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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10012 ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+The Mountains of California
+
+by John Muir
+
+Contents
+
+ I THE SIERRA NEVADA
+ II THE GLACIERS
+ III THE SNOW
+ IV A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA
+ V THE PASSES
+ VI THE GLACIER LAKES
+ VII THE GLACIER MEADOWS
+ VIII THE FORESTS
+ IX THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
+ X A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS
+ XI THE RIVER FLOODS
+ XII SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS
+ XIII THE WATER-OUZEL
+ XIV THE WILD SHEEP
+ XV IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS
+ XVI THE BEE-PASTURES
+
+[Illustration: HOOFED LOCUSTS.]
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ HOOFED LOCUSTS
+ MOUNT TAMALPAIS—NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE
+ MAP OF THE SIERRA NEVADA
+ MOUNT SHASTA
+ MOUNT HOOD
+ MAP OF THE GLACIER COUNTRY
+ MOUNT RAINIER; NORTH PUYALLUP GLACIER FROM EAGLE CLIFF
+ KOLANA ROCK, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY
+ GENERAL GRANT TREE, GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK
+ MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY
+ MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION BOUNDARY
+ RANCHERIA FALLS, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY
+ VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CAÑON
+ LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS
+ THE DEATH OF A LAKE
+ SHADOW LAKE (MERCED LAKE), YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
+ VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY
+ LAKE STARR KING
+ VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST
+ EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA
+ VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST
+ NUT PINE
+ THE GROVE FORM
+ LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN CHARACTER OF WOODS
+ SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE
+ YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES
+ FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE
+ PINUS PONDEROSA
+ SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH
+ INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME
+ FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS
+ VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR
+ SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA GLACIERS
+ SEQUOIA GIGANTEA. VIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK
+ MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAÑON—YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
+ VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
+ JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR
+ STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS
+ STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH
+ GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES
+ A DWARF PINE
+ OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES
+ PATE VALLEY, SHOWING THE OAKS. TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
+ TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE WHEN SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR
+ SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE
+ TRYING THE BOW
+ A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS
+ YELLOW PINE AND LIBOCEDRUS
+ BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY
+ WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING
+ ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL
+ OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT
+ THE OUZEL AT HOME
+ YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-COUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CAÑON
+ SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA
+ HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM
+ HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP
+ CROSSING A CAÑON STREAM
+ WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE
+ INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP
+ A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA
+ WILD BEE GARDEN
+ IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.—WHITE SAGE
+ A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE.—CARDINAL FLOWER
+ WILD BUCKWHEAT.—A BEE-RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS
+ A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT.—SPANISH BAYONET
+ A BEE-KEEPER’S CABIN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+THE SIERRA NEVADA
+
+
+Go where you may within the bounds of California, mountains are ever in
+sight, charming and glorifying every landscape. Yet so simple and
+massive is the topography of the State in general views, that the main
+central portion displays only one valley, and two chains of mountains
+which seem almost perfectly regular in trend and height: the Coast
+Range on the west side, the Sierra Nevada on the east. These two ranges
+coming together in curves on the north and south inclose a magnificent
+basin, with a level floor more than 400 miles long, and from 35 to 60
+miles wide. This is the grand Central Valley of California, the waters
+of which have only one outlet to the sea through the Golden Gate. But
+with this general simplicity of features there is great complexity of
+hidden detail. The Coast Range, rising as a grand green barrier against
+the ocean, from 2000 to 8000 feet high, is composed of innumerable
+forest-crowned spurs, ridges, and rolling hill-waves which inclose a
+multitude of smaller valleys; some looking out through long,
+forest-lined vistas to the sea; others, with but few trees, to the
+Central Valley; while a thousand others yet smaller are embosomed and
+concealed in mild, round-browed hills, each, with its own climate,
+soil, and productions.
+
+Making your way through the mazes of the Coast Range to the summit of
+any of the inner peaks or passes opposite San Francisco, in the clear
+springtime, the grandest and most telling of all California landscapes
+is outspread before you. At your feet lies the great Central Valley
+glowing golden in the sunshine, extending north and south farther than
+the eye can reach, one smooth, flowery, lake-like bed of fertile soil.
+Along its eastern margin rises the mighty Sierra, miles in height,
+reposing like a smooth, cumulous cloud in the sunny sky, and so
+gloriously colored, and so luminous, it seems to be not clothed with
+light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.
+Along the top, and extending a good way down, you see a pale,
+pearl-gray belt of snow; and below it a belt of blue and dark purple,
+marking the extension of the forests; and along the base of the range a
+broad belt of rose-purple and yellow, where lie the minor’s gold-fields
+and the foot-hill gardens. All these colored belts blending smoothly
+make a wall of light ineffably fine, and as beautiful as a rainbow, yet
+firm as adamant.
+
+When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, from the
+summit of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or
+plowed as yet, was one furred, rich sheet of golden compositae, and the
+luminous wall of the mountains shone in all its glory. Then it seemed
+to me the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but
+the Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it,
+rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light,
+seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday
+radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the alpenglow,
+and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of
+irised spray, it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light,
+the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever
+seen.
+
+The Sierra is about 500 miles long, 70 miles wide, and from 7000 to
+nearly 15,000 feet high. In general views no mark of man is visible on
+it, nor anything to suggest the richness of the life it cherishes, or
+the depth and grandeur of its sculpture. None of its magnificent
+forest-crowned ridges rises much above the general level to publish its
+wealth. No great valley or lake is seen, or river, or group of
+well-marked features of any kind, standing out in distinct pictures.
+Even the summit-peaks, so clear and high in the sky, seem comparatively
+smooth and featureless. Nevertheless, glaciers are still at work in the
+shadows of the peaks, and thousands of lakes and meadows shine and
+bloom beneath them, and the whole range is furrowed with cañons to a
+depth of from 2000 to 5000 feet, in which once flowed majestic
+glaciers, and in which now flow and sing a band of beautiful rivers.
+
+Though of such stupendous depth, these famous cañons are not raw,
+gloomy, jagged-walled gorges, savage and inaccessible. With rough
+passages here and there they still make delightful pathways for the
+mountaineer, conducting from the fertile lowlands to the highest icy
+fountains, as a kind of mountain streets full of charming life and
+light, graded and sculptured by the ancient glaciers, and presenting,
+throughout all their courses, a rich variety of novel and attractive
+scenery, the most attractive that has yet been discovered in the
+mountain-ranges of the world.
+
+In many places, especially in the middle region of the western flank of
+the range, the main cañons widen into spacious valleys or parks,
+diversified like artificial landscape-gardens, with charming groves and
+meadows, and thickets of blooming bushes, while the lofty, retiring
+walls, infinitely varied in form and sculpture, are fringed with ferns,
+flowering-plants of many species, oaks, and evergreens, which find
+anchorage on a thousand narrow steps and benches; while the whole is
+enlivened and made glorious with rejoicing streams that come dancing
+and foaming over the sunny brows of the cliffs to join the shining
+river that flows in tranquil beauty down the middle of each one of
+them.
+
+The walls of these park valleys of the Yosemite kind are made up of
+rocks mountains in size, partly separated from each other by narrow
+gorges and side-cañons; and they are so sheer in front, and so
+compactly built together on a level floor, that, comprehensively seen,
+the parks they inclose look like immense halls or temples lighted from
+above. Every rock seems to glow with life. Some lean back in majestic
+repose; others, absolutely sheer, or nearly so, for thousands of feet,
+advance their brows in thoughtful attitudes beyond their companions,
+giving welcome to storms and calms alike, seemingly conscious yet
+heedless of everything going on about them, awful in stern majesty,
+types of permanence, yet associated with beauty of the frailest and
+most fleeting forms; their feet set in pine-groves and gay emerald
+meadows, their brows in the sky; bathed in light, bathed in floods of
+singing water, while snow-clouds, avalanches, and the winds shine and
+surge and wreathe about them as the years go by, as if into these
+mountain mansions Nature had taken pains to gather her choicest
+treasures to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with
+her.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT TAMALPAIS—NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE.]
+
+Here, too, in the middle region of deepest cañons are the grandest
+forest-trees, the Sequoia, king of conifers, the noble Sugar and Yellow
+Pines, Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, and the Silver Firs, each a giant of
+its kind, assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all
+other coniferous forests in the world, both in the number of its
+species and in the size and beauty of its trees. The winds flow in
+melody through their colossal spires, and they are vocal everywhere
+with the songs of birds and running water. Miles of fragrant ceanothus
+and manzanita bushes bloom beneath them, and lily gardens and meadows,
+and damp, ferny glens in endless variety of fragrance and color,
+compelling the admiration of every observer. Sweeping on over ridge and
+valley, these noble trees extend a continuous belt from end to end of
+the range, only slightly interrupted by sheer-walled cañons at
+intervals of about fifteen and twenty miles. Here the great burly brown
+bears delight to roam, harmonizing with the brown boles of the trees
+beneath which they feed. Deer, also, dwell here, and find food and
+shelter in the ceanothus tangles, with a multitude of smaller people.
+Above this region of giants, the trees grow smaller until the utmost
+limit of the timber line is reached on the stormy mountain-slopes at a
+height of from ten to twelve thousand feet above the sea, where the
+Dwarf Pine is so lowly and hard beset by storms and heavy snow, it is
+pressed into flat tangles, over the tops of which we may easily walk.
+Below the main forest belt the trees likewise diminish in size, frost
+and burning drought repressing and blasting alike.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE SIERRA NEVADA]
+
+The rose-purple zone along the base of the range comprehends nearly all
+the famous gold region of California. And here it was that miners from
+every country under the sun assembled in a wild, torrent-like rush to
+seek their fortunes. On the banks of every river, ravine, and gully
+they have left their marks. Every gravel- and boulder-bed has been
+desperately riddled over and over again. But in this region the pick
+and shovel, once wielded with savage enthusiasm, have been laid away,
+and only quartz-mining is now being carried on to any considerable
+extent. The zone in general is made up of low, tawny, waving
+foot-hills, roughened here and there with brush and trees, and
+outcropping masses of slate, colored gray and red with lichens. The
+smaller masses of slate, rising abruptly from the dry, grassy sod in
+leaning slabs, look like ancient tombstones in a deserted
+burying-ground. In early spring, say from February to April, the whole
+of this foot-hill belt is a paradise of bees and flowers. Refreshing
+rains then fall freely, birds are busy building their nests, and the
+sunshine is balmy and delightful. But by the end of May the soil,
+plants, and sky seem to have been baked in an oven. Most of the plants
+crumble to dust beneath the foot, and the ground is full of cracks;
+while the thirsty traveler gazes with eager longing through the burning
+glare to the snowy summits looming like hazy clouds in the distance.
+
+The trees, mostly _Quercus Douglasii_ and _Pinus Sabiniana_, thirty to
+forty feet high, with thin, pale-green foliage, stand far apart and
+cast but little shade. Lizards glide about on the rocks enjoying a
+constitution that no drought can dry, and ants in amazing numbers,
+whose tiny sparks of life seem to burn the brighter with the increasing
+heat, ramble industriously in long trains in search of food. Crows,
+ravens, magpies—friends in distress—gather on the ground beneath the
+best shade-trees, panting with drooping wings and bills wide open,
+scarce a note from any of them during the midday hours. Quails, too,
+seek the shade during the heat of the day about tepid pools in the
+channels of the larger mid-river streams. Rabbits scurry from thicket
+to thicket among the ceanothus bushes, and occasionally a long-eared
+hare is seen cantering gracefully across the wider openings. The nights
+are calm and dewless during the summer, and a thousand voices proclaim
+the abundance of life, notwithstanding the desolating effect of dry
+sunshine on the plants and larger animals. The hylas make a
+delightfully pure and tranquil music after sunset; and coyotes, the
+little, despised dogs of the wilderness, brave, hardy fellows, looking
+like withered wisps of hay, bark in chorus for hours. Mining-towns,
+most of them dead, and a few living ones with bright bits of
+cultivation about them, occur at long intervals along the belt, and
+cottages covered with climbing roses, in the midst of orange and peach
+orchards, and sweet-scented hay-fields in fertile flats where water for
+irrigation may be had. But they are mostly far apart, and make scarce
+any mark in general views.
+
+Every winter the High Sierra and the middle forest region get snow in
+glorious abundance, and even the foot-hills are at times whitened. Then
+all the range looks like a vast beveled wall of purest marble. The
+rough places are then made smooth, the death and decay of the year is
+covered gently and kindly, and the ground seems as clean as the sky.
+And though silent in its flight from the clouds, and when it is taking
+its place on rock, or tree, or grassy meadow, how soon the gentle snow
+finds a voice! Slipping from the heights, gathering in avalanches, it
+booms and roars like thunder, and makes a glorious show as it sweeps
+down the mountain-side, arrayed in long, silken streamers and
+wreathing, swirling films of crystal dust.
+
+The north half of the range is mostly covered with floods of lava, and
+dotted with volcanoes and craters, some of them recent and perfect in
+form, others in various stages of decay. The south half is composed of
+granite nearly from base to summit, while a considerable number of
+peaks, in the middle of the range, are capped with metamorphic slates,
+among which are Mounts Dana and Gibbs to the east of Yosemite Valley.
+Mount Whitney, the culminating point of the range near its southern
+extremity, lifts its helmet-shaped crest to a height of nearly 14,700
+feet. Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a height of
+14,440 feet at the northern extremity, and forms a noble landmark for
+all the surrounding region within a radius of a hundred miles. Residual
+masses of volcanic rocks occur throughout most of the granitic southern
+portion also, and a considerable number of old volcanoes on the flanks,
+especially along the eastern base of the range near Mono Lake and
+southward. But it is only to the northward that the entire range, from
+base to summit, is covered with lava.
+
+From the summit of Mount Whitney only granite is seen. Innumerable
+peaks and spires but little lower than its own storm-beaten crags rise
+in groups like forest-trees, in full view, segregated by cañons of
+tremendous depth and ruggedness. On Shasta nearly every feature in the
+vast view speaks of the old volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in
+Oregon, the icy volcanoes of Mount Pitt and the Three Sisters rise
+above the dark evergreen woods. Southward innumerable smaller craters
+and cones are distributed along the axis of the range and on each
+flank. Of these, Lassen’s Butte is the highest, being nearly 11,000
+feet above sea-level. Miles of its flanks are reeking and bubbling with
+hot springs, many of them so boisterous and sulphurous they seem over
+ready to become spouting geysers like those of the Yellowstone.
+
+The Cinder Cone near marks the most recent volcanic eruption in the
+Sierra. It is a symmetrical truncated cone about 700 feet high, covered
+with gray cinders and ashes, and has a regular unchanged crater on its
+summit, in which a few small Two-leaved Pines are growing. These show
+that the age of the cone is not less than eighty years. It stands
+between two lakes, which a short time ago were one. Before the cone was
+built, a flood of rough vesicular lava was poured into the lake,
+cutting it in two, and, overflowing its banks, the fiery flood advanced
+into the pine-woods, overwhelming the trees in its way, the charred
+ends of some of which may still be seen projecting from beneath the
+snout of the lava-stream where it came to rest. Later still there was
+an eruption of ashes and loose obsidian cinders, probably from the same
+vent, which, besides forming the Cinder Cone, scattered a heavy shower
+over the surrounding woods for miles to a depth of from six inches to
+several feet.
+
+The history of this last Sierra eruption is also preserved in the
+traditions of the Pitt River Indians. They tell of a fearful time of
+darkness, when the sky was black with ashes and smoke that threatened
+every living thing with death, and that when at length the sun appeared
+once more it was red like blood.
+
+Less recent craters in great numbers roughen the adjacent region; some
+of them with lakes in their throats, others overgrown with trees and
+flowers, Nature in these old hearths and firesides having literally
+given beauty for ashes. On the northwest side of Mount Shasta there is
+a subordinate cone about 3000 feet below the summit, which, has been
+active subsequent to the breaking up of the main ice-cap that once
+covered the mountain, as is shown by its comparatively unwasted crater
+and the streams of unglaciated lava radiating from it. The main summit
+is about a mile and a half in diameter, bounded by small crumbling
+peaks and ridges, among which we seek in vain for the outlines of the
+ancient crater.
+
+These ruinous masses, and the deep glacial grooves that flute the sides
+of the mountain, show that it has been considerably lowered and wasted
+by ice; how much we have no sure means of knowing. Just below the
+extreme summit hot sulphurous gases and vapor issue from irregular
+fissures, mixed with spray derived from melting snow, the last feeble
+expression of the mighty force that built the mountain. Not in one
+great convulsion was Shasta given birth. The crags of the summit and
+the sections exposed by the glaciers down the sides display enough of
+its internal framework to prove that comparatively long periods of
+quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which the
+cooling lavas ceased to flow, and became permanent additions to the
+bulk of the growing mountain. With alternate haste and deliberation
+eruption succeeded eruption till the old volcano surpassed even its
+present sublime height.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT SHASTA]
+
+Standing on the icy top of this, the grandest of all the fire-mountains
+of the Sierra, we can hardly fail to look forward to its next eruption.
+Gardens, vineyards, homes have been planted confidingly on the flanks
+of volcanoes which, after remaining steadfast for ages, have suddenly
+blazed into violent action, and poured forth overwhelming floods of
+fire. It is known that more than a thousand years of cool calm have
+intervened between violent eruptions. Like gigantic geysers spouting
+molten rock instead of water, volcanoes work and rest, and we have no
+sure means of knowing whether they are dead when still, or only
+sleeping.
+
+Along the western base of the range a telling series of sedimentary
+rocks containing the early history of the Sierra are now being studied.
+But leaving for the present these first chapters, we see that only a
+very short geological time ago, just before the coming on of that
+winter of winters called the glacial period, a vast deluge of molten
+rocks poured from many a chasm and crater on the flanks and summit of
+the range, filling lake basins and river channels, and obliterating
+nearly every existing feature on the northern portion. At length these
+all-destroying floods ceased to flow. But while the great volcanic
+cones built up along the axis still burned and smoked, the whole Sierra
+passed under the domain of ice and snow. Then over the bald,
+featureless, fire-blackened mountains, glaciers began to crawl,
+covering them from the summits to the sea with a mantle of ice; and
+then with infinite deliberation the work went on of sculpturing the
+range anew. These mighty agents of erosion, halting never through
+unnumbered centuries, crushed and ground the flinty lavas and granites
+beneath their crystal folds, wasting and building until in the fullness
+of time the Sierra was born again, brought to light nearly as we behold
+it today, with glaciers and snow-crushed pines at the top of the range,
+wheat-fields and orange-groves at the foot of it.
+
+This change from icy darkness and death to life and beauty was slow, as
+we count time, and is still going on, north and south, over all the
+world wherever glaciers exist, whether in the form of distinct rivers,
+as in Switzerland, Norway, the mountains of Asia, and the Pacific
+Coast; or in continuous mantling folds, as in portions of Alaska,
+Greenland, Franz-Joseph-Land, Nova Zembla, Spitzbergen, and the lands
+about the South Pole. But in no country, as far as I know, may these
+majestic changes be studied to better advantage than in the plains and
+mountains of California.
+
+Toward the close of the glacial period, when the snow-clouds became
+less fertile and the melting waste of sunshine became greater, the
+lower folds of the ice-sheet in California, discharging fleets of
+icebergs into the sea, began to shallow and recede from the lowlands,
+and then move slowly up the flanks of the Sierra in compliance with the
+changes of climate. The great white mantle on the mountains broke up
+into a series of glaciers more or less distinct and river-like, with
+many tributaries, and these again were melted and divided into still
+smaller glaciers, until now only a few of the smallest residual topmost
+branches of the grand system exist on the cool slopes of the summit
+peaks.
+
+Plants and animals, biding their time, closely followed the retiring
+ice, bestowing quick and joyous animation on the new-born landscapes.
+Pine-trees marched up the sun-warmed moraines in long, hopeful files,
+taking the ground and establishing themselves as soon as it was ready
+for them; brown-spiked sedges fringed the shores of the newborn lakes;
+young rivers roared in the abandoned channels of the glaciers; flowers
+bloomed around the feet of the great burnished domes,—while with quick
+fertility mellow beds of soil, settling and warming, offered food to
+multitudes of Nature’s waiting children, great and small, animals as
+well as plants; mice, squirrels, marmots, deer, bears, elephants, etc.
+The ground burst into bloom with magical rapidity, and the young
+forests into bird-song: life in every form warming and sweetening and
+growing richer as the years passed away over the mighty Sierra so
+lately suggestive of death and consummate desolation only.
+
+It is hard without long and loving study to realize the magnitude of
+the work done on these mountains during the last glacial period by
+glaciers, which are only streams of closely compacted snow-crystals.
+Careful study of the phenomena presented goes to show that the
+pre-glacial condition of the range was comparatively simple: one vast
+wave of stone in which a thousand mountains, domes, cañons, ridges,
+etc., lay concealed. And in the development of these Nature chose for a
+tool not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the
+stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly
+falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea.
+Laboring harmoniously in united strength they crushed and ground and
+wore away the rocks in their march, making vast beds of soil, and at
+the same time developed and fashioned the landscapes into the
+delightful variety of hill and dale and lordly mountain that mortals
+call beauty. Perhaps more than a mile in average depth has the range
+been thus degraded during the last glacial period,—a quantity of
+mechanical work almost inconceivably great. And our admiration must be
+excited again and again as we toil and study and learn that this vast
+job of rockwork, so far-reaching in its influences, was done by agents
+so fragile and small as are these flowers of the mountain clouds.
+Strong only by force of numbers, they carried away entire mountains,
+particle by particle, block by block, and cast them into the sea;
+sculptured, fashioned, modeled all the range, and developed its
+predestined beauty. All these new Sierra landscapes were evidently
+predestined, for the physical structure of the rocks on which the
+features of the scenery depend was acquired while they lay at least a
+mile deep below the pre-glacial surface. And it was while these
+features were taking form in the depths of the range, the particles of
+the rocks marching to their appointed places in the dark with reference
+to the coming beauty, that the particles of icy vapor in the sky
+marching to the same music assembled to bring them to the light. Then,
+after their grand task was done, these bands of snow-flowers, these
+mighty glaciers, were melted and removed as if of no more importance
+than dew destined to last but an hour. Few, however, of Nature’s agents
+have left monuments so noble and enduring as they. The great granite
+domes a mile high, the cañons as deep, the noble peaks, the Yosemite
+valleys, these, and indeed nearly all other features of the Sierra
+scenery, are glacier monuments.
+
+Contemplating the works of these flowers of the sky, one may easily
+fancy them endowed with life: messengers sent down to work in the
+mountain mines on errands of divine love. Silently flying through the
+darkened air, swirling, glinting, to their appointed places, they seem
+to have taken counsel together, saying, “Come, we are feeble; let us
+help one another. We are many, and together we will be strong. Marching
+in close, deep ranks, let us roll away the stones from these mountain
+sepulchers, and set the landscapes free. Let us uncover these
+clustering domes. Here let us carve a lake basin; there, a Yosemite
+Valley; here, a channel for a river with fluted steps and brows for the
+plunge of songful cataracts. Yonder let us spread broad sheets of soil,
+that man and beast may be fed; and here pile trains of boulders for
+pines and giant Sequoias. Here make ground for a meadow; there, for a
+garden and grove, making it smooth and fine for small daisies and
+violets and beds of heathy bryanthus, spicing it well with crystals,
+garnet feldspar, and zircon.” Thus and so on it has oftentimes seemed
+to me sang and planned and labored the hearty snow-flower crusaders;
+and nothing that I can write can possibly exaggerate the grandeur and
+beauty of their work. Like morning mist they have vanished in sunshine,
+all save the few small companies that still linger on the coolest
+mountainsides, and, as residual glaciers, are still busily at work
+completing the last of the lake basins, the last beds of soil, and the
+sculpture of some of the highest peaks.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT HOOD]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE GLACIERS
+
+
+Of the small residual glaciers mentioned in the preceding chapter, I
+have found sixty-five in that portion of the range lying between
+latitude 36° 30′ and 39°. They occur singly or in small groups on the
+north sides of the peaks of the High Sierra, sheltered beneath broad
+frosty shadows, in amphitheaters of their own making, where the snow,
+shooting down from the surrounding heights in avalanches, is most
+abundant. Over two thirds of the entire number lie between latitude 37°
+and 38°, and form the highest fountains of the San Joaquin, Merced,
+Tuolumne, and Owen’s rivers.
+
+The glaciers of Switzerland, like those of the Sierra, are mere wasting
+remnants of mighty ice-floods that once filled the great valleys and
+poured into the sea. So, also, are those of Norway, Asia, and South
+America. Even the grand continuous mantles of ice that still cover
+Greenland, Spitsbergen, Nova Zembla, Franz-Joseph-Land, parts of
+Alaska, and the south polar region are shallowing and shrinking. Every
+glacier in the world is smaller than it once was. All the world is
+growing warmer, or the crop of snow-flowers is diminishing. But in
+contemplating the condition of the glaciers of the world, we must bear
+in mind while trying to account for the changes going on that the same
+sunshine that wastes them builds them. Every glacier records the
+expenditure of an enormous amount of sun-heat in lifting the vapor for
+the snow of which it is made from the ocean to the mountains, as
+Tyndall strikingly shows.
+
+The number of glaciers in the Alps, according to the Schlagintweit
+brothers, is 1100, of which 100 may be regarded as primary, and the
+total area of ice, snow, and _névé_ is estimated at 1177 square miles,
+or an average for each glacier of little more than one square mile. On
+the same authority, the average height above sea-level at which they
+melt is about 7414 feet. The Grindelwald glacier descends below 4000
+feet, and one of the Mont Blanc glaciers reaches nearly as low a point.
+One of the largest of the Himalaya glaciers on the head waters of the
+Ganges does not, according to Captain Hodgson, descend below 12,914
+feet. The largest of the Sierra glaciers on Mount Shasta descends to
+within 9500 feet of the level of the sea, which, as far as I have
+observed, is the lowest point reached by any glacier within the bounds
+of California, the average height of all being not far from 11,000
+feet.
+
+The changes that have taken place in the glacial conditions of the
+Sierra from the time of greatest extension is well illustrated by the
+series of glaciers of every size and form extending along the mountains
+of the coast to Alaska. A general exploration of this instructive
+region shows that to the north of California, through Oregon and
+Washington, groups of active glaciers still exist on all the high
+volcanic cones of the Cascade Range,—Mount Pitt, the Three Sisters,
+Mounts Jefferson, Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier, Baker, and
+others,—some of them of considerable size, though none of them approach
+the sea. Of these mountains Rainier, in Washington, is the highest and
+iciest. Its dome-like summit, between 14,000 and 15,000 feet high, is
+capped with ice, and eight glaciers, seven to twelve miles long,
+radiate from it as a center, and form the sources of the principal
+streams of the State. The lowest-descending of this fine group flows
+through beautiful forests to within 3500 feet of the sea-level, and
+sends forth a river laden with glacier mud and sand. On through British
+Columbia and southeastern Alaska the broad, sustained mountain-chain,
+extending along the coast, is generally glacier-bearing. The upper
+branches of nearly all the main cañons and fiords are occupied by
+glaciers, which gradually increase in size, and descend lower until the
+high region between Mount Fairweather and Mount St. Elias is reached,
+where a considerable number discharge into the waters of the ocean.
+This is preëminently the ice-land of Alaska and of the entire Pacific
+Coast.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE GLACIER COUNTRY]
+
+Northward from here the glaciers gradually diminish in size and
+thickness, and melt at higher levels. In Prince William Sound and
+Cook’s Inlet many fine glaciers are displayed, pouring from the
+surrounding mountains; but to the north of latitude 62° few, if any,
+glaciers remain, the ground being mostly low and the snowfall light.
+Between latitude 56° and 60° there are probably more than 5000
+glaciers, not counting the smallest. Hundreds of the largest size
+descend through the forests to the level of the sea, or near it, though
+as far as my own observations have reached, after a pretty thorough
+examination of the region, not more than twenty-five discharge icebergs
+into the sea. All the long high-walled fiords into which these great
+glaciers of the first class flow are of course crowded with icebergs of
+every conceivable form, which are detached with thundering noise at
+intervals of a few minutes from an imposing ice-wall that is thrust
+forward into deep water. But these Pacific Coast icebergs are small as
+compared with those of Greenland and the Antarctic region, and only a
+few of them escape from the intricate system of channels, with which
+this portion of the coast is fringed, into the open sea. Nearly all of
+them are swashed and drifted by wind and tide back and forth in the
+fiords until finally melted by the ocean water, the sunshine, the warm
+winds, and the copious rains of summer. Only one glacier on the coast,
+observed by Prof. Russell, discharges its bergs directly into the open
+sea, at Icy Cape, opposite Mount St. Elias. The southernmost of the
+glaciers that reach the sea occupies a narrow, picturesque fiord about
+twenty miles to the northwest of the mouth of the Stikeen River, in
+latitude 56° 50′. The fiord is called by the natives “Hutli,” or
+Thunder Bay, from the noise made by the discharge of the icebergs.
+About one degree farther north there are four of these complete
+glaciers, discharging at the heads of the long arms of Holkam Bay. At
+the head of the Tahkoo Inlet, still farther north, there is one; and at
+the head and around the sides of Glacier Bay, trending in a general
+northerly direction from Cross Sound in latitude 58° to 59°, there are
+seven of these complete glaciers pouring bergs into the bay and its
+branches, and keeping up an eternal thundering. The largest of this
+group, the Muir, has upward of 200 tributaries, and a width below the
+confluence of the main tributaries of about twenty-five miles. Between
+the west side of this icy bay and the ocean all the ground, high and
+low, excepting the peaks of the Fairweather Range, is covered with a
+mantle of ice from 1000 to probably 3000 feet thick, which discharges
+by many distinct mouths.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT RAINIER; NORTH PUYALLUP GLACIER FROM EAGLE CLIFF]
+
+This fragmentary ice-sheet, and the immense glaciers about Mount St.
+Elias, together with the multitude of separate river-like glaciers that
+load the slopes of the coast mountains, evidently once formed part of a
+continuous ice-sheet that flowed over all the region hereabouts, and
+only a comparatively short time ago extended as far southward as the
+mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, probably farther. All the islands
+of the Alexander Archipelago, as well as the headlands and promontories
+of the mainland, display telling traces of this great mantle that are
+still fresh and unmistakable. They all have the forms of the greatest
+strength with reference to the action of a vast rigid press of
+oversweeping ice from the north and northwest, and their surfaces have
+a smooth, rounded, overrubbed appearance, generally free from angles.
+The intricate labyrinth of canals, channels, straits, passages, sounds,
+narrows, etc. between the islands, and extending into the mainland, of
+course manifest in their forms and trends and general characteristics
+the same subordination to the grinding action of universal glaciation
+as to their origin, and differ from the islands and banks of the fiords
+only in being portions of the pre-glacial margin of the continent more
+deeply eroded, and therefore covered by the ocean waters which flowed
+into them as the ice was melted out of them. The formation and
+extension of fiords in this manner is still going on, and may be
+witnessed in many places in Glacier Bay, Yakutat Bay, and adjacent
+regions. That the domain of the sea is being extended over the land by
+the wearing away of its shores, is well known, but in these icy regions
+of Alaska, and even as far south as Vancouver Island, the coast rocks
+have been so short a time exposed to wave-action they are but little
+wasted as yet. In these regions the extension of the sea effected by
+its own action in post-glacial time is scarcely appreciable as compared
+with that effected by ice-action.
+
+Traces of the vanished glaciers made during the period of greater
+extension abound on the Sierra as far south as latitude 36°. Even the
+polished rock surfaces, the most evanescent of glacial records, are
+still found in a wonderfully perfect state of preservation on the upper
+half of the middle portion of the range, and form the most striking of
+all the glacial phenomena. They occur in large irregular patches in the
+summit and middle regions, and though they have been subjected to the
+action of the weather with its corroding storms for thousands of years,
+their mechanical excellence is such that they still reflect the
+sunbeams like glass, and attract the attention of every observer. The
+attention of the mountaineer is seldom arrested by moraines, however
+regular and high they may be, or by cañons, however deep, or by rocks,
+however noble in form and sculpture; but he stoops and rubs his hands
+admiringly on the shining surfaces and trios hard to account for their
+mysterious smoothness. He has seen the snow descending in avalanches,
+but concludes this cannot be the work of snow, for he finds it where no
+avalanches occur. Nor can water have done it, for he sees this
+smoothness glowing on the sides and tops of the highest domes. Only the
+winds of all the agents he knows seem capable of flowing in the
+directions indicated by the scoring. Indians, usually so little curious
+about geological phenomena, have come to me occasionally and asked me,
+“What makeum the ground so smooth at Lake Tenaya?” Even horses and dogs
+gaze wonderingly at the strange brightness of the ground, and smell the
+polished spaces and place their feet cautiously on them when they come
+to them for the first time, as if afraid of sinking. The most perfect
+of the polished pavements and walls lie at an elevation of from 7000 to
+9000 feet above the sea, where the rock is compact silicious granite.
+Small dim patches may be found as low as 3000 feet on the driest and
+most enduring portions of sheer walls with a southern exposure, and on
+compact swelling bosses partially protected from rain by a covering of
+large boulders. On the north half of the range the striated and
+polished surfaces are less common, not only because this part of the
+chain is lower, but because the surface rocks are chiefly porous lavas
+subject to comparatively rapid waste. The ancient moraines also, though
+well preserved on most of the south half of the range, are nearly
+obliterated to the northward, but then material is found scattered and
+disintegrated.
+
+A similar blurred condition of the superficial records of glacial
+action obtains throughout most of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia,
+and Alaska, due in great part to the action of excessive moisture. Even
+in southeastern Alaska, where the most extensive glaciers on the
+continent are, the more evanescent of the traces of their former
+greater extension, though comparatively recent, are more obscure than
+those of the ancient California glaciers whore the climate is drier and
+the rocks more resisting.
+
+These general views of the glaciers of the Pacific Coast will enable my
+readers to see something of the changes that have taken place in
+California, and will throw light on the residual glaciers of the High
+Sierra.
+
+Prior to the autumn of 1871 the glaciers of the Sierra were unknown. In
+October of that year I discovered the Black Mountain Glacier in a
+shadowy amphitheater between Black and Rod Mountains, two of the peaks
+of the Merced group. This group is the highest portion of a spur that
+straggles out from the main axis of the range in the direction of
+Yosemite Valley. At the time of this interesting discovery I was
+exploring the _névé_ amphitheaters of the group, and tracing the
+courses of the ancient glaciers that once poured from its ample
+fountains through the Illilouette Basin and the Yosemite Valley, not
+expecting to find any active glaciers so far south in the land of
+sunshine.
+
+Beginning on the northwestern extremity of the group, I explored the
+chief tributary basins in succession, their moraines, roches
+moutonnées, and splendid glacier pavements, taking them in regular
+succession without any reference to the time consumed in their study.
+The monuments of the tributary that poured its ice from between Red and
+Black Mountains I found to be the most interesting of them all; and
+when I saw its magnificent moraines extending in majestic curves from
+the spacious amphitheater between the mountains, I was exhilarated with
+the work that lay before me. It was one of the golden days of the
+Sierra Indian summer, when the rich sunshine glorifies every landscape
+however rocky and cold, and suggests anything rather than glaciers. The
+path of the vanished glacier was warm now, and shone in many places as
+if washed with silver. The tall pines growing on the moraines stood
+transfigured in the glowing light, the poplar groves on the levels of
+the basin were masses of orange-yellow, and the late-blooming
+goldenrods added gold to gold. Pushing on over my rosy glacial highway,
+I passed lake after lake set in solid basins of granite, and many a
+thicket and meadow watered by a stream that issues from the
+amphitheater and links the lakes together; now wading through plushy
+bogs knee-deep in yellow and purple sphagnum; now passing over bare
+rock. The main lateral moraines that bounded the view on either hand
+are from 100 to nearly 200 feet high, and about as regular as
+artificial embankments, and covered with a superb growth of Silver Fir
+and Pine. But this garden and forest luxuriance was speedily left
+behind. The trees were dwarfed as I ascended; patches of the alpine
+bryanthus and cassiope began to appear, and arctic willows pressed into
+flat carpets by the winter snow. The lakelets, which a few miles down
+the valley were so richly embroidered with flowery meadows, had here,
+at an elevation of 10,000 feet, only small brown mats of carex, leaving
+bare rocks around more than half their shores. Yet amid this alpine
+suppression the Mountain Pine bravely tossed his storm-beaten branches
+on the ledges and buttresses of Red Mountain, some specimens being over
+100 feet high, and 24 feet in circumference, seemingly as fresh and
+vigorous as the giants of the lower zones.
+
+Evening came on just as I got fairly within the portal of the main
+amphitheater. It is about a mile wide, and a little less than two miles
+long. The crumbling spurs and battlements of Red Mountain bound it on
+the north, the somber, rudely sculptured precipices of Black Mountain
+on the south, and a hacked, splintery _col_, curving around from
+mountain to mountain, shuts it in on the east.
+
+I chose a camping-ground on the brink of one of the lakes where a
+thicket of Hemlock Spruce sheltered me from the night wind. Then, after
+making a tin-cupful of tea, I sat by my camp-fire reflecting on the
+grandeur and significance of the glacial records I had seen. As the
+night advanced the mighty rock walls of my mountain mansion seemed to
+come nearer, while the starry sky in glorious brightness stretched
+across like a ceiling from wall to wall, and fitted closely down into
+all the spiky irregularities of the summits. Then, after a long
+fireside rest and a glance at my note-book, I cut a few leafy branches
+for a bed, and fell into the clear, death-like sleep of the tired
+mountaineer.
+
+Early next morning I set out to trace the grand old glacier that had
+done so much for the beauty of the Yosemite region back to its farthest
+fountains, enjoying the charm that every explorer feels in Nature’s
+untrodden wildernesses. The voices of the mountains were still asleep.
+The wind scarce stirred the pine-needles. The sun was up, but it was
+yet too cold for the birds and the few burrowing animals that dwell
+here. Only the stream, cascading from pool to pool, seemed to be wholly
+awake. Yet the spirit of the opening day called to action. The sunbeams
+came streaming gloriously through the jagged openings of the _col_,
+glancing on the burnished pavements and lighting the silvery lakes,
+while every sun-touched rock burned white on its edges like melting
+iron in a furnace. Passing round the north shore of my camp lake I
+followed the central stream past many cascades from lakelet to lakelet.
+The scenery became more rigidly arctic, the Dwarf Pines and Hemlocks
+disappeared, and the stream was bordered with icicles. As the sun rose
+higher rocks were loosened on shattered portions of the cliffs, and
+came down in rattling avalanches, echoing wildly from crag to crag.
+
+The main lateral moraines that extend from the jaws of the amphitheater
+into the Illilouette Basin are continued in straggling masses along the
+walls of the amphitheater, while separate boulders, hundreds of tons in
+weight, are left stranded here and there out in the middle of the
+channel. Here, also, I observed a series of small terminal moraines
+ranged along the south wall of the amphitheater, corresponding in size
+and form with the shadows cast by the highest portions. The meaning of
+this correspondence between moraines and shadows was afterward made
+plain. Tracing the stream back to the last of its chain of lakelets, I
+noticed a deposit of fine gray mud on the bottom except where the force
+of the entering current had prevented its settling. It looked like the
+mud worn from a grindstone, and I at once suspected its glacial origin,
+for the stream that was carrying it came gurgling out of the base of a
+raw moraine that seemed in process of formation. Not a plant or
+weather-stain was visible on its rough, unsettled surface. It is from
+60 to over 100 feet high, and plunges forward at an angle of 38°.
+Cautiously picking my way, I gained the top of the moraine and was
+delighted to see a small but well characterized glacier swooping down
+from the gloomy precipices of Black Mountain in a finely graduated
+curve to the moraine on which I stood. The compact ice appeared on all
+the lower portions of the glacier, though gray with dirt and stones
+embedded in it. Farther up the ice disappeared beneath coarse
+granulated snow. The surface of the glacier was further characterized
+by dirt bands and the outcropping edges of the blue veins, showing the
+laminated structure of the ice. The uppermost crevasse, or
+“bergschrund,” where the _névé_ was attached to the mountain, was from
+12 to 14 feet wide, and was bridged in a few places by the remains of
+snow avalanches. Creeping along the edge of the schrund, holding on
+with benumbed fingers, I discovered clear sections where the bedded
+structure was beautifully revealed. The surface snow, though sprinkled
+with stones shot down from the cliffs, was in some places almost pure,
+gradually becoming crystalline and changing to whitish porous ice of
+different shades of color, and this again changing at a depth of 20 or
+30 feet to blue ice, some of the ribbon-like bands of which were nearly
+pure, and blended with the paler bands in the most gradual and delicate
+manner imaginable. A series of rugged zigzags enabled me to make my way
+down into the weird under-world of the crevasse. Its chambered hollows
+were hung with a multitude of clustered icicles, amid which pale,
+subdued light pulsed and shimmered with indescribable loveliness. Water
+dripped and tinkled overhead, and from far below came strange, solemn
+murmurings from currents that were feeling their way through veins and
+fissures in the dark. The chambers of a glacier are perfectly
+enchanting, notwithstanding one feels out of place in their frosty
+beauty. I was soon cold in my shirt-sleeves, and the leaning wall
+threatened to engulf me; yet it was hard to leave the delicious music
+of the water and the lovely light. Coming again to the surface, I
+noticed boulders of every size on their journeys to the terminal
+moraine—journeys of more than a hundred years, without a single stop,
+night or day, winter or summer.
+
+The sun gave birth to a network of sweet-voiced rills that ran
+gracefully down the glacier, curling and swirling in their shining
+channels, and cutting clear sections through the porous surface-ice
+into the solid blue, where the structure of the glacier was beautifully
+illustrated.
+
+The series of small terminal moraines which I had observed in the
+morning, along the south wall of the amphitheater, correspond in every
+way with the moraine of this glacier, and their distribution with
+reference to shadows was now understood. When the climatic changes came
+on that caused the melting and retreat of the main glacier that filled
+the amphitheater, a series of residual glaciers were left in the cliff
+shadows, under the protection of which they lingered, until they formed
+the moraines we are studying. Then, as the snow became still less
+abundant, all of them vanished in succession, except the one just
+described; and the cause of its longer life is sufficiently apparent in
+the greater area of snow-basin it drains, and its more perfect
+protection from wasting sunshine. How much longer this little glacier
+will last depends, of course, on the amount of snow it receives from
+year to year, as compared with melting waste.
+
+After this discovery, I made excursions over all the High Sierra,
+pushing my explorations summer after summer, and discovered that what
+at first sight in the distance looked like extensive snow-fields, wore
+in great part glaciers, busily at work completing the sculpture of the
+summit-peaks so grandly blocked out by their giant predecessors.
+
+On August 21, I set a series of stakes in the Maclure Glacier, near
+Mount Lyell, and found its rate of motion to be little more than an
+inch a day in the middle, showing a great contrast to the Muir Glacier
+in Alaska, which, near the front, flows at a rate of from five to ten
+feet in twenty-four hours. Mount Shasta has three glaciers, but Mount
+Whitney, although it is the highest mountain in the range, does not now
+cherish a single glacier. Small patches of lasting snow and ice occur
+on its northern slopes, but they are shallow, and present no well
+marked evidence of glacial motion. Its sides, however, are scored and
+polished in many places by the action of its ancient glaciers that
+flowed east and west as tributaries of the great glaciers that once
+filled the valleys of the Kern and Owen’s rivers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+THE SNOW
+
+
+The first snow that whitens the Sierra, usually falls about the end of
+October or early in November, to a depth of a few inches, after months
+of the most charming Indian summer weather imaginable. But in a few
+days, this light covering mostly melts from the slopes exposed to the
+sun and causes but little apprehension on the part of mountaineers who
+may be lingering among the high peaks at this time. The first general
+winter storm that yields snow that is to form a lasting portion of the
+season’s supply, seldom breaks on the mountains before the end of
+November. Then, warned by the sky, cautions mountaineers, together with
+the wild sheep, deer, and most of the birds and bears, make haste to
+the lowlands or foot-hills; and burrowing marmots, mountain beavers,
+wood-rats, and such people go into winter quarters, some of them not
+again to see the light of day until the general awakening and
+resurrection of the spring in June or July. The first heavy fall is
+usually from about two to four feet in depth. Then, with intervals of
+splendid sunshine, storm succeeds storm, heaping snow on snow, until
+thirty to fifty feet has fallen. But on account of its settling and
+compacting, and the almost constant waste from melting and evaporation,
+the average depth actually found at any time seldom exceeds ten feet in
+the forest region, or fifteen feet along the slopes of the summit
+peaks.
+
+Even during the coldest weather evaporation never wholly ceases, and
+the sunshine that abounds between the storms is sufficiently powerful
+to melt the surface more or less through all the winter months. Waste
+from melting also goes on to some extent on the bottom from heat stored
+up in the rocks, and given off slowly to the snow in contact with them,
+as is shown by the rising of the streams on all the higher regions
+after the first snowfall, and their steady sustained flow all winter.
+
+The greater portion of the snow deposited around the lofty summits of
+the range falls in small crisp flakes and broken crystals, or, when
+accompanied by strong winds and low temperature, the crystals, instead
+of being locked together in their fall to form tufted flakes, are
+beaten and broken into meal and fine dust. But down in the forest
+region the greater portion comes gently to the ground, light and
+feathery, some of the flakes in mild weather being nearly an inch in
+diameter, and it is evenly distributed and kept from drifting to any
+great extent by the shelter afforded by the large trees. Every tree
+during the progress of gentle storms is loaded with, fairy bloom at the
+coldest and darkest time of year, bending the branches, and hushing
+every singing needle. But as soon as the storm is over, and the sun
+shines, the snow at once begins to shift and settle and fall from the
+branches in miniature avalanches, and the white forest soon becomes
+green again. The snow on the ground also settles and thaws every bright
+day, and freezes at night, until it becomes coarsely granulated, and
+loses every trace of its rayed crystalline structure, and then a man
+may walk firmly over its frozen surface as if on ice. The forest region
+up to an elevation of 7000 feet is usually in great part free from snow
+in June, but at this time the higher regions are still heavy-laden, and
+are not touched by spring weather to any considerable extent before the
+middle or end of July.
+
+One of the most striking effects of the snow on the mountains is the
+burial of the rivers and small lakes.
+
+As the snow fa’s in the river
+A moment white, then lost forever,
+
+
+sang Burns, in illustrating the fleeting character of human pleasure.
+The first snowflakes that fall into the Sierra rivers vanish thus
+suddenly; but in great storms, when the temperature is low, the
+abundance of the snow at length chills the water nearly to the
+freezing-point, and then, of course, it ceases to melt and consume the
+snow so suddenly. The falling flakes and crystals form, cloud-like
+masses of blue sludge, which are swept forward with the current and
+carried down to warmer climates many miles distant, while some are
+lodged against logs and rocks and projecting points of the banks, and
+last for days, piled high above the level of the water, and show white
+again, instead of being at once “lost forever,” while the rivers
+themselves are at length lost for months during the snowy period. The
+snow is first built out from the banks in bossy, over-curling drifts,
+compacting and cementing until the streams are spanned. They then flow
+in the dark beneath a continuous covering across the snowy zone, which
+is about thirty miles wide. All the Sierra rivers and their tributaries
+in these high regions are thus lost every winter, as if another glacial
+period had come on. Not a drop of running water is to be seen excepting
+at a few points where large falls occur, though the rush and rumble of
+the heavier currents may still be heard. Toward spring, when the
+weather is warm during the day and frosty at night, repeated thawing
+and freezing and new layers of snow render the bridging-masses dense
+and firm, so that one may safely walk across the streams, or even lead
+a horse across them without danger of falling through. In June the
+thinnest parts of the winter ceiling, and those most exposed to
+sunshine, begin to give way, forming dark, rugged-edged, pit-like
+sinks, at the bottom of which the rushing water may be seen. At the end
+of June only here and there may the mountaineer find a secure
+snow-bridge. The most lasting of the winter bridges, thawing from below
+as well as from above, because of warm currents of air passing through
+the tunnels, are strikingly arched and sculptured; and by the
+occasional freezing of the oozing, dripping water of the ceiling they
+become brightly and picturesquely icy. In some of the reaches, where
+there is a free margin, we may walk through them. Small skylights
+appearing here and there, these tunnels are not very dark. The roaring
+river fills all the arching way with impressively loud reverberating
+music, which is sweetened at times by the ouzel, a bird that is not
+afraid to go wherever a stream may go, and to sing wherever a stream
+sings.
+
+All the small alpine pools and lakelets are in like manner obliterated
+from the winter landscapes, either by being first frozen and then
+covered by snow, or by being filled in by avalanches. The first
+avalanche of the season shot into a lake basin may perhaps find the
+surface frozen. Then there is a grand crashing of breaking ice and
+dashing of waves mingled with the low, deep booming of the avalanche.
+Detached masses of the invading snow, mixed with fragments of ice,
+drift about in sludgy, island-like heaps, while the main body of it
+forms a talus with its base wholly or in part resting on the bottom of
+the basin, as controlled by its depth and the size of the avalanche.
+The next avalanche, of course, encroaches still farther, and so on with
+each in succession until the entire basin may be filled and its water
+sponged up or displaced. This huge mass of sludge, more or less mixed
+with sand, stones, and perhaps timber, is frozen to a considerable
+depth, and much sun-heat is required to thaw it. Some of these
+unfortunate lakelets are not clear of ice and snow until near the end
+of summer. Others are never quite free, opening only on the side
+opposite the entrance of the avalanches. Some show only a narrow
+crescent of water lying between the shore and sheer bluffs of icy
+compacted snow, masses of which breaking off float in front like
+icebergs in a miniature Arctic Ocean, while the avalanche heaps leaning
+back against the mountains look like small glaciers. The frontal cliffs
+are in some instances quite picturesque, and with the berg-dotted
+waters in front of them lighted with sunshine are exceedingly
+beautiful. It often happens that while one side of a lake basin is
+hopelessly snow-buried and frozen, the other, enjoying sunshine, is
+adorned with beautiful flower-gardens. Some of the smaller lakes are
+extinguished in an instant by a heavy avalanche either of rocks or
+snow. The rolling, sliding, ponderous mass entering on one side sweeps
+across the bottom and up the opposite side, displacing the water and
+even scraping the basin clean, and shoving the accumulated rocks and
+sediments up the farther bank and taking full possession. The dislodged
+water is in part absorbed, but most of it is sent around the front of
+the avalanche and down the channel of the outlet, roaring and hurrying
+as if frightened and glad to escape.
+
+SNOW-BANNERS
+
+The most magnificent storm phenomenon I ever saw, surpassing in showy
+grandeur the most imposing effects of clouds, floods, or avalanches,
+was the peaks of the High Sierra, back of Yosemite Valley, decorated
+with snow-banners. Many of the starry snow-flowers, out of which these
+banners are made, fall before they are ripe, while most of those that
+do attain perfect development as six-rayed crystals glint and chafe
+against one another in their fall through the frosty air, and are
+broken into fragments. This dry fragmentary snow is still further
+prepared for the formation of banners by the action of the wind. For,
+instead of finding rest at once, like the snow which falls into the
+tranquil depths of the forests, it is rolled over and over, beaten
+against rock-ridges, and swirled in pits and hollows, like boulders,
+pebbles, and sand in the pot-holes of a river, until finally the
+delicate angles of the crystals are worn off, and the whole mass is
+reduced to dust. And whenever storm-winds find this prepared snow-dust
+in a loose condition on exposed slopes, where there is a free upward
+sweep to leeward, it is tossed back into the sky, and borne onward from
+peak to peak in the form of banners or cloudy drifts, according to the
+velocity of the wind and the conformation of the slopes up or around
+which it is driven. While thus flying through the air, a small portion
+makes good its escape, and remains in the sky as vapor. But far the
+greater part, after being driven into the sky again and again, is at
+length locked fast in bossy drifts, or in the wombs of glaciers, some
+of it to remain silent and rigid for centuries before it is finally
+melted and sent singing down the mountainsides to the sea.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding the abundance of winter snow-dust in the
+mountains, and the frequency of high winds, and the length of time the
+dust remains loose and exposed to their action, the occurrence of
+well-formed banners is, for causes we shall hereafter note,
+comparatively rare. I have seen only one display of this kind that
+seemed in every way perfect. This was in the winter of 1873, when the
+snow-laden summits were swept by a wild “norther.” I happened at the
+time to be wintering in Yosemite Valley, that sublime Sierra temple
+where every day one may see the grandest sights. Yet even here the wild
+gala-day of the north wind seemed surpassingly glorious. I was awakened
+in the morning by the rocking of my cabin and the beating of pine-burs
+on the roof. Detached torrents and avalanches from the main wind-flood
+overhead were rushing wildly down the narrow side cañons, and over the
+precipitous walls, with loud resounding roar, rousing the pines to
+enthusiastic action, and making the whole valley vibrate as though it
+were an instrument being played.
+
+But afar on the lofty exposed peaks of the range standing so high in
+the sky, the storm was expressing itself in still grander characters,
+which I was soon to see in all their glory. I had long been anxious to
+study some points in the structure of the ice-cone that is formed every
+winter at the foot of the upper Yosemite fall, but the blinding spray
+by which it is invested had hitherto prevented me from making a
+sufficiently near approach. This morning the entire body of the fall
+was torn into gauzy shreds, and blown horizontally along the face of
+the cliff, leaving the cone dry; and while making my way to the top of
+an overlooking ledge to seize so favorable an opportunity to examine
+the interior of the cone, the peaks of the Merced group came in sight
+over the shoulder of the South Dome, each waving a resplendent banner
+against the blue sky, as regular in form, and as firm in texture, as if
+woven of fine silk. So rare and splendid a phenomenon, of course,
+overbore all other considerations, and I at once let the ice-cone go,
+and began to force my way out of the valley to some dome or ridge
+sufficiently lofty to command a general view of the main summits,
+feeling assured that I should find them bannered still more gloriously;
+nor was I in the least disappointed. Indian Cañon, through which I
+climbed, was choked with snow that had been shot down in avalanches
+from the high cliffs on either side, rendering the ascent difficult;
+but inspired by the roaring storm, the tedious wallowing brought no
+fatigue, and in four hours I gained the top of a ridge above the
+valley, 8000 feet high. And there in bold relief, like a clear
+painting, appeared a most imposing scene. Innumerable peaks, black and
+sharp, rose grandly into the dark blue sky, their bases set in solid
+white, their sides streaked and splashed with snow, like ocean rocks
+with foam; and from every summit, all free and unconfused, was
+streaming a beautiful silky silvery banner, from half a mile to a mile
+in length, slender at the point of attachment, then widening gradually
+as it extended from the peak until it was about 1000 or 1500 feet in
+breadth, as near as I could estimate. The cluster of peaks called the
+“Crown of the Sierra,” at the head of the Merced and Tuolumne
+rivers,—Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Conness, Lyell, Maclure, Ritter, with their
+nameless compeers,—each had its own refulgent banner, waving with a
+clearly visible motion in the sunglow, and there was not a single cloud
+in the sky to mar their simple grandeur. Fancy yourself standing on
+this Yosemite ridge looking eastward. You notice a strange garish
+glitter in the air. The gale drives wildly overhead with a fierce,
+tempestuous roar, but its violence is not felt, for you are looking
+through a sheltered opening in the woods as through a window. There, in
+the immediate foreground of your picture, rises a majestic forest of
+Silver Fir blooming in eternal freshness, the foliage yellow-green, and
+the snow beneath the trees strewn with their beautiful plumes, plucked
+off by the wind. Beyond, and extending over all the middle ground, are
+somber swaths of pine, interrupted by huge swelling ridges and domes;
+and just beyond the dark forest you see the monarchs of the High Sierra
+waving their magnificent banners. They are twenty miles away, but you
+would not wish them nearer, for every feature is distinct, and the
+whole glorious show is seen in its right proportions. After this
+general view, mark how sharply the dark snowless ribs and buttresses
+and summits of the peaks are defined, excepting the portions veiled by
+the banners, and how delicately their sides are streaked with snow,
+where it has come to rest in narrow flutings and gorges. Mark, too, how
+grandly the banners wave as the wind is deflected against their sides,
+and how trimly each is attached to the very summit of its peak, like a
+streamer at a masthead; how smooth and silky they are in texture, and
+how finely their fading fringes are penciled on the azure sky. See how
+dense and opaque they are at the point of attachment, and how filmy and
+translucent toward the end, so that the peaks back of them are seen
+dimly, as though you were looking through ground glass. Yet again
+observe how some of the longest, belonging to the loftiest summits,
+stream perfectly free all the way across intervening notches and passes
+from peak to peak, while others overlap and partly hide each other. And
+consider how keenly every particle of this wondrous cloth of snow is
+flashing out jets of light. These are the main features of the
+beautiful and terrible picture as seen from the forest window; and it
+would still be surpassingly glorious were the fore- and middle-grounds
+obliterated altogether, leaving only the black peaks, the white
+banners, and the blue sky.
+
+[Illustration: KOLANA ROCK, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY]
+
+Glancing now in a general way at the formation of snow-banners, we find
+that the main causes of the wondrous beauty and perfection of those we
+have been contemplating were the favorable direction and great force of
+the wind, the abundance of snow-dust, and the peculiar conformation of
+the slopes of the peaks. It is essential not only that the wind should
+move with great velocity and steadiness to supply a sufficiently
+copious and continuous stream of snow-dust, but that it should come
+from the north. No perfect banner is ever hung on the Sierra peaks by a
+south wind. Had the gale that day blown from the south, leaving other
+conditions unchanged, only a dull, confused, fog-like drift would have
+been produced; for the snow, instead of being spouted up over the tops
+of the peaks in concentrated currents to be drawn out as streamers,
+would have been shed off around the sides, and piled down into the
+glacier wombs. The cause of the concentrated action of the north wind
+is found in the peculiar form of the north sides of the peaks, where
+the amphitheaters of the residual glaciers are. In general the south
+sides are convex and irregular, while the north sides are concave both
+in their vertical and horizontal sections; the wind in ascending these
+curves converges toward the summits, carrying the snow in concentrating
+currents with it, shooting it almost straight up into the air above the
+peaks, from which it is then carried away in a horizontal direction.
+
+This difference in form between the north and south sides of the peaks
+was almost wholly produced by the difference in the kind and quantity
+of the glaciation to which they have been subjected, the north sides
+having been hollowed by residual shadow-glaciers of a form that never
+existed on the sun-beaten sides.
+
+It appears, therefore, that shadows in great part determine not only
+the forms of lofty icy mountains, but also those of the snow-banners
+that the wild winds hang on them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA
+
+
+Early one bright morning in the middle of Indian summer, while the
+glacier meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from
+the foot of Mount Lyell, on my way down to Yosemite Valley, to
+replenish my exhausted store of bread and tea. I had spent the past
+summer, as many preceding ones, exploring the glaciers that lie on the
+head waters of the San Joaquin, Tuolumne, Merced, and Owen’s rivers;
+measuring and studying their movements, trends, crevasses, moraines,
+etc., and the part they had played during the period of their greater
+extension in the creation and development of the landscapes of this
+alpine wonderland. The time for this kind of work was nearly over for
+the year, and I began to look forward with delight to the approaching
+winter with its wondrous storms, when I would be warmly snow-bound in
+my Yosemite cabin with plenty of bread and books; but a tinge of regret
+came on when I considered that possibly I might not see this favorite
+region again until the next summer, excepting distant views from the
+heights about the Yosemite walls.
+
+To artists, few portions of the High Sierra are, strictly speaking,
+picturesque. The whole massive uplift of the range is one great
+picture, not clearly divisible into smaller ones; differing much in
+this respect from the older, and what may be called, riper mountains of
+the Coast Range. All the landscapes of the Sierra, as we have seen,
+were born again, remodeled from base to summit by the developing
+ice-floods of the last glacial winter. But all those new landscapes
+were not brought forth simultaneously; some of the highest, where the
+ice lingered longest, are tens of centuries younger than those of the
+warmer regions below them. In general, the younger the
+mountain-landscapes,—younger, I mean, with reference to the time of
+their emergence from the ice of the glacial period,—the less separable
+are they into artistic bits capable of being made into warm,
+sympathetic, lovable pictures with appreciable humanity in them.
+
+Here, however, on the head waters of the Tuolumne, is a group of wild
+peaks on which the geologist may say that the sun has but just begun to
+shine, which is yet in a high degree picturesque, and in its main
+features so regular and evenly balanced as almost to appear
+conventional—one somber cluster of snow-laden peaks with gray
+pine-fringed granite bosses braided around its base, the whole surging
+free into the sky from the head of a magnificent valley, whose lofty
+walls are beveled away on both sides so as to embrace it all without
+admitting anything not strictly belonging to it. The foreground was now
+aflame with autumn colors, brown and purple and gold, ripe in the
+mellow sunshine; contrasting brightly with the deep, cobalt blue of the
+sky, and the black and gray, and pure, spiritual white of the rocks and
+glaciers. Down through the midst, the young Tuolumne was seen pouring
+from its crystal fountains, now resting in glassy pools as if changing
+back again into ice, now leaping in white cascades as if turning to
+snow; gliding right and left between granite bosses, then sweeping on
+through the smooth, meadowy levels of the valley, swaying pensively
+from side to side with calm, stately gestures past dipping willows and
+sedges, and around groves of arrowy pine; and throughout its whole
+eventful course, whether flowing fast or slow, singing loud or low,
+ever filling the landscape with spiritual animation, and manifesting
+the grandeur of its sources in every movement and tone.
+
+Pursuing my lonely way down the valley, I turned again and again to
+gaze on the glorious picture, throwing up my arms to inclose it as in a
+frame. After long ages of growth in the darkness beneath the glaciers,
+through sunshine and storms, it seemed now to be ready and waiting for
+the elected artist, like yellow wheat for the reaper; and I could not
+help wishing that I might carry colors and brushes with me on my
+travels, and learn to paint. In the mean time I had to be content with
+photographs on my mind and sketches in my note-books. At length, after
+I had rounded a precipitous headland that puts out from the west wall
+of the valley, every peak vanished from sight, and I pushed rapidly
+along the frozen meadows, over the divide between the waters of the
+Merced and Tuolumne, and down through the forests that clothe the
+slopes of Cloud’s Rest, arriving in Yosemite in due time—which, with
+me, is _any_ time. And, strange to say, among the first people I met
+here were two artists who, with letters of introduction, were awaiting
+my return. They inquired whether in the course of my explorations in
+the adjacent mountains I had ever come upon a landscape suitable for a
+large painting; whereupon I began a description of the one that had so
+lately excited my admiration. Then, as I went on further and further
+into details, their faces began to glow, and I offered to guide them to
+it, while they declared that they would gladly follow, far or near,
+whithersoever I could spare the time to lead them.
+
+Since storms might come breaking down through the fine weather at any
+time, burying the colors in snow, and cutting off the artists’ retreat,
+I advised getting ready at once.
+
+I led them out of the valley by the Vernal and Nevada Falls, thence
+over the main dividing ridge to the Big Tuolumne Meadows, by the old
+Mono trail, and thence along the upper Tuolumne River to its head. This
+was my companions’ first excursion into the High Sierra, and as I was
+almost always alone in my mountaineering, the way that the fresh beauty
+was reflected in their faces made for me a novel and interesting study.
+They naturally were affected most of all by the colors—the intense
+azure of the sky, the purplish grays of the granite, the red and browns
+of dry meadows, and the translucent purple and crimson of huckleberry
+bogs; the flaming yellow of aspen groves, the silvery flashing of the
+streams, and the bright green and blue of the glacier lakes. But the
+general expression of the scenery—rocky and savage—seemed sadly
+disappointing; and as they threaded the forest from ridge to ridge,
+eagerly scanning the landscapes as they were unfolded, they said: “All
+this is huge and sublime, but we see nothing as yet at all available
+for effective pictures. Art is long, and art is limited, you know; and
+here are foregrounds, middle-grounds, backgrounds, all alike; bare
+rock-waves, woods, groves, diminutive flecks of meadow, and strips of
+glittering water.” “Never mind,” I replied, “only bide a wee, and I
+will show you something you will like.”
+
+At length, toward the end of the second day, the Sierra Crown began to
+come into view, and when we had fairly rounded the projecting headland
+before mentioned, the whole picture stood revealed in the flush of the
+alpenglow. Their enthusiasm was excited beyond bounds, and the more
+impulsive of the two, a young Scotchman, dashed ahead, shouting and
+gesticulating and tossing his arms in the air like a madman. Here, at
+last, was a typical alpine landscape.
+
+After feasting awhile on the view, I proceeded to make camp in a
+sheltered grove a little way back from the meadow, where pine-boughs
+could be obtained for beds, and where there was plenty of dry wood for
+fires, while the artists ran here and there, along the river-bends and
+up the sides of the cañon, choosing foregrounds for sketches. After
+dark, when our tea was made and a rousing fire had been built, we began
+to make our plans. They decided to remain several days, at the least,
+while I concluded to make an excursion in the mean time to the
+untouched summit of Ritter.
+
+It was now about the middle of October, the springtime of snow-flowers.
+The first winter-clouds had already bloomed, and the peaks were strewn
+with fresh crystals, without, however, affecting the climbing to any
+dangerous extent. And as the weather was still profoundly calm, and the
+distance to the foot of the mountain only a little more than a day, I
+felt that I was running no great risk of being storm-bound.
+
+Mount Ritter is king of the mountains of the middle portion of the High
+Sierra, as Shasta of the north and Whitney of the south sections.
+Moreover, as far as I know, it had never been climbed. I had explored
+the adjacent wilderness summer after summer, but my studies thus far
+had never drawn me to the top of it. Its height above sea-level is
+about 13,300 feet, and it is fenced round by steeply inclined glaciers,
+and cañons of tremendous depth and ruggedness, which render it almost
+inaccessible. But difficulties of this kind only exhilarate the
+mountaineer.
+
+Next morning, the artists went heartily to their work and I to mine.
+Former experiences had given good reason to know that passionate
+storms, invisible as yet, might be brooding in the calm sun-gold;
+therefore, before bidding farewell, I warned the artists not to be
+alarmed should I fail to appear before a week or ten days, and advised
+them, in case a snow-storm should set in, to keep up big fires and
+shelter themselves as best they could, and on no account to become
+frightened and attempt to seek their way back to Yosemite alone through
+the drifts.
+
+My general plan was simply this: to scale the cañon, wall, cross over
+to the eastern flank of the range, and then make my way southward to
+the northern spurs of Mount Ritter in compliance with the intervening
+topography; for to push on directly southward from camp through the
+innumerable peaks and pinnacles that adorn this portion of the axis of
+the range, however interesting, would take too much time, besides being
+extremely difficult and dangerous at this time of year.
+
+All my first day was pure pleasure; simply mountaineering indulgence,
+crossing the dry pathways of the ancient glaciers, tracing happy
+streams, and learning the habits of the birds and marmots in the groves
+and rocks. Before I had gone a mile from camp, I came to the foot of a
+white cascade that beats its way down a rugged gorge in the cañon wall,
+from a height of about nine hundred feet, and pours its throbbing
+waters into the Tuolumne. I was acquainted with its fountains, which,
+fortunately, lay in my course. What a fine traveling companion it
+proved to be, what songs it sang, and how passionately it told the
+mountain’s own joy! Gladly I climbed along its dashing border,
+absorbing its divine music, and bathing from time to time in waftings
+of irised spray. Climbing higher, higher, now beauty came streaming on
+the sight: painted meadows, late-blooming gardens, peaks of rare
+architecture, lakes here and there, shining like silver, and glimpses
+of the forested middle region and the yellow lowlands far in the west.
+Beyond the range I saw the so-called Mono Desert, lying dreamily silent
+in thick purple light—a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert
+of ice-burnished granite. Here the waters divide, shouting in glorious
+enthusiasm, and falling eastward to vanish in the volcanic sands and
+dry sky of the Great Basin, or westward to the Great Valley of
+California, and thence through the Bay of San Francisco and the Golden
+Gate to the sea.
+
+Passing a little way down over the summit until I had reached an
+elevation of about 10,000 feet, I pushed on southward toward a group of
+savage peaks that stand guard about Ritter on the north and west,
+groping my way, and dealing instinctively with every obstacle as it
+presented itself. Here a huge gorge would be found cutting across my
+path, along the dizzy edge of which I scrambled until some less
+precipitous point was discovered where I might safely venture to the
+bottom and then, selecting some feasible portion of the opposite wall,
+reascend with the same slow caution. Massive, flat-topped spurs
+alternate with the gorges, plunging abruptly from the shoulders of the
+snowy peaks, and planting their feet in the warm desert. These were
+everywhere marked and adorned with characteristic sculptures of the
+ancient glaciers that swept over this entire region like one vast
+ice-wind, and the polished surfaces produced by the ponderous flood are
+still so perfectly preserved that in many places the sunlight reflected
+from them is about as trying to the eyes as sheets of snow.
+
+God’s glacial-mills grind slowly, but they have been kept in motion
+long enough in California to grind sufficient soil for a glorious
+abundance of life, though most of the grist has been carried to the
+lowlands, leaving these high regions comparatively lean and bare; while
+the post-glacial agents of erosion have not yet furnished sufficient
+available food over the general surface for more than a few tufts of
+the hardiest plants, chiefly carices and eriogonae. And it is
+interesting to learn in this connection that the sparseness and
+repressed character of the vegetation at this height is caused more by
+want of soil than by harshness of climate; for, here and there, in
+sheltered hollows (countersunk beneath the general surface) into which
+a few rods of well-ground moraine chips have been dumped, we find
+groves of spruce and pine thirty to forty feet high, trimmed around the
+edges with willow and huckleberry bushes, and oftentimes still further
+by an outer ring of tall grasses, bright with lupines, larkspurs, and
+showy columbines, suggesting a climate by no means repressingly severe.
+All the streams, too, and the pools at this elevation are furnished
+with little gardens wherever soil can be made to lie, which, though
+making scarce any show at a distance, constitute charming surprises to
+the appreciative observer. In these bits of leanness a few birds find
+grateful homes. Having no acquaintance with man, they fear no ill, and
+flock curiously about the stranger, almost allowing themselves to be
+taken in the hand. In so wild and so beautiful a region was spent my
+first day, every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of
+himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality.
+
+Now came the solemn, silent evening. Long, blue, spiky shadows crept
+out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce
+discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top,
+flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the
+alpenglow, to me one of the most impressive of all the terrestrial
+manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains
+seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed
+and waiting like devout worshipers. Just before the alpenglow began to
+fade, two crimson clouds came streaming across the summit like wings of
+flame, rendering the sublime scene yet more impressive; then came
+darkness and the stars.
+
+Icy Ritter was still miles away, but I could proceed no farther that
+night. I found a good campground on the rim of a glacier basin about
+11,000 feet above the sea. A small lake nestles in the bottom of it,
+from which I got water for my tea, and a storm-beaten thicket near by
+furnished abundance of resiny fire-wood. Somber peaks, hacked and
+shattered, circled half-way around the horizon, wearing a savage aspect
+in the gloaming, and a waterfall chanted solemnly across the lake on
+its way down from the foot of a glacier. The fall and the lake and the
+glacier were almost equally bare; while the scraggy pines anchored in
+the rock-fissures were so dwarfed and shorn by storm-winds that you
+might walk over their tops. In tone and aspect the scene was one of the
+most desolate I ever beheld. But the darkest scriptures of the
+mountains are illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to
+make themselves felt when one is alone.
+
+I made my bed in a nook of the pine-thicket, where the branches were
+pressed and crinkled overhead like a roof, and bent down around the
+sides. These are the best bedchambers the high mountains afford—snug as
+squirrel-nests, well ventilated, full of spicy odors, and with plenty
+of wind-played needles to sing one asleep. I little expected company,
+but, creeping in through a low side-door, I found five or six birds
+nestling among the tassels. The night-wind began to blow soon after
+dark; at first only a gentle breathing, but increasing toward midnight
+to a rough gale that fell upon my leafy roof in ragged surges like a
+cascade, bearing wild sounds from the crags overhead. The waterfall
+sang in chorus, filling the old ice-fountain with its solemn roar, and
+seeming to increase in power as the night advanced—fit voice for such a
+landscape. I had to creep out many times to the fire during the night,
+for it was biting cold and I had no blankets. Gladly I welcomed the
+morning star.
+
+The dawn in the dry, wavering air of the desert was glorious.
+Everything encouraged my undertaking and betokened success. There was
+no cloud in the sky, no storm-tone in the wind. Breakfast of bread and
+tea was soon made. I fastened a hard, durable crust to my belt by way
+of provision, in case I should be compelled to pass a night on the
+mountain-top; then, securing the remainder of my little stock against
+wolves and wood-rats, I set forth free and hopeful.
+
+How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this
+alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The
+highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the
+lower peaks and spires caught the glow, and long lances of light,
+streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen
+meadows. The majestic form of Ritter was full in sight, and I pushed
+rapidly on over rounded rock-bosses and pavements, my iron-shod shoes
+making a clanking sound, suddenly hushed now and then in rugs of
+bryanthus, and sedgy lake-margins soft as moss. Here, too, in this
+so-called “land of desolation,” I met cassiope, growing in fringes
+among the battered rocks. Her blossoms had faded long ago, but they
+were still clinging with happy memories to the evergreen sprays, and
+still so beautiful as to thrill every fiber of one’s being. Winter and
+summer, you may hear her voice, the low, sweet melody of her purple
+bells. No evangel among all the mountain plants speaks Nature’s love
+more plainly than cassiope. Where she dwells, the redemption of the
+coldest solitude is complete. The very rocks and glaciers seem to feel
+her presence, and become imbued with her own fountain sweetness. All
+things were warming and awakening. Frozen rills began to flow, the
+marmots came out of their nests in boulder-piles and climbed sunny
+rocks to bask, and the dun-headed sparrows were flitting about seeking
+their breakfasts. The lakes seen from every ridge-top were brilliantly
+rippled and spangled, shimmering like the thickets of the low Dwarf
+Pines. The rocks, too, seemed responsive to the vital
+heat—rock-crystals and snow-crystals thrilling alike. I strode on
+exhilarated, as if never more to feel fatigue, limbs moving of
+themselves, every sense unfolding like the thawing flowers, to take
+part in the new day harmony.
+
+All along my course thus far, excepting when down in the cañons, the
+landscapes were mostly open to me, and expansive, at least on one side.
+On the left were the purple plains of Mono, reposing dreamily and warm;
+on the right, the near peaks springing keenly into the thin sky with
+more and more impressive sublimity. But these larger views were at
+length lost. Rugged spurs, and moraines, and huge, projecting
+buttresses began to shut me in. Every feature became more rigidly
+alpine, without, however, producing any chilling effect; for going to
+the mountains is like going home. We always find that the strangest
+objects in these fountain wilds are in some degree familiar, and we
+look upon them with a vague sense of having seen them before.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL GRANT TREE, GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK]
+
+On the southern shore of a frozen lake, I encountered an extensive
+field of hard, granular snow, up which I scampered in fine tone,
+intending to follow it to its head, and cross the rocky spur against
+which it leans, hoping thus to come direct upon the base of the main
+Ritter peak. The surface was pitted with oval hollows, made by stones
+and drifted pine-needles that had melted themselves into the mass by
+the radiation of absorbed sun-heat. These afforded good footholds, but
+the surface curved more and more steeply at the head, and the pits
+became shallower and less abundant, until I found myself in danger of
+being shed off like avalanching snow. I persisted, however, creeping on
+all fours, and shuffling up the smoothest places on my back, as I had
+often done on burnished granite, until, after slipping several times, I
+was compelled to retrace my course to the bottom, and make my way
+around the west end of the lake, and thence up to the summit of the
+divide between the head waters of Rush Creek and the northernmost
+tributaries of the San Joaquin.
+
+Arriving on the summit of this dividing crest, one of the most exciting
+pieces of pure wilderness was disclosed that I ever discovered in all
+my mountaineering. There, immediately in front, loomed the majestic
+mass of Mount Ritter, with a glacier swooping down its face nearly to
+my feet, then curving westward and pouring its frozen flood into a dark
+blue lake, whose shores were bound with precipices of crystalline snow;
+while a deep chasm drawn between the divide and the glacier separated
+the massive picture from everything else. I could see only the one
+sublime mountain, the one glacier, the one lake; the whole veiled with
+one blue shadow—rock, ice, and water close together without a single
+leaf or sign of life. After gazing spellbound, I began instinctively to
+scrutinize every notch and gorge and weathered buttress of the
+mountain, with reference to making the ascent. The entire front above
+the glacier appeared as one tremendous precipice, slightly receding at
+the top, and bristling with spires and pinnacles set above one another
+in formidable array. Massive lichen-stained battlements stood forward
+here and there, hacked at the top with angular notches, and separated
+by frosty gullies and recesses that have been veiled in shadow ever
+since their creation; while to right and left, as far as I could see,
+were huge, crumbling buttresses, offering no hope to the climber. The
+head of the glacier sends up a few finger-like branches through narrow
+_couloirs_; but these seemed too steep and short to be available,
+especially as I had no ax with which to cut steps, and the numerous
+narrow-throated gullies down which stones and snow are avalanched
+seemed hopelessly steep, besides being interrupted by vertical cliffs;
+while the whole front was rendered still more terribly forbidding by
+the chill shadow and the gloomy blackness of the rocks.
+
+Descending the divide in a hesitating mood, I picked my way across the
+yawning chasm at the foot, and climbed out upon the glacier. There were
+no meadows now to cheer with their brave colors, nor could I hear the
+dun-headed sparrows, whose cheery notes so often relieve the silence of
+our highest mountains. The only sounds were the gurgling of small rills
+down in the veins and crevasses of the glacier, and now and then the
+rattling report of falling stones, with the echoes they shot out into
+the crisp air.
+
+I could not distinctly hope to reach the summit from this side, yet I
+moved on across the glacier as if driven by fate. Contending with
+myself, the season is too far spent, I said, and even should I be
+successful, I might be storm-bound on the mountain; and in the
+cloud-darkness, with the cliffs and crevasses covered with snow, how
+could I escape? No; I must wait till next summer. I would only approach
+the mountain now, and inspect it, creep about its flanks, learn what I
+could of its history, holding myself ready to flee on the approach of
+the first storm-cloud. But we little know until tried how much of the
+uncontrollable there is in us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and
+up dangerous heights, let the judgment forbid as it may.
+
+I succeeded in gaining the foot of the cliff on the eastern extremity
+of the glacier, and there discovered the mouth of a narrow avalanche
+gully, through which I began to climb, intending to follow it as far as
+possible, and at least obtain some fine wild views for my pains. Its
+general course is oblique to the plane of the mountain-face, and the
+metamorphic slates of which the mountain is built are cut by cleavage
+planes in such a way that they weather off in angular blocks, giving
+rise to irregular steps that greatly facilitate climbing on the sheer
+places. I thus made my way into a wilderness of crumbling spires and
+battlements, built together in bewildering combinations, and glazed in
+many places with a thin coating of ice, which I had to hammer off with
+stones. The situation was becoming gradually more perilous; but, having
+passed several dangerous spots, I dared not think of descending; for,
+so steep was the entire ascent, one would inevitably fall to the
+glacier in case a single misstep were made. Knowing, therefore, the
+tried danger beneath, I became all the more anxious concerning the
+developments to be made above, and began to be conscious of a vague
+foreboding of what actually befell; not that I was given to fear, but
+rather because my instincts, usually so positive and true, seemed
+vitiated in some way, and were leading me astray. At length, after
+attaining an elevation of about 12,800 feet, I found myself at the foot
+of a sheer drop in the bed of the avalanche channel I was tracing,
+which seemed absolutely to bar further progress. It was only about
+forty-five or fifty feet high, and somewhat roughened by fissures and
+projections; but these seemed so slight and insecure, as footholds,
+that I tried hard to avoid the precipice altogether, by scaling the
+wall of the channel on either side. But, though less steep, the walls
+were smoother than the obstructing rock, and repeated efforts only
+showed that I must either go right ahead or turn back. The tried
+dangers beneath seemed even greater than that of the cliff in front;
+therefore, after scanning its face again and again, I began to scale
+it, picking my holds with intense caution. After gaining a point about
+halfway to the top, I was suddenly brought to a dead stop, with arms
+outspread, clinging close to the face of the rock, unable to move hand
+or foot either up or down. My doom appeared fixed. I _must_ fall. There
+would be a moment of bewilderment, and then a lifeless rumble down the
+one general precipice to the glacier below.
+
+When this final danger flashed upon me, I became nerve-shaken for the
+first time since setting foot on the mountains, and my mind seemed to
+fill with a stifling smoke. But this terrible eclipse lasted only a
+moment, when life blazed forth again with preternatural clearness. I
+seemed suddenly to become possessed of a new sense. The other self,
+bygone experiences, Instinct, or Guardian Angel,—call it what you
+will,—came forward and assumed control. Then my trembling muscles
+became firm again, every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as through
+a microscope, and my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision with
+which I seemed to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft
+upon wings, my deliverance could not have been more complete.
+
+Above this memorable spot, the face of the mountain is still more
+savagely hacked and torn. It is a maze of yawning chasms and gullies,
+in the angles of which rise beetling crags and piles of detached
+boulders that seem to have been gotten ready to be launched below. But
+the strange influx of strength I had received seemed inexhaustible. I
+found a way without effort, and soon stood upon the topmost crag in the
+blessed light.
+
+How truly glorious the landscape circled around this noble
+summit!—giant mountains, valleys innumerable, glaciers and meadows,
+rivers and lakes, with the wide blue sky bent tenderly over them all.
+But in my first hour of freedom from that terrible shadow, the sunlight
+in which I was laving seemed all in all.
+
+Looking southward along the axis of the range, the eye is first caught
+by a row of exceedingly sharp and slender spires, which rise openly to
+a height of about a thousand feet, above a series of short, residual
+glaciers that lean back against their bases; their fantastic sculpture
+and the unrelieved sharpness with which they spring out of the ice
+rendering them peculiarly wild and striking. These are “The Minarets.”
+Beyond them you behold a sublime wilderness of mountains, their snowy
+summits towering together in crowded abundance, peak beyond peak,
+swelling higher, higher as they sweep on southward, until the
+culminating point of the range is reached on Mount Whitney, near the
+head of the Kern River, at an elevation of nearly 14,700 feet above the
+level of the sea.
+
+Westward, the general flank of the range is seen flowing sublimely away
+from the sharp summits, in smooth undulations; a sea of huge gray
+granite waves dotted with lakes and meadows, and fluted with stupendous
+cañons that grow steadily deeper as they recede in the distance. Below
+this gray region lies the dark forest zone, broken here and there by
+upswelling ridges and domes; and yet beyond lies a yellow, hazy belt,
+marking the broad plain of the San Joaquin, bounded on its farther side
+by the blue mountains of the coast.
+
+Turning now to the northward, there in the immediate foreground is the
+glorious Sierra Crown, with Cathedral Peak, a temple of marvelous
+architecture, a few degrees to the left of it; the gray, massive form
+of Mammoth Mountain to the right; while Mounts Ord, Gibbs, Dana,
+Conness, Tower Peak, Castle Peak, Silver Mountain, and a host of noble
+companions, as yet nameless, make a sublime show along the axis of the
+range.
+
+Eastward, the whole region seems a land of desolation covered with
+beautiful light. The torrid volcanic basin of Mono, with its one bare
+lake fourteen miles long; Owen’s Valley and the broad lava table-land
+at its head, dotted with craters, and the massive Inyo Range, rivaling
+even the Sierra in height; these are spread, map-like, beneath you,
+with countless ranges beyond, passing and overlapping one another and
+fading on the glowing horizon.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY]
+
+At a distance of less than 3000 feet below the summit of Mount Ritter
+you may find tributaries of the San Joaquin and Owen’s rivers, bursting
+forth from the ice and snow of the glaciers that load its flanks; while
+a little to the north of here are found the highest affluents of the
+Tuolumne and Merced. Thus, the fountains of four of the principal
+rivers of California are within a radius of four or five miles.
+
+Lakes are seen gleaming in all sorts of places,—round, or oval, or
+square, like very mirrors; others narrow and sinuous, drawn close
+around the peaks like silver zones, the highest reflecting only rocks,
+snow, and the sky. But neither these nor the glaciers, nor the bits of
+brown meadow and moorland that occur here and there, are large enough
+to make any marked impression upon the mighty wilderness of mountains.
+The eye, rejoicing in its freedom, roves about the vast expanse, yet
+returns again and again to the fountain peaks. Perhaps some one of the
+multitude excites special attention, some gigantic castle with turret
+and battlement, or some Gothic cathedral more abundantly spired than
+Milan’s. But, generally, when looking for the first time from an
+all-embracing standpoint like this, the inexperienced observer is
+oppressed by the incomprehensible grandeur, variety, and abundance of
+the mountains rising shoulder to shoulder beyond the reach of vision;
+and it is only after they have been studied one by one, long and
+lovingly, that their far-reaching harmonies become manifest. Then,
+penetrate the wilderness where you may, the main telling features, to
+which all the surrounding topography is subordinate, are quickly
+perceived, and the most complicated clusters of peaks stand revealed
+harmoniously correlated and fashioned like works of art—eloquent
+monuments of the ancient ice-rivers that brought them into relief from
+the general mass of the range. The cañons, too, some of them a mile
+deep, mazing wildly through the mighty host of mountains, however
+lawless and ungovernable at first sight they appear, are at length
+recognized as the necessary effects of causes which followed each other
+in harmonious sequence—Nature’s poems carved on tables of stone—the
+simplest and most emphatic of her glacial compositions.
+
+Could we have been here to observe during the glacial period, we should
+have overlooked a wrinkled ocean of ice as continuous as that now
+covering the landscapes of Greenland; filling every valley and cañon
+with only the tops of the fountain peaks rising darkly above the
+rock-encumbered ice-waves like islets in a stormy sea—those islets the
+only hints of the glorious landscapes now smiling in the sun. Standing
+here in the deep, brooding silence all the wilderness seems motionless,
+as if the work of creation were done. But in the midst of this outer
+steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and change. Ever and
+anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These cliff-bound
+glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water and
+grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite
+shores and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young
+rivers is fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to
+the plains. Here are the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here
+more simply than elsewhere is the eternal flux of nature manifested.
+Ice changing to water, lakes to meadows, and mountains to plains. And
+while we thus contemplate Nature’s methods of landscape creation, and,
+reading the records she has carved on the rocks, reconstruct, however
+imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also learn that as these we
+now behold have succeeded those of the pre-glacial age, so they in turn
+are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others yet unborn.
+
+But in the midst of these fine lessons and landscapes, I had to
+remember that the sun was wheeling far to the west, while a new way
+down the mountain had to be discovered to some point on the timber line
+where I could have a fire; for I had not even burdened myself with a
+coat. I first scanned the western spurs, hoping some way might appear
+through which I might reach the northern glacier, and cross its snout;
+or pass around the lake into which it flows, and thus strike my morning
+track. This route was soon sufficiently unfolded to show that, if
+practicable at all, it would require so much time that reaching camp
+that night would be out of the question. I therefore scrambled back
+eastward, descending the southern slopes obliquely at the same time.
+Here the crags seemed less formidable, and the head of a glacier that
+flows northeast came in sight, which I determined to follow as far as
+possible, hoping thus to make my way to the foot of the peak on the
+east side, and thence across the intervening cañons and ridges to camp.
+
+The inclination of the glacier is quite moderate at the head, and, as
+the sun had softened the _névé_, I made safe and rapid progress,
+running and sliding, and keeping up a sharp outlook for crevasses.
+About half a mile from the head, there is an ice-cascade, where the
+glacier pours over a sharp declivity and is shattered into massive
+blocks separated by deep, blue fissures. To thread my way through the
+slippery mazes of this crevassed portion seemed impossible, and I
+endeavored to avoid it by climbing off to the shoulder of the mountain.
+But the slopes rapidly steepened and at length fell away in sheer
+precipices, compelling a return to the ice. Fortunately, the day had
+been warm enough to loosen the ice-crystals so as to admit of hollows
+being dug in the rotten portions of the blocks, thus enabling me to
+pick my way with far less difficulty than I had anticipated. Continuing
+down over the snout, and along the left lateral moraine, was only a
+confident saunter, showing that the ascent of the mountain by way of
+this glacier is easy, provided one is armed with an ax to cut steps
+here and there.
+
+The lower end of the glacier was beautifully waved and barred by the
+outcropping edges of the bedded ice-layers which represent the annual
+snowfalls, and to some extent the irregularities of structure caused by
+the weathering of the walls of crevasses, and by separate snowfalls
+which have been followed by rain, hail, thawing and freezing, etc.
+Small rills were gliding and swirling over the melting surface with a
+smooth, oily appearance, in channels of pure ice—their quick, compliant
+movements contrasting most impressively with the rigid, invisible flow
+of the glacier itself, on whose back they all were riding.
+
+Night drew near before I reached the eastern base of the mountain, and
+my camp lay many a rugged mile to the north; but ultimate success was
+assured. It was now only a matter of endurance and ordinary
+mountain-craft. The sunset was, if possible, yet more beautiful than
+that of the day before. The Mono landscape seemed to be fairly
+saturated with warm, purple light. The peaks marshaled along the summit
+were in shadow, but through every notch and pass streamed vivid
+sun-fire, soothing and irradiating their rough, black angles, while
+companies of small, luminous clouds hovered above them like very angels
+of light.
+
+Darkness came on, but I found my way by the trends of the cañons and
+the peaks projected against the sky. All excitement died with the
+light, and then I was weary. But the joyful sound of the waterfall
+across the lake was heard at last, and soon the stars were seen
+reflected in the lake itself. Taking my bearings from these, I
+discovered the little pine thicket in which my nest was, and then I had
+a rest such as only a tired mountaineer may enjoy. After lying loose
+and lost for awhile, I made a sunrise fire, went down to the lake,
+dashed water on my head, and dipped a cupful for tea. The revival
+brought about by bread and tea was as complete as the exhaustion from
+excessive enjoyment and toil. Then I crept beneath the pine-tassels to
+bed. The wind was frosty and the fire burned low, but my sleep was none
+the less sound, and the evening constellations had swept far to the
+west before I awoke.
+
+After thawing and resting in the morning sunshine, I sauntered
+home,—that is, back to the Tuolumne camp,—bearing away toward a cluster
+of peaks that hold the fountain snows of one of the north tributaries
+of Rush Creek. Here I discovered a group of beautiful glacier lakes,
+nestled together in a grand amphitheater. Toward evening, I crossed the
+divide separating the Mono waters from those of the Tuolumne, and
+entered the glacier basin that now holds the fountain snows of the
+stream that forms the upper Tuolumne cascades. This stream I traced
+down through its many dells and gorges, meadows and bogs, reaching the
+brink of the main Tuolumne at dusk.
+
+A loud whoop for the artists was answered again and again. Their
+camp-fire came in sight, and half an hour afterward I was with them.
+They seemed unreasonably glad to see me. I had been absent only three
+days; nevertheless, though the weather was fine, they had already been
+weighing chances as to whether I would ever return, and trying to
+decide whether they should wait longer or begin to seek their way back
+to the lowlands. Now their curious troubles were over. They packed
+their precious sketches, and next morning we set out homeward bound,
+and in two days entered the Yosemite Valley from the north by way of
+Indian Cañon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE PASSES
+
+
+The sustained grandeur of the High Sierra is strikingly illustrated by
+the great height of the passes. Between latitude 36° 20′ and 38° the
+lowest pass, gap, gorge, or notch of any kind cutting across the axis
+of the range, as far as I have discovered, exceeds 9000 feet in height
+above the level of the sea; while the average height of all that are in
+use, either by Indians or whites, is perhaps not less than 11,000 feet,
+and not one of these is a carriage-pass.
+
+Farther north a carriage-road has been constructed through what is
+known as the Sonora Pass, on the head waters of the Stanislaus and
+Walker’s rivers, the summit of which is about 10,000 feet above the
+sea. Substantial wagon-roads have also been built through the Carson
+and Johnson passes, near the head of Lake Tahoe, over which immense
+quantities of freight were hauled from California to the mining regions
+of Nevada, before the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad.
+
+Still farther north, a considerable number of comparatively low passes
+occur, some of which are accessible to wheeled vehicles, and through
+these rugged defiles during the exciting years of the gold period long
+emigrant-trains with foot-sore cattle wearily toiled. After the
+toil-worn adventurers had escaped a thousand dangers and had crawled
+thousands of miles across the plains the snowy Sierra at last loomed in
+sight, the eastern wall of the land of gold. And as with shaded eyes
+they gazed through the tremulous haze of the desert, with what joy must
+they have descried the pass through which they were to enter the better
+land of their hopes and dreams!
+
+Between the Sonora Pass and the southern extremity of the High Sierra,
+a distance of nearly 160 miles, there are only five passes through
+which trails conduct from one side of the range to the other. These are
+barely practicable for animals; a pass in these regions meaning simply
+any notch or cañon through which one may, by the exercise of unlimited
+patience, make out to lead a mule, or a sure-footed mustang; animals
+that can slide or jump as well as walk. Only three of the five passes
+may be said to be in use, viz.: the Kearsarge, Mono, and Virginia
+Creek; the tracks leading through the others being only obscure Indian
+trails, not graded in the least, and scarcely traceable by white men;
+for much of the way is over solid rock and earthquake avalanche
+taluses, where the unshod ponies of the Indians leave no appreciable
+sign. Only skilled mountaineers are able to detect the marks that serve
+to guide the Indians, such as slight abrasions of the looser rocks, the
+displacement of stones here and there, and bent bushes and weeds. A
+general knowledge of the topography is, then, the main guide, enabling
+one to determine where the trail ought to go—_must_ go. One of these
+Indian trails crosses the range by a nameless pass between the head
+waters of the south and middle forks of the San Joaquin, the other
+between the north and middle forks of the same river, just to the south
+of “The Minarets”; this last being about 9000 feet high, is the lowest
+of the five. The Kearsarge is the highest, crossing the summit near the
+head of the south fork of King’s River, about eight miles to the north
+of Mount Tyndall, through the midst of the most stupendous
+rock-scenery. The summit of this pass is over 12,000 feet above
+sea-level; nevertheless, it is one of the safest of the five, and is
+used every summer, from July to October or November, by hunters,
+prospectors, and stock-owners, and to some extent by enterprising
+pleasure-seekers also. For, besides the surpassing grandeur of the
+scenery about the summit, the trail, in ascending the western flank of
+the range, conducts through a grove of the giant Sequoias, and through
+the magnificent Yosemite Valley of the south fork of King’s River. This
+is, perhaps, the highest traveled pass on the North American continent.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION
+BOUNDARY.]
+
+The Mono Pass lies to the east of Yosemite Valley, at the head of one
+of the tributaries of the south fork of the Tuolumne. This is the best
+known and most extensively traveled of all that exist in the High
+Sierra. A trail was made through it about the time of the Mono gold
+excitement, in the year 1858, by adventurous miners and prospectors—men
+who would build a trail down the throat of darkest Erebus on the way to
+gold. Though more than a thousand feet lower than the Kearsarge, it is
+scarcely less sublime in rock-scenery, while in snowy, falling water it
+far surpasses it. Being so favorably situated for the stream of
+Yosemite travel, the more adventurous tourists cross over through this
+glorious gateway to the volcanic region around Mono Lake. It has
+therefore gained a name and fame above every other pass in the range.
+According to the few barometrical observations made upon it, its
+highest point is 10,765 feet above the sea. The other pass of the five
+we have been considering is somewhat lower, and crosses the axis of the
+range a few miles to the north of the Mono Pass, at the head of the
+southernmost tributary of Walker’s River. It is used chiefly by roaming
+bands of the Pah Ute Indians and “sheepmen.”
+
+But, leaving wheels and animals out of the question, the free
+mountaineer with a sack of bread on his shoulders and an ax to cut
+steps in ice and frozen snow can make his way across the range almost
+everywhere, and at any time of year when the weather is calm. To him
+nearly every notch between the peaks is a pass, though much patient
+step-cutting is at times required up and down steeply inclined
+glaciers, with cautious climbing over precipices that at first sight
+would seem hopelessly inaccessible.
+
+In pursuing my studies, I have crossed from side to side of the range
+at intervals of a few miles all along the highest portion of the chain,
+with far less real danger than one would naturally count on. And what
+fine wildness was thus revealed—storms and avalanches, lakes and
+waterfalls, gardens and meadows, and interesting animals—only those
+will ever know who give the freest and most buoyant portion of their
+lives to climbing and seeing for themselves.
+
+To the timid traveler, fresh from the sedimentary levels of the
+lowlands, these highways, however picturesque and grand, seem terribly
+forbidding—cold, dead, gloomy gashes in the bones of the mountains, and
+of all Nature’s ways the ones to be most cautiously avoided. Yet they
+are full of the finest and most telling examples of Nature’s love; and
+though hard to travel, none are safer. For they lead through regions
+that lie far above the ordinary haunts of the devil, and of the
+pestilence that walks in darkness. True, there are innumerable places
+where the careless step will be the last step; and a rock falling from
+the cliffs may crush without warning like lightning from the sky; but
+what then! Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the
+lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even
+divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of
+civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home.
+Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care,
+save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty
+into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these
+so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill,
+they cure a thousand.
+
+All the passes make their steepest ascents on the eastern flank. On
+this side the average rise is not far from a thousand feet to the mile,
+while on the west it is about two hundred feet. Another marked
+difference between the eastern and western portions of the passes is
+that the former begin at the very foot of the range, while the latter
+can hardly be said to begin lower than an elevation of from seven to
+ten thousand feet. Approaching the range from the gray levels of Mono
+and Owen’s Valley on the east, the traveler sees before him the steep,
+short passes in full view, fenced in by rugged spurs that come plunging
+down from the shoulders of the peaks on either side, the courses of the
+more direct being disclosed from top to bottom without interruption.
+But from the west one sees nothing of the way he may be seeking until
+near the summit, after days have been spent in threading the forests
+growing on the main dividing ridges between the river cañons.
+
+It is interesting to observe how surely the alp-crossing animals of
+every kind fall into the same trails. The more rugged and inaccessible
+the general character of the topography of any particular region, the
+more surely will the trails of white men, Indians, bears, wild sheep,
+etc., be found converging into the best passes. The Indians of the
+western slope venture cautiously over the passes in settled weather to
+attend dances, and obtain loads of pine-nuts and the larvae of a small
+fly that breeds in Mono and Owen’s lakes, which, when dried, forms an
+important article of food; while the Pah Utes cross over from the east
+to hunt the deer and obtain supplies of acorns; and it is truly
+astonishing to see what immense loads the haggard old squaws make out
+to carry bare-footed through these rough passes, oftentimes for a
+distance of sixty or seventy miles. They are always accompanied by the
+men, who stride on, unburdened and erect, a little in advance, kindly
+stooping at difficult places to pile stepping-stones for their patient,
+pack-animal wives, just as they would prepare the way for their ponies.
+
+Bears evince great sagacity as mountaineers, but although they are
+tireless and enterprising travelers they seldom cross the range. I have
+several times tracked them through the Mono Pass, but only in late
+years, after cattle and sheep had passed that way, when they doubtless
+were following to feed on the stragglers and on those that had been
+killed by falling over the rocks. Even the wild sheep, the best
+mountaineers of all, choose regular passes in making journeys across
+the summits. Deer seldom cross the range in either direction. I have
+never yet observed a single specimen of the mule-deer of the Great
+Basin west of the summit, and rarely one of the black-tailed species on
+the eastern slope, notwithstanding many of the latter ascend the range
+nearly to the summit every summer, to feed in the wild gardens and
+bring forth their young.
+
+The glaciers are the pass-makers, and it is by them that the courses of
+all mountaineers are predestined. Without exception every pass in the
+Sierra was created by them without the slightest aid or predetermining
+guidance from any of the cataclysmic agents. I have seen elaborate
+statements of the amount of drilling and blasting accomplished in the
+construction of the railroad across the Sierra, above Donner Lake; but
+for every pound of rock moved in this way, the glaciers which descended
+east and west through this same pass, crushed and carried away more
+than a hundred tons.
+
+The so-called practicable road-passes are simply those portions of the
+range more degraded by glacial action than the adjacent portions, and
+degraded in such a way as to leave the summits rounded, instead of
+sharp; while the peaks, from the superior strength and hardness of
+their rocks, or from more favorable position, having suffered less
+degradation, are left towering above the passes as if they had been
+heaved into the sky by some force acting from beneath.
+
+The scenery of all the passes, especially at the head, is of the
+wildest and grandest description,—lofty peaks massed together and laden
+around their bases with ice and snow; chains of glacier lakes;
+cascading streams in endless variety, with glorious views, westward
+over a sea of rocks and woods, and eastward over strange ashy plains,
+volcanoes, and the dry, dead-looking ranges of the Great Basin. Every
+pass, however, possesses treasures of beauty all its own.
+
+Having thus in a general way indicated the height, leading features,
+and distribution of the principal passes, I will now endeavor to
+describe the Mono Pass in particular, which may, I think, be regarded
+as a fair example of the higher alpine passes in general.
+
+The main portion of the Mono Pass is formed by Bloody Cañon, which
+begins at the summit of the range, and runs in a general
+east-northeasterly direction to the edge of the Mono Plain.
+
+The first white men who forced a way through its somber depths were, as
+we have seen, eager gold-seekers. But the cañon was known and traveled
+as a pass by the Indians and mountain animals long before its discovery
+by white men, as is shown by the numerous tributary trails which come
+into it from every direction. Its name accords well with the character
+of the “early times” in California, and may perhaps have been suggested
+by the predominant color of the metamorphic slates in which it is in
+great part eroded; or more probably by blood-stains made by the
+unfortunate animals which were compelled to slip and shuffle awkwardly
+over its rough, cutting rocks. I have never known an animal, either
+mule or horse, to make its way through the cañon, either in going up or
+down, without losing more or less blood from wounds on the legs.
+Occasionally one is killed outright—falling headlong and rolling over
+precipices like a boulder. But such accidents are rarer than from the
+terrible appearance of the trail one would be led to expect; the more
+experienced when driven loose find their way over the dangerous places
+with a caution and sagacity that is truly wonderful. During the gold
+excitement it was at times a matter of considerable pecuniary
+importance to force a way through the cañon with pack-trains early in
+the spring while it was yet heavily blocked with snow; and then the
+mules with their loads had sometimes to be let down over the steepest
+drifts and avalanche beds by means of ropes.
+
+A good bridle-path leads from Yosemite through many a grove and meadow
+up to the head of the cañon, a distance of about thirty miles. Here the
+scenery undergoes a sudden and startling condensation. Mountains, red,
+gray, and black, rise close at hand on the right, whitened around their
+bases with banks of enduring snow; on the left swells the huge red mass
+of Mount Gibbs, while in front the eye wanders down the shadowy cañon,
+and out on the warm plain of Mono, where the lake is seen gleaming like
+a burnished metallic disk, with clusters of lofty volcanic cones to the
+south of it.
+
+When at length we enter the mountain gateway, the somber rocks seem
+aware of our presence, and seem to come thronging closer about us.
+Happily the ouzel and the old familiar robin are here to sing us
+welcome, and azure daisies beam with trustfulness and sympathy,
+enabling us to feel something of Nature’s love even here, beneath the
+gaze of her coldest rocks.
+
+The effect of this expressive outspokenness on the part of the
+cañon-rocks is greatly enhanced by the quiet aspect of the alpine
+meadows through which we pass just before entering the narrow gateway.
+The forests in which they lie, and the mountain-tops rising beyond
+them, seem quiet and tranquil. We catch their restful spirit, yield to
+the soothing influences of the sunshine, and saunter dreamily on
+through flowers and bees, scarce touched by a definite thought; then
+suddenly we find ourselves in the shadowy cañon, closeted with Nature
+in one of her wildest strongholds.
+
+After the first bewildering impression begins to wear off, we perceive
+that it is not altogether terrible; for besides the reassuring birds
+and flowers we discover a chain of shining lakelets hanging down from
+the very summit of the pass, and linked together by a silvery stream.
+The highest are set in bleak, rough bowls, scantily fringed with brown
+and yellow sedges. Winter storms blow snow through the cañon in
+blinding drifts, and avalanches shoot from the heights. Then are these
+sparkling tarns filled and buried, leaving not a hint of their
+existence. In June and July they begin to blink and thaw out like
+sleepy eyes, the carices thrust up their short brown spikes, the
+daisies bloom in turn, and the most profoundly buried of them all is at
+length warmed and summered as if winter were only a dream.
+
+Red Lake is the lowest of the chain, and also the largest. It seems
+rather dull and forbidding at first sight, lying motionless in its
+deep, dark bed. The cañon wall rises sheer from the water’s edge on the
+south, but on the opposite side there is sufficient space and sunshine
+for a sedgy daisy garden, the center of which is brilliantly lighted
+with lilies, castilleias, larkspurs, and columbines, sheltered from the
+wind by leafy willows, and forming a most joyful outburst of plant-life
+keenly emphasized by the chill baldness of the onlooking cliffs.
+
+After indulging here in a dozing, shimmering lake-rest, the happy
+stream sets forth again, warbling and trilling like an ouzel, ever
+delightfully confiding, no matter how dark the way; leaping, gliding,
+hither, thither, clear or foaming: manifesting the beauty of its
+wildness in every sound and gesture.
+
+One of its most beautiful developments is the Diamond Cascade, situated
+a short distance below Red Lake. Here the tense, crystalline water is
+first dashed into coarse, granular spray mixed with dusty foam, and
+then divided into a diamond pattern by following the diagonal
+cleavage-joints that intersect the face of the precipice over which it
+pours. Viewed in front, it resembles a strip of embroidery of definite
+pattern, varying through the seasons with the temperature and the
+volume of water. Scarce a flower may be seen along its snowy border. A
+few bent pines look on from a distance, and small fringes of cassiope
+and rock-ferns are growing in fissures near the head, but these are so
+lowly and undemonstrative that only the attentive observer will be
+likely to notice them.
+
+On the north wall of the cañon, a little below the Diamond Cascade, a
+glittering side stream makes its appearance, seeming to leap directly
+out of the sky. It first resembles a crinkled ribbon of silver hanging
+loosely down the wall, but grows wider as it descends, and dashes the
+dull rock with foam. A long rough talus curves up against this part of
+the cliff, overgrown with snow-pressed willows, in which the fall
+disappears with many an eager surge and swirl and plashing leap,
+finally beating its way down to its confluence with the main cañon
+stream.
+
+Below this point the climate is no longer arctic. Butterflies become
+larger and more abundant, grasses with imposing spread of panicle wave
+above your shoulders, and the summery drone of the bumblebee thickens
+the air. The Dwarf Pine, the tree-mountaineer that climbs highest and
+braves the coldest blasts, is found scattered in storm-beaten clumps
+from the summit of the pass about half-way down the cañon. Here it is
+succeeded by the hardy Two-leaved Pine, which is speedily joined by the
+taller Yellow and Mountain Pines. These, with the burly juniper, and
+shimmering aspen, rapidly grow larger as the sunshine becomes richer,
+forming groves that block the view; or they stand more apart here and
+there in picturesque groups, that make beautiful and obvious harmony
+with the rocks and with one another. Blooming underbrush becomes
+abundant,—azalea, spiraea, and the brier-rose weaving fringes for the
+streams, and shaggy rugs to relieve the stern, unflinching rock-bosses.
+
+[Illustration: RANCHERIA FALLS, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY]
+
+Through this delightful wilderness, Cañon Creek roves without any
+constraining channel, throbbing and wavering; now in sunshine, now in
+thoughtful shade; falling, swirling, flashing from side to side in
+weariless exuberance of energy. A glorious milky way of cascades is
+thus developed, of which Bower Cascade, though one of the smallest, is
+perhaps the most beautiful of them all. It is situated in the lower
+region of the pass, just where the sunshine begins to mellow between
+the cold and warm climates. Here the glad creek, grown strong with
+tribute gathered from many a snowy fountain on the heights, sings
+richer strains, and becomes more human and lovable at every step. Now
+you may by its side find the rose and homely yarrow, and small meadows
+full of bees and clover. At the head of a low-browed rock, luxuriant
+dogwood bushes and willows arch over from bank to bank, embowering the
+stream with their leafy branches; and drooping plumes, kept in motion
+by the current, fringe the brow of the cascade in front. From this
+leafy covert the stream leaps out into the light in a fluted curve
+thick sown with sparkling crystals, and falls into a pool filled with
+brown boulders, out of which it creeps gray with foam-bells and
+disappears in a tangle of verdure like that from which it came.
+
+Hence, to the foot of the cañon, the metamorphic slates give place to
+granite, whose nobler sculpture calls forth expressions of
+corresponding beauty from the stream in passing over it,—bright trills
+of rapids, booming notes of falls, solemn hushes of smooth-gliding
+sheets, all chanting and blending in glorious harmony. When, at length,
+its impetuous alpine life is done, it slips through a meadow with
+scarce an audible whisper, and falls asleep in Moraine Lake.
+
+This water-bed is one of the finest I ever saw. Evergreens wave
+soothingly about it, and the breath of flowers floats over it like
+incense. Here our blessed stream rests from its rocky wanderings, all
+its mountaineering done,—no more foaming rock-leaping, no more wild,
+exulting song. It falls into a smooth, glassy sleep, stirred only by
+the night-wind, which, coming down the cañon, makes it croon and mutter
+in ripples along its broidered shores.
+
+Leaving the lake, it glides quietly through the rushes, destined never
+more to touch the living rock. Henceforth its path lies through ancient
+moraines and reaches of ashy sage-plain, which nowhere afford rocks
+suitable for the development of cascades or sheer falls. Yet this
+beauty of maturity, though less striking, is of a still higher order,
+enticing us lovingly on through gentian meadows and groves of rustling
+aspen to Lake Mono, where, spirit-like, our happy stream vanishes in
+vapor, and floats free again in the sky.
+
+Bloody Cañon, like every other in the Sierra, was recently occupied by
+a glacier, which derived its fountain snows from the adjacent summits,
+and descended into Mono Lake, at a time when its waters stood at a much
+higher level than now. The principal characters in which the history of
+the ancient glaciers is preserved are displayed here in marvelous
+freshness and simplicity, furnishing the student with extraordinary
+advantages for the acquisition of knowledge of this sort. The most
+striking passages are polished and striated surfaces, which in many
+places reflect the rays of the sun like smooth water. The dam of Red
+Lake is an elegantly modeled rib of metamorphic slate, brought into
+relief because of its superior strength, and because of the greater
+intensity of the glacial erosion of the rock immediately above it,
+caused by a steeply inclined tributary glacier, which entered the main
+trunk with a heavy down-thrust at the head of the lake.
+
+Moraine Lake furnishes an equally interesting example of a basin formed
+wholly, or in part, by a terminal moraine dam curved across the path of
+a stream between two lateral moraines.
+
+At Moraine Lake the cañon proper terminates, although apparently
+continued by the two lateral moraines of the vanished glacier. These
+moraines are about 300 feet high, and extend unbrokenly from the sides
+of the cañon into the plain, a distance of about five miles, curving
+and tapering in beautiful lines. Their sunward sides are gardens, their
+shady sides are groves; the former devoted chiefly to eriogonae,
+compositae, and graminae; a square rod containing five or six profusely
+flowered eriogonums of several species, about the same number of bahia
+and linosyris, and a few grass tufts; each species being planted trimly
+apart, with bare gravel between, as if cultivated artificially.
+
+My first visit to Bloody Cañon was made in the summer of 1869, under
+circumstances well calculated to heighten the impressions that are the
+peculiar offspring of mountains. I came from the blooming tangles of
+Florida, and waded out into the plant-gold of the great valley of
+California, when its flora was as yet untrodden. Never before had I
+beheld congregations of social flowers half so extensive or half so
+glorious. Golden composite covered all the ground from the Coast Range
+to the Sierra like a stratum of curdled sunshine, in which I reveled
+for weeks, watching the rising and setting of their innumerable suns;
+then I gave myself up to be borne forward on the crest of the summer
+wave that sweeps annually up the Sierra and spends itself on the snowy
+summits.
+
+At the Big Tuolumne Meadows I remained more than a month, sketching,
+botanizing, and climbing among the surrounding mountains. The
+mountaineer with whom I then happened to be camping was one of those
+remarkable men one so frequently meets in California, the hard angles
+and bosses of whose characters have been brought into relief by the
+grinding excitements of the gold period, until they resemble glacial
+landscapes. But at this late day, my friend’s activities had subsided,
+and his craving for rest caused him to become a gentle shepherd and
+literally to lie down with the lamb.
+
+Recognizing the unsatisfiable longings of my Scotch Highland instincts,
+he threw out some hints concerning Bloody Cañon, and advised me to
+explore it. “I have never seen it myself,” he said, “for I never was so
+unfortunate as to pass that way. But I have heard many a strange story
+about it, and I warrant you will at least find it wild enough.”
+
+Then of course I made haste to see it. Early next morning I made up a
+bundle of bread, tied my note-book to my belt, and strode away in the
+bracing air, full of eager, indefinite hope. The plushy lawns that lay
+in my path served to soothe my morning haste. The sod in many places
+was starred with daisies and blue gentians, over which I lingered. I
+traced the paths of the ancient glaciers over many a shining pavement,
+and marked the gaps in the upper forests that told the power of the
+winter avalanches. Climbing higher, I saw for the first time the
+gradual dwarfing of the pines in compliance with climate, and on the
+summit discovered creeping mats of the arctic willow overgrown with
+silky catkins, and patches of the dwarf vaccinium with its round
+flowers sprinkled in the grass like purple hail; while in every
+direction the landscape stretched sublimely away in fresh wildness—a
+manuscript written by the hand of Nature alone.
+
+At length, as I entered the pass, the huge rocks began to close around
+in all their wild, mysterious impressiveness, when suddenly, as I was
+gazing eagerly about me, a drove of gray hairy beings came in sight,
+lumbering toward me with a kind of boneless, wallowing motion like
+bears.
+
+I never turn back, though often so inclined, and in this particular
+instance, amid such surroundings, everything seemed singularly
+unfavorable for the calm acceptance of so grim a company. Suppressing
+my fears, I soon discovered that although as hairy as bears and as
+crooked as summit pines, the strange creatures were sufficiently erect
+to belong to our own species. They proved to be nothing more formidable
+than Mono Indians dressed in the skins of sage-rabbits. Both the men
+and the women begged persistently for whisky and tobacco, and seemed so
+accustomed to denials that I found it impossible to convince them that
+I had none to give. Excepting the names of these two products of
+civilization, they seemed to understand not a word of English; but I
+afterward learned that they were on their way to Yosemite Valley to
+feast awhile on trout and procure a load of acorns to carry back
+through the pass to their huts on the shore of Mono Lake.
+
+Occasionally a good countenance may be seen among the Mono Indians, but
+these, the first specimens I had seen, were mostly ugly, and some of
+them altogether hideous. The dirt on their faces was fairly stratified,
+and seemed so ancient and so undisturbed it might almost possess a
+geological significance. The older faces were, moreover, strangely
+blurred and divided into sections by furrows that looked like the
+cleavage-joints of rocks, suggesting exposure on the mountains in a
+castaway condition for ages. Somehow they seemed to have no right place
+in the landscape, and I was glad to see them fading out of sight down
+the pass.
+
+Then came evening, and the somber cliffs were inspired with the
+ineffable beauty of the alpenglow. A solemn calm fell upon everything.
+All the lower portion of the cañon was in gloaming shadow, and I crept
+into a hollow near one of the upper lakelets to smooth the ground in a
+sheltered nook for a bed. When the short twilight faded, I kindled a
+sunny fire, made a cup of tea, and lay down to rest and look at the
+stars. Soon the night-wind began to flow and pour in torrents among the
+jagged peaks, mingling strange tones with those of the waterfalls
+sounding far below; and as I drifted toward sleep I began to experience
+an uncomfortable feeling of nearness to the furred Monos. Then the full
+moon looked down over the edge of the cañon wall, her countenance
+seemingly filled with intense concern, and apparently so near as to
+produce a startling effect as if she had entered my bedroom, forgetting
+all the world, to gaze on me alone.
+
+The night was full of strange sounds, and I gladly welcomed the
+morning. Breakfast was soon done, and I set forth in the exhilarating
+freshness of the new day, rejoicing in the abundance of pure wildness
+so close about me. The stupendous rocks, hacked and scarred with
+centuries of storms, stood sharply out in the thin early light, while
+down in the bottom of the cañon grooved and polished bosses heaved and
+glistened like swelling sea-waves, telling a grand old story of the
+ancient glacier that poured its crushing floods above them.
+
+Here for the first time I met the arctic daisies in all their
+perfection of purity and spirituality,—gentle mountaineers face to face
+with the stormy sky, kept safe and warm by a thousand miracles. I
+leaped lightly from rock to rock, glorying in the eternal freshness and
+sufficiency of Nature, and in the ineffable tenderness with which she
+nurtures her mountain darlings in the very fountains of storms. Fresh
+beauty appeared at every step, delicate rock-ferns, and groups of the
+fairest flowers. Now another lake came to view, now a waterfall. Never
+fell light in brighter spangles, never fell water in whiter foam. I
+seemed to float through the cañon enchanted, feeling nothing of its
+roughness, and was out in the Mono levels before I was aware.
+
+Looking back from the shore of Moraine Lake, my morning ramble seemed
+all a dream. There curved Bloody Cañon, a mere glacial furrow 2000 feet
+deep, with smooth rocks projecting from the sides and braided together
+in the middle, like bulging, swelling muscles. Here the lilies were
+higher than my head, and the sunshine was warm enough for palms. Yet
+the snow around the arctic willows was plainly visible only four miles
+away, and between were narrow specimen zones of all the principal
+climates of the globe.
+
+On the bank of a small brook that comes gurgling down the side of the
+left lateral moraine, I found a camp-fire still burning, which no doubt
+belonged to the gray Indians I had met on the summit, and I listened
+instinctively and moved cautiously forward, half expecting to see some
+of their grim faces peering out of the bushes.
+
+Passing on toward the open plain, I noticed three well-defined terminal
+moraines curved gracefully across the cañon stream, and joined by long
+splices to the two noble laterals. These mark the halting-places of the
+vanished glacier when it was retreating into its summit shadows on the
+breaking-up of the glacial winter.
+
+Five miles below the foot of Moraine Lake, just where the lateral
+moraines lose themselves in the plain, there was a field of wild rye,
+growing in magnificent waving bunches six to eight feet high, bearing
+heads from six to twelve inches long. Rubbing out some of the grains, I
+found them about five eighths of an inch long, dark-colored, and sweet.
+Indian women were gathering it in baskets, bending down large handfuls,
+beating it out, and fanning it in the wind. They were quite
+picturesque, coming through the rye, as one caught glimpses of them
+here and there, in winding lanes and openings, with splendid tufts
+arching above their heads, while their incessant chat and laughter
+showed their heedless joy.
+
+Like the rye-field, I found the so-called desert of Mono blooming in a
+high state of natural cultivation with the wild rose, cherry, aster,
+and the delicate abronia; also innumerable gilias, phloxes, poppies,
+and bush-compositae. I observed their gestures and the various
+expressions of their corollas, inquiring how they could be so fresh and
+beautiful out in this volcanic desert. They told as happy a life as any
+plant-company I ever met, and seemed to enjoy even the hot sand and the
+wind.
+
+But the vegetation of the pass has been in great part destroyed, and
+the same may be said of all the more accessible passes throughout the
+range. Immense numbers of starving sheep and cattle have been driven
+through them into Nevada, trampling the wild gardens and meadows almost
+out of existence. The lofty walls are untouched by any foot, and the
+falls sing on unchanged; but the sight of crushed flowers and stripped,
+bitten bushes goes far toward destroying the charm of wildness.
+
+The cañon should be seen in winter. A good, strong traveler, who knows
+the way and the weather, might easily make a safe excursion through it
+from Yosemite Valley on snow-shoes during some tranquil time, when the
+storms are hushed. The lakes and falls would be buried then; but so,
+also, would be the traces of destructive feet, while the views of the
+mountains in their winter garb, and the ride at lightning speed down
+the pass between the snowy walls, would be truly glorious.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CAÑON.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+THE GLACIER LAKES
+
+
+Among the many unlooked-for treasures that are bound up and hidden away
+in the depths of Sierra solitudes, none more surely charm and surprise
+all kinds of travelers than the glacier lakes. The forests and the
+glaciers and the snowy fountains of the streams advertise their wealth
+in a more or less telling manner even in the distance, but nothing is
+seen of the lakes until we have climbed above them. All the upper
+branches of the rivers are fairly laden with lakes, like orchard trees
+with fruit. They lie embosomed in the deep woods, down in the grovy
+bottoms of cañons, high on bald tablelands, and around the feet of the
+icy peaks, mirroring back their wild beauty over and over again. Some
+conception of their lavish abundance may be made from the fact that,
+from one standpoint on the summit of Red Mountain, a day’s journey to
+the east of Yosemite Valley, no fewer than forty-two are displayed
+within a radius of ten miles. The whole number in the Sierra can hardly
+be less than fifteen hundred, not counting the smaller pools and tarns,
+which are innumerable. Perhaps two thirds or more lie on the western
+flank of the range, and all are restricted to the alpine and subalpine
+regions. At the close of the last glacial period, the middle and
+foot-hill regions also abounded in lakes, all of which have long since
+vanished as completely as the magnificent ancient glaciers that brought
+them into existence.
+
+Though the eastern flank of the range is excessively steep, we find
+lakes pretty regularly distributed throughout even the most precipitous
+portions. They are mostly found in the upper branches of the cañons,
+and in the glacial amphitheaters around the peaks.
+
+Occasionally long, narrow specimens occur upon the steep sides of
+dividing ridges, their basins swung lengthwise like hammocks, and very
+rarely one is found lying so exactly on the summit of the range at the
+head of some pass that its waters are discharged down both flanks when
+the snow is melting fast. But, however situated, they soon cease to
+form surprises to the studious mountaineer; for, like all the love-work
+of Nature, they are harmoniously related to one another, and to all the
+other features of the mountains. It is easy, therefore, to find the
+bright lake-eyes in the roughest and most ungovernable-looking
+topography of any landscape countenance. Even in the lower regions,
+where they have been closed for many a century, their rocky orbits are
+still discernible, filled in with the detritus of flood and avalanche.
+A beautiful system of grouping in correspondence with the glacial
+fountains is soon perceived; also their extension in the direction of
+the trends of the ancient glaciers; and in general their dependence as
+to form, size, and position upon the character of the rocks in which
+their basins have been eroded, and the quantity and direction of
+application of the glacial force expended upon each basin.
+
+In the upper cañons we usually find them in pretty regular succession,
+strung together like beads on the bright ribbons of their
+feeding-streams, which pour, white and gray with foam and spray, from
+one to the other, their perfect mirror stillness making impressive
+contrasts with the grand blare and glare of the connecting cataracts.
+In Lake Hollow, on the north side of the Hoffman spur, immediately
+above the great Tuolumne cañon, there are ten lovely lakelets lying
+near together in one general hollow, like eggs in a nest. Seen from
+above, in a general view, feathered with Hemlock Spruce, and fringed
+with sedge, they seem to me the most singularly beautiful and
+interestingly located lake-cluster I have ever yet discovered.
+
+Lake Tahoe, 22 miles long by about 10 wide, and from 500 to over 1600
+feet in depth, is the largest of all the Sierra lakes. It lies just
+beyond the northern limit of the higher portion of the range between
+the main axis and a spur that puts out on the east side from near the
+head of the Carson River. Its forested shores go curving in and out
+around many an emerald bay and pine-crowned promontory, and its waters
+are everywhere as keenly pure as any to be found among the highest
+mountains.
+
+Donner Lake, rendered memorable by the terrible fate of the Donner
+party, is about three miles long, and lies about ten miles to the north
+of Tahoe, at the head of one of the tributaries of the Truckee. A few
+miles farther north lies Lake Independence, about the same size as
+Donner. But far the greater number of the lakes lie much higher and are
+quite small, few of them exceeding a mile in length, most of them less
+than half a mile.
+
+Along the lower edge of the lake-belt, the smallest have disappeared by
+the filling-in of their basins, leaving only those of considerable
+size. But all along the upper freshly glaciated margin of the
+lake-bearing zone, every hollow, however small, lying within reach of
+any portion of the close network of streams, contains a bright,
+brimming pool; so that the landscape viewed from the mountain-tops
+seems to be sown broadcast with them. Many of the larger lakes are
+encircled with smaller ones like central gems girdled with sparkling
+brilliants. In general, however, there is no marked dividing line as to
+size. In order, therefore, to prevent confusion, I would state here
+that in giving numbers, I include none less than 500 yards in
+circumference.
+
+In the basin of the Merced River, I counted 131, of which 111 are upon
+the tributaries that fall so grandly into Yosemite Valley. Pohono
+Creek, which forms the fall of that name, takes its rise in a beautiful
+lake, lying beneath the shadow of a lofty granite spur that puts out
+from Buena Vista peak. This is now the only lake left in the whole
+Pohono Basin. The Illilouette has sixteen, the Nevada no fewer than
+sixty-seven, the Tenaya eight, Hoffmann Creek five, and Yosemite Creek
+fourteen. There are but two other lake-bearing affluents of the Merced,
+viz., the South Fork with fifteen, and Cascade Creek with five, both of
+which unite with the main trunk below Yosemite.
+
+[Illustration: LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS.]
+
+The Merced River, as a whole, is remarkably like an elm-tree, and it
+requires but little effort on the part of the imagination to picture it
+standing upright, with all its lakes hanging upon its spreading
+branches, the topmost eighty miles in height. Now add all the other
+lake-bearing rivers of the Sierra, each in its place, and you will have
+a truly glorious spectacle,—an avenue the length and width of the
+range; the long, slender, gray shafts of the main trunks, the milky way
+of arching branches, and the silvery lakes, all clearly defined and
+shining on the sky. How excitedly such an addition to the scenery would
+be gazed at! Yet these lakeful rivers are still more excitingly
+beautiful and impressive in their natural positions to those who have
+the eyes to see them as they lie imbedded in their meadows and forests
+and glacier-sculptured rocks.
+
+When a mountain lake is born,—when, like a young eye, it first opens to
+the light,—it is an irregular, expressionless crescent, inclosed in
+banks of rock and ice,—bare, glaciated rock on the lower side, the
+rugged snout of a glacier on the upper. In this condition it remains
+for many a year, until at length, toward the end of some auspicious
+cluster of seasons, the glacier recedes beyond the upper margin of the
+basin, leaving it open from shore to shore for the first time,
+thousands of years after its conception beneath the glacier that
+excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its
+pure depths; the winds ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun fills it
+with throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around
+its leafless shores,—sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at
+night its only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors.
+Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede, and numerous rills, still
+younger than the lake itself, bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and
+pebbles, giving rise to margin-rings and plats of soil. To these fresh
+soil-beds come many a waiting plant. First, a hardy carex with arching
+leaves and a spike of brown flowers; then, as the seasons grow warmer,
+and the soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take their appointed
+places, and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies, dodecatheons,
+violets, honeyworts, and many a lowly moss. Shrubs also hasten in time
+to the new gardens,—kalmia with its glossy leaves and purple flowers,
+the arctic willow, making soft woven carpets, together with the heathy
+bryanthus and cassiope, the fairest and dearest of them all. Insects
+now enrich the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed
+by the ouzel, which is the first bird to visit a glacier lake, as the
+sedge is the first of plants.
+
+So the young lake grows in beauty, becoming more and more humanly
+lovable from century to century. Groves of aspen spring up, and hardy
+pines, and the Hemlock Spruce, until it is richly overshadowed and
+embowered. But while its shores are being enriched, the soil-beds creep
+out with incessant growth, contracting its area, while the lighter
+mud-particles deposited on the bottom cause it to grow constantly
+shallower, until at length the last remnant of the lake
+vanishes,—closed forever in ripe and natural old age. And now its
+feeding-stream goes winding on without halting through the new gardens
+and groves that have taken its place.
+
+The length of the life of any lake depends ordinarily upon the capacity
+of its basin, as compared with the carrying power of the streams that
+flow into it, the character of the rocks over which these streams flow,
+and the relative position of the lake toward other lakes. In a series
+whose basins lie in the same cañon, and are fed by one and the same
+main stream, the uppermost will, of course, vanish first unless some
+other lake-filling agent comes in to modify the result; because at
+first it receives nearly all of the sediments that the stream brings
+down, only the finest of the mud-particles being carried through the
+highest of the series to the next below. Then the next higher, and the
+next would be successively filled, and the lowest would be the last to
+vanish. But this simplicity as to duration is broken in upon in various
+ways, chiefly through the action of side-streams that enter the lower
+lakes direct. For, notwithstanding many of these side tributaries are
+quite short, and, during late summer, feeble, they all become powerful
+torrents in springtime when the snow is melting, and carry not only
+sand and pine-needles, but large trunks and boulders tons in weight,
+sweeping them down their steeply inclined channels and into the lake
+basins with astounding energy. Many of these side affluents also have
+the advantage of access to the main lateral moraines of the vanished
+glacier that occupied the cañon, and upon these they draw for
+lake-filling material, while the main trunk stream flows mostly over
+clean glacier pavements, where but little moraine matter is ever left
+for them to carry. Thus a small rapid stream with abundance of loose
+transportable material within its reach may fill up an extensive basin
+in a few centuries, while a large perennial trunk stream, flowing over
+clean, enduring pavements, though ordinarily a hundred times larger,
+may not fill a smaller basin in thousands of years.
+
+The comparative influence of great and small streams as lake-fillers is
+strikingly illustrated in Yosemite Valley, through which the Merced
+flows. The bottom of the valley is now composed of level meadow-lands
+and dry, sloping soil-beds planted with oak and pine, but it was once a
+lake stretching from wall to wall and nearly from one end of the valley
+to the other, forming one of the most beautiful cliff-bound sheets of
+water that ever existed in the Sierra. And though never perhaps seen by
+human eye, it was but yesterday, geologically speaking, since it
+disappeared, and the traces of its existence are still so fresh, it may
+easily be restored to the eye of imagination and viewed in all its
+grandeur, about as truly and vividly as if actually before us. Now we
+find that the detritus which fills this magnificent basin was not
+brought down from the distant mountains by the main streams that
+converge here to form the river, however powerful and available for the
+purpose at first sight they appear; but almost wholly by the small
+local tributaries, such as those of Indian Cañon, the Sentinel, and the
+Three Brothers, and by a few small residual glaciers which lingered in
+the shadows of the walls long after the main trunk glacier had receded
+beyond the head of the valley.
+
+Had the glaciers that once covered the range been melted at once,
+leaving the entire surface bare from top to bottom simultaneously, then
+of course all the lakes would have come into existence at the same
+time, and the highest, other circumstances being equal, would, as we
+have seen, be the first to vanish. But because they melted gradually
+from the foot of the range upward, the lower lakes were the first to
+see the light and the first to be obliterated. Therefore, instead of
+finding the lakes of the present day at the foot of the range, we find
+them at the top. Most of the lower lakes vanished thousands of years
+before those now brightening the alpine landscapes were born. And in
+general, owing to the deliberation of the upward retreat of the
+glaciers, the lowest of the existing lakes are also the oldest, a
+gradual transition being apparent throughout the entire belt, from the
+older, forested, meadow-rimmed and contracted forms all the way up to
+those that are new born, lying bare and meadowless among the highest
+peaks.
+
+[Illustration: THE DEATH OF A LAKE.]
+
+A few small lakes unfortunately situated are extinguished suddenly by a
+single swoop of an avalanche, carrying down immense numbers of trees,
+together with the soil they were growing upon. Others are obliterated
+by land-slips, earthquake taluses, etc., but these lake-deaths compared
+with those resulting from the deliberate and incessant deposition of
+sediments, may be termed accidental. Their fate is like that of trees
+struck by lightning.
+
+The lake-line is of course still rising, its present elevation being
+about 8000 feet above sea-level; somewhat higher than this toward the
+southern extremity of the range, lower toward the northern, on account
+of the difference in time of the withdrawal of the glaciers, due to
+difference in climate. Specimens occur here and there considerably
+below this limit, in basins specially protected from inwashing
+detritus, or exceptional in size. These, however, are not sufficiently
+numerous to make any marked irregularity in the line. The highest I
+have yet found lies at an elevation of about 12,000 feet, in a glacier
+womb, at the foot of one of the highest of the summit peaks, a few
+miles to the north of Mount Hitter. The basins of perhaps twenty-five
+or thirty are still in process of formation beneath the few lingering
+glaciers, but by the time they are born, an equal or greater number
+will probably have died. Since the beginning of the close of the
+ice-period the whole number in the range has perhaps never been greater
+than at present.
+
+A rough approximation to the average duration of these mountain lakes
+may be made from data already suggested, but I cannot stop here to
+present the subject in detail. I must also forego, in the mean time,
+the pleasure of a full discussion of the interesting question of
+lake-basin formation, for which fine, clear, demonstrative material
+abounds in these mountains. In addition to what has been already given
+on the subject, I will only make this one statement. Every lake in the
+Sierra is a glacier lake. Their basins were not merely remodeled and
+scoured out by this mighty agent, but in the first place were eroded
+from the solid.
+
+I must now make haste to give some nearer views of representative
+specimens lying at different elevations on the main lake-belt,
+confining myself to descriptions of the features most characteristic of
+each.
+
+SHADOW LAKE
+
+This is a fine specimen of the oldest and lowest of the existing lakes.
+It lies about eight miles above Yosemite Valley, on the main branch of
+the Merced, at an elevation of about 7350 feet above the sea; and is
+everywhere so securely cliff-bound that without artificial trails only
+wild animals can get down to its rocky shores from any direction. Its
+original length was about a mile and a half; now it is only half a mile
+in length by about a fourth of a mile in width, and over the lowest
+portion of the basin ninety-eight feet deep. Its crystal waters are
+clasped around on the north and south by majestic granite walls
+sculptured in true Yosemitic style into domes, gables, and battlemented
+headlands, which on the south come plunging down sheer into deep water,
+from a height of from 1500 to 2000 feet. The South Lyell glacier eroded
+this magnificent basin out of solid porphyritic granite while forcing
+its way westward from the summit fountains toward Yosemite, and the
+exposed rocks around the shores, and the projecting bosses of the
+walls, ground and burnished beneath the vast ice-flood, still glow with
+silvery radiance, notwithstanding the innumerable corroding storms that
+have fallen upon them. The general conformation of the basin, as well
+as the moraines laid along the top of the walls, and the grooves and
+scratches on the bottom and sides, indicate in the most unmistakable
+manner the direction pursued by this mighty ice-river, its great depth,
+and the tremendous energy it exerted in thrusting itself into and out
+of the basin; bearing down with superior pressure upon this portion of
+its channel, because of the greater declivity, consequently eroding it
+deeper than the other portions about it, and producing the lake-bowl as
+the necessary result.
+
+With these magnificent ice-characters so vividly before us it is not
+easy to realize that the old glacier that made them vanished tens of
+centuries ago; for, excepting the vegetation that has sprung up, and
+the changes effected by an earthquake that hurled rock-avalanches from
+the weaker headlands, the basin as a whole presents the same appearance
+that it did when first brought to light. The lake itself, however, has
+undergone marked changes; one sees at a glance that it is growing old.
+More than two thirds of its original area is now dry land, covered with
+meadow-grasses and groves of pine and fir, and the level bed of
+alluvium stretching across from wall to wall at the head is evidently
+growing out all along its lakeward margin, and will at length close the
+lake forever.
+
+[Illustration: SHADOW LAKE (MERCED LAKE), YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.]
+
+Every lover of fine wildness would delight to saunter on a summer day
+through the flowery groves now occupying the filled-up portion of the
+basin. The curving shore is clearly traced by a ribbon of white sand
+upon which the ripples play; then comes a belt of broad-leafed sedges,
+interrupted here and there by impenetrable tangles of willows; beyond
+this there are groves of trembling aspen; then a dark, shadowy belt of
+Two-leaved Pine, with here and there a round carex meadow ensconced
+nest-like in its midst; and lastly, a narrow outer margin of majestic
+Silver Fir 200 feet high. The ground beneath the trees is covered with
+a luxuriant crop of grasses, chiefly triticum, bromus, and
+calamagrostis, with purple spikes and panicles arching to one’s
+shoulders; while the open meadow patches glow throughout the summer
+with showy flowers,—heleniums, goldenrods, erigerons, lupines,
+castilleias, and lilies, and form favorite hiding and feeding-grounds
+for bears and deer.
+
+The rugged south wall is feathered darkly along the top with an
+imposing array of spirey Silver Firs, while the rifted precipices all
+the way down to the water’s edge are adorned with picturesque old
+junipers, their cinnamon-colored bark showing finely upon the neutral
+gray of the granite. These, with a few venturesome Dwarf Pines and
+Spruces, lean out over fissured ribs and tablets, or stand erect back
+in shadowy niches, in an indescribably wild and fearless manner.
+Moreover, the white-flowered Douglas spiraea and dwarf evergreen oak
+form graceful fringes along the narrower seams, wherever the slightest
+hold can be effected. Rock-ferns, too, are here, such as allosorus,
+pellaea, and cheilanthes, making handsome rosettes on the drier
+fissures; and the delicate maidenhair, cistoperis, and woodsia hide
+back in mossy grottoes, moistened by some trickling rill; and then the
+orange wall-flower holds up its showy panicles here and there in the
+sunshine, and bahia makes bosses of gold. But, notwithstanding all this
+plant beauty, the general impression in looking across the lake is of
+stern, unflinching rockiness; the ferns and flowers are scarcely seen,
+and not one fiftieth of the whole surface is screened with plant life.
+
+The sunnier north wall is more varied in sculpture, but the general
+tone is the same. A few headlands, flat-topped and soil-covered,
+support clumps of cedar and pine; and up-curving tangles of chinquapin
+and live-oak, growing on rough earthquake taluses, girdle their bases.
+Small streams come cascading down between them, their foaming margins
+brightened with gay primulas, gilias, and mimuluses. And close along
+the shore on this side there is a strip of rocky meadow enameled with
+buttercups, daisies, and white violets, and the purple-topped grasses
+out on its beveled border dip their leaves into the water.
+
+The lower edge of the basin is a dam-like swell of solid granite,
+heavily abraded by the old glacier, but scarce at all cut into as yet
+by the outflowing stream, though it has flowed on unceasingly since the
+lake came into existence.
+
+As soon as the stream is fairly over the lake-lip it breaks into
+cascades, never for a moment halting, and scarce abating one jot of its
+glad energy, until it reaches the next filled-up basin, a mile below.
+Then swirling and curving drowsily through meadow and grove, it breaks
+forth anew into gray rapids and falls, leaping and gliding in glorious
+exuberance of wild bound and dance down into another and yet another
+filled-up lake basin. Then, after a long rest in the levels of Little
+Yosemite, it makes its grandest display in the famous Nevada Fall. Out
+of the clouds of spray at the foot of the fall the battered, roaring
+river gropes its way, makes another mile of cascades and rapids, rests
+a moment in Emerald Pool, then plunges over the grand cliff of the
+Vernal Fall, and goes thundering and chafing down a boulder-choked
+gorge of tremendous depth and wildness into the tranquil reaches of the
+old Yosemite lake basin.
+
+The color-beauty about Shadow Lake during the Indian summer is much
+richer than one could hope to find in so young and so glacial a
+wilderness. Almost every leaf is tinted then, and the golden-rods are
+in bloom; but most of the color is given by the ripe grasses, willows,
+and aspens. At the foot of the lake you stand in a trembling aspen
+grove, every leaf painted like a butterfly, and away to right and left
+round the shores sweeps a curving ribbon of meadow, red and brown
+dotted with pale yellow, shading off here and there into hazy purple.
+The walls, too, are dashed with bits of bright color that gleam out on
+the neutral granite gray. But neither the walls, nor the margin meadow,
+nor yet the gay, fluttering grove in which you stand, nor the lake
+itself, flashing with spangles, can long hold your attention; for at
+the head of the lake there is a gorgeous mass of orange-yellow,
+belonging to the main aspen belt of the basin, which seems the very
+fountain whence all the color below it had flowed, and here your eye is
+filled and fixed. This glorious mass is about thirty feet high, and
+extends across the basin nearly from wall to wall. Rich bosses of
+willow flame in front of it, and from the base of these the brown
+meadow comes forward to the water’s edge, the whole being relieved
+against the unyielding green of the coniferae, while thick sun-gold is
+poured over all.
+
+During these blessed color-days no cloud darkens the sky, the winds are
+gentle, and the landscape rests, hushed everywhere, and indescribably
+impressive. A few ducks are usually seen sailing on the lake,
+apparently more for pleasure than anything else, and the ouzels at the
+head of the rapids sing always; while robins, grosbeaks, and the
+Douglas squirrels are busy in the groves, making delightful company,
+and intensifying the feeling of grateful sequestration without ruffling
+the deep, hushed calm and peace.
+
+[Illustration: VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY]
+
+This autumnal mellowness usually lasts until the end of November. Then
+come days of quite another kind. The winter clouds grow, and bloom, and
+shed their starry crystals on every leaf and rock, and all the colors
+vanish like a sunset. The deer gather and hasten down their well-known
+trails, fearful of being snow-bound. Storm succeeds storm, heaping snow
+on the cliffs and meadows, and bending the slender pines to the ground
+in wide arches, one over the other, clustering and interlacing like
+lodged wheat. Avalanches rush and boom from the shelving heights,
+piling immense heaps upon the frozen lake, and all the summer glory is
+buried and lost. Yet in the midst of this hearty winter the sun shines
+warm at times, calling the Douglas squirrel to frisk in the snowy pines
+and seek out his hidden stores; and the weather is never so severe as
+to drive away the grouse and little nut-hatches and chickadees.
+
+Toward May, the lake begins to open. The hot sun sends down innumerable
+streams over the cliffs, streaking them round and round with foam. The
+snow slowly vanishes, and the meadows show tintings of green. Then
+spring comes on apace; flowers and flies enrich the air and the sod,
+and the deer come back to the upper groves like birds to an old nest.
+
+I first discovered this charming lake in the autumn of 1872, while on
+my way to the glaciers at the head of the river. It was rejoicing then
+in its gayest colors, untrodden, hidden in the glorious wildness like
+unmined gold. Year after year I walked its shores without discovering
+any other trace of humanity than the remains of an Indian camp-fire,
+and the thigh-bones of a deer that had been broken to get at the
+marrow. It lies out of the regular ways of Indians, who love to hunt in
+more accessible fields adjacent to trails. Their knowledge of
+deer-haunts had probably enticed them here some hunger-time when they
+wished to make sure of a feast; for hunting in this lake-hollow is like
+hunting in a fenced park. I had told the beauty of Shadow Lake only to
+a few friends, fearing it might come to be trampled and “improved” like
+Yosemite. On my last visit, as I was sauntering along the shore on the
+strip of sand between the water and sod, reading the tracks of the wild
+animals that live here, I was startled by a human track, which I at
+once saw belonged to some shepherd; for each step was turned out 35° or
+40° from the general course pursued, and was also run over in an
+uncertain sprawling fashion at the heel, while a row of round dots on
+the right indicated the staff that shepherds carry. None but a shepherd
+could make such a track, and after tracing it a few minutes I began to
+fear that he might be seeking pasturage; for what else could he be
+seeking? Returning from the glaciers shortly afterward, nay worst fears
+were realized. A trail had been made down the mountain-side from the
+north, and all the gardens and meadows were destroyed by a horde of
+hoofed locusts, as if swept by a fire. The money-changers were in the
+temple.
+
+ORANGE LAKE
+
+Besides these larger cañon lakes, fed by the main cañon streams, there
+are many smaller ones lying aloft on the top of rock benches, entirely
+independent of the general drainage channels, and of course drawing
+their supplies from a very limited area. Notwithstanding they are
+mostly small and shallow, owing to their immunity from avalanche
+detritus and the inwashings of powerful streams, they often endure
+longer than others many times larger but less favorably situated. When
+very shallow they become dry toward the end of summer; but because
+their basins are ground out of seamless stone they suffer no loss save
+from evaporation alone; and the great depth of snow that falls, lasting
+into June, makes their dry season short in any case.
+
+Orange Lake is a fair illustration of this bench form. It lies in the
+middle of a beautiful glacial pavement near the lower margin of the
+lake-line, about a mile and a half to the northwest of Shadow Lake. It
+is only about 100 yards in circumference. Next the water there is a
+girdle of carices with wide overarching leaves, then in regular order a
+shaggy ruff of huckleberry bushes, a zone of willows with here and
+there a bush of the Mountain Ash, then a zone of aspens with a few
+pines around the outside. These zones are of course concentric, and
+together form a wall beyond which the naked ice-burnished granite
+stretches away in every direction, leaving it conspicuously relieved,
+like a bunch of palms in a desert.
+
+In autumn, when the colors are ripe, the whole circular grove, at a
+little distance, looks like a big handful of flowers set in a cup to be
+kept fresh—a tuft of goldenrods. Its feeding-streams are exceedingly
+beautiful, notwithstanding their inconstancy and extreme shallowness.
+They have no channel whatever, and consequently are left free to spread
+in thin sheets upon the shining granite and wander at will. In many
+places the current is less than a fourth of an inch deep, and flows
+with so little friction it is scarcely visible. Sometimes there is not
+a single foam-bell, or drifting pine-needle, or irregularity of any
+sort to manifest its motion. Yet when observed narrowly it is seen to
+form a web of gliding lacework exquisitely woven, giving beautiful
+reflections from its minute curving ripples and eddies, and differing
+from the water-laces of large cascades in being everywhere transparent.
+In spring, when the snow is melting, the lake-bowl is brimming full,
+and sends forth quite a large stream that slips glassily for 200 yards
+or so, until it comes to an almost vertical precipice 800 feet high,
+down which it plunges in a fine cataract; then it gathers its scattered
+waters and goes smoothly over folds of gently dipping granite to its
+confluence with the main cañon stream. During the greater portion of
+the year, however, not a single water sound will you hear either at
+head or foot of the lake, not oven the whispered lappings of
+ripple-waves along the shore; for the winds are fenced out. But the
+deep mountain silence is sweetened now and then by birds that stop here
+to rest and drink on their way across the cañon.
+
+LAKE STARR KING
+
+A beautiful variety of the bench-top lakes occurs just where the great
+lateral moraines of the main glaciers have been shoved forward in
+outswelling concentric rings by small residual tributary glaciers.
+Instead of being encompassed by a narrow ring of trees like Orange
+Lake, these lie embosomed in dense moraine woods, so dense that in
+seeking them you may pass them by again and again, although you may
+know nearly where they lie concealed.
+
+[Illustration: LAKE STARR KING.]
+
+Lake Starr King, lying to the north of the cone of that name, above the
+Little Yosemite Valley, is a fine specimen of this variety. The ouzels
+pass it by, and so do the ducks; they could hardly get into it if they
+would, without plumping straight down inside the circling trees.
+
+Yet these isolated gems, lying like fallen fruit detached from the
+branches, are not altogether without inhabitants and joyous, animating
+visitors. Of course fishes cannot get into them, and this is generally
+true of nearly every glacier lake in the range, but they are all well
+stocked with happy frogs. How did the frogs get into them in the first
+place? Perhaps their sticky spawn was carried in on the feet of ducks
+or other birds, else their progenitors must have made some exciting
+excursions through the woods and up the sides of the cañons. Down in
+the still, pure depths of these hidden lakelets you may also find the
+larvae of innumerable insects and a great variety of beetles, while the
+air above them is thick with humming wings, through the midst of which
+fly-catchers are constantly darting. And in autumn, when the
+huckleberries are ripe, bands of robins and grosbeaks come to feast,
+forming altogether delightful little byworlds for the naturalist.
+
+Pushing our way upward toward the axis of the range, we find lakes in
+greater and greater abundance, and more youthful in aspect. At an
+elevation of about 9000 feet above sea-level they seem to have arrived
+at middle age,—that is, their basins seem to be about half filled with
+alluvium. Broad sheets of meadow-land are seen extending into them,
+imperfect and boggy in many places and more nearly level than those of
+the older lakes below them, and the vegetation of their shores is of
+course more alpine. Kalmia, lodum, and cassiope fringe the meadow
+rocks, while the luxuriant, waving groves, so characteristic of the
+lower lakes, are represented only by clumps of the Dwarf Pine and
+Hemlock Spruce. These, however, are oftentimes very picturesquely
+grouped on rocky headlands around the outer rim of the meadows, or with
+still more striking effect crown some rocky islet.
+
+Moreover, from causes that we cannot stop here to explain, the cliffs
+about these middle-aged lakes are seldom of the massive Yosemite type,
+but are more broken, and less sheer, and they usually stand back,
+leaving the shores comparatively free; while the few precipitous rocks
+that do come forward and plunge directly into deep water are seldom
+more than three or four hundred feet high.
+
+I have never yet met ducks in any of the lakes of this kind, but the
+ouzel is never wanting where the feeding-streams are perennial. Wild
+sheep and deer may occasionally be seen on the meadows, and very rarely
+a bear. One might camp on the rugged shores of these bright fountains
+for weeks, without meeting any animal larger than the marmots that
+burrow beneath glacier boulders along the edges of the meadows.
+
+The highest and youngest of all the lakes lie nestled in glacier wombs.
+At first sight, they seem pictures of pure bloodless desolation,
+miniature arctic seas, bound in perpetual ice and snow, and
+overshadowed by harsh, gloomy, crumbling precipices. Their waters are
+keen ultramarine blue in the deepest parts, lively grass-green toward
+the shore shallows and around the edges of the small bergs usually
+floating about in them. A few hardy sedges, frost-pinched every night,
+are occasionally found making soft sods along the sun-touched portions
+of their shores, and when their northern banks slope openly to the
+south, and are soil-covered, no matter how coarsely, they are sure to
+be brightened with flowers. One lake in particular now comes to mind
+which illustrates the floweriness of the sun-touched banks of these icy
+gems. Close up under the shadow of the Sierra Matterhorn, on the
+eastern slope of the range, lies one of the iciest of these glacier
+lakes at an elevation of about 12,000 feet. A short, ragged-edged
+glacier crawls into it from the south, and on the opposite side it is
+embanked and dammed by a series of concentric terminal moraines, made
+by the glacier when it entirely filled the basin. Half a mile below
+lies a second lake, at a height of 11,500 feet, about as cold and as
+pure as a snow-crystal. The waters of the first come gurgling down into
+it over and through the moraine dam, while a second stream pours into
+it direct from a glacier that lies to the southeast. Sheer precipices
+of crystalline snow rise out of deep water on the south, keeping
+perpetual winter on that side, but there is a fine summery spot on the
+other, notwithstanding the lake is only about 300 yards wide. Here, on
+August 25, 1873, I found a charming company of flowers, not pinched,
+crouching dwarfs, scarce able to look up, but warm and juicy, standing
+erect in rich cheery color and bloom. On a narrow strip of shingle,
+close to the water’s edge, there were a few tufts of carex gone to
+seed; and a little way back up the rocky bank at the foot of a
+crumbling wall so inclined as to absorb and radiate as well as reflect
+a considerable quantity of sun-heat, was the garden, containing a
+thrifty thicket of Cowania covered with large yellow flowers; several
+bushes of the alpine ribes with berries nearly ripe and wildly acid; a
+few handsome grasses belonging to two distinct species, and one
+goldenrod; a few hairy lupines and radiant spragueas, whose blue and
+rose-colored flowers were set off to fine advantage amid green carices;
+and along a narrow seam in the very warmest angle of the wall a
+perfectly gorgeous fringe of _Epilobium obcordatum_ with flowers an
+inch wide, crowded together in lavish profusion, and colored as royal a
+purple as ever was worn by any high-bred plant of the tropics; and best
+of all, and greatest of all, a noble thistle in full bloom, standing
+erect, head and shoulders above his companions, and thrusting out his
+lances in sturdy vigor as if growing on a Scottish brae. All this brave
+warm bloom among the raw stones, right in the face of the onlooking
+glaciers.
+
+As far as I have been able to find out, these upper lakes are
+snow-buried in winter to a depth of about thirty-five or forty feet,
+and those most exposed to avalanches, to a depth of even a hundred feet
+or more. These last are, of course, nearly lost to the landscape. Some
+remain buried for years, when the snowfall is exceptionally great, and
+many open only on one side late in the season. The snow of the closed
+side is composed of coarse granules compacted and frozen into a firm,
+faintly stratified mass, like the _névé_ of a glacier. The lapping
+waves of the open portion gradually undermine and cause it to break off
+in large masses like icebergs, which gives rise to a precipitous front
+like the discharging wall of a glacier entering the sea. The play of
+the lights among the crystal angles of these snow-cliffs, the pearly
+white of the outswelling bosses, the bergs drifting in front, aglow in
+the sun and edged with green water, and the deep blue disk of the lake
+itself extending to your feet,—this forms a picture that enriches all
+your afterlife, and is never forgotten. But however perfect the season
+and the day, the cold incompleteness of these young lakes is always
+keenly felt. We approach them with a kind of mean caution, and steal
+unconfidingly around their crystal shores, dashed and ill at ease, as
+if expecting to hear some forbidding voice. But the love-songs of the
+ouzels and the love-looks of the daisies gradually reassure us, and
+manifest the warm fountain humanity that pervades the coldest and most
+solitary of them all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+THE GLACIER MEADOWS
+
+
+After the lakes on the High Sierra come the glacier meadows. They are
+smooth, level, silky lawns, lying embedded in the upper forests, on the
+floors of the valleys, and along the broad backs of the main dividing
+ridges, at a height of about 8000 to 9500 feet above the sea.
+
+They are nearly as level as the lakes whose places they have taken, and
+present a dry, even surface free from rock-heaps, mossy bogginess, and
+the frowsy roughness of rank, coarse-leaved, weedy, and shrubby
+vegetation. The sod is close and fine, and so complete that you cannot
+see the ground; and at the same time so brightly enameled with flowers
+and butterflies that it may well be called a garden-meadow, or
+meadow-garden; for the plushy sod is in many places so crowded with
+gentians, daisies, ivesias, and various species of orthocarpus that the
+grass is scarcely noticeable, while in others the flowers are only
+pricked in here and there singly, or in small ornamental rosettes.
+
+The most influential of the grasses composing the sod is a delicate
+calamagrostis with fine filiform leaves, and loose, airy panicles that
+seem to float above the flowery lawn like a purple mist. But, write as
+I may, I cannot give anything like an adequate idea of the exquisite
+beauty of these mountain carpets as they lie smoothly outspread in the
+savage wilderness. What words are fine enough to picture them I to what
+shall we liken them? The flowery levels of the prairies of the old
+West, the luxuriant savannahs of the South, and the finest of
+cultivated meadows are coarse in comparison. One may at first sight
+compare them with the carefully tended lawns of pleasure-grounds; for
+they are as free from weeds as they, and as smooth, but here the
+likeness ends; for these wild lawns, with all their exquisite fineness,
+have no trace of that painful, licked, snipped, repressed appearance
+that pleasure-ground lawns are apt to have even when viewed at a
+distance. And, not to mention the flowers with which they are
+brightened, their grasses are very much finer both in color and
+texture, and instead of lying flat and motionless, matted together like
+a dead green cloth, they respond to the touches of every breeze,
+rejoicing in pure wildness, blooming and fruiting in the vital light.
+
+Glacier meadows abound throughout all the alpine and subalpine regions
+of the Sierra in still greater numbers than the lakes. Probably from
+2500 to 3000 exist between latitude 36° 30′ and 39°, distributed, of
+course, like the lakes, in concordance with all the other glacial
+features of the landscape.
+
+On the head waters of the rivers there are what are called “Big
+Meadows,” usually about from five to ten miles long. These occupy the
+basins of the ancient ice-seas, where many tributary glaciers came
+together to form the grand trunks. Most, however, are quite small,
+averaging perhaps but little more than three fourths of a mile in
+length.
+
+One of the very finest of the thousands I have enjoyed lies hidden in
+an extensive forest of the Two-leaved Pine, on the edge of the basin of
+the ancient Tuolumne Mer de Glace, about eight miles to the west of
+Mount Dana.
+
+Imagine yourself at the Tuolumne Soda Springs on the bank of the river,
+a day’s journey above Yosemite Valley. You set off northward through a
+forest that stretches away indefinitely before you, seemingly unbroken
+by openings of any kind. As soon as you are fairly into the woods, the
+gray mountain-peaks, with their snowy gorges and hollows, are lost to
+view. The ground is littered with fallen trunks that lie crossed and
+recrossed like storm-lodged wheat; and besides this close forest of
+pines, the rich moraine soil supports a luxuriant growth of
+ribbon-leaved grasses—bromus, triticum, calamagrostis, agrostis, etc.,
+which rear their handsome spikes and panicles above your waist. Making
+your way through the fertile wilderness,—finding lively bits of
+interest now and then in the squirrels and Clark crows, and perchance
+in a deer or bear,—after the lapse of an hour or two vertical bars of
+sunshine are seen ahead between the brown shafts of the pines, showing
+that you are approaching an open space, and then you suddenly emerge
+from the forest shadows upon a delightful purple lawn lying smooth and
+free in the light like a lake. This is a glacier meadow. It is about a
+mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile wide. The trees come
+pressing forward all around in close serried ranks, planting their feet
+exactly on its margin, and holding themselves erect, strict and orderly
+like soldiers on parade; thus bounding the meadow with exquisite
+precision, yet with free curving lines such as Nature alone can draw.
+With inexpressible delight you wade out into the grassy sun-lake,
+feeling yourself contained in one of Nature’s most sacred chambers,
+withdrawn from the sterner influences of the mountains, secure from all
+intrusion, secure from yourself, free in the universal beauty. And
+notwithstanding the scene is so impressively spiritual, and you seem
+dissolved in it, yet everything about you is beating with warm,
+terrestrial, human love and life delightfully substantial and familiar.
+The resiny pines are types of health and steadfastness; the robins
+feeding on the sod belong to the same species you have known since
+childhood; and surely these daisies, larkspurs, and goldenrods are the
+very friend-flowers of the old home garden. Bees hum as in a harvest
+noon, butterflies waver above the flowers, and like them you lave in
+the vital sunshine, too richly and homogeneously joy-filled to be
+capable of partial thought. You are all eye, sifted through and through
+with light and beauty. Sauntering along the brook that meanders
+silently through the meadow from the east, special flowers call you
+back to discriminating consciousness. The sod comes curving down to the
+water’s edge, forming bossy outswelling banks, and in some places
+overlapping countersunk boulders and forming bridges. Here you find
+mats of the curious dwarf willow scarce an inch high, yet sending up a
+multitude of gray silky catkins, illumined here and there with, the
+purple cups and bells of bryanthus and vaccinium.
+
+Go where you may, you everywhere find the lawn divinely beautiful, as
+if Nature had fingered and adjusted every plant this very day. The
+floating grass panicles are scarcely felt in brushing through their
+midst, so flue are they, and none of the flowers have tall or rigid
+stalks. In the brightest places you find three species of gentians with
+different shades of blue, daisies pure as the sky, silky leaved ivesias
+with warm yellow flowers, several species of orthocarpus with blunt,
+bossy spikes, red and purple and yellow; the alpine goldenrod,
+pentstemon, and clover, fragrant and honeyful, with their colors massed
+and blended. Parting the grasses and looking more closely you may trace
+the branching of their shining stems, and note the marvelous beauty of
+their mist of flowers, the glumes and pales exquisitely penciled, the
+yellow dangling stamens, and feathery pistils. Beneath the lowest
+leaves you discover a fairy realm of mosses,—hypnum, dicranum,
+polytriclium, and many others,—their precious spore-cups poised
+daintily on polished shafts, curiously hooded, or open, showing the
+richly ornate peristomas worn like royal crowns. Creeping liverworts
+are here also in abundance, and several rare species of fungi,
+exceedingly small, and frail, and delicate, as if made only for beauty.
+Caterpillars, black beetles, and ants roam the wilds of this lower
+world, making their way through miniature groves and thickets like
+bears in a thick wood.
+
+And how rich, too, is the life of the sunny air! Every leaf and flower
+seems to have its winged representative overhead. Dragon-flies shoot in
+vigorous zigzags through the dancing swarms, and a rich profusion of
+butterflies—the leguminosae of insects—make a fine addition to the
+general show. Many of these last are comparatively small at this
+elevation, and as yet almost unknown to science; but every now and then
+a familiar vanessa or papilio comes sailing past. Humming-birds, too,
+are quite common here, and the robin is always found along the margin
+of the stream, or out in the shallowest portions of the sod, and
+sometimes the grouse and mountain quail, with their broods of precious
+fluffy chickens. Swallows skim the grassy lake from end to end,
+fly-catchers come and go in fitful flights from the tops of dead spars,
+while woodpeckers swing across from side to side in graceful festoon
+curves,—birds, insects, and flowers all in their own way telling a deep
+summer joy.
+
+The influences of pure nature seem to be so little known as yet, that
+it is generally supposed that complete pleasure of this kind,
+permeating one’s very flesh and bones, unfits the student for
+scientific pursuits in which cool judgment and observation are
+required. But the effect is just the opposite. Instead of producing a
+dissipated condition, the mind is fertilized and stimulated and
+developed like sun-fed plants. All that we have seen here enables us to
+see with surer vision the fountains among the summit-peaks to the east
+whence flowed the glaciers that ground soil for the surrounding forest;
+and down at the foot of the meadow the moraine which formed the dam
+which gave rise to the lake that occupied this basin before the meadow
+was made; and around the margin the stones that were shoved back and
+piled up into a rude wall by the expansion of the lake ice during long
+bygone winters; and along the sides of the streams the slight hollows
+of the meadow which mark those portions of the old lake that were the
+last to vanish.
+
+I would fain ask my readers to linger awhile in this fertile
+wilderness, to trace its history from its earliest glacial beginnings,
+and learn what we may of its wild inhabitants and visitors. How happy
+the birds are all summer and some of them all winter; how the pouched
+marmots drive tunnels under the snow, and how fine and brave a life the
+slandered coyote lives here, and the deer and bears! But, knowing well
+the difference between reading and seeing, I will only ask attention to
+some brief sketches of its varying aspects as they are presented
+throughout the more marked seasons of the year.
+
+The summer life we have been depicting lasts with but little abatement
+until October, when the night frosts begin to sting, bronzing the
+grasses, and ripening the leaves of the creeping heathworts along the
+banks of the stream to reddish purple and crimson; while the flowers
+disappear, all save the goldenrods and a few daisies, that continue to
+bloom on unscathed until the beginning of snowy winter. In still nights
+the grass panicles and every leaf and stalk are laden with frost
+crystals, through which the morning sunbeams sift in ravishing
+splendor, transforming each to a precious diamond radiating the colors
+of the rainbow. The brook shallows are plaited across and across with
+slender lances of ice, but both these and the grass crystals are melted
+before midday, and, notwithstanding the great elevation of the meadow,
+the afternoons are still warm enough to revive the chilled butterflies
+and call them out to enjoy the late-flowering goldenrods. The divine
+alpenglow flushes the surrounding forest every evening, followed by a
+crystal night with hosts of lily stars, whose size and brilliancy
+cannot be conceived by those who have never risen above the lowlands.
+
+Thus come and go the bright sun-days of autumn, not a cloud in the sky,
+week after week until near December. Then comes a sudden change. Clouds
+of a peculiar aspect with a slow, crawling gait gather and grow in the
+azure, throwing out satiny fringes, and becoming gradually darker until
+every lake-like rift and opening is closed and the whole bent firmament
+is obscured in equal structureless gloom. Then comes the snow, for the
+clouds are ripe, the meadows of the sky are in bloom, and shed their
+radiant blossoms like an orchard in the spring. Lightly, lightly they
+lodge in the brown grasses and in the tasseled needles of the pines,
+falling hour after hour, day after day, silently, lovingly,—all the
+winds hushed,—glancing and circling hither, thither, glinting against
+one another, rays interlocking in flakes as large as daisies; and then
+the dry grasses, and the trees, and the stones are all equally abloom
+again. Thunder-showers occur here during the summer months, and
+impressive it is to watch the coming of the big transparent drops, each
+a small world in itself,—one unbroken ocean without islands hurling
+free through the air like planets through space. But still more
+impressive to me is the coming of the snow-flowers,—falling stars,
+winter daisies,—giving bloom to all the ground alike. Raindrops blossom
+brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow
+comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.
+
+The later snow-storms are oftentimes accompanied by winds that break up
+the crystals, when the temperature is low, into single petals and
+irregular dusty fragments; but there is comparatively little drifting
+on the meadow, so securely is it embosomed in the woods. From December
+to May, storm succeeds storm, until the snow is about fifteen or twenty
+feet deep, but the surface is always as smooth as the breast of a bird.
+
+Hushed now is the life that so late was beating warmly. Most of the
+birds have gone down below the snow-line, the plants sleep, and all the
+fly-wings are folded. Yet the sun beams gloriously many a cloudless day
+in midwinter, casting long lance shadows athwart the dazzling expanse.
+In June small flecks of the dead, decaying sod begin to appear,
+gradually widening and uniting with one another, covered with creeping
+rags of water during the day, and ice by night, looking as hopeless and
+unvital as crushed rocks just emerging from the darkness of the glacial
+period. Walk the meadow now! Scarce the memory of a flower will you
+find. The ground seems twice dead. Nevertheless, the annual
+resurrection is drawing near. The life-giving sun pours his floods, the
+last snow-wreath melts, myriads of growing points push eagerly through
+the steaming mold, the birds come back, new wings fill the air, and
+fervid summer life comes surging on, seemingly yet more glorious than
+before.
+
+This is a perfect meadow, and under favorable circumstances exists
+without manifesting any marked changes for centuries. Nevertheless,
+soon or late it must inevitably grow old and vanish. During the calm
+Indian summer, scarce a sand-grain moves around its banks, but in
+flood-times and storm-times, soil is washed forward upon it and laid in
+successive sheets around its gently sloping rim, and is gradually
+extended to the center, making it dryer. Through a considerable period
+the meadow vegetation is not greatly affected thereby, for it gradually
+rises with the rising ground, keeping on the surface like water-plants
+rising on the swell of waves. But at length the elevation of the
+meadow-land goes on so far as to produce too dry a soil for the
+specific meadow-plants, when, of course, they have to give up their
+places to others fitted for the new conditions. The most characteristic
+of the newcomers at this elevation above the sea are principally
+sun-loving gilias, eriogonae, and compositae, and finally forest-trees.
+Henceforward the obscuring changes are so manifold that the original
+lake-meadow can be unveiled and seen only by the geologist.
+
+Generally speaking, glacier lakes vanish more slowly than the meadows
+that succeed them, because, unless very shallow, a greater quantity of
+material is required to fill up their basins and obliterate them than
+is required to render the surface of the meadow too high and dry for
+meadow vegetation. Furthermore, owing to the weathering to which the
+adjacent rocks are subjected, material of the finer sort, susceptible
+of transportation by rains and ordinary floods, is more abundant during
+the meadow period than during the lake period. Yet doubtless many a
+fine meadow favorably situated exists in almost prime beauty for
+thousands of years, the process of extinction being exceedingly slow,
+as we reckon time. This is especially the case with meadows
+circumstanced like the one we have described—embosomed in deep woods,
+with the ground rising gently away from it all around, the network of
+tree-roots in which all the ground is clasped preventing any rapid
+torrential washing. But, in exceptional cases, beautiful lawns formed
+with great deliberation are overwhelmed and obliterated at once by the
+action of land-slips, earthquake avalanches, or extraordinary floods,
+just as lakes are.
+
+In those glacier meadows that take the places of shallow lakes which
+have been fed by feeble streams, glacier mud and fine vegetable humus
+enter largely into the composition of the soil; and on account of the
+shallowness of this soil, and the seamless, water-tight, undrained
+condition of the rock-basins, they are usually wet, and therefore
+occupied by tall grasses and sedges, whose coarse appearance offers a
+striking contrast to that of the delicate lawn-making kind described
+above. These shallow-soiled meadows are oftentimes still further
+roughened and diversified by partially buried moraines and swelling
+bosses of the bed-rock, which, with the trees and shrubs growing upon
+them, produce a striking effect as they stand in relief like islands in
+the grassy level, or sweep across in rugged curves from one forest wall
+to the other.
+
+Throughout the upper meadow region, wherever water is sufficiently
+abundant and low in temperature, in basins secure from flood-washing,
+handsome bogs are formed with a deep growth of brown and yellow
+sphagnum picturesquely ruined with patches of kalmia and ledum which
+ripen masses of beautiful color in the autumn. Between these cool,
+spongy bogs and the dry, flowery meadows there are many interesting
+varieties which are graduated into one another by the varied conditions
+already alluded to, forming a series of delightful studies.
+
+HANGING MEADOWS
+
+Another, very well-marked and interesting kind of meadow, differing
+greatly both in origin and appearance from the lake-meadows, is found
+lying aslant upon moraine-covered hillsides trending in the direction
+of greatest declivity, waving up and down over rock heaps and ledges,
+like rich green ribbons brilliantly illumined with tall flowers. They
+occur both in the alpine and subalpine regions in considerable numbers,
+and never fail to make telling features in the landscape. They are
+often a mile or more in length, but never very wide—usually from thirty
+to fifty yards. When the mountain or cañon side on which, they lie dips
+at the required angle, and other conditions are at the same time
+favorable, they extend from above the timber line to the bottom of a
+cañon or lake basin, descending in fine, fluent lines like cascades,
+breaking here and there into a kind of spray on large boulders, or
+dividing and flowing around on either side of some projecting islet.
+Sometimes a noisy stream goes brawling down through them, and again,
+scarcely a drop of water is in sight. They owe their existence,
+however, to streams, whether visible or invisible, the wildest
+specimens being found where some perennial fountain, as a glacier or
+snowbank or moraine spring sends down its waters across a rough sheet
+of soil in a dissipated web of feeble, oozing rivulets. These
+conditions give rise to a meadowy vegetation, whose extending roots
+still more obstruct the free flow of the waters, and tend to dissipate
+them out over a yet wider area. Thus the moraine soil and the necessary
+moisture requisite for the better class of meadow plants are at times
+combined about as perfectly as if smoothly outspread on a level
+surface. Where the soil happens to be composed of the finer qualities
+of glacial detritus and the water is not in excess, the nearest
+approach is made by the vegetation to that of the lake-meadow. But
+where, as is more commonly the case, the soil is coarse and bouldery,
+the vegetation is correspondingly rank. Tall, wide-leaved grasses take
+their places along the sides, and rushes and nodding carices in the
+wetter portions, mingled with the most beautiful and imposing
+flowers,—orange lilies and larkspurs seven or eight feet high, lupines,
+senecios, aliums, painted-cups, many species of mimulus and pentstemon,
+the ample boat-leaved _veratrum alba_, and the magnificent alpine
+columbine, with spurs an inch and a half long. At an elevation of from
+seven to nine thousand feet showy flowers frequently form the bulk of
+the vegetation; then the hanging meadows become hanging gardens.
+
+In rare instances we find an alpine basin the bottom of which is a
+perfect meadow, and the sides nearly all the way round, rising in
+gentle curves, are covered with moraine soil, which, being saturated
+with melting snow from encircling fountains, gives rise to an almost
+continuous girdle of down-curving meadow vegetation that blends
+gracefully into the level meadow at the bottom, thus forming a grand,
+smooth, soft, meadow-lined mountain nest. It is in meadows of this sort
+that the mountain beaver (_Haplodon_) loves to make his home,
+excavating snug chambers beneath the sod, digging canals, turning the
+underground waters from channel to channel to suit his convenience, and
+feeding the vegetation.
+
+Another kind of meadow or bog occurs on densely timbered hillsides
+where small perennial streams have been dammed at short intervals by
+fallen trees. Still another kind is found hanging down smooth, flat
+precipices, while corresponding leaning meadows rise to meet them.
+
+There are also three kinds of small pot-hole meadows one of which is
+found along the banks of the main streams, another on the summits of
+rocky ridges, and the third on glacier pavements, all of them
+interesting in origin and brimful of plant beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+THE FORESTS
+
+
+The coniferous forests of the Sierra are the grandest and most
+beautiful in the world, and grow in a delightful climate on the most
+interesting and accessible of mountain-ranges, yet strange to say they
+are not well known. More than sixty years ago David Douglas, an
+enthusiastic botanist and tree lover, wandered alone through fine
+sections of the Sugar Pine and Silver Fir woods wild with delight. A
+few years later, other botanists made short journeys from the coast
+into the lower woods. Then came the wonderful multitude of miners into
+the foot-hill zone, mostly blind with gold-dust, soon followed by
+“sheepmen,” who, with wool over their eyes, chased their flocks through
+all the forest belts from one end of the range to the other. Then the
+Yosemite Valley was discovered, and thousands of admiring tourists
+passed through sections of the lower and middle zones on their way to
+that wonderful park, and gained fine glimpses of the Sugar Pines and
+Silver Firs along the edges of dusty trails and roads. But few indeed,
+strong and free with eyes undimmed with care, have gone far enough and
+lived long enough with the trees to gain anything like a loving
+conception of their grandeur and significance as manifested in the
+harmonies of their distribution and varying aspects throughout the
+seasons, as they stand arrayed in their winter garb rejoicing in
+storms, putting forth their fresh leaves in the spring while steaming
+with resiny fragrance, receiving the thunder-showers of summer, or
+reposing heavy-laden with ripe cones in the rich sungold of autumn. For
+knowledge of this kind one must dwell with the trees and grow with
+them, without any reference to time in the almanac sense.
+
+The distribution of the general forest in belts is readily perceived.
+These, as we have seen, extend in regular order from one extremity of
+the range to the other; and however dense and somber they may appear in
+general views, neither on the rocky heights nor down in the leafiest
+hollows will you find anything to remind you of the dank, malarial
+selvas of the Amazon and Orinoco, with, their “boundless contiguity of
+shade,” the monotonous uniformity of the Deodar forests of the
+Himalaya, the Black Forest of Europe, or the dense dark woods of
+Douglas Spruce where rolls the Oregon. The giant pines, and firs, and
+Sequoias hold their arms open to the sunlight, rising above one another
+on the mountain benches, marshaled in glorious array, giving forth the
+utmost expression of grandeur and beauty with inexhaustible variety and
+harmony.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST.]
+
+The inviting openness of the Sierra woods is one of their most
+distinguishing characteristics. The trees of all the species stand more
+or less apart in groves, or in small, irregular groups, enabling one to
+find a way nearly everywhere, along sunny colonnades and through
+openings that have a smooth, park-like surface, strewn with brown
+needles and burs. Now you cross a wild garden, now a meadow, now a
+ferny, willowy stream; and ever and anon you emerge from all the groves
+and flowers upon some granite pavement or high, bare ridge commanding
+superb views above the waving sea of evergreens far and near.
+
+One would experience but little difficulty in riding on horseback
+through the successive belts all the way up to the storm-beaten fringes
+of the icy peaks. The deep cañons, however, that extend from the axis
+of the range, cut the belts more or less completely into sections, and
+prevent the mounted traveler from tracing them lengthwise.
+
+This simple arrangement in zones and sections brings the forest, as a
+whole, within the comprehension of every observer. The different
+species are ever found occupying the same relative positions to one
+another, as controlled by soil, climate, and the comparative vigor of
+each species in taking and holding the ground; and so appreciable are
+these relations, one need never be at a loss in determining, within a
+few hundred feet, the elevation above sea-level by the trees alone;
+for, notwithstanding some of the species range upward for several
+thousand feet, and all pass one another more or less, yet even those
+possessing the greatest vertical range are available in this
+connection, in as much as they take on new forms corresponding with the
+variations in altitude.
+
+Crossing the treeless plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin from the
+west and reaching the Sierra foot-hills, you enter the lower fringe of
+the forest, composed of small oaks and pines, growing so far apart that
+not one twentieth of the surface of the ground is in shade at clear
+noonday. After advancing fifteen or twenty miles, and making an ascent
+of from two to three thousand feet, you reach the lower margin of the
+main pine belt, composed of the gigantic Sugar Pine, Yellow Pine,
+Incense Cedar, and Sequoia. Next you come to the magnificent Silver Fir
+belt, and lastly to the upper pine belt, which sweeps up the rocky
+acclivities of the summit peaks in a dwarfed, wavering fringe to a
+height of from ten to twelve thousand feet.
+
+[Illustration: EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA.]
+
+This general order of distribution, with reference to climate dependent
+on elevation, is perceived at once, but there are other harmonies, as
+far-reaching in this connection, that become manifest only after
+patient observation and study. Perhaps the most interesting of these is
+the arrangement of the forests in long, curving bands, braided together
+into lace-like patterns, and outspread in charming variety. The key to
+this beautiful harmony is the ancient glaciers; where they flowed the
+trees followed, tracing their wavering courses along cañons, over
+ridges, and over high, rolling plateaus. The Cedars of Lebanon, says
+Hooker, are growing upon one of the moraines of an ancient glacier. All
+the forests of the Sierra are growing upon moraines. But moraines
+vanish like the glaciers that make them. Every storm that falls upon
+them wastes them, cutting gaps, disintegrating boulders, and carrying
+away their decaying material into new formations, until at length they
+are no longer recognizable by any save students, who trace their
+transitional forms down from the fresh moraines still in process of
+formation, through those that are more and more ancient, and more and
+more obscured by vegetation and all kinds of post-glacial weathering.
+
+Had the ice-sheet that once covered all the range been melted
+simultaneously from the foot-hills to the summits, the flanks would, of
+course, have been left almost bare of soil, and these noble forests
+would be wanting. Many groves and thickets would undoubtedly have grown
+up on lake and avalanche beds, and many a fair flower and shrub would
+have found food and a dwelling-place in weathered nooks and crevices,
+but the Sierra as a whole would have been a bare, rocky desert.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST.]
+
+It appears, therefore, that the Sierra forests in general indicate the
+extent and positions of the ancient moraines as well as they do lines
+of climate. For forests, properly speaking, cannot exist without soil;
+and, since the moraines have been deposited upon the solid rock, and
+only upon elected places, leaving a considerable portion of the old
+glacial surface bare, we find luxuriant forests of pine and fir
+abruptly terminated by scored and polished pavements on which not even
+a moss is growing, though soil alone is required to fit them for the
+growth of trees 200 feet in height.
+
+THE NUT PINE
+(_Pinus Sabiniana_)
+
+The Nut Pine, the first conifer met in ascending the range from the
+west, grows only on the torrid foothills, seeming to delight in the
+most ardent sun-heat, like a palm; springing up here and there singly,
+or in scattered groups of five or six, among scrubby White Oaks and
+thickets of ceanothus and manzanita; its extreme upper limit being
+about 4000 feet above the sea, its lower about from 500 to 800 feet.
+
+This tree is remarkable for its airy, widespread, tropical appearance,
+which suggests a region of palms, rather than cool, resiny pine woods.
+No one would take it at first sight to be a conifer of any kind, it is
+so loose in habit and so widely branched, and its foliage is so thin
+and gray. Full-grown specimens are from forty to fifty feet in height,
+and from two to three feet in diameter. The trunk usually divides into
+three or four main branches, about fifteen and twenty feet from the
+ground, which, after bearing away from one another, shoot straight up
+and form separate summits; while the crooked subordinate branches
+aspire, and radiate, and droop in ornamental sprays. The slender,
+grayish-green needles are from eight to twelve inches long, loosely
+tasseled, and inclined to droop in handsome curves, contrasting with
+the stiff, dark-colored trunk and branches in a very striking manner.
+No other tree of my acquaintance, so substantial in body, is in its
+foliage so thin and so pervious to the light. The sunbeams sift through
+even the leafiest trees with scarcely any interruption, and the weary,
+heated traveler finds but little protection in their shade.
+
+[Illustration: THE NUT PINE (_Pinus Sabiniana_)]
+
+The generous crop of nutritious nuts which the Nut Pine yields makes it
+a favorite with Indians, bears, and squirrels. The cones are most
+beautiful, measuring from five to eight inches in length, and not much
+less in thickness, rich chocolate-brown in color, and protected by
+strong, down-curving hooks which terminate the scales. Nevertheless,
+the little Douglas squirrel can open them. Indians gathering the ripe
+nuts make a striking picture. The men climb the trees like bears and
+beat off the cones with sticks, or recklessly cut off the more fruitful
+branches with hatchets, while the squaws gather the big, generous
+cones, and roast them until the scales open sufficiently to allow the
+hard-shelled seeds to be beaten out. Then, in the cool evenings, men,
+women, and children, with their capacity for dirt greatly increased by
+the soft resin with which they are all bedraggled, form circles around
+camp-fires, on the bank of the nearest stream, and lie in easy
+independence cracking nuts and laughing and chattering, as heedless of
+the future as the squirrels.
+
+_Pinus tuberculata_
+
+This curious little pine is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000
+feet, growing in close, willowy groves. It is exceedingly slender and
+graceful in habit, although trees that chance to stand alone outside
+the groves sweep forth long, curved branches, producing a striking
+contrast to the ordinary grove form. The foliage is of the same
+peculiar gray-green color as that of the Nut Pine, and is worn about as
+loosely, so that the body of the tree is scarcely obscured by it.
+
+[Illustration: THE GROVE FORM. THE ISOLATED FORM (PINUS TUBERCULATA).]
+
+At the age of seven or eight years it begins to bear cones, not on
+branches, but on the main axis, and, as they never fall off, the trunk
+is soon picturesquely dotted with them. The branches also become
+fruitful after they attain sufficient size. The average size of the
+older trees is about thirty or forty feet in height, and twelve to
+fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are about four inches long,
+exceedingly hard, and covered with a sort of silicious varnish and gum,
+rendering them impervious to moisture, evidently with a view to the
+careful preservation of the seeds.
+
+No other conifer in the range is so closely restricted to special
+localities. It is usually found apart, standing deep in chaparral on
+sunny hill-and cañon-sides where there is but little depth of soil,
+and, where found at all, it is quite plentiful; but the ordinary
+traveler, following carriage-roads and trails, may ascend the range
+many times without meeting it.
+
+While exploring the lower portion of the Merced Cañon I found a lonely
+miner seeking his fortune in a quartz vein on a wild mountain-side
+planted with this singular tree. He told me that he called it the
+Hickory Pine, because of the whiteness and toughness of the wood. It is
+so little known, however, that it can hardly be said to have a common
+name. Most mountaineers refer to it as “that queer little pine-tree
+covered all over with burs.” In my studies of this species I found a
+very interesting and significant group of facts, whose relations will
+be seen almost as soon as stated:
+
+1st. All the trees in the groves I examined, however unequal in size,
+are of the same age.
+
+2d. Those groves are all planted on dry hillsides covered with
+chaparral, and therefore are liable to be swept by fire.
+
+3d. There are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves,
+but there is always a fine, hopeful crop springing up on the ground
+once occupied by any grove that has been destroyed by the burning of
+the chaparral.
+
+4th. The cones never fall off and never discharge their seeds until the
+tree or branch to which they belong dies.
+
+[Illustration: LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN
+CHARACTER OF WOODS.]
+
+A full discussion of the bearing of these facts upon one another would
+perhaps be out of place here, but I may at least call attention to the
+admirable adaptation of the tree to the fire-swept regions where alone
+it is found. After a grove has been destroyed, the ground is at once
+sown lavishly with all the seeds ripened during its whole life, which
+seem to have been carefully held in store with reference to such a
+calamity. Then a young grove immediately springs up, giving beauty for
+ashes.
+
+SUGAR PINE
+(_Pinus Lambertiana_)
+
+This is the noblest pine yet discovered, surpassing all others not
+merely in size but also in kingly beauty and majesty.
+
+It towers sublimely from every ridge and cañon of the range, at an
+elevation of from three to seven thousand feet above the sea, attaining
+most perfect development at a height of about 5000 feet.
+
+Full-grown specimens are commonly about 220 feet high, and from six to
+eight feet in diameter near the ground, though some grand old patriarch
+is occasionally met that has enjoyed five or six centuries of storms,
+and attained a thickness of ten or even twelve feet, living on
+undecayed, sweet and fresh in every fiber.
+
+In southern Oregon, where it was first discovered by David Douglas, on
+the head waters of the Umpqua, it attains still grander dimensions, one
+specimen having been measured that was 245 feet high, and over eighteen
+feet in diameter three feet from the ground. The discoverer was the
+Douglas for whom the noble Douglas Spruce is named, and many other
+plants which will keep his memory sweet and fresh as long as trees and
+flowers are loved. His first visit to the Pacific Coast was made in the
+year 1825. The Oregon Indians watched him with curiosity as he wandered
+in the woods collecting specimens, and, unlike the fur-gathering
+strangers they had hitherto known, caring nothing about trade. And when
+at length they came to know him better, and saw that from year to year
+the growing things of the woods and prairies were his only objects of
+pursuit, they called him “The Man of Grass,” a title of which he was
+proud. During his first summer on the waters of the Columbia he made
+Fort Vancouver his headquarters, making excursions from this Hudson Bay
+post in every direction. On one of his long trips he saw in an Indian’s
+pouch some of the seeds of a new species of pine which he learned were
+obtained from a very large tree far to the southward of the Columbia.
+At the end of the next summer, returning to Fort Vancouver after the
+setting in of the winter rains, bearing in mind the big pine he had
+heard of, he set out on an excursion up the Willamette Valley in search
+of it; and how he fared, and what dangers and hardships he endured, are
+best told in his own journal, from which I quote as follows:
+
+_October_ 26, 1826. Weather dull. Cold and cloudy. When my friends in
+England are made acquainted with my travels I fear they will think I
+have told them nothing but my miseries…. I quitted my camp early in the
+morning to survey the neighboring country, leaving my guide to take
+charge of the horses until my return in the evening. About an hour’s
+walk from the camp I met an Indian, who on perceiving me instantly
+strung his bow, placed on his left arm a sleeve of raccoon skin and
+stood on the defensive. Being quite sure that conduct was prompted by
+fear and not by hostile intentions, the poor fellow having probably
+never seen such a being as myself before, I laid my gun at my feet on
+the ground and waved my hand for him to come to me, which he did slowly
+and with great caution. I then made him place his bow and quiver of
+arrows beside my gun, and striking a light gave him a smoke out of my
+own pipe and a present of a few beads. With my pencil I made a rough
+sketch of the cone and pine tree which I wanted to obtain, and drew his
+attention to it, when he instantly pointed with his hand to the hills
+fifteen or twenty miles distant towards the south; and when I expressed
+my intention of going thither, cheerfully set out to accompany me. At
+midday I reached my long-wished-for pines, and lost no time in
+examining them and endeavoring to collect specimens and seeds. New and
+strange things seldom fail to make strong impressions, and are
+therefore frequently over-rated; so that, lest I should never see my
+friends in England to inform them verbally of this most beautiful and
+immensely grand tree, I shall here state the dimensions of the largest
+I could find among several that had been blown down by the wind. At 3
+feet from the ground its circumference is 57 feet 9 inches; at 134
+feet, 17 feet 5 inches; the extreme length 245 feet…. As it was
+impossible either to climb the tree or hew it down, I endeavored to
+knock off the cones by firing at them with ball, when the report of my
+gun brought eight Indians, all of them painted with red earth, armed
+with bows, arrows, bone-tipped spears, and flint-knives. They appeared
+anything but friendly. I explained to them what I wanted, and they
+seemed satisfied and sat down to smoke; but presently I saw one of them
+string his bow, and another sharpen his flint knife with a pair of
+wooden pincers and suspend it off the wrist of his right hand. Further
+testimony of their intentions was unnecessary. To save myself by flight
+was impossible, so without hesitation I stepped back about five paces,
+cocked my gun, drew one of the pistols out of my belt, and holding it
+in my left hand and the gun in my right, showed myself determined to
+fight for my life. As much as possible I endeavored to preserve my
+coolness, and thus we stood looking at one another without making any
+movement or uttering a word for perhaps ten minutes, when one at last,
+who seemed to be the leader, gave a sign that they wished for some
+tobacco; this I signified that they should have if they fetched a
+quantity of cones. They went off immediately in search of them, and no
+sooner were they all out of sight than I picked up my three cones and
+some twigs of the trees and made the quickest possible retreat,
+hurrying back to the camp, which I reached before dusk…. I now write
+lying on the grass with my gun cocked beside me, and penning these
+lines by the light of my Columbian candle, namely, an ignited piece of
+rosin-wood.
+
+
+This grand pine discovered under such, exciting circumstances Douglas
+named in honor of his friend Dr. Lambert of London.
+
+The trunk is a smooth, round, delicately tapered shaft, mostly without
+limbs, and colored rich purplish-brown, usually enlivened with tufts of
+yellow lichen. At the top of this magnificent bole, long, curving
+branches sweep gracefully outward and downward, sometimes forming a
+palm-like crown, but far more nobly impressive than any palm crown I
+ever beheld. The needles are about three inches long, finely tempered
+and arranged in rather close tassels at the ends of slender branchlets
+that clothe the long, outsweeping limbs. How well they sing in the
+wind, and how strikingly harmonious an effect is made by the immense
+cylindrical cones that depend loosely from the ends of the main
+branches! No one knows what Nature can do in the way of pine-burs until
+he has seen those of the Sugar Pine. They are commonly from fifteen to
+eighteen inches long, and three in diameter; green, shaded with dark
+purple on their sunward sides. They are ripe in September and October.
+Then the flat scales open and the seeds take wing, but the empty cones
+become still more beautiful and effective, for their diameter is nearly
+doubled by the spreading of the scales, and their color changes to a
+warm yellowish-brown; while they remain swinging on the tree all the
+following winter and summer, and continue effectively beautiful even on
+the ground many years after they fall. The wood is deliciously
+fragrant, and fine in grain and texture; it is of a rich cream-yellow,
+as if formed of condensed sunbeams. _Retinospora obtusa, Siebold_, the
+glory of Eastern forests, is called “Fu-si-no-ki” (tree of the sun) by
+the Japanese; the Sugar Pine is the sun-tree of the Sierra.
+Unfortunately it is greatly prized by the lumbermen, and in accessible
+places is always the first tree in the woods to feel their steel. But
+the regular lumbermen, with their saw-mills, have been, less generally
+destructive thus far than the shingle-makers. The wood splits freely,
+and there is a constant demand for the shingles. And because an ax, and
+saw, and frow are all the capital required for the business, many of
+that drifting, unsteady class of men so large in California engage in
+it for a few months in the year. When prospectors, hunters, ranch
+hands, etc., touch their “bottom dollar” and find themselves out of
+employment, they say, “Well, I can at least go to the Sugar Pines and
+make shingles.” A few posts are set in the ground, and a single length
+cut from the first tree felled produces boards enough for the walls and
+roof of a cabin; all the rest the lumberman makes is for sale, and he
+is speedily independent. No gardener or haymaker is more sweetly
+perfumed than these rough mountaineers while engaged in this business,
+but the havoc they make is most deplorable.
+
+[Illustration: SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE.]
+
+The sugar, from which the common name is derived, is to my taste the
+best of sweets—better than maple sugar. It exudes from the heart-wood,
+where wounds have been made, either by forest fires, or the ax, in the
+shape of irregular, crisp, candy-like kernels, which are crowded
+together in masses of considerable size, like clusters of resin-beads.
+When fresh, it is perfectly white and delicious, but, because most of
+the wounds on which it is found have been made by fire, the exuding sap
+is stained on the charred surface, and the hardened sugar becomes
+brown. Indians are fond of it, but on account of its laxative
+properties only small quantities may be eaten. Bears, so fond of sweet
+things in general, seem never to taste it; at least I have failed to
+find any trace of their teeth in this connection.
+
+No lover of trees will ever forget his first meeting with the Sugar
+Pine, nor will he afterward need a poet to call him to “listen what the
+pine-tree saith.” In most pine-trees there is a sameness of expression,
+which, to most people, is apt to become monotonous; for the typical
+spiry form, however beautiful, affords but little scope for appreciable
+individual character. The Sugar Pine is as free from conventionalities
+of form and motion as any oak. No two are alike, even to the most
+inattentive observer; and, notwithstanding they are ever tossing out
+their immense arms in what might seem most extravagant gestures, there
+is a majesty and repose about them that precludes all possibility of
+the grotesque, or even picturesque, in their general expression. They
+are the priests of pines, and seem ever to be addressing the
+surrounding forest. The Yellow Pine is found growing with them on warm
+hillsides, and the White Silver Fir on cool northern slopes; but, noble
+as these are, the Sugar Pine is easily king, and spreads his arms above
+them in blessing while they rock and wave in sign of recognition. The
+main branches are sometimes found to be forty feet in length, yet
+persistently simple, seldom dividing at all, excepting near the end;
+but anything like a bare cable appearance is prevented by the small,
+tasseled branchlets that extend all around them; and when these superb
+limbs sweep out symmetrically on all sides, a crown sixty or seventy
+feet wide is formed, which, gracefully poised on the summit of the
+noble shaft, and filled with sunshine, is one of the most glorious
+forest objects conceivable. Commonly, however, there is a great
+preponderance of limbs toward the east, away from the direction of the
+prevailing winds.
+
+No other pine seems to me so unfamiliar and self-contained. In
+approaching it, we feel as if in the presence of a superior being, and
+begin to walk with a light step, holding our breath. Then, perchance,
+while we gaze awe-stricken, along comes a merry squirrel, chattering
+and laughing, to break the spell, running up the trunk with no
+ceremony, and gnawing off the cones as if they were made only for him;
+while the carpenter-woodpecker hammers away at the bark, drilling holes
+in which to store his winter supply of acorns.
+
+[Illustration: YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES.]
+
+Although so wild and unconventional when full-grown, the Sugar Pine is
+a remarkably proper tree in youth. The old is the most original and
+independent in appearance of all the Sierra evergreens; the young is
+the most regular,—a strict follower of coniferous fashions,—slim,
+erect, with leafy, supple branches kept exactly in place, each tapering
+in outline and terminating in a spiry point. The successive
+transitional forms presented between the cautious neatness of youth and
+bold freedom of maturity offer a delightful study. At the age of fifty
+or sixty years, the shy, fashionable form begins to be broken up.
+Specialized branches push out in the most unthought-of places, and bend
+with the great cones, at once marking individual character, and this
+being constantly augmented from year to year by the varying action of
+the sunlight, winds, snow-storms, etc., the individuality of the tree
+is never again lost in the general forest.
+
+The most constant companion of this species is the Yellow Pine, and a
+worthy companion it is.
+
+[Illustration: FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE.]
+
+The Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, Sequoia, and the White Silver Fir are
+also more or less associated with it; but on many deep-soiled
+mountain-sides, at an elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, it
+forms the bulk of the forest, filling every swell and hollow and
+down-plunging ravine. The majestic crowns, approaching each other in
+bold curves, make a glorious canopy through which the tempered sunbeams
+pour, silvering the needles, and gilding the massive boles, and
+flowery, park-like ground, into a scene of enchantment.
+
+On the most sunny slopes the white-flowered fragrant chamoebatia is
+spread like a carpet, brightened during early summer with the crimson
+Sarcodes, the wild rose, and innumerable violets and gilias. Not even
+in the shadiest nooks will you find any rank, untidy weeds or
+unwholesome darkness. On the north sides of ridges the boles are more
+slender, and the ground is mostly occupied by an underbrush of hazel,
+ceanothus, and flowering dogwood, but never so densely as to prevent
+the traveler from sauntering where he will; while the crowning branches
+are never impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and never so
+interblended as to lose their individuality.
+
+View the forest from beneath or from some commanding ridge-top; each
+tree presents a study in itself, and proclaims the surpassing grandeur
+of the species.
+
+YELLOW, OR SILVER PINE
+(_Pinus ponderosa_)
+
+The Silver, or Yellow, Pine, as it is commonly called, ranks second
+among the pines of the Sierra as a lumber tree, and almost rivals the
+Sugar Pine in stature and nobleness of port. Because of its superior
+powers of enduring variations of climate and soil, it has a more
+extensive range than any other conifer growing on the Sierra. On the
+western slope it is first met at an elevation of about 2000 feet, and
+extends nearly to the upper limit of the timber line. Thence, crossing
+the range by the lowest passes, it descends to the eastern base, and
+pushes out for a considerable distance into the hot volcanic plains,
+growing bravely upon well-watered moraines, gravelly lake basins,
+arctic ridges, and torrid lava-beds; planting itself upon the lips of
+craters, flourishing vigorously even there, and tossing ripe cones
+among the ashes and cinders of Nature’s hearths.
+
+The average size of full-grown trees on the western slope, where it is
+associated with the Sugar Pine, is a little less than 200 feet in
+height and from five to six feet in diameter, though specimens may
+easily be found that are considerably larger. I measured one, growing
+at an elevation of 4000 feet in the valley of the Merced, that is a few
+inches over eight feet in diameter, and 220 feet high.
+
+Where there is plenty of free sunshine and other conditions are
+favorable, it presents a striking contrast in form to the Sugar Pine,
+being a symmetrical spire, formed of a straight round trunk, clad with
+innumerable branches that are divided over and over again. About one
+half of the trunk is commonly branchless, but where it grows at all
+close, three fourths or more become naked; the tree presenting then a
+more slender and elegant shaft than any other tree in the woods. The
+bark is mostly arranged in massive plates, some of them measuring four
+or five feet in length by eighteen inches in width, with a thickness of
+three or four inches, forming a quite marked and distinguishing
+feature. The needles are of a fine, warm, yellow-green color, six to
+eight inches long, firm and elastic, and crowded in handsome, radiant
+tassels on the upturning ends of the branches. The cones are about
+three or four inches long, and two and a half wide, growing in close,
+sessile clusters among the leaves.
+
+[Illustration: PINUS PONDEROSA]
+
+The species attains its noblest form in filled-up lake basins,
+especially in those of the older yosemites, and so prominent a part
+does it form of their groves that it may well be called the Yosemite
+Pine. Ripe specimens favorably situated are almost always 200 feet or
+more in height, and the branches clothe the trunk nearly to the ground,
+as seen in the illustration.
+
+The Jeffrey variety attains its finest development in the northern
+portion of the range, in the wide basins of the McCloud and Pitt
+rivers, where it forms magnificent forests scarcely invaded by any
+other tree. It differs from the ordinary form in size, being only about
+half as tall, and in its redder and more closely furrowed bark,
+grayish-green foliage, less divided branches, and larger cones; but
+intermediate forms come in which make a clear separation impossible,
+although some botanists regard it as a distinct species. It is this
+variety that climbs storm-swept ridges, and wanders out among the
+volcanoes of the Great Basin. Whether exposed to extremes of heat or
+cold, it is dwarfed like every other tree, and becomes all knots and
+angles, wholly unlike the majestic forms we have been sketching. Old
+specimens, bearing cones about as big as pineapples, may sometimes be
+found clinging to rifted rocks at an elevation of seven or eight
+thousand feet, whose highest branches scarce reach above one’s
+shoulders.
+
+[Illustration: SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH. (THE FORM GROWING IN
+YOSEMITE VALLEY.)]
+
+I have oftentimes feasted on the beauty of these noble trees when they
+were towering in all their winter grandeur, laden with snow—one mass of
+bloom; in summer, too, when the brown, staminate clusters hang thick
+among the shimmering needles, and the big purple burs are ripening in
+the mellow light; but it is during cloudless wind-storms that these
+colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like
+willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when
+the sun shines upon them at the required angle, entire groves glow as
+if every leaf were burnished silver. The fall of tropic light on the
+royal crown of a palm is a truly glorious spectacle, the fervid
+sun-flood breaking upon the glossy leaves in long lance-rays, like
+mountain water among boulders. But to me there is something more
+impressive in the fall of light upon these Silver Pines. It seems
+beaten to the finest dust, and is shed off in myriads of minute
+sparkles that seem to come from the very heart of the trees, as if,
+like rain falling upon fertile soil, it had been absorbed, to reappear
+in flowers of light.
+
+This species also gives forth the finest music to the wind. After
+listening to it in all kinds of winds, night and day, season after
+season, I think I could approximate to my position on the mountains by
+this pine-music alone. If you would catch the tones of separate
+needles, climb a tree. They are well tempered, and give forth no
+uncertain sound, each standing out, with no interference excepting
+during heavy gales; then you may detect the click of one needle upon
+another, readily distinguishable from their free, wing-like hum. Some
+idea of their temper may be drawn from the fact that, notwithstanding
+they are so long, the vibrations that give rise to the peculiar
+shimmering of the light are made at the rate of about two hundred and
+fifty per minute.
+
+When a Sugar Pine and one of this species equal in size are observed
+together, the latter is seen to be far more simple in manners, more
+lithely graceful, and its beauty is of a kind more easily appreciated;
+but then, it is, on the other hand, much less dignified and original in
+demeanor. The Silver Pine seems eager to shoot aloft. Even while it is
+drowsing in autumn sun-gold, you may still detect a skyward aspiration.
+But the Sugar Pine seems too unconsciously noble, and too complete in
+every way, to leave room for even a heavenward care.
+
+DOUGLAS SPRUCE
+(_Pseudotsuga Douglasii_)
+
+This tree is the king of the spruces, as the Sugar Pine is king of
+pines. It is by far the most majestic spruce I ever beheld in any
+forest, and one of the largest and longest lived of the giants that
+flourish throughout the main pine belt, often attaining a height of
+nearly 200 feet, and a diameter of six or seven. Where the growth is
+not too close, the strong, spreading branches come more than halfway
+down the trunk, and these are hung with innumerable slender, swaying
+sprays, that are handsomely feathered with the short leaves which
+radiate at right angles all around them. This vigorous spruce is ever
+beautiful, welcoming the mountain winds and the snow as well as the
+mellow summer light, and maintaining its youthful freshness
+undiminished from century to century through a thousand storms.
+
+It makes its finest appearance in the months of June and July. The rich
+brown buds with which its sprays are tipped swell and break about this
+time, revealing the young leaves, which at first are bright yellow,
+making the tree appear as if covered with gay blossoms; while the
+pendulous bracted cones with their shell-like scales are a constant
+adornment.
+
+The young trees are mostly gathered into beautiful family groups, each
+sapling exquisitely symmetrical. The primary branches are whorled
+regularly around the axis, generally in fives, while each is draped
+with long, feathery sprays, that descend in curves as free and as
+finely drawn as those of falling water.
+
+In Oregon and Washington it grows in dense forests, growing tall and
+mast-like to a height of 300 feet, and is greatly prized as a lumber
+tree. But in the Sierra it is scattered among other trees, or forms
+small groves, seldom ascending higher than 5500 feet, and never making
+what would be called a forest. It is not particular in its choice of
+soil—wet or dry, smooth or rocky, it makes out to live well on them
+all. Two of the largest specimens I have measured are in Yosemite
+Valley, one of which is more than eight feet in diameter, and is
+growing upon the terminal moraine of the residual glacier that occupied
+the South Fork Canon; the other is nearly as large, growing upon
+angular blocks of granite that have been shaken from the precipitous
+front of the Liberty Cap near the Nevada Fall. No other tree seems so
+capable of adapting itself to earthquake taluses, and many of these
+rough boulder-slopes are occupied by it almost exclusively, especially
+in yosemite gorges moistened by the spray of waterfalls.
+
+INCENSE CEDAR
+(_Libocedrus decurrens_)
+
+The Incense Cedar is another of the giants quite generally distributed
+throughout this portion of the forest, without exclusively occupying
+any considerable area, or even making extensive groves. It ascends to
+about 5000 feet on the warmer hillsides, and reaches the climate most
+congenial to it at about from 3000 to 4000 feet, growing vigorously at
+this elevation on all kinds of soil, and in particular it is capable of
+enduring more moisture about its roots than any of its companions,
+excepting only the Sequoia.
+
+The largest specimens are about 150 feet high, and seven feet in
+diameter. The bark is brown, of a singularly rich tone very attractive
+to artists, and the foliage is tinted with a warmer yellow than that of
+any other evergreen in the woods. Casting your eye over the general
+forest from some ridge-top, the color alone of its spiry summits is
+sufficient to identify it in any company.
+
+[Illustration: INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME.]
+
+In youth, say up to the age of seventy or eighty years, no other tree
+forms so strictly tapered a cone from top to bottom. The branches swoop
+outward and downward in bold curves, excepting the younger ones near
+the top, which aspire, while the lowest droop to the ground, and all
+spread out in flat, ferny plumes, beautifully fronded, and imbricated
+upon one another. As it becomes older, it grows strikingly irregular
+and picturesque. Large special branches put out at right angles from
+the trunk, form big, stubborn elbows, and then shoot up parallel with
+the axis. Very old trees are usually dead at the top, the main axis
+protruding above ample masses of green plumes, gray and lichen-covered,
+and drilled full of acorn holes by the woodpeckers. The plumes are
+exceedingly beautiful; no waving fern-frond in shady dell is more
+unreservedly beautiful in form and texture, or half so inspiring in
+color and spicy fragrance. In its prime, the whole tree is thatched
+with them, so that they shed off rain and snow like a roof, making fine
+mansions for storm-bound birds and mountaineers. But if you would see
+the _Libocedrus_ in all its glory, you must go to the woods in winter.
+Then it is laden with myriads of four-sided staminate cones about the
+size of wheat grains,—winter wheat,—producing a golden tinge, and
+forming a noble illustration of Nature’s immortal vigor and virility.
+The fertile cones are about three fourths of an inch long, borne on the
+outside of the plumy branchlets, where they serve to enrich still more
+the surpassing beauty of this grand winter-blooming goldenrod.
+
+WHITE SILVER FIR
+(_Abies concolor_)
+
+[Illustration: FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS. TWO SEQUOIAS IN THE
+FOREGROUND ON THE LEFT.]
+
+We come now to the most regularly planted of all the main forest belts,
+composed almost exclusively of two noble firs—_A. concolor_ and _A.
+magnifica_. It extends with no marked interruption for 450 miles, at an
+elevation of from 5000 to nearly 9000 feet above the sea. In its youth
+_A. concolor_ is a charmingly symmetrical tree with branches regularly
+whorled in level collars around its whitish-gray axis, which terminates
+in a strong, hopeful shoot. The leaves are in two horizontal rows,
+along branchlets that commonly are less than eight years old, forming
+handsome plumes, pinnated like the fronds of ferns. The cones are
+grayish-green when ripe, cylindrical, about from three to four inches
+long by one and a half to two inches wide, and stand upright on the
+upper branches.
+
+Full-grown trees, favorably situated as to soil and exposure, are about
+200 feet high, and five or six feet in diameter near the ground, though
+larger specimens are by no means rare.
+
+As old age creeps on, the bark becomes rougher and grayer, the branches
+lose their exact regularity, many are snow-bent or broken off, and the
+main axis often becomes double or otherwise irregular from accidents to
+the terminal bud or shoot; but throughout all the vicissitudes of its
+life on the mountains, come what may, the noble grandeur of the species
+is patent to every eye.
+
+MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR, OR RED FIR
+(_Abies magnifica_)
+
+This is the most charmingly symmetrical of all the giants of the Sierra
+woods, far surpassing its companion species in this respect, and easily
+distinguished from it by the purplish-red bark, which is also more
+closely furrowed than that of the white, and by its larger cones, more
+regularly whorled and fronded branches, and by its leaves, which are
+shorter, and grow all around the branchlets and point upward.
+
+In size, these two Silver Firs are about equal, the _magnifica_ perhaps
+a little the taller. Specimens from 200 to 250 feet high are not rare
+on well-ground moraine soil, at an elevation of from 7500 to 8500 feet
+above sea-level. The largest that I measured stands back three miles
+from the brink of the north wall of Yosemite Valley. Fifteen years ago
+it was 240 feet high, with a diameter of a little more than five feet.
+
+Happy the man with the freedom and the love to climb one of these
+superb trees in full flower and fruit. How admirable the forest-work of
+Nature is then seen to be, as one makes his way up through the midst of
+the broad, fronded branches, all arranged in exquisite order around the
+trunk, like the whorled leaves of lilies, and each branch and branchlet
+about as strictly pinnate as the most symmetrical fern-frond. The
+staminate cones are seen growing straight downward from the under side
+of the young branches in lavish profusion, making fine purple clusters
+amid the grayish-green foliage. On the topmost branches the fertile
+cones are set firmly on end like small casks. They are about six inches
+long, three wide, covered with a fine gray down, and streaked with
+crystal balsam that seems to have been poured upon each cone from
+above.
+
+Both the Silver Firs live 250 years or more when the conditions about
+them are at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may often be seen,
+heavily storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising
+generation, with a protecting grove of saplings pressing close around
+his feet, each dressed with such loving care that not a leaf seems
+wanting. Other companies are made up of trees near the prime of life,
+exquisitely harmonized to one another in form and gesture, as if Nature
+had culled them one by one with nice discrimination from all the rest
+of the woods.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR.]
+
+It is from this tree, called Red Fir by the lumberman, that
+mountaineers always cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate
+as to be within its limits. Two rows of the plushy branches overlapping
+along the middle, and a crescent of smaller plumes mixed with ferns and
+flowers for a pillow, form the very best bed imaginable. The essences
+of the pressed leaves seem to fill every pore of one’s body, the sounds
+of falling water make a soothing hush, while the spaces between the
+grand spires afford noble openings through which to gaze dreamily into
+the starry sky. Even in the matter of sensuous ease, any combination of
+cloth, steel springs, and feathers seems vulgar in comparison.
+
+The fir woods are delightful sauntering-grounds at any time of year,
+but most so in autumn. Then the noble trees are hushed in the hazy
+light, and drip with balsam; the cones are ripe, and the seeds, with
+their ample purple wings, mottle the air like flocks of butterflies;
+while deer feeding in the flowery openings between the groves, and
+birds and squirrels in the branches, make a pleasant stir which
+enriches the deep, brooding calm of the wilderness, and gives a
+peculiar impressiveness to every tree. No wonder the enthusiastic
+Douglas went wild with joy when he first discovered this species. Even
+in the Sierra, where so many noble evergreens challenge admiration, we
+linger among these colossal firs with fresh love, and extol their
+beauty again and again, as if no other in the world could henceforth
+claim our regard.
+
+[Illustration: SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN
+AND TENAYA GLACIERS.]
+
+It is in these woods the great granite domes rise that are so striking
+and characteristic a feature of the Sierra. And here too we find the
+best of the garden meadows. They lie level on the tops of the dividing
+ridges, or sloping on the sides of them, embedded in the magnificent
+forest. Some of these meadows are in great part occupied by
+_Veratrumalba_, which here grows rank and tall, with boat-shaped leaves
+thirteen inches long and twelve inches wide, ribbed like those of
+cypripedium. Columbine grows on the drier margins with tall larkspurs
+and lupines waist-deep in grasses and sedges; several species of
+castilleia also make a bright show in beds of blue and white violets
+and daisies. But the glory of these forest meadows is a lily—_L.
+parvum_. The flowers are orange-colored and quite small, the smallest I
+ever saw of the true lilies; but it is showy nevertheless, for it is
+seven to eight feet high and waves magnificent racemes of ten to twenty
+flowers or more over one’s head, while it stands out in the open ground
+with just enough of grass and other plants about it to make a fringe
+for its feet and show it off to best advantage.
+
+A dry spot a little way back from the margin of a Silver Fir lily
+garden makes a glorious campground, especially where the slope is
+toward the east and opens a view of the distant peaks along the summit
+of the range. The tall lilies are brought forward in all their glory by
+the light of your blazing camp-fire, relieved against the outer
+darkness, and the nearest of the trees with their whorled branches
+tower above you like larger lilies, and the sky seen through the garden
+opening seems one vast meadow of white lily stars.
+
+In the morning everything is joyous and bright, the delicious purple of
+the dawn changes softly to daffodil yellow and white; while the
+sunbeams pouring through the passes between the peaks give a margin of
+gold to each of them. Then the spires of the firs in the hollows of the
+middle region catch the glow, and your camp grove is filled with light.
+The birds begin to stir, seeking sunny branches on the edge of the
+meadow for sun-baths after the cold night, and looking for their
+breakfasts, every one of them as fresh as a lily and as charmingly
+arrayed. Innumerable insects begin to dance, the deer withdraw from the
+open glades and ridge-tops to their leafy hiding-places in the
+chaparral, the flowers open and straighten their petals as the dew
+vanishes, every pulse beats high, every life-cell rejoices, the very
+rocks seem to tingle with life, and God is felt brooding over
+everything great and small.
+
+BIG TREE
+(_Sequoia gigantea_)
+
+Between the heavy pine and Silver Fir belts we find the Big Tree, the
+king of all the conifers in the world, “the noblest of a noble race.”
+It extends in a widely interrupted belt from a small grove on the
+middle fork of the American River to the head of Deer Creek, a distance
+of about 260 miles, the northern limit being near the thirty-ninth
+parallel, the southern a little below the thirty-sixth, and the
+elevation of the belt above the sea varies from about 5000 to 8000
+feet. From the American River grove to the forest on King’s River the
+species occurs only in small isolated groups so sparsely distributed
+along the belt that three of the gaps in it are from forty to sixty
+miles wide. But from King’s River southward the Sequoia is not
+restricted to mere groves, but extends across the broad rugged basins
+of the Kaweah and Tule rivers in noble forests, a distance of nearly
+seventy miles, the continuity of this part of the belt being broken
+only by deep cañons. The Fresno, the largest of the northern groves,
+occupies an area of three or four square miles, a short distance to the
+southward of the famous Mariposa Grove. Along the beveled rim of the
+cañon of the south fork of King’s River there is a majestic forest of
+Sequoia about six miles long by two wide. This is the northernmost
+assemblage of Big Trees that may fairly be called a forest. Descending
+the precipitous divide between the King’s River and Kaweah you enter
+the grand forests that form the main continuous portion of the belt.
+Advancing southward the giants become more and more irrepressibly
+exuberant, heaving their massive crowns into the sky from every ridge
+and slope, and waving onward in graceful compliance with the
+complicated topography of the region. The finest of the Kaweah section
+of the belt is on the broad ridge between Marble Creek and the middle
+fork, and extends from the granite headlands overlooking the hot plains
+to within a few miles of the cool glacial fountains of the summit
+peaks. The extreme upper limit of the belt is reached between the
+middle and south forks of the Kaweah at an elevation of 8400 feet. But
+the finest block of Big Tree forest in the entire belt is on the north
+fork of Tule River. In the northern groves there are comparatively few
+young trees or saplings. But here for every old, storm-stricken giant
+there are many in all the glory of prime vigor, and for each of these a
+crowd of eager, hopeful young trees and saplings growing heartily on
+moraines, rocky ledges, along watercourses, and in the moist alluvium
+of meadows, seemingly in hot pursuit of eternal life.
+
+[Illustration:  SEQUOIA GIGANTEA—VIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK.]
+
+But though the area occupied by the species increases so much from
+north to south there is no marked increase in the size of the trees. A
+height of 275 feet and a diameter near the ground of about 20 feet is
+perhaps about the average size of full-grown trees favorably situated;
+specimens 25 feet in diameter are not very rare, and a few are nearly
+300 feet high. In the Calaveras Grove there are four trees over 300
+feet in height, the tallest of which by careful measurement is 325
+feet. The largest I have yet met in the course of my explorations is a
+majestic old scarred monument in the King’s River forest. It is 35 feet
+8 inches in diameter inside the bark four feet from the ground. Under
+the most favorable conditions these giants probably live 5000 years or
+more, though few of even the larger trees are more than half as old. I
+never saw a Big Tree that had died a natural death; barring accidents
+they seem to be immortal, being exempt from all the diseases that
+afflict and kill other trees. Unless destroyed by man, they live on
+indefinitely until burned, smashed by lightning, or cast down by
+storms, or by the giving way of the ground on which they stand. The age
+of one that was felled in the Calaveras Grove, for the sake of having
+its stump for a dancing-floor, was about 1300 years, and its diameter,
+measured across the stump, 24 feet inside the bark. Another that was
+cut down in the King’s River forest was about the same size, but nearly
+a thousand years older (2200 years), though not a very old-looking
+tree. It was felled to procure a section for exhibition, and thus an
+opportunity was given to count its annual rings of growth. The colossal
+scarred monument in the King’s River forest mentioned above is burned
+half through, and I spent a day in making an estimate of its age,
+clearing away the charred surface with an ax and carefully counting the
+annual rings with the aid of a pocket-lens. The wood-rings in the
+section I laid bare were so involved and contorted in some places that
+I was not able to determine its age exactly, but I counted over 4000
+rings, which showed that this tree was in its prime, swaying in the
+Sierra winds, when Christ walked the earth. No other tree in the world,
+as far as I know, has looked down on so many centuries as the Sequoia,
+or opens such impressive and suggestive views into history.
+
+So exquisitely harmonious and finely balanced are even the very
+mightiest of these monarchs of the woods in all their proportions and
+circumstances there never is anything overgrown or monstrous-looking
+about them. On coming in sight of them for the first time, you are
+likely to say, “Oh, see what beautiful, noble-looking trees are
+towering there among the firs and pines!”—their grandeur being in the
+mean time in great part invisible, but to the living eye it will be
+manifested sooner or later, stealing slowly on the senses, like the
+grandeur of Niagara, or the lofty Yosemite domes. Their great size is
+hidden from the inexperienced observer as long as they are seen at a
+distance in one harmonious view. When, however, you approach them and
+walk round them, you begin to wonder at their colossal size and seek a
+measuring-rod. These giants bulge considerably at the base, but not
+more than is required for beauty and safety; and the only reason that
+this bulging seems in some cases excessive is that only a comparatively
+small section of the shaft is seen at once in near views. One that I
+measured in the King’s River forest was 25 feet in diameter at the
+ground, and 10 feet in diameter 200 feet above the ground, showing that
+the taper of the trunk as a whole is charmingly fine. And when you
+stand back far enough to see the massive columns from the swelling
+instep to the lofty summit dissolving in a dome of verdure, you rejoice
+in the unrivaled display of combined grandeur and beauty. About a
+hundred feet or more of the trunk is usually branchless, but its
+massive simplicity is relieved by the bark furrows, which instead of
+making an irregular network run evenly parallel, like the fluting of an
+architectural column, and to some extent by tufts of slender sprays
+that wave lightly in the winds and cast flecks of shade, seeming to
+have been pinned on here and there for the sake of beauty only. The
+young trees have slender simple branches down to the ground, put on
+with strict regularity, sharply aspiring at the top, horizontal about
+half-way down, and drooping in handsome curves at the base. By the time
+the sapling is five or six hundred years old this spiry, feathery,
+juvenile habit merges into the firm, rounded dome form of middle age,
+which in turn takes on the eccentric picturesqueness of old age. No
+other tree in the Sierra forest has foliage so densely massed or
+presents outlines so firmly drawn and so steadily subordinate to a
+special type. A knotty ungovernable-looking branch five to eight feet
+thick may be seen pushing out abruptly from the smooth trunk, as if
+sure to throw the regular curve into confusion, but as soon as the
+general outline is reached it stops short and dissolves in spreading
+bosses of law-abiding sprays, just as if every tree were growing
+beneath some huge, invisible bell-glass, against whose sides every
+branch was being pressed and molded, yet somehow indulging in so many
+small departures from the regular form that there is still an
+appearance of freedom.
+
+The foliage of the saplings is dark bluish-green in color, while the
+older trees ripen to a warm brownish-yellow tint like Libocedrus. The
+bark is rich cinnamon-brown, purplish in young trees and in shady
+portions of the old, while the ground is covered with brown leaves and
+burs forming color-masses of extraordinary richness, not to mention the
+flowers and underbrush that rejoice about them in their seasons. Walk
+the Sequoia woods at any time of year and you will say they are the
+most beautiful and majestic on earth. Beautiful and impressive
+contrasts meet you everywhere: the colors of tree and flower, rock and
+sky, light and shade, strength and frailty, endurance and evanescence,
+tangles of supple hazel-bushes, tree-pillars about as rigid as granite
+domes, roses and violets, the smallest of their kind, blooming around
+the feet of the giants, and rugs of the lowly chamaebatia where the
+sunbeams fall. Then in winter the trees themselves break forth in
+bloom, myriads of small four-sided staminate cones crowd the ends of
+the slender sprays, coloring the whole tree, and when ripe dusting the
+air and the ground with golden pollen. The fertile cones are bright
+grass-green, measuring about two inches in length by one and a half in
+thickness, and are made up of about forty firm rhomboidal scales
+densely packed, with from five to eight seeds at the base of each. A
+single cone, therefore, contains from two to three hundred seeds, which
+are about a fourth of an inch long by three sixteenths wide, including
+a thin, flat margin that makes them go glancing and wavering in their
+fall like a boy’s kite. The fruitfulness of Sequoia may be illustrated
+by two specimen branches one and a half and two inches in diameter on
+which I counted 480 cones. No other Sierra conifer produces nearly so
+many seeds. Millions are ripened annually by a single tree, and in a
+fruitful year the product of one of the northern groves would be enough
+to plant all the mountain-ranges of the world. Nature takes care,
+however, that not one seed in a million shall germinate at all, and of
+those that do perhaps not one in ten thousand is suffered to live
+through the many vicissitudes of storm, drought, fire, and
+snow-crushing that beset their youth.
+
+The Douglas squirrel is the happy harvester of most of the Sequoia
+cones. Out of every hundred perhaps ninety fall to his share, and
+unless cut off by his ivory sickle they shake out their seeds and
+remain on the tree for many years. Watching the squirrels at their
+harvest work in the Indian summer is one of the most delightful
+diversions imaginable. The woods are calm and the ripe colors are
+blazing in all their glory; the cone-laden trees stand motionless in
+the warm, hazy air, and you may see the crimson-crested woodcock, the
+prince of Sierra woodpeckers, drilling some dead limb or fallen trunk
+with his bill, and ever and anon filling the glens with his happy
+cackle. The humming-bird, too, dwells in these noble woods, and may
+oftentimes be seen glancing among the flowers or resting wing-weary on
+some leafless twig; here also are the familiar robin of the orchards,
+and the brown and grizzly bears so obviously fitted for these majestic
+solitudes; and the Douglas squirrel, making more hilarious, exuberant,
+vital stir than all the bears, birds, and humming wings together.
+
+As soon as any accident happens to the crown of these Sequoias, such as
+being stricken off by lightning or broken by storms, then the branches
+beneath the wound, no matter how situated, seem to be excited like a
+colony of bees that have lost their queen, and become anxious to repair
+the damage. Limbs that have grown outward for centuries at right angles
+to the trunk begin to turn upward to assist in making a new crown, each
+speedily assuming the special form of true summits. Even in the case of
+mere stumps, burned half through, some mere ornamental tuft will try to
+go aloft and do its best as a leader in forming a new head.
+
+Groups of two or three of these grand trees are often found standing
+close together, the seeds from which they sprang having probably grown
+on ground cleared for their reception by the fall of a large tree of a
+former generation. These patches of fresh, mellow soil beside the
+upturned roots of the fallen giant may be from forty to sixty feet
+wide, and they are speedily occupied by seedlings. Out of these
+seedling-thickets perhaps two or three may become trees, forming those
+close groups called “three graces,” “loving couples,” etc. For even
+supposing that the trees should stand twenty or thirty feet apart while
+young, by the time they are full-grown their trunks will touch and
+crowd against each other and even appear as one in some cases.
+
+It is generally believed that this grand Sequoia was once far more
+widely distributed over the Sierra; but after long and careful study I
+have come to the conclusion that it never was, at least since the close
+of the glacial period, because a diligent search along the margins of
+the groves, and in the gaps between, fails to reveal a single trace of
+its previous existence beyond its present bounds. Notwithstanding, I
+feel confident that if every Sequoia in the range were to die to-day,
+numerous monuments of their existence would remain, of so imperishable
+a nature as to be available for the student more than ten thousand
+years hence.
+
+In the first place we might notice that no species of coniferous tree
+in the range keeps its individuals so well together as Sequoia; a mile
+is perhaps the greatest distance of any straggler from the main body,
+and all of those stragglers that have come under my observation are
+young, instead of old monumental trees, relics of a more extended
+growth.
+
+Again, Sequoia trunks frequently endure for centuries after they fall.
+I have a specimen block, cut from a fallen trunk, which is hardly
+distinguishable from specimens cut from living trees, although the old
+trunk-fragment from which it was derived has lain in the damp forest
+more than 380 years, probably thrice as long. The time measure in the
+case is simply this: when the ponderous trunk to which the old vestige
+belonged fell, it sunk itself into the ground, thus making a long,
+straight ditch, and in the middle of this ditch a Silver Fir is growing
+that is now four feet in diameter and 380 years old, as determined by
+cutting it half through and counting the rings, thus demonstrating that
+the remnant of the trunk that made the ditch has lain on the ground
+_more_ than 380 years. For it is evident that to find the whole time,
+we must add to the 380 years the time that the vanished portion of the
+trunk lay in the ditch before being burned out of the way, plus the
+time that passed before the seed from which the monumental fir sprang
+fell into the prepared soil and took root. Now, because Sequoia trunks
+are never wholly consumed in one forest fire, and those fires recur
+only at considerable intervals, and because Sequoia ditches after being
+cleared are often left unplanted for centuries, it becomes evident that
+the trunk remnant in question may probably have lain a thousand years
+or more. And this instance is by no means a rare one.
+
+But admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been once covered
+with Sequoia every tree may have fallen, and every trunk may have been
+burned or buried, leaving not a remnant, many of the ditches made by
+the fall of the ponderous trunks, and the bowls made by their upturning
+roots, would remain patent for thousands of years after the last
+vestige of the trunks that made them had vanished. Much of this
+ditch-writing would no doubt be quickly effaced by the flood-action of
+overflowing streams and rain-washing; but no inconsiderable portion
+would remain enduringly engraved on ridge-tops beyond such destructive
+action; for, where all the conditions are favorable, it is almost
+imperishable. _Now these historic ditches and root bowls occur in all
+the present Sequoia groves and forests, but as far as I have observed,
+not the faintest vestige of one presents itself outside of them_.
+
+We therefore conclude that the area covered by Sequoia has not been
+diminished during the last eight or ten thousand years, and probably
+not at all in post-glacial times.
+
+_Is the species verging to extinction? What are its relations to
+climate, soil, and associated trees?_
+
+All the phenomena bearing on these questions also throw light, as we
+shall endeavor to show, upon the peculiar distribution of the species,
+and sustain the conclusion already arrived at on the question of
+extension.
+
+In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are few young trees or
+saplings growing up around the failing old ones to perpetuate the race,
+and in as much as those aged Sequoias, so nearly childless, are the
+only ones commonly known, the species, to most observers, seems doomed
+to speedy extinction, as being nothing more than an expiring remnant,
+vanquished in the so-called struggle for life by pines and firs that
+have driven it into its last strongholds in moist glens where climate
+is exceptionally favorable. But the language of the majestic continuous
+forests of the south creates a very different impression. No tree of
+all the forest is more enduringly established in concordance with
+climate and soil. It grows heartily everywhere—on moraines, rocky
+ledges, along watercourses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows,
+with a multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the aged,
+seemingly abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. For
+every old storm-stricken tree, there is one or more in all the glory of
+prime; and for each of these many young trees and crowds of exuberant
+saplings. So that if all the trees of any section of the main Sequoia
+forest were ranged together according to age, a very promising curve
+would be presented, all the way up from last year’s seedlings to
+giants, and with the young and middle-aged portion of the curve many
+times longer than the old portion. Even as far north as the Fresno, I
+counted 536 saplings and seedlings growing promisingly upon a piece of
+rough avalanche soil not exceeding two acres in area. This soil bed is
+about seven years old, and has been seeded almost simultaneously by
+pines, firs, Libocedrus, and Sequoia, presenting a simple and
+instructive illustration of the struggle for life among the rival
+species; and it was interesting to note that the conditions thus far
+affecting them have enabled the young Sequoias to gain a marked
+advantage.
+
+In every instance like the above I have observed that the seedling
+Sequoia is capable of growing on both drier and wetter soil than its
+rivals, but requires more sunshine than they; the latter fact being
+clearly shown wherever a Sugar Pine or fir is growing in close contact
+with a Sequoia of about equal age and size, and equally exposed to the
+sun; the branches of the latter in such cases are always less leafy.
+Toward the south, however, where the Sequoia becomes _more_ exuberant
+and numerous, the rival trees become _less_ so; and where they mix with
+Sequoias, they mostly grow up beneath them, like slender grasses among
+stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of sandy flood-soil I counted
+ninety-four Sequoias, from one to twelve feet high, on a patch, of
+ground once occupied by four large Sugar Pines which lay crumbling
+beneath them,—an instance of conditions which have enabled Sequoias to
+crowd out the pines.
+
+[Illustration: MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAÑON—YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.]
+
+I also noted eighty-six vigorous saplings upon a piece of fresh ground
+prepared for their reception by fire. Thus fire, the great destroyer of
+Sequoia, also furnishes bare virgin ground, one of the conditions
+essential for its growth from the seed. Fresh ground is, however,
+furnished in sufficient quantities for the constant renewal of the
+forests without fire, viz., by the fall of old trees. The soil is thus
+upturned and mellowed, and many trees are planted for every one that
+falls. Land-slips and floods also give rise to bare virgin ground; and
+a tree now and then owes its existence to a burrowing wolf or squirrel,
+but the most regular supply of fresh soil is furnished by the fall of
+aged trees.
+
+The climatic changes in progress in the Sierra, bearing on the tenure
+of tree life, are entirely misapprehended, especially as to the time
+and the means employed by Nature in effecting them. It is constantly
+asserted in a vague way that the Sierra was vastly wetter than now, and
+that the increasing drought will of itself extinguish Sequoia, leaving
+its ground to other trees supposed capable of nourishing in a drier
+climate. But that Sequoia can and does grow on as dry ground as any of
+its present rivals, is manifest in a thousand places. “Why, then,” it
+will be asked, “are Sequoias always found in greatest abundance in
+well-watered places where streams are exceptionally abundant?” Simply
+because a growth of Sequoias creates those streams. The thirsty
+mountaineer knows well that in every Sequoia grove he will find running
+water, but it is a mistake to suppose that the water is the cause of
+the grove being there; on the contrary, the grove is the cause of the
+water being there. Drain off the water and the trees will remain, but
+cut off the trees, and the streams will vanish. Never was cause more
+completely mistaken for effect than in the case of these related
+phenomena of Sequoia woods and perennial streams, and I confess that at
+first I shared in the blunder.
+
+When attention is called to the method of Sequoia stream-making, it
+will be apprehended at once. The roots of this immense tree fill the
+ground, forming a thick sponge that absorbs and holds back the rains
+and melting snows, only allowing them to ooze and flow gently. Indeed,
+every fallen leaf and rootlet, as well as long clasping root, and
+prostrate trunk, may be regarded as a dam hoarding the bounty of
+storm-clouds, and dispensing it as blessings all through the summer,
+instead of allowing it to go headlong in short-lived floods.
+Evaporation is also checked by the dense foliage to a greater extent
+than by any other Sierra tree, and the air is entangled in masses and
+broad sheets that are quickly saturated; while thirsty winds are not
+allowed to go sponging and licking along the ground.
+
+So great is the retention of water in many places in the main belt,
+that bogs and meadows are created by the killing of the trees. A single
+trunk falling across a stream in the woods forms a dam 200 feet long,
+and from ten to thirty feet high, giving rise to a pond which kills the
+trees within its reach. These dead trees fall in turn, thus making a
+clearing, while sediments gradually accumulate changing the pond into a
+bog, or meadow, for a growth of carices and sphagnum. In some instances
+a series of small bogs or meadows rise above one another on a hillside,
+which are gradually merged into one another, forming sloping bogs, or
+meadows, which make striking features of Sequoia woods, and since all
+the trees that have fallen into them have been preserved, they contain
+records of the generations that have passed since they began to form.
+
+Since, then, it is a fact that thousands of Sequoias are growing
+thriftily on what is termed dry ground, and even clinging like mountain
+pines to rifts in granite precipices; and since it has also been shown
+that the extra moisture found in connection with the denser growths is
+an effect of their presence, instead of a cause of their presence, then
+the notions as to the former extension of the species and its near
+approach to extinction, based upon its supposed dependence on greater
+moisture, are seen to be erroneous.
+
+The decrease in the rain- and snow-fall since the close of the glacial
+period in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed. The highest
+post-glacial watermarks are well preserved in all the upper river
+channels, and they are not greatly higher than the spring floodmarks of
+the present; showing conclusively that no extraordinary decrease has
+taken place in the volume of the upper tributaries of post-glacial
+Sierra streams since they came into existence. But in the mean time,
+eliminating all this complicated question of climatic change, the plain
+fact remains that _the present rain- and snow-fall is abundantly
+sufficient for the luxuriant growth of Sequoia forests_. Indeed, all my
+observations tend to show that in a prolonged drought the Sugar Pines
+and firs would perish before the Sequoia, not alone because of the
+greater longevity of individual trees, but because the species can
+endure more drought, and make the most of whatever moisture falls.
+
+Again, if the restriction and irregular distribution of the species be
+interpreted as a result of the desiccation of the range, then instead
+of increasing as it does in individuals toward the south where the
+rainfall is less, it should diminish.
+
+If, then, the peculiar distribution of Sequoia has not been governed by
+superior conditions of soil as to fertility or moisture, by what has it
+been governed?
+
+In the course of my studies I observed that the northern groves, the
+only ones I was at first acquainted with, were located on just those
+portions of the general forest soil-belt that were first laid bare
+toward the close of the glacial period when the ice-sheet began to
+break up into individual glaciers. And while searching the wide basin
+of the San Joaquin, and trying to account for the absence of Sequoia
+where every condition seemed favorable for its growth, it occured to me
+that this remarkable gap in the Sequoia belt is located exactly in the
+basin of the vast ancient _mer de glace_ of the San Joaquin and King’s
+River basins, which poured its frozen floods to the plain, fed by the
+snows that fell on more than fifty miles of the summit. I then
+perceived that the next great gap in the belt to the northward, forty
+miles wide, extending between the Calaveras and Tuolumne groves, occurs
+in the basin of the great ancient _mer de glace_ of the Tuolumne and
+Stanislaus basins, and that the smaller gap between the Merced and
+Mariposa groves occurs in the basin of the smaller glacier of the
+Merced. _The wider the ancient glacier, the wider the corresponding gap
+in the Sequoia belt_.
+
+Finally, pursuing my investigations across the basins of the Kaweah and
+Tule, I discovered that the Sequoia belt attained its greatest
+development just where, owing to the topographical peculiarities of the
+region, the ground had been most perfectly protected from the main
+ice-rivers that continued to pour past from the summit fountains long
+after the smaller local glaciers had been melted.
+
+Taking now a general view of the belt, beginning at the south, we see
+that the majestic ancient glaciers were shed off right and left down
+the valleys of Kern and King’s rivers by the lofty protective spurs
+outspread embracingly above the warm Sequoia-filled basins of the
+Kaweah and Tule. Then, next northward, occurs the wide Sequoia-less
+channel, or basin, of the ancient San Joaquin and King’s River _mer de
+glace_; then the warm, protected spots of Fresno and Mariposa groves;
+then the Sequoia-less channel of the ancient Merced glacier; next the
+warm, sheltered ground of the Merced and Tuolumne groves; then the
+Sequoia-less channel of the grand ancient _mer de glace_ of the
+Tuolumne and Stanislaus; then the warm old ground of the Calaveras and
+Stanislaus groves. It appears, therefore, that just where, at a certain
+period in the history of the Sierra, the glaciers were not, there the
+Sequoia is, and just where the glaciers were, there the Sequoia is not.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.]
+
+What the other conditions may have been that enabled Sequoia to
+establish itself upon these oldest and warmest portions of the main
+glacial soil-belt, I cannot say. I might venture to state, however, in
+this connection, that since the Sequoia forests present a more and more
+ancient aspect as they extend southward, I am inclined to think that
+the species was distributed from the south, while the Sugar Pine, its
+great rival in the northern groves, seems to have come around the head
+of the Sacramento valley and down the Sierra from the north;
+consequently, when the Sierra soil-beds were first thrown open to
+preemption on the melting of the ice-sheet, the Sequoia may have
+established itself along the available portions of the south half of
+the range prior to the arrival of the Sugar Pine, while the Sugar Pine
+took possession of the north half prior to the arrival of Sequoia.
+
+But however much uncertainty may attach to this branch of the question,
+there are no obscuring shadows upon the grand general relationship we
+have pointed out between the present distribution of Sequoia and the
+ancient glaciers of the Sierra. And when we bear in mind that all the
+present forests of the Sierra are young, growing on moraine soil
+recently deposited, and that the flank of the range itself, with all
+its landscapes, is new-born, recently sculptured, and brought to the
+light of day from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial winter, then a
+thousand lawless mysteries disappear, and broad harmonies take their
+places.
+
+But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial
+history of this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was
+more widely distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial
+epoch; that its present forests are scarcely past prime, if, indeed,
+they have reached prime; that the post-glacial day of the species is
+probably not half done; yet, when from a wider outlook the vast
+antiquity of the genus is considered, and its ancient richness in
+species and individuals; comparing our Sierra Giant and _Sequoia
+sempervirens_ of the Coast Range, the only other living species of
+Sequoia, with the twelve fossil species already discovered and
+described by Heer and Lesquereux, some of which seem to have flourished
+over vast areas in the Arctic regions and in Europe and our own
+territories, during tertiary and cretaceous times,—then indeed it
+becomes plain that our two surviving species, restricted to narrow
+belts within the limits of California, are mere remnants of the genus,
+both as to species and individuals, and that they probably are verging
+to extinction. But the verge of a period beginning in cretaceous times
+may have a breadth of tens of thousands of years, not to mention the
+possible existence of conditions calculated to multiply and reëxtend
+both species and individuals. This, however, is a branch of the
+question into which I do not now purpose to enter.
+
+In studying the fate of our forest king, we have thus far considered
+the action of purely natural causes only; but, unfortunately, _man_ is
+in the woods, and waste and pure destruction are making rapid headway.
+If the importance of forests were at all understood, even from an
+economic standpoint, their preservation would call forth the most
+watchful attention of government. Only of late years by means of forest
+reservations has the simplest groundwork for available legislation been
+laid, while in many of the finest groves every species of destruction
+is still moving on with accelerated speed.
+
+In the course of my explorations I found no fewer than five mills
+located on or near the lower edge of the Sequoia belt, all of which
+were cutting considerable quantities of Big Tree lumber. Most of the
+Fresno group are doomed to feed the mills recently erected near them,
+and a company of lumbermen are now cutting the magnificent forest on
+King’s River. In these milling operations waste far exceeds use, for
+after the choice young manageable trees on any given spot have been
+felled, the woods are fired to clear the ground of limbs and refuse
+with reference to further operations, and, of course, most of the
+seedlings and saplings are destroyed.
+
+These mill ravages, however, are small as compared with the
+comprehensive destruction caused by “sheepmen.” Incredible numbers of
+sheep are driven to the mountain pastures every summer, and their
+course is ever marked by desolation. Every wild garden is trodden down,
+the shrubs are stripped of leaves as if devoured by locusts, and the
+woods are burned. Running fires are set everywhere, with a view to
+clearing the ground of prostrate trunks, to facilitate the movements of
+the flocks and improve the pastures. The entire forest belt is thus
+swept and devastated from one extremity of the range to the other, and,
+with the exception of the resinous _Pinus contorta_, Sequoia suffers
+most of all. Indians burn off the underbrush in certain localities to
+facilitate deer-hunting, mountaineers and lumbermen carelessly allow
+their camp-fires to run; but the fires of the sheepmen, or
+_muttoneers_, form more than ninety per cent. of all destructive fires
+that range the Sierra forests.
+
+It appears, therefore, that notwithstanding our forest king might live
+on gloriously in Nature’s keeping, it is rapidly vanishing before the
+fire and steel of man; and unless protective measures be speedily
+invented and applied, in a few decades, at the farthest, all that will
+be left of _Sequoia gigantea_ will be a few hacked and scarred
+monuments.
+
+TWO-LEAVED, OR TAMARACK, PINE
+(_Pinus contorta_, var._Marrayana_)
+
+This species forms the bulk of the alpine forests, extending along the
+range, above the fir zone, up to a height of from 8000 to 9500 feet
+above the sea, growing in beautiful order upon moraines that are
+scarcely changed as yet by post-glacial weathering. Compared with the
+giants of the lower zones, this is a small tree, seldom attaining a
+height of a hundred feet. The largest specimen I ever measured was
+ninety feet in height, and a little over six in diameter four feet from
+the ground. The average height of mature trees throughout the entire
+belt is probably not far from fifty or sixty feet, with a diameter of
+two feet. It is a well-proportioned, rather handsome little pine, with
+grayish-brown bark, and crooked, much-divided branches, which cover the
+greater portion of the trunk, not so densely, however, as to prevent
+its being seen. The lower limbs curve downward, gradually take a
+horizontal position about half-way up the trunk, then aspire more and
+more toward the summit, thus forming a sharp, conical top. The foliage
+is short and rigid, two leaves in a fascicle, arranged in comparatively
+long, cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough, up-curving
+branchlets. The cones are about two inches long, growing in stiff
+clusters among the needles, without making any striking effect, except
+while very young, when they are of a vivid crimson color, and the whole
+tree appears to be dotted with brilliant flowers. The sterile cones are
+still more showy, on account of their great abundance, often giving a
+reddish-yellow tinge to the whole mass of the foliage, and filling the
+air with pollen.
+
+No other pine on the range is so regularly planted as this one. Moraine
+forests sweep along the sides of the high, rocky valleys for miles
+without interruption; still, strictly speaking, they are not dense, for
+flecks of sunshine and flowers find their way into the darkest places,
+where the trees grow tallest and thickest. Tall, nutritious grasses are
+specially abundant beneath them, growing over all the ground, in
+sunshine and shade, over extensive areas like a farmer’s crop, and
+serving as pasture for the multitude of sheep that are driven from the
+arid plains every summer as soon as the snow is melted.
+
+The Two-leaved Pine, more than any other, is subject to destruction by
+fire. The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled with resin, as though it
+had been showered down upon it like rain, so that even the green trees
+catch fire readily, and during strong winds whole forests are
+destroyed, the flames leaping from tree to tree, forming one continuous
+belt of roaring fire that goes surging and racing onward above the
+bending woods, like the grass-fires of a prairie. During the calm, dry
+season of Indian summer, the fire creeps quietly along the ground,
+feeding on the dry needles and burs; then, arriving at the foot of a
+tree, the resiny bark is ignited, and the heated air ascends in a
+powerful current, increasing in velocity, and dragging the flames
+swiftly upward; then the leaves catch fire, and an immense column of
+flame, beautifully spired on the edges, and tinted a rose-purple hue,
+rushes aloft thirty or forty feet above the top of the tree, forming a
+grand spectacle, especially on a dark night. It lasts, however, only a
+few seconds, vanishing with magical rapidity, to be succeeded by others
+along the fire-line at irregular intervals for weeks at a time—tree
+after tree flashing and darkening, leaving the trunks and branches
+hardly scarred. The heat, however, is sufficient to kill the trees, and
+in a few years the bark shrivels and falls off. Belts miles in extent
+are thus killed and left standing with the branches on, peeled and
+rigid, appearing gray in the distance, like misty clouds. Later the
+branches drop off, leaving a forest of bleached spars. At length the
+roots decay, and the forlorn trunks are blown down during some storm,
+and piled one upon another encumbering the ground until they are
+consumed by the next fire, and leave it ready for a fresh crop.
+
+The endurance of the species is shown by its wandering occasionally out
+over the lava plains with the Yellow Pine, and climbing moraineless
+mountain-sides with the Dwarf Pine, clinging to any chance support in
+rifts and crevices of storm-beaten rocks—always, however, showing the
+effects of such hardships in every feature.
+
+Down in sheltered lake hollows, on beds of rich alluvium, it varies so
+far from the common form as frequently to be taken for a distinct
+species. Here it grows in dense sods, like grasses, from forty to
+eighty feet high, bending all together to the breeze and whirling in
+eddying gusts more lithely than any other tree in the woods. I have
+frequently found specimens fifty feet high less than five inches in
+diameter. Being thus slender, and at the same time well clad with leafy
+boughs, it is oftentimes bent to the ground when laden with soft snow,
+forming beautiful arches in endless variety, some of which last until
+the melting of the snow in spring.
+
+MOUNTAIN PINE
+(_Pinus monticola_)
+
+The Mountain Pine is king of the alpine woods, brave, hardy, and
+long-lived, towering grandly above its companions, and becoming
+stronger and more imposing just where other species begin to crouch and
+disappear. At its best it is usually about ninety feet high and five or
+six in diameter, though a specimen is often met considerably larger
+than this. The trunk is as massive and as suggestive of enduring
+strength as that of an oak. About two thirds of the trunk is commonly
+free of limbs, but close, fringy tufts of sprays occur all the way
+down, like those which adorn the colossal shafts of Sequoia. The bark
+is deep reddish-brown upon trees that occupy exposed situations near
+its upper limit, and furrowed rather deeply, the main furrows running
+nearly parallel with each other, and connected by conspicuous cross
+furrows, which, with one exception, are, as far as I have noticed,
+peculiar to this species.
+
+The cones are from four to eight inches long, slender, cylindrical, and
+somewhat curved, resembling those of the common White Pine of the
+Atlantic coast. They grow in clusters of about from three to six or
+seven, becoming pendulous as they increase in weight, chiefly by the
+bending of the branches.
+
+This species is nearly related to the Sugar Pine, and, though not half
+so tall, it constantly suggests its noble relative in the way that it
+extends its long arms and in general habit. The Mountain Pine is first
+met on the upper margin of the fir zone, growing singly in a subdued,
+inconspicuous form, in what appear as chance situations, without making
+much impression on the general forest. Continuing up through the
+Two-leaved Pines in the same scattered growth, it begins to show its
+character, and at an elevation of about 10,000 feet attains its noblest
+development near the middle of the range, tossing its tough arms in the
+frosty air, welcoming storms and feeding on them, and reaching the
+grand old age of 1000 years.
+
+JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR
+(_Juniperus occidentalis_)
+
+[Illustration: JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR.]
+
+The Juniper is preëminently a rock tree, occupying the baldest domes
+and pavements, where there is scarcely a handful of soil, at a height
+of from 7000 to 9500 feet. In such situations the trunk is frequently
+over eight feet in diameter, and not much more in height. The top is
+almost always dead in old trees, and great stubborn limbs push out
+horizontally that are mostly broken and bare at the ends, but densely
+covered and embedded here and there with bossy mounds of gray foliage.
+Some are mere weathered stumps, as broad as long, decorated with a few
+leafy sprays, reminding one of the crumbling towers of some ancient
+castle scantily draped with ivy. Only upon the head waters of the
+Carson have I found this species established on good moraine soil. Here
+it flourishes with the Silver and Two-leaved Pines, in great beauty and
+luxuriance, attaining a height of from forty to sixty feet, and
+manifesting but little of that rocky angularity so characteristic a
+feature throughout the greater portion, of its range. Two of the
+largest, growing at the head of Hope Valley, measured twenty-nine feet
+three inches and twenty-five feet six inches in circumference,
+respectively, four feet from the ground. The bark is of a bright
+cinnamon color, and, in thrifty trees, beautifully braided and
+reticulated, flaking off in thin, lustrous ribbons that are sometimes
+used by Indians for tent-matting. Its fine color and odd
+picturesqueness always catch an artist’s eye, but to me the Juniper
+seems a singularly dull and taciturn tree, never speaking to one’s
+heart. I have spent many a day and night in its company, in all kinds
+of weather, and have ever found it silent, cold, and rigid, like a
+column of ice. Its broad stumpiness, of course, precludes all
+possibility of waving, or even shaking; but it is not this rocky
+steadfastness that constitutes its silence. In calm, sun-days the Sugar
+Pine preaches the grandeur of the mountains like an apostle without
+moving a leaf.
+
+[Illustration: STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS.]
+
+On level rocks it dies standing, and wastes insensibly out of existence
+like granite, the wind exerting about as little control over it alive
+or dead as it does over a glacier boulder. Some are undoubtedly over
+2000 years old. All the trees of the alpine woods suffer, more or less,
+from avalanches, the Two-leaved Pine most of all. Gaps two or three
+hundred yards wide, extending from the upper limit of the tree-line to
+the bottoms of valleys and lake basins, are of common occurrence in all
+the upper forests, resembling the clearings of settlers in the old
+backwoods. Scarcely a tree is spared, even the soil is scraped away,
+while the thousands of uprooted pines and spruces are piled upon one
+another heads downward, and tucked snugly in along the sides of the
+clearing in two windrows, like lateral moraines. The pines lie with
+branches wilted and drooping like weeds. Not so the burly junipers.
+After braving in silence the storms of perhaps a dozen or twenty
+centuries, they seem in this, their last calamity, to become somewhat
+communicative, making sign of a very unwilling acceptance of their
+fate, holding themselves well up from the ground on knees and elbows,
+seemingly ill at ease, and anxious, like stubborn wrestlers, to rise
+again.
+
+HEMLOCK SPRUCE
+(_Tsuga Pattoniana_)
+
+The Hemlock Spruce is the most singularly beautiful of all the
+California coniferae. So slender is its axis at the top, that it bends
+over and droops like the stalk of a nodding lily. The branches droop
+also, and divide into innumerable slender, waving sprays, which are
+arranged in a varied, eloquent harmony that is wholly indescribable.
+Its cones are purple, and hang free, in the form of little tassels two
+inches long from all the sprays from top to bottom. Though exquisitely
+delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best where the snow lies
+deepest, far up in the region of storms, at an elevation of from 9000
+to 9500 feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it is capable of growing
+considerably higher, say 10,500 feet. The tallest specimens, growing in
+sheltered hollows somewhat beneath the heaviest wind-currents, are from
+eighty to a hundred feet high, and from two to four feet in diameter.
+The very largest specimen I ever found was nineteen feet seven inches
+in circumference four feet from the ground, growing on the edge of Lake
+Hollow, at an elevation of 9250 feet above the level of the sea. At the
+age of twenty or thirty years it becomes fruitful, and hangs out its
+beautiful purple cones at the ends of the slender sprays, where they
+swing free in the breeze, and contrast delightfully with the cool green
+foliage. They are translucent when young, and their beauty is
+delicious. After they are fully ripe, they spread their shell-like
+scales and allow the brown-winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while
+the empty cones remain to beautify the tree until the coming of a fresh
+crop.
+
+[Illustration: STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH.]
+
+The staminate cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in
+bright clusters, yellow, and rose, and crimson. Those of the Hemlock
+Spruce are the most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue
+flowers, each on a slender stem.
+
+Under all conditions, sheltered or storm-beaten, well-fed or ill-fed,
+this tree is singularly graceful in habit. Even at its highest limit
+upon exposed ridge-tops, though compelled to crouch in dense thickets,
+huddled close together, as if for mutual protection, it still manages
+to throw out its sprays in irrepressible loveliness; while on
+well-ground moraine soil it develops a perfectly tropical luxuriance of
+foliage and fruit, and is the very loveliest tree in the forest; poised
+in thin white sunshine, clad with branches from head to foot, yet not
+in the faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in unassuming
+majesty, drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its
+race, loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven and
+joyously receptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like
+sensitive tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it. No other of
+our alpine conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches
+yield to the mountains’ gentlest breath; yet is it strong to meet the
+wildest onsets of the gale,—strong not in resistance, but compliance,
+bowing, snow-laden, to the ground, gracefully accepting burial month
+after month in the darkness beneath the heavy mantle of winter.
+
+When the first soft snow begins to fall, the flakes lodge in the
+leaves, weighing down the branches against the trunk. Then the axis
+bends yet lower and lower, until the slender top touches the ground,
+thus forming a fine ornamental arch. The snow still falls lavishly, and
+the whole tree is at length buried, to sleep and rest in its beautiful
+grave as though dead. Entire groves of young trees, from ten to forty
+feet high, are thus buried every winter like slender grasses. But, like
+the violets and daisies which the heaviest snows crush not, they are
+safe. It is as though this were only Nature’s method of putting her
+darlings to sleep instead of leaving them exposed to the biting storms
+of winter.
+
+Thus warmly wrapped they await the summer resurrection. The snow
+becomes soft in the sunshine, and freezes at night, making the mass
+hard and compact, like ice, so that during the months of April and May
+you can ride a horse over the prostrate groves without catching sight
+of a single leaf. At length the down-pouring sunshine sets them free.
+First the elastic tops of the arches begin to appear, then one branch
+after another, each springing loose with a gentle rustling sound, and
+at length the whole tree, with the assistance of the winds, gradually
+unbends and rises and settles back into its place in the warm air, as
+dry and feathery and fresh as young ferns just out of the coil.
+
+Some of the finest groves I have yet found are on the southern slopes
+of Lassen’s Butte. There are also many charming companies on the head
+waters of the Tuolumne, Merced, and San Joaquin, and, in general, the
+species is so far from being rare that you can scarcely fail to find
+groves of considerable extent in crossing the range, choose what pass
+you may. The Mountain Pine grows beside it, and more frequently the
+two-leaved species; but there are many beautiful groups, numbering 1000
+individuals, or more, without a single intruder.
+
+I wish I had space to write more of the surpassing beauty of this
+favorite spruce. Every tree-lover is sure to regard it with special
+admiration; apathetic mountaineers, even, seeking only game or gold,
+stop to gaze on first meeting it, and mutter to themselves: “That’s a
+mighty pretty tree,” some of them adding, “d——d pretty!” In autumn,
+when its cones are ripe, the little striped tamias, and the Douglas
+squirrel, and the Clark crow make a happy stir in its groves. The deer
+love to lie down beneath its spreading branches; bright streams from
+the snow that is always near ripple through its groves, and bryanthus
+spreads precious carpets in its shade. But the best words only hint its
+charms. Come to the mountains and see.
+
+DWARF PINE
+(_Pinus albicaulis_)
+
+This species forms the extreme edge of the timber line throughout
+nearly the whole extent of the range on both flanks. It is first met
+growing in company with _Pinus contorta_, var. _Murrayana_, on the
+upper margin of the belt, as an erect tree from fifteen to thirty feet
+high and from one to two feet in thickness; thence it goes straggling
+up the flanks of the summit peaks, upon moraines or crumbling ledges,
+wherever it can obtain a foothold, to an elevation of from 10,000 to
+12,000 feet, where it dwarfs to a mass of crumpled, prostrate branches,
+covered with slender, upright shoots, each tipped with a short,
+close-packed tassel of leaves. The bark is smooth and purplish, in some
+places almost white. The fertile cones grow in rigid clusters upon the
+upper branches, dark chocolate in color while young, and bear beautiful
+pearly seeds about the size of peas, most of which are eaten by two
+species of tamias and the notable Clark crow. The staminate cones occur
+in clusters, about an inch wide, down among the leaves, and, as they
+are colored bright rose-purple, they give rise to a lively, flowery
+appearance little looked for in such a tree.
+
+[Illustration: GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES.]
+
+Pines are commonly regarded as sky-loving trees that must necessarily
+aspire or die. This species forms a marked exception, creeping lowly,
+in compliance with the most rigorous demands of climate, yet enduring
+bravely to a more advanced age than many of its lofty relatives in the
+sun-lands below. Seen from a distance, it would never be taken for a
+tree of any kind. Yonder, for example, is Cathedral Peak, some three
+miles away, with a scattered growth of this pine creeping like mosses
+over the roof and around the beveled edges of the north gable, nowhere
+giving any hint of an ascending axis. When approached quite near it
+still appears matted and heathy, and is so low that one experiences no
+great difficulty in walking over the top of it. Yet it is seldom
+absolutely prostrate, at its lowest usually attaining a height of three
+or four feet, with a main trunk, and branches outspread and
+intertangled above it, as if in ascending they had been checked by a
+ceiling, against which they had grown and been compelled to spread
+horizontally. The winter snow is indeed such a ceiling, lasting half
+the year; while the pressed, shorn surface is made yet smoother by
+violent winds, armed with cutting sand-grains, that beat down any shoot
+that offers to rise much above the general level, and carve the dead
+trunks and branches in beautiful patterns.
+
+During stormy nights I have often camped snugly beneath the interlacing
+arches of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for
+centuries, make fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers,
+such as deer and wild sheep, who paw out oval hollows and lie beneath
+the larger trees in safe and comfortable concealment.
+
+[Illustration: A DWARF PINE.]
+
+The longevity of this lowly dwarf is far greater than would be guessed.
+Here, for example, is a specimen, growing at an elevation of 10,700
+feet, which seems as though it might be plucked up by the roots, for it
+is only three and a half inches in diameter, and its topmost tassel is
+hardly three feet above the ground. Cutting it half through and
+counting the annual rings with the aid of a lens, we find its age to be
+no less than 255 years. Here is another telling specimen about the same
+height, 426 years old, whose trunk is only six inches in diameter; and
+one of its supple branchlets, hardly an eighth of an inch in diameter
+inside the bark, is seventy-five years old, and so filled with oily
+balsam, and so well seasoned by storms, that we may tie it in knots
+like a whip-cord.
+
+WHITE PINE
+(_Pinus flexilis_)
+
+This species is widely distributed throughout the Rocky Mountains, and
+over all the higher of the many ranges of the Great Basin, between the
+Wahsatch Mountains and the Sierra, where it is known as White Pine. In
+the Sierra it is sparsely scattered along the eastern flank, from
+Bloody Cañon southward nearly to the extremity of the range, opposite
+the village of Lone Pine, nowhere forming any appreciable portion of
+the general forest. From its peculiar position, in loose, straggling
+parties, it seems to have been derived from the Basin ranges to the
+eastward, where it is abundant.
+
+It is a larger tree than the Dwarf Pine. At an elevation of about 9000
+feet above the sea, it often attains a height of forty or fifty feet,
+and a diameter of from three to five feet. The cones open freely when
+ripe, and are twice as large as those of the _albicaulis_, and the
+foliage and branches are more open, having a tendency to sweep out in
+free, wild curves, like those of the Mountain Pine, to which it is
+closely allied. It is seldom found lower than 9000 feet above
+sea-level, but from this elevation it pushes upward over the roughest
+ledges to the extreme limit of tree-growth, where, in its dwarfed,
+storm-crushed condition, it is more like the white-barked species.
+
+Throughout Utah and Nevada it is one of the principal timber-trees,
+great quantities being cut every year for the mines. The famous White
+Pine Mining District, White Pine City, and the White Pine Mountains
+have derived their names from it.
+
+NEEDLE PINE
+(_Pinus aristata_)
+
+This species is restricted in the Sierra to the southern portion of the
+range, about the head waters of Kings and Kern rivers, where it forms
+extensive forests, and in some places accompanies the Dwarf Pine to the
+extreme limit of tree-growth.
+
+It is first met at an elevation of between 9000 and 10,000 feet, and
+runs up to 11,000 without seeming to suffer greatly from the climate or
+the leanness of the soil. It is a much finer tree than the Dwarf Pine.
+Instead of growing in clumps and low, heathy mats, it manages in some
+way to maintain an erect position, and usually stands single. Wherever
+the young trees are at all sheltered, they grow up straight and arrowy,
+with delicately tapered bole, and ascending branches terminated with
+glossy, bottle-brush tassels. At middle age, certain limbs are
+specialized and pushed far out for the bearing of cones, after the
+manner of the Sugar Pine; and in old age these branches droop and cast
+about in every direction, giving rise to very picturesque effects. The
+trunk becomes deep brown and rough, like that of the Mountain Pine,
+while the young cones are of a strange, dull, blackish-blue color,
+clustered on the upper branches. When ripe they are from three to four
+inches long, yellowish brown, resembling in every way those of the
+Mountain Pine. Excepting the Sugar Pine, no tree on the mountains is so
+capable of individual expression, while in grace of form and movement
+it constantly reminds one of the Hemlock Spruce.
+
+[Illustration: OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES.]
+
+The largest specimen I measured was a little over five feet in diameter
+and ninety feet in height, but this is more than twice the ordinary
+size.
+
+This species is common throughout the Rocky Mountains and most of the
+short ranges of the Great Basin, where it is called the Fox-tail Pine,
+from its long dense leaf-tassels. On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and
+Golden Gate ranges it is quite abundant. About a foot or eighteen
+inches of the ends of the branches is densely packed with stiff
+outstanding needles which radiate like an electric fox or squirrel’s
+tail. The needles have a glossy polish, and the sunshine sifting
+through them makes them burn with silvery luster, while their number
+and elastic temper tell delightfully in the winds. This tree is here
+still more original and picturesque than in the Sierra, far surpassing
+not only its companion conifers in this respect, but also the most
+noted of the lowland oaks. Some stand firmly erect, feathered with
+radiant tassels down to the ground, forming slender tapering towers of
+shining verdure; others, with two or three specialized branches pushed
+out at right angles to the trunk and densely clad with tasseled sprays,
+take the form of beautiful ornamental crosses. Again in the same woods
+you find trees that are made up of several boles united near the
+ground, spreading at the sides in a plane parallel to the axis of the
+mountain, with the elegant tassels hung in charming order between them,
+making a harp held against the main wind lines where they are most
+effective in playing the grand storm harmonies. And besides these there
+are many variable arching forms, alone or in groups, with innumerable
+tassels drooping beneath the arches or radiant above them, and many
+lowly giants of no particular form that have braved the storms of a
+thousand years. But whether old or young, sheltered or exposed to the
+wildest gales, this tree is ever found irrepressibly and extravagantly
+picturesque, and offers a richer and more varied series of forms to the
+artist than any other conifer I know of.
+
+NUT PINE
+(_Pinus monophylla_)
+
+The Nut Pine covers or rather dots the eastern flank of the Sierra, to
+which it is mostly restricted, in grayish, bush-like patches, from the
+margin of the sage-plains to an elevation of from 7000 to 8000 feet.
+
+A more contentedly fruitful and unaspiring conifer could not be
+conceived. All the species we have been sketching make departures more
+or less distant from the typical spire form, but none goes so far as
+this. Without any apparent exigency of climate or soil, it remains near
+the ground, throwing out crooked, divergent branches like an orchard
+apple-tree, and seldom pushes a single shoot higher than fifteen or
+twenty feet above the ground.
+
+The average thickness of the trunk is, perhaps, about ten or twelve
+inches. The leaves are mostly undivided, like round awls, instead of
+being separated, like those of other pines, into twos and threes and
+fives. The cones are green while growing, and are usually found over
+all the tree, forming quite a marked feature as seen against the
+bluish-gray foliage. They are quite small, only about two inches in
+length, and give no promise of edible nuts; but when we come to open
+them, we find that about half the entire bulk of the cone is made up of
+sweet, nutritious seeds, the kernels of which are nearly as large as
+those of hazel-nuts.
+
+This is undoubtedly the most important food-tree on the Sierra, and
+furnishes the Mono, Carson, and Walker River Indians with more and
+better nuts than all the other species taken together. It is the
+Indians’ own tree, and many a white man have they killed for cutting it
+down.
+
+In its development Nature seems to have aimed at the formation of as
+great a fruit-bearing surface as possible. Being so low and accessible,
+the cones are readily beaten off with poles, and the nuts procured by
+roasting them until the scales open. In bountiful seasons a single
+Indian will gather thirty or forty bushels of them—a fine squirrelish
+employment.
+
+Of all the conifers along the eastern base of the Sierra, and on all
+the many mountain groups and short ranges of the Great Basin, this
+foodful little pine is the commonest tree, and the most important.
+Nearly every mountain is planted with it to a height of from 8000 to
+9000 feet above the sea. Some are covered from base to summit by this
+one species, with only a sparse growth of juniper on the lower slopes
+to break the continuity of its curious woods, which, though
+dark-looking at a distance, are almost shadeless, and have none of the
+damp, leafy glens and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods.
+Tens of thousands of acres occur in continuous belts. Indeed, viewed
+comprehensively the entire Basin seems to be pretty evenly divided into
+level plains dotted with sage-bushes and mountain-chains covered with
+Nut Pines. No slope is too rough, none too dry, for these bountiful
+orchards of the red man.
+
+The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It
+furnishes charcoal and timber for the mines, and, with the juniper,
+supplies the ranches with fuel and rough fencing. In fruitful seasons
+the nut crop is perhaps greater than the California wheat crop, which
+exerts so much influence throughout the food markets of the world.
+When, the crop is ripe, the Indians make ready the long beating-poles;
+bags, baskets, mats, and sacks are collected; the women out at service
+among the settlers, washing or drudging, assemble at the family huts;
+the men leave their ranch work; old and young, all are mounted on
+ponies and start in great glee to the nut-lands, forming curiously
+picturesque cavalcades; flaming scarfs and calico skirts stream loosely
+over the knotty ponies, two squaws usually astride of each, with baby
+midgets bandaged in baskets slung on their backs or balanced on the
+saddle-bow; while nut-baskets and water-jars project from each side,
+and the long beating-poles make angles in every direction. Arriving at
+some well-known central point where grass and water are found, the
+squaws with baskets, the men with poles ascend the ridges to the laden
+trees, followed by the children. Then the beating begins right merrily,
+the burs fly in every direction, rolling down the slopes, lodging here
+and there against rocks and sage-bushes, chased and gathered by the
+women and children with fine natural gladness. Smoke-columns speedily
+mark the joyful scene of their labors as the roasting-fires are
+kindled, and, at night, assembled in gay circles garrulous as jays,
+they begin the first nut feast of the season.
+
+The nuts are about half an inch long and a quarter of an inch in
+diameter, pointed at the top, round at the base, light brown in general
+color, and, like many other pine seeds, handsomely dotted with purple,
+like birds’ eggs. The shells are thin and may be crushed between the
+thumb and finger. The kernels are white, becoming brown by roasting,
+and are sweet to every palate, being eaten by birds, squirrels, dogs,
+horses, and men. Perhaps less than one bushel in a thousand of the
+whole crop is ever gathered. Still, besides supplying their own wants,
+in times of plenty the Indians bring large quantities to market; then
+they are eaten around nearly every fireside in the State, and are even
+fed to horses occasionally instead of barley.
+
+Of other trees growing on the Sierra, but forming a very small part of
+the general forest, we may briefly notice the following:
+
+_Chamoecyparis Lawsoniana_ is a magnificent tree in the coast ranges,
+but small in the Sierra. It is found only well to the northward along
+the banks of cool streams on the upper Sacramento toward Mount Shasta.
+Only a few trees of this species, as far as I have seen, have as yet
+gained a place in the Sierra woods. It has evidently been derived from
+the coast range by way of the tangle of connecting mountains at the
+head of the Sacramento Valley.
+
+In shady dells and on cool stream banks of the northern Sierra we also
+find the Yew (_Taxus brevifolia_).
+
+The interesting Nutmeg Tree (_Torreya Californica_) is sparsely
+distributed along the western flank of the range at an elevation of
+about 4000 feet, mostly in gulches and cañons. It is a small, prickly
+leaved, glossy evergreen, like a conifer, from twenty to fifty feet
+high, and one to two feet in diameter. The fruit resembles a green-gage
+plum, and contains one seed, about the size of an acorn, and like a
+nutmeg, hence the common name. The wood is fine-grained and of a
+beautiful, creamy yellow color like box, sweet-scented when dry, though
+the green leaves emit a disagreeable odor.
+
+_Betula occidentalis_, the only birch, is a small, slender tree
+restricted to the eastern flank of the range along stream-sides below
+the pine-belt, especially in Owen’s Valley.
+
+Alder, Maple, and Nuttall’s Flowering Dogwood make beautiful bowers
+over swift, cool streams at an elevation of from 3000 to 5000 feet,
+mixed more or less with willows and cottonwood; and above these in lake
+basins the aspen forms fine ornamental groves, and lets its light shine
+gloriously in the autumn months.
+
+The Chestnut Oak (_Quercus densiflora_) seems to have come from the
+coast range around the head of the Sacramento Valley, like the
+_Chamaecyparis_, but as it extends southward along the lower edge of
+the main pine-belt it grows smaller until it finally dwarfs to a mere
+chaparral bush. In the coast mountains it is a fine, tall, rather
+slender tree, about from sixty to seventy-five feet high, growing with
+the grand _Sequoia sempervirens_, or Redwood. But unfortunately it is
+too good to live, and is now being rapidly destroyed for tan-bark.
+
+[Illustration: PATE VALLEY, SHOWING THE OAKS. TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE
+NATIONAL PARK.]
+
+Besides the common Douglas Oak and the grand _Quercus Wislizeni_ of the
+foot-hills, and several small ones that make dense growths of
+chaparral, there are two mountain-oaks that grow with the pines up to
+an elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, and greatly enhance the
+beauty of the yosemite parks. These are the Mountain Live Oak and the
+Kellogg Oak, named in honor of the admirable botanical pioneer of
+California. Kellogg’s Oak (_Quercus Kelloggii_) is a firm, bright,
+beautiful tree, reaching a height of sixty feet, four to seven feet in
+diameter, with wide-spreading branches, and growing at an elevation of
+from 3000 to 5000 feet in sunny valleys and flats among the evergreens,
+and higher in a dwarfed state. In the cliff-bound parks about 4000 feet
+above the sea it is so abundant and effective it might fairly be called
+the Yosemite Oak. The leaves make beautiful masses of purple in the
+spring, and yellow in ripe autumn; while its acorns are eagerly
+gathered by Indians, squirrels, and woodpeckers. The Mountain Live Oak
+(_Q. Chrysolepis_) is a tough, rugged mountaineer of a tree, growing
+bravely and attaining noble dimensions on the roughest earthquake
+taluses in deep cañons and yosemite valleys. The trunk is usually
+short, dividing near the ground into great, wide-spreading limbs, and
+these again into a multitude of slender sprays, many of them cord-like
+and drooping to the ground, like those of the Great White Oak of the
+lowlands (_Q. lobata_). The top of the tree where there is plenty of
+space is broad and bossy, with a dense covering of shining leaves,
+making delightful canopies, the complicated system of gray,
+interlacing, arching branches as seen from beneath being exceedingly
+rich and picturesque. No other tree that I know dwarfs so regularly and
+completely as this under changes of climate due to changes in
+elevation. At the foot of a cañon 4000 feet above the sea you may find
+magnificent specimens of this oak fifty feet high, with craggy, bulging
+trunks, five to seven feet in diameter, and at the head of the cañon,
+2500 feet higher, a dense, soft, low, shrubby growth of the same
+species, while all the way up the cañon between these extremes of size
+and habit a perfect gradation may be traced. The largest I have seen
+was fifty feet high, eight feet in diameter, and about seventy-five
+feet in spread. The trunk was all knots and buttresses, gray like
+granite, and about as angular and irregular as the boulders on which it
+was growing—a type of steadfast, unwedgeable strength.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
+(_Sciurus Douglasii_)
+
+
+The Douglas Squirrel is by far the most interesting and influential of
+the California sciuridae, surpassing every other species in force of
+character, numbers, and extent of range, and in the amount of influence
+he brings to bear upon the health and distribution of the vast forests
+he inhabits.
+
+Go where you will throughout the noble woods of the Sierra Nevada,
+among the giant pines and spruces of the lower zones, up through the
+towering Silver Firs to the storm-bent thickets of the summit peaks,
+you everywhere find this little squirrel the master-existence. Though
+only a few inches long, so intense is his fiery vigor and restlessness,
+he stirs every grove with wild life, and makes himself more important
+than even the huge bears that shuffle through the tangled underbrush
+beneath him. Every wind is fretted by his voice, almost every bole and
+branch feels the sting of his sharp feet. How much the growth of the
+trees is stimulated by this means it is not easy to learn, but his
+action in manipulating their seeds is more appreciable. Nature has made
+him master forester and committed most of her coniferous crops to his
+paws. Probably over fifty per cent. of all the cones ripened on the
+Sierra are cut off and handled by the Douglas alone, and of those of
+the Big Trees perhaps ninety per cent. pass through his hands: the
+greater portion is of course stored away for food to last during the
+winter and spring, but some of them are tucked separately into loosely
+covered holes, where some of the seeds germinate and become trees. But
+the Sierra is only one of the many provinces over which he holds sway,
+for his dominion extends over all the Redwood Belt of the Coast
+Mountains, and far northward throughout the majestic forests of Oregon,
+Washington, and British Columbia. I make haste to mention these facts,
+to show upon how substantial a foundation the importance I ascribe to
+him rests.
+
+The Douglas is closely allied to the Red Squirrel or Chickaree of the
+eastern woods. Ours may be a lineal descendant of this species,
+distributed westward to the Pacific by way of the Great Lakes and the
+Rocky Mountains, and thence southward along our forested ranges. This
+view is suggested by the fact that our species becomes redder and more
+Chickaree-like in general, the farther it is traced back along the
+course indicated above. But whatever their relationship, and the
+evolutionary forces that have acted upon them, the Douglas is now the
+larger and more beautiful animal.
+
+From the nose to the root of the tail he measures about eight inches;
+and his tail, which he so effectively uses in interpreting his
+feelings, is about six inches in length. He wears dark bluish-gray over
+the back and half-way down the sides, bright buff on the belly, with a
+stripe of dark gray, nearly black, separating the upper and under
+colors; this dividing stripe, however, is not very sharply defined. He
+has long black whiskers, which gives him a rather fierce look when
+observed closely, strong claws, sharp as fish-hooks, and the brightest
+of bright eyes, full of telling speculation.
+
+A King’s River Indian told me that they call him “Pillillooeet,” which,
+rapidly pronounced with the first syllable heavily accented, is not
+unlike the lusty exclamation he utters on his way up a tree when
+excited. Most mountaineers in California call him the Pine Squirrel;
+and when I asked an old trapper whether he knew our little forester, he
+replied with brightening countenance: “Oh, yes, of course I know him;
+everybody knows him. When I’m huntin’ in the woods, I often find out
+where the deer are by his barkin’ at ’em. I call ’em Lightnin’
+Squirrels, because they’re so mighty quick and peert.”
+
+All the true squirrels are more or less birdlike in speech and
+movements; but the Douglas is preëminently so, possessing, as he does,
+every attribute peculiarly squirrelish enthusiastically concentrated.
+He is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his
+favorite evergreens crisp and glossy and undiseased as a sunbeam. Give
+him wings and he would outfly any bird in the woods. His big gray
+cousin is a looser animal, seemingly light enough to float on the wind;
+yet when leaping from limb to limb, or out of one tree-top to another,
+he sometimes halts to gather strength, as if making efforts concerning
+the upshot of which he does not always feel exactly confident. But the
+Douglas, with his denser body, leaps and glides in hidden strength,
+seemingly as independent of common muscles as a mountain stream. He
+threads the tasseled branches of the pines, stirring their needles like
+a rustling breeze; now shooting across openings in arrowy lines; now
+launching in curves, glinting deftly from side to side in sudden
+zigzags, and swirling in giddy loops and spirals around the knotty
+trunks; getting into what seem to be the most impossible situations
+without sense of danger; now on his haunches, now on his head; yet ever
+graceful, and punctuating his most irrepressible outbursts of energy
+with little dots and dashes of perfect repose. He is, without
+exception, the wildest animal I ever saw,—a fiery, sputtering little
+bolt of life, luxuriating in quick oxygen and the woods’ best juices.
+One can hardly think of such a creature being dependent, like the rest
+of us, on climate and food. But, after all, it requires no long
+acquaintance to learn he is human, for he works for a living. His
+busiest time is in the Indian summer. Then he gathers burs and
+hazel-nuts like a plodding farmer, working continuously every day for
+hours; saying not a word; cutting off the ripe cones at the top of his
+speed, as if employed by the job, and examining every branch in regular
+order, as if careful that not one should escape him; then, descending,
+he stores them away beneath logs and stumps, in anticipation of the
+pinching hunger days of winter. He seems himself a kind of coniferous
+fruit,—both fruit and flower. The resiny essences of the pines pervade
+every pore of his body, and eating his flesh is like chewing gum.
+
+One never tires of this bright chip of nature,—this brave little voice
+crying in the wilderness,—of observing his many works and ways, and
+listening to his curious language. His musical, piny gossip is as
+savory to the ear as balsam to the palate; and, though he has not
+exactly the gift of song, some of his notes are as sweet as those of a
+linnet—almost flute-like in softness, while others prick and tingle
+like thistles. He is the mocking-bird of squirrels, pouring forth mixed
+chatter and song like a perennial fountain; barking like a dog,
+screaming like a hawk, chirping like a blackbird or a sparrow; while in
+bluff, audacious noisiness he is a very jay.
+
+[Illustration: TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE
+WHEN SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR.]
+
+In descending the trunk of a tree with the intention of alighting on
+the ground, he preserves a cautious silence, mindful, perhaps, of foxes
+and wildcats; but while rocking safely at home in the pine-tops there
+is no end to his capers and noise; and woe to the gray squirrel or
+chipmunk that ventures to set foot on his favorite tree! No matter how
+slyly they trace the furrows of the bark, they are speedily discovered,
+and kicked down-stairs with comic vehemence, while a torrent of angry
+notes comes rushing from his whiskered lips that sounds remarkably like
+swearing. He will even attempt at times to drive away dogs and men,
+especially if he has had no previous knowledge of them. Seeing a man
+for the first time, he approaches nearer and nearer, until within a few
+feet; then, with an angry outburst, he makes a sudden rush, all teeth
+and eyes, as if about to eat you up. But, finding that the big, forked
+animal doesn’t scare, he prudently beats a retreat, and sets himself up
+to reconnoiter on some overhanging branch, scrutinizing every movement
+you make with ludicrous solemnity. Gathering courage, he ventures down
+the trunk again, churring and chirping, and jerking nervously up and
+down in curious loops, eyeing you all the time, as if snowing off and
+demanding your admiration. Finally, growing calmer, he settles down in
+a comfortable posture on some horizontal branch commanding a good view,
+and beats time with his tail to a steady “Chee-up! chee-up!” or, when
+somewhat less excited, “Pee-ah!” with the first syllable keenly
+accented, and the second drawn out like the scream of a hawk,—repeating
+this slowly and more emphatically at first, then gradually faster,
+until a rate of about 150 words a minute is reached; usually sitting
+all the time on his haunches, with paws resting on his breast, which
+pulses visibly with each word. It is remarkable, too, that, though
+articulating distinctly, he keeps his mouth shut most of the time, and
+speaks through his nose. I have occasionally observed him even eating
+Sequoia seeds and nibbling a troublesome flea, without ceasing or in
+any way confusing his “Pee-ah! pee-ah!” for a single moment.
+
+While ascending trees all his claws come into play, but in descending
+the weight of his body is sustained chiefly by those of the hind feet;
+still in neither case do his movements suggest effort, though if you
+are near enough you may see the bulging strength of his short,
+bear-like arms, and note his sinewy fists clinched in the bark.
+
+Whether going up or down, he carries his tail extended at full length
+in line with his body, unless it be required for gestures. But while
+running along horizontal limbs or fallen trunks, it is frequently
+folded forward over the back, with the airy tip daintily upcurled. In
+cool weather it keeps him warm. Then, after he has finished his meal,
+you may see him crouched close on some level limb with his tail-robe
+neatly spread and reaching forward to his ears, the electric,
+outstanding hairs quivering in the breeze like pine-needles. But in wet
+or very cold weather he stays in his nest, and while curled up there
+his comforter is long enough to come forward around his nose. It is
+seldom so cold, however, as to prevent his going out to his stores when
+hungry.
+
+Once as I lay storm-bound on the upper edge of the timber line on Mount
+Shasta, the thermometer nearly at zero and the sky thick with driving
+snow, a Douglas came bravely out several times from one of the lower
+hollows of a Dwarf Pine near my camp, faced the wind without seeming to
+feel it much, frisked lightly about over the mealy snow, and dug his
+way down to some hidden seeds with wonderful precision, as if to his
+eyes the thick snow-covering were glass.
+
+No other of the Sierra animals of my acquaintance is better fed, not
+even the deer, amid abundance of sweet herbs and shrubs, or the
+mountain sheep, or omnivorous bears. His food consists of grass-seeds,
+berries, hazel-nuts, chinquapins, and the nuts and seeds of all the
+coniferous trees without exception,—Pine, Fir, Spruce, Libocedrus,
+Juniper, and Sequoia,—he is fond of them all, and they all agree with
+him, green or ripe. No cone is too large for him to manage, none so
+small as to be beneath his notice. The smaller ones, such as those of
+the Hemlock, and the Douglas Spruce, and the Two-leaved Pine, he cuts
+off and eats on a branch of the tree, without allowing them to fall;
+beginning at the bottom of the cone and cutting away the scales to
+expose the seeds; not gnawing by guess, like a bear, but turning them
+round and round in regular order, in compliance with their spiral
+arrangement.
+
+When thus employed, his location in the tree is betrayed by a dribble
+of scales, shells, and seed-wings, and, every few minutes, by the fall
+of the stripped axis of the cone. Then of course he is ready for
+another, and if you are watching you may catch a glimpse of him as he
+glides silently out to the end of a branch and see him examining the
+cone-clusters until he finds one to his mind; then, leaning over, pull
+back the springy needles out of his way, grasp the cone with his paws
+to prevent its falling, snip it off in an incredibly short time, seize
+it with jaws grotesquely stretched, and return to his chosen seat near
+the trunk. But the immense size of the cones of the Sugar Pine—from
+fifteen to twenty inches in length—and those of the Jeffrey variety of
+the Yellow Pine compel him to adopt a quite different method. He cuts
+them off without attempting to hold them, then goes down and drags them
+from where they have chanced to fall up to the bare, swelling ground
+around the instep of the tree, where he demolishes them in the same
+methodical way, beginning at the bottom and following the scale-spirals
+to the top.
+
+[Illustration: SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE. (NAT. SIZE.)]
+
+From a single Sugar Pine cone he gets from two to four hundred seeds
+about half the size of a hazel-nut, so that in a few minutes he can
+procure enough to last a week. He seems, however, to prefer those of
+the two Silver First above all others; perhaps because they are most
+easily obtained, as the scales drop off when ripe without needing to be
+cut. Both species are filled with an exceedingly pungent, aromatic oil,
+which spices all his flesh, and is of itself sufficient to account for
+his lightning energy.
+
+You may easily know this little workman by his chips. On sunny
+hillsides around the principal trees they lie in big piles,—bushels and
+basketfuls of them, all fresh and clean, making the most beautiful
+kitchen-middens imaginable. The brown and yellow scales and nut-shells
+are as abundant and as delicately penciled and tinted as the shells
+along the sea-shore; while the beautiful red and purple seed-wings
+mingled with them would lead one to fancy that innumerable butterflies
+had there met their fate.
+
+He feasts on all the species long before they are ripe, but is wise
+enough to wait until they are matured before he gathers them into his
+barns. This is in October and November, which with him are the two
+busiest months of the year. All kinds of burs, big and little, are now
+cut off and showered down alike, and the ground is speedily covered
+with them. A constant thudding and bumping is kept up; some of the
+larger cones chancing to fall on old logs make the forest reëcho with
+the sound. Other nut-eaters less industrious know well what is going
+on, and hasten to carry away the cones as they fall. But however busy
+the harvester may be, he is not slow to descry the pilferers below, and
+instantly leaves his work to drive them away. The little striped tamias
+is a thorn in his flesh, stealing persistently, punish him as he may.
+The large Gray Squirrel gives trouble also, although the Douglas has
+been accused of stealing from him. Generally, however, just the
+opposite is the case.
+
+The excellence of the Sierra evergreens is well known to nurserymen
+throughout the world, consequently there is considerable demand for the
+seeds. The greater portion of the supply has hitherto been procured by
+chopping down the trees in the more accessible sections of the forest
+alongside of bridle-paths that cross the range. Sequoia seeds at first
+brought from twenty to thirty dollars per pound, and therefore were
+eagerly sought after. Some of the smaller fruitful trees were cut down
+in the groves not protected by government, especially those of Fresno
+and King’s River. Most of the Sequoias, however, are of so gigantic a
+size that the seedsmen have to look for the greater portion of their
+supplies to the Douglas, who soon learns he is no match for these
+freebooters. He is wise enough, however, to cease working the instant
+he perceives them, and never fails to embrace every opportunity to
+recover his burs whenever they happen to be stored in any place
+accessible to him, and the busy seedsman often finds on returning to
+camp that the little Douglas has exhaustively spoiled the spoiler. I
+know one seed-gatherer who, whenever he robs the squirrels, scatters
+wheat or barley beneath the trees as conscience-money.
+
+The want of appreciable life remarked by so many travelers in the
+Sierra forests is never felt at this time of year. Banish all the
+humming insects and the birds and quadrupeds, leaving only Sir Douglas,
+and the most solitary of our so-called solitudes would still throb with
+ardent life. But if you should go impatiently even into the most
+populous of the groves on purpose to meet him, and walk about looking
+up among the branches, you would see very little of him. But lie down
+at the foot of one of the trees and straightway he will come. For, in
+the midst of the ordinary forest sounds, the falling of burs, piping of
+quails, the screaming of the Clark Crow, and the rustling of deer and
+bears among the chaparral, he is quick to detect your strange
+footsteps, and will hasten to make a good, close inspection of you as
+soon as you are still. First, you may hear him sounding a few notes of
+curious inquiry, but more likely the first intimation of his approach
+will be the prickly sounds of his feet as he descends the tree
+overhead, just before he makes his savage onrush to frighten you and
+proclaim your presence to every squirrel and bird in the neighborhood.
+If you remain perfectly motionless, he will come nearer and nearer, and
+probably set your flesh a-tingle by frisking across your body. Once,
+while I was seated at the foot of a Hemlock Spruce in one of the most
+inaccessible of the San Joaquin yosemites engaged in sketching, a
+reckless fellow came up behind me, passed under my bended arm, and
+jumped on my paper. And one warm afternoon, while an old friend of mine
+was reading out in the shade of his cabin, one of his Douglas neighbors
+jumped from the gable upon his head, and then with admirable assurance
+ran down over his shoulder and on to the book he held in his hand.
+
+Our Douglas enjoys a large social circle; for, besides his numerous
+relatives, _Sciurus fossor, Tamias quadrivitatus, T. Townsendii,
+Spermophilus Beccheyi, S. Douglasii_, he maintains intimate relations
+with the nut-eating birds, particularly the Clark Crow (_Picicorvus
+columbianus_) and the numerous woodpeckers and jays. The two
+spermophiles are astonishingly abundant in the lowlands and lower
+foot-hills, but more and more sparingly distributed up through the
+Douglas domains,—seldom venturing higher than six or seven thousand
+feet above the level of the sea. The gray sciurus ranges but little
+higher than this. The little striped tamias alone is associated with
+him everywhere. In the lower and middle zones, where they all meet,
+they are tolerably harmonious—a happy family, though very amusing
+skirmishes may occasionally be witnessed. Wherever the ancient glaciers
+have spread forest soil there you find our wee hero, most abundant
+where depth of soil and genial climate have given rise to a
+corresponding luxuriance in the trees, but following every kind of
+growth up the curving moraines to the highest glacial fountains.
+
+Though I cannot of course expect all my readers to sympathize fully in
+my admiration of this little animal, few, I hope, will think this
+sketch of his life too long. I cannot begin to tell here how much he
+has cheered my lonely wanderings during all the years I have been
+pursuing my studies in these glorious wilds; or how much unmistakable
+humanity I have found in him. Take this for example: One calm, creamy
+Indian summer morning, when the nuts were ripe, I was camped in the
+upper pine-woods of the south fork of the San Joaquin, where the
+squirrels seemed to be about as plentiful as the ripe burs. They were
+taking an early breakfast before going to their regular harvest-work.
+While I was busy with my own breakfast I heard the thudding fall of two
+or three heavy cones from a Yellow Pine near me. I stole noiselessly
+forward within about twenty feet of the base of it to observe. In a few
+moments down came the Douglas. The breakfast-burs he had cut off had
+rolled on the gently sloping ground into a clump of ceanothus bushes,
+but he seemed to know exactly where they were, for he found them at
+once, apparently without searching for them. They were more than twice
+as heavy as himself, but after turning them into the right position for
+getting a good hold with his long sickle-teeth he managed to drag them
+up to the foot of the tree from which he had cut them, moving backward.
+Then seating himself comfortably, he held them on end, bottom up, and
+demolished them at his ease. A good deal of nibbling had to be done
+before he got anything to eat, because the lower scales are barren, but
+when he had patiently worked his way up to the fertile ones he found
+two sweet nuts at the base of each, shaped like trimmed hams, and
+spotted purple like birds’ eggs. And notwithstanding these cones were
+dripping with soft balsam, and covered with prickles, and so strongly
+put together that a boy would be puzzled to cut them open with a
+jack-knife, he accomplished his meal with easy dignity and cleanliness,
+making less effort apparently than a man would in eating soft cookery
+from a plate.
+
+Breakfast done, I whistled a tune for him before he went to work,
+curious to see how he would be affected by it. He had not seen me all
+this while; but the instant I began to whistle he darted up the tree
+nearest to him, and came out on a small dead limb opposite me, and
+composed himself to listen. I sang and whistled more than a dozen airs,
+and as the music changed his eyes sparkled, and he turned his head
+quickly from side to side, but made no other response. Other squirrels,
+hearing the strange sounds, came around on all sides, also chipmunks
+and birds. One of the birds, a handsome, speckle-breasted thrush,
+seemed even more interested than the squirrels. After listening for
+awhile on one of the lower dead sprays of a pine, he came swooping
+forward within a few feet of my face, and remained fluttering in the
+air for half a minute or so, sustaining himself with whirring
+wing-beats, like a humming-bird in front of a flower, while I could
+look into his eyes and see his innocent wonder.
+
+By this time my performance must have lasted nearly half an hour. I
+sang or whistled “Bonnie Boon,” “Lass o’ Gowrie,” “O’er the Water to
+Charlie,” “Bonnie Woods o’ Cragie Lee,” etc., all of which seemed to be
+listened to with bright interest, my first Douglas sitting patiently
+through it all, with his telling eyes fixed upon me until I ventured to
+give the “Old Hundredth,” when he screamed his Indian name,
+Pillillooeet, turned tail, and darted with ludicrous haste up the tree
+out of sight, his voice and actions in the case leaving a somewhat
+profane impression, as if he had said, “I’ll be hanged if you get me to
+hear anything so solemn and unpiny.” This acted as a signal for the
+general dispersal of the whole hairy tribe, though the birds seemed
+willing to wait further developments, music being naturally more in
+their line.
+
+What there can be in that grand old church-tune that is so offensive to
+birds and squirrels I can’t imagine. A year or two after this High
+Sierra concert, I was sitting one fine day on a hill in the Coast Range
+where the common Ground Squirrels were abundant. They were very shy on
+account of being hunted so much; but after I had been silent and
+motionless for half an hour or so they began to venture out of their
+holes and to feed on the seeds of the grasses and thistles around me as
+if I were no more to be feared than a tree-stump. Then it occurred to
+me that this was a good opportunity to find out whether they also
+disliked “Old Hundredth.” Therefore I began to whistle as nearly as I
+could remember the same familiar airs that had pleased the mountaineers
+of the Sierra. They at once stopped eating, stood erect, and listened
+patiently until I came to “Old Hundredth,” when with ludicrous haste
+every one of them rushed to their holes and bolted in, their feet
+twinkling in the air for a moment as they vanished.
+
+No one who makes the acquaintance of our forester will fail to admire
+him; but he is far too self-reliant and warlike ever to be taken for a
+darling.
+
+How long the life of a Douglas Squirrel may be, I don’t know. The young
+seem to sprout from knot-holes, perfect from the first, and as enduring
+as their own trees. It is difficult, indeed, to realize that so
+condensed a piece of sun-fire should ever become dim or die at all. He
+is seldom killed by hunters, for he is too small to encourage much of
+their attention, and when pursued in settled regions becomes
+excessively shy, and keeps close in the furrows of the highest trunks,
+many of which are of the same color as himself. Indian boys, however,
+lie in wait with unbounded patience to shoot them with arrows. In the
+lower and middle zones a few fall a prey to rattlesnakes. Occasionally
+he is pursued by hawks and wildcats, etc. But, upon the whole, he
+dwells safely in the deep bosom of the woods, the most highly favored
+of all his happy tribe. May his tribe increase!
+
+[Illustration: TRYING THE BOW.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS
+
+
+The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are
+measured and bestowed with love on the forests to develop their
+strength and beauty. However restricted the scope of other forest
+influences, that of the winds is universal. The snow bends and trims
+the upper forests every winter, the lightning strikes a single tree
+here and there, while avalanches mow down thousands at a swoop as a
+gardener trims out a bed of flowers. But the winds go to every tree,
+fingering every leaf and branch and furrowed bole; not one is
+forgotten; the Mountain Pine towering with outstretched arms on the
+rugged buttresses of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring
+tenant of the dells; they seek and find them all, caressing them
+tenderly, bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth,
+plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire tree or
+grove, now whispering and cooing through the branches like a sleepy
+child, now roaring like the ocean; the winds blessing the forests, the
+forests the winds, with ineffable beauty and harmony as the sure
+result.
+
+[Illustration: A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS. (AFTER A
+SKETCH BY THE AUTHOR.)]
+
+After one has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses
+before a mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a
+crash that shakes the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the
+lowest thickset trees, could ever have found a period sufficiently
+stormless to establish themselves; or, once established, that they
+should not, sooner or later, have been blown down. But when the storm
+is over, and we behold the same forests tranquil again, towering fresh
+and unscathed in erect majesty, and consider what centuries of storms
+have fallen upon them since they were first planted,—hail, to break the
+tender seedlings; lightning, to scorch and shatter; snow, winds, and
+avalanches, to crush and overwhelm,—while the manifest result of all
+this wild storm-culture is the glorious perfection we behold; then
+faith in Nature’s forestry is established, and we cease to deplore the
+violence of her most destructive gales, or of any other storm-implement
+whatsoever.
+
+There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never blown down, so
+long as they continue in sound health. These are the Juniper and the
+Dwarf Pine of the summit peaks. Their stiff, crooked roots grip the
+storm-beaten ledges like eagles’ claws, while their lithe, cord-like
+branches bend round compliantly, offering but slight holds for winds,
+however violent. The other alpine conifers—the Needle Pine, Mountain
+Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruce—are never thinned out by this
+agent to any destructive extent, on account of their admirable
+toughness and the closeness of their growth. In general the same is
+true of the giants of the lower zones. The kingly Sugar Pine, towering
+aloft to a height of more than 200 feet, offers a fine mark to
+storm-winds; but it is not densely foliaged, and its long, horizontal
+arms swing round compliantly in the blast, like tresses of green,
+fluent algae in a brook; while the Silver Firs in most places keep
+their ranks well together in united strength. The Yellow or Silver Pine
+is more frequently overturned than any other tree on the Sierra,
+because its leaves and branches form a larger mass in proportion to its
+height, while in many places it is planted sparsely, leaving open lanes
+through which storms may enter with full force. Furthermore, because it
+is distributed along the lower portion of the range, which was the
+first to be left bare on the breaking up of the ice-sheet at the close
+of the glacial winter, the soil it is growing upon has been longer
+exposed to post-glacial weathering, and consequently is in a more
+crumbling, decayed condition than the fresher soils farther up the
+range, and therefore offers a less secure anchorage for the roots.
+
+While exploring the forest zones of Mount Shasta, I discovered the path
+of a hurricane strewn with thousands of pines of this species. Great
+and small had been uprooted or wrenched off by sheer force, making a
+clean gap, like that made by a snow avalanche. But hurricanes capable
+of doing this class of work are rare in the Sierra, and when we have
+explored the forests from one extremity of the range to the other, we
+are compelled to believe that they are the most beautiful on the face
+of the earth, however we may regard the agents that have made them so.
+
+There is always something deeply exciting, not only in the sounds of
+winds in the woods, which exert more or less influence over every mind,
+but in their varied waterlike flow as manifested by the movements of
+the trees, especially those of the conifers. By no other trees are they
+rendered so extensively and impressively visible, not even by the
+lordly tropic palms or tree-ferns responsive to the gentlest breeze.
+The waving of a forest of the giant Sequoias is indescribably
+impressive and sublime, but the pines seem to me the best interpreters
+of winds. They are mighty waving goldenrods, ever in tune, singing and
+writing wind-music all their long century lives. Little, however, of
+this noble tree-waving and tree-music will you see or hear in the
+strictly alpine portion of the forests. The burly Juniper, whose girth
+sometimes more than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks
+on which it grows. The slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine
+stream out in wavering ripples, but the tallest and slenderest are far
+too unyielding to wave even in the heaviest gales. They only shake in
+quick, short vibrations. The Hemlock Spruce, however, and the Mountain
+Pine, and some of the tallest thickets of the Two-leaved species bow in
+storms with considerable scope and gracefulness. But it is only in the
+lower and middle zones that the meeting of winds and woods is to be
+seen in all its grandeur.
+
+One of the most beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever enjoyed in the
+Sierra occurred in December, 1874, when I happened to be exploring one
+of the tributary valleys of the Yuba River. The sky and the ground and
+the trees had been thoroughly rain-washed and were dry again. The day
+was intensely pure, one of those incomparable bits of California
+winter, warm and balmy and full of white sparkling sunshine, redolent
+of all the purest influences of the spring, and at the same time
+enlivened with one of the most bracing wind-storms conceivable. Instead
+of camping out, as I usually do, I then chanced to be stopping at the
+house of a friend. But when the storm began to sound, I lost no time in
+pushing out into the woods to enjoy it. For on such occasions Nature
+has always something rare to show us, and the danger to life and limb
+is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly
+beneath a roof.
+
+It was still early morning when I found myself fairly adrift. Delicious
+sunshine came pouring over the hills, lighting the tops of the pines,
+and setting free a steam of summery fragrance that contrasted strangely
+with the wild tones of the storm. The air was mottled with pine-tassels
+and bright green plumes, that went flashing past in the sunlight like
+birds pursued. But there was not the slightest dustiness, nothing less
+pure than leaves, and ripe pollen, and flecks of withered bracken and
+moss. I heard trees falling for hours at the rate of one every two or
+three minutes; some uprooted, partly on account of the loose,
+water-soaked condition of the ground; others broken straight across,
+where some weakness caused by fire had determined the spot. The
+gestures of the various trees made a delightful study. Young Sugar
+Pines, light and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the
+ground; while the grand old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been
+tried in a hundred storms, waved solemnly above them, their long,
+arching branches streaming fluently on the gale, and every needle
+thrilling and ringing and shedding off keen lances of light like a
+diamond. The Douglas Spruces, with long sprays drawn out in level
+tresses, and needles massed in a gray, shimmering glow, presented a
+most striking appearance as they stood in bold relief along the
+hilltops. The madroños in the dells, with their red bark and large
+glossy leaves tilted every way, reflected the sunshine in throbbing
+spangles like those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a
+glacier lake. But the Silver Pines were now the most impressively
+beautiful of all. Colossal spires 200 feet in height waved like supple
+golden-rods chanting and bowing low as if in worship, while the whole
+mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous
+blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such that the most
+steadfast monarch of them all rocked down to its roots with a motion
+plainly perceptible when one leaned against it. Nature was holding high
+festival, and every fiber of the most rigid giants thrilled with glad
+excitement.
+
+I drifted on through the midst of this passionate music and motion,
+across many a glen, from ridge to ridge; often halting in the lee of a
+rock for shelter, or to gaze and listen. Even when the grand anthem had
+swelled to its highest pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones
+of individual trees,—Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak,—and
+even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet.
+Each was expressing itself in its own way,—singing its own song, and
+making its own peculiar gestures,—manifesting a richness of variety to
+be found in no other forest I have yet seen. The coniferous woods of
+Canada, and the Carolinas, and Florida, are made up of trees that
+resemble one another about as nearly as blades of grass, and grow close
+together in much the same way. Coniferous trees, in general, seldom
+possess individual character, such as is manifest among Oaks and Elms.
+But the California forests are made up of a greater number of distinct
+species than any other in the world. And in them we find, not only a
+marked differentiation into special groups, but also a marked
+individuality in almost every tree, giving rise to storm effects
+indescribably glorious.
+
+Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through copses of hazel
+and ceanothus, I gained the summit of the highest ridge in the
+neighborhood; and then it occurred to me that it would be a fine thing
+to climb one of the trees to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear
+close to the Aeolian music of its topmost needles. But under the
+circumstances the choice of a tree was a serious matter. One whose
+instep was not very strong seemed in danger of being blown down, or of
+being struck by others in case they should fall; another was branchless
+to a considerable height above the ground, and at the same time too
+large to be grasped with arms and legs in climbing; while others were
+not favorably situated for clear views. After cautiously casting about,
+I made choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that were
+growing close together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed
+likely to fall unless all the rest fell with it. Though comparatively
+young, they were about 100 feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were
+rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy. Being accustomed to climb trees
+in making botanical studies, I experienced no difficulty in reaching
+the top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so noble an
+exhilaration of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in
+the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward,
+round and round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and
+horizontal curves, while I clung with muscles firm braced, like a
+bobolink on a reed.
+
+[Illustration: YELLOW PINE AND LIBOCEDRUS
+The two inside trees are Libocedrus, the two outside trees, Yellow
+Pine.]
+
+In its widest sweeps my tree-top described an arc of from twenty to
+thirty degrees, but I felt sure of its elastic temper, having seen
+others of the same species still more severely tried—bent almost to the
+ground indeed, in heavy snows—without breaking a fiber. I was therefore
+safe, and free to take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the excited
+forest from my superb outlook. The view from here must be extremely
+beautiful in any weather. Now my eye roved over the piny hills and
+dales as over fields of waving grain, and felt the light running in
+ripples and broad swelling undulations across the valleys from ridge to
+ridge, as the shining foliage was stirred by corresponding waves of
+air. Oftentimes these waves of reflected light would break up suddenly
+into a kind of beaten foam, and again, after chasing one another in
+regular order, they would seem to bend forward in concentric curves,
+and disappear on some hillside, like sea-waves on a shelving shore. The
+quantity of light reflected from the bent needles was so great as to
+make whole groves appear as if covered with snow, while the black
+shadows beneath the trees greatly enhanced the effect of the silvery
+splendor.
+
+Excepting only the shadows there was nothing somber in all this wild
+sea of pines. On the contrary, notwithstanding this was the winter
+season, the colors were remarkably beautiful. The shafts of the pine
+and libocedrus were brown and purple, and most of the foliage was well
+tinged with yellow; the laurel groves, with the pale undersides of
+their leaves turned upward, made masses of gray; and then there was
+many a dash of chocolate color from clumps of manzanita, and jet of
+vivid crimson from the bark of the madroños, while the ground on the
+hillsides, appearing here and there through openings between the
+groves, displayed masses of pale purple and brown.
+
+The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with this wild
+exuberance of light and motion. The profound bass of the naked branches
+and boles booming like waterfalls; the quick, tense vibrations of the
+pine-needles, now rising to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a
+silky murmur; the rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen
+metallic click of leaf on leaf—all this was heard in easy analysis when
+the attention was calmly bent.
+
+The varied gestures of the multitude were seen to fine advantage, so
+that one could recognize the different species at a distance of several
+miles by this means alone, as well as by their forms and colors, and
+the way they reflected the light. All seemed strong and comfortable, as
+if really enjoying the storm, while responding to its most enthusiastic
+greetings. We hear much nowadays concerning the universal struggle for
+existence, but no struggle in the common meaning of the word was
+manifest here; no recognition of danger by any tree; no deprecation;
+but rather an invincible gladness as remote from exultation as from
+fear.
+
+I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy
+the music by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance
+that was streaming past. The fragrance of the woods was less marked
+than that produced during warm rain, when so many balsamic buds and
+leaves are steeped like tea; but, from the chafing of resiny branches
+against each other, and the incessant attrition of myriads of needles,
+the gale was spiced to a very tonic degree. And besides the fragrance
+from these local sources there were traces of scents brought from afar.
+For this wind came first from the sea, rubbing against its fresh, briny
+waves, then distilled through the redwoods, threading rich ferny
+gulches, and spreading itself in broad undulating currents over many a
+flower-enameled ridge of the coast mountains, then across the golden
+plains, up the purple foot-hills, and into these piny woods with the
+varied incense gathered by the way.
+
+Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we
+may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents
+alone. Mariners detect the flowery perfume of land-winds far at sea,
+and sea-winds carry the fragrance of dulse and tangle far inland, where
+it is quickly recognized, though mingled with the scents of a thousand
+land-flowers. As an illustration of this, I may tell here that I
+breathed sea-air on the Firth of Forth, in Scotland, while a boy; then
+was taken to Wisconsin, where I remained nineteen years; then, without
+in all this time having breathed one breath of the sea, I walked
+quietly, alone, from the middle of the Mississippi Valley to the Gulf
+of Mexico, on a botanical excursion, and while in Florida, far from the
+coast, my attention wholly bent on the splendid tropical vegetation
+about me, I suddenly recognized a sea-breeze, as it came sifting
+through the palmettos and blooming vine-tangles, which at once awakened
+and set free a thousand dormant associations, and made me a boy again
+in Scotland, as if all the intervening years had been annihilated.
+
+Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear them in mind; but
+few care to look at the winds, though far more beautiful and sublime,
+and though they become at times about as visible as flowing water. When
+the north winds in winter are making upward sweeps over the curving
+summits of the High Sierra, the fact is sometimes published with flying
+snow-banners a mile long. Those portions of the winds thus embodied can
+scarce be wholly invisible, even to the darkest imagination. And when
+we look around over an agitated forest, we may see something of the
+wind that stirs it, by its effects upon the trees. Yonder it descends
+in a rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the bending pines from
+hill to hill. Nearer, we see detached plumes and leaves, now speeding
+by on level currents, now whirling in eddies, or, escaping over the
+edges of the whirls, soaring aloft on grand, upswelling domes of air,
+or tossing on flame-like crests. Smooth, deep currents, cascades,
+falls, and swirling eddies, sing around every tree and leaf, and over
+all the varied topography of the region with telling changes of form,
+like mountain rivers conforming to the features of their channels.
+
+After tracing the Sierra streams from their fountains to the plains,
+marking where they bloom white in falls, glide in crystal plumes, surge
+gray and foam-filled in boulder-choked gorges, and slip