouse, 63, 230, 262.
Grouse Lake, 158.
Half-Dome, 18, 19, 20, 23, 25, 30,
4S. 47. 54. 85, 87, 88, 92, 189,
339.341,344-
Hawks, 61,151.
Hazel, 42, 166.
Heather, bryanthus, 67, 232, 237,
241. 246, 333, 336.
Heather, cassiope, 256, 333.
Hemlock, mountain, 62, 118, 238,
340-
Herons, 244.
Hetch-Hetchy, 202, 211, 224, 229,
343-
Hetch-Hetchy Fall, 203, 209, 233.
Hoffman, Mt., 6, 44, 45, 47, 84, 85,
261, 282.
Hog Ranch, 201.
Hopkins Meadow, 59, 343.
Horse " Pet," 195, 237, 258.
Illilouette Creek and Cafion, 25,45,
48, 49, 89.
Illilouette Fall, 48.
Indian Canon, 10, 86.
Indian names of places, 31.
Indian Sequoyah, 35.
Indians, 32, 34, 76, 106, 11 2, 302,
309, 311, 312 ; honesty of, 81.
Inspiration Point, 15, 28, 39, 40. I

Ireland Creek, 335.
Iris, 153, 301, 315.

Jack Main Caiion, 232.
Jay, blue, 43, 61, 133, 211.
Juniper [y. occidentalis), go,gs, 98,
108, 119, 223, 236, 301, 320, 340.
Kellogg, Mt., 328.
King, Clarence, quoted, 22, 25, 57,
87, 161.
Kolana Dome, 204, 209, 211.
Kuna Crest, 286, 287, 288, 296, 334-
Larkspur, 212, 246, 301.
Laurel Lake, 217.
Liberty Cap, 204.
Libocedrus decurrens, g, m.
Lichen, 12, 18, 44, 167, 327.
Lilies, II, 68, 115, 166, 212, 302.
LUy, Alpine, 343.
Little Yosemite, 7, 45, 50, 52, 58,
345-
Long Meadow, 64.
Long Trail, 48.
Lupine, 12, 45, 152, 197, 199, 209,
217. 234, 243. 252, 255,301, 331,
336. 341-
Lyell Fork Cafion, 326, 333, 334,
33S-
Lyell, Mt., 92, 294, 319, 328, 333,
337. 339. 344; glacier on, 333.
Mammoth Pass, 298.
Manzanita, 43, 153, 241, 343.
Mariposa Grove of Sequoias, 133,
135,146, 161.
Marmots, 65, 89.
Matterhorn peaks, 73, 216, 343.
Meadow Brook Fall, 28.

352

INDEX

Meadow-larks, 1 66, 212, 313.
Meadows, mountain, 51, 61, 200,
212,234.
Merced Grove of Sequoias, 39.
Merced, Lake, 60, 341.
Merced River, McClure Fork of,
340.
Merced River and Canon, 4, 7, 16,
25, 39.59. 144. 165, 188,339, 341-
Mexicans, 169, 283.
McClure Fork of Merced River,
340.
McClure, Mt., 294, 328, 337, 339.
McGee, Lake, 258.
McGill's Meadows, 212.
Mimulus, 12, 166, 197, 237, 24:, 300.
Mines, abandoned, 145, 298.
Mirror Lake, 261.
Mono Craters, 291, 303, 310.
Mono Indians, 33, 78, 302, 309, 311,
312.
Mono Lake, 291, 308, 313.
Mono Pass, 297.
Mono Plain, 108, 154, 293, 302.
"Monuments," 236.
Moraines, 26, 287.
Morning in the Sierra, 205, 312,
317. 336.
Mosquitoes, 60, 70,205, 210,222,
226, 236, 247, 255, 335.
Mountain-lilac, see Ceanothus.
Mountain-lions, 42, 142, 230.
Muir, John, quoted, 103, 322 ; on the
Gentian Meadows, 72.
Mules, behavior of, 193, 195, 298.
Murdock Lake, 247.
Murphy's Dome, 74, 261, 282.
Names, remarks on, 27.
Nemophila, 152.

Nevada Fall, 7, 14, 47, 50.
New Inspiration Point, 188.
Night, 19, 40, 53, 55, 60, 64,70,9s,
135. 227, 239, 244, 262, 289, 320.
North Dome, 23, 30, 88.
Nutmeg-tree, 125.
Oaks, 10, 12, 208, 209.
Ouzels, 217.
Packing, 61, 84, 85.
Parker Pass, 297, 3J4.
Parker Peak, 314.
Pentstemon, 12, 197, 231, 237, 241,
246, 300.
Phlox, 241, 291, 327.
Pine, digger, 105.
Pine, dwarf, 63, 118, 121, 290, 330,
331. 337, 344-
Pine, Jeffrey, 47, 95, 107, 154, 302.
Pine, knob-cone, 124.
Pine, limber, 123, 300.
Pine, mountain, 58, 1 16, 240, 343.
Pine, nut, 123, 310.
Pine, piiion, 123, 310.
Pine, single-leafed, 310.
Pine, sugar, 41, 58, 94, 110, 218.
Pine, yellow, 9, 58, 106, 154, 206.
Pinus albicaulis, 63, 121, 3CX>, 337.
Pinus attenuata, 124.
Pinus contorta, 117.
Pinus coulteri, 106.
Pinus flexilis, 123, 300.
Pinus jeffreyi, 107.
Pinus lambertiana, 106, 110.
Pinus monophylla, 123, 310.
Pinus monticola, 58, 62, 116.
Pinus murrayana, 117.
Pinus ponderosa, 9, 58, 106, 154.
Pinus sabiniana, 105, 201.

INDEX

353

Piute Creek, 249.
Piute, Mt., 243, 244.
Plovers, 64, 247.
Pohono trail, 40.
Polemonium, 295.
Porcupine Flat, 73.
Pseudotsuga taxifolia, 9, 108.
Rancheria Creek, 208.
Rancheria, Mt., 208, 229, 249.
Raspberries, wild, 207.
Raymond, Mt., 146, 165, 167.
Rattlesnakes, 207.
Red Mt., 45.
Ribbon Creek, 94, 99.
Ribbon Fall, 27.
Ritter, Mt., 294, 328, 332.
Robins, 133, 205, 212.
Rock slides, 16, 245.
Rodgers Lake, 252.
Roses, wild, II, 43, 166, 210, 301,
302, 312, 315.
Royal Arches, 6, 25, 49.
Rush Creek, 314.
Ruskin, John, quoted on the pine,
107 ; quoted on lichens, 1 2.
San Joaquin Valley, 150, 168, 217.
Sardine Lake, 299.
Sawtooth Ridge, 240, 248.
Sentinel, The, 17, 18, 19, 30, 31.
Sentinel Dome, 30, 45, 46, 86, 89,
98, 108.
Sentinel FaU, 18.
Sequoia, " Grizzly Giant," 135, 139,
140.
Sequoia sempervirens, 129.
Sequoias, the, 126, 151, 154, 168,
189; labelling the, 140; Mari
posa Grove of, 133, 135. 146.

161 i Merced Grove of, 39 ; night
among the, 135; storm among
the, 133; Tuolumne Grove of,
189.
Sequoyah, Indian, 35.
Sheep-men, 200, 269, 283, 297, 322.
Signal, Mt., 165.
Silver Lake, 316.
Smedberg Lake, 252.
Smoky Jack, 229.
Snake, King, 207.
Snow-birds, 133, 151, 158.
Snow-plant, 10.
Soda Springs, 233, 256, 282, 283.
Soldiers, 202, 215, 287.
Spring in the Sierra, 221.
Spruce, Douglas, 9, 108.
Squirrels, 12, 43, 51, 107, 151, 206,
211, 212.
Stanford Point, 41.
Starr King, Mt., 47, 87.
Stars, multitude of, 289.
Stone's Meadows, 200.
Storms in the Sierra, 76, 82, 133,
147, 226, 319, 321, 326, 329, 341.
Strawberries, wild, 166.
Sunrise, Mt., 62.
Sunrise Trail, 56, 286.
Swallows, 166, 238, 313.
Talus, 5, 15, 97, 207, 246, 283.
Tamarack, 59, 62, 74, 117, 154, 217,
251, 285, 296, 302, 327.
Tamarack Creek, 39.
Tamarack Flat, 189.
Tenaya Creek and Caiion, 4, 21,
23, 25, 261, 344.
Tenaya, Lake, 74, 257, 261, 282, 344.

Tenayn Peak, 83, 84, 261.
Thlmble«enffe^3.

354

INDEX

Thistle-poppy, 315.
Thoreau, Henry D., on loneliness,
83.
Three Brothers, The, 19, 39, 89,
91.
Tilden Lake, 237.
Till-tUl, The, 225, 229.
Till-till Creek, 208.
Tioga Pass, 282.
Tioga Road, 73, 282.
Tooeoolala Fall, 203.
Tower Peak, 238.
Trout, 50, 159, 187, 226, 243, 335.
Tsuga mertensiana, 62, 118.
Tulip, mariposa, 197.
Tumion californica, 125.
Tuolumne Caiion, 44, 339.
Tuolumne, Grand Canon of the,
208, 249.
Tuolumne Grove of Sequoias, 189.
Tuolumne Meadows, 70, 257, 286.
Tuolumne Pass, 121, 339.
Tuolumne River, 197, 201, 204, 256,
339 ; Lyell Fork of, 326, 333,
335-
Unicom Peak, 64, 256, 287.
Vernal Fall, 9, 14, 47, 49.
Vernon Lake, 218, 223,233.
Violet, II, 221, 230.
Vogelsang Lake, 339.
Vogelsang Peak, 339.
Volcanoes, 291,303, 309, 310.
Volunteer Peak, 247.

Wagon-tramps, 307, 312.
Walker Lake, 301.
Walker River, 238.
Wallflower, 189.
Washington Column, 4. 6, 23, 30.
Watkins, Mt., 30.
Wawona Dome, 150, 152.
Wawona forest, 114, 146.
Wawona Meadows, 150, 165.
Wawona Point, 167.
Wawona region, 144.
White Rapids, 256.
White Wolf, 73, 229.
Whitney, Josiah Dwight, quoted,
20, 24, 36.
Winter in Yosemite, 13.
Wood, Mt., 314.
Woodpeckers, 43, 61, 107.
Yosemite, Little, 7, 45, 50, 52, 58,
34S-
Yosemite Creek and Canon, 6, 44,
86.
Yosemite Falls, 6, 13, 20, 87, 92.
Yosemite Point, 87, 88.
Yosemite Valley, autumn, 12; birds,
12; cemetery, 22; configuration,
3, 5; extent, 4; flowers, 10 ;
forest, 8, 1 10 ; general character,
4 ; geological formation, 5, 24 ;
glacial period, 25 j Indian names,
31; Indian summer, 13; night
in, 19; nomenclature, 27; rock-
features, 15 ; spring, 10, 14 ; sum
mer, 1 1 i waterfalls, 7 ; winter, 13.

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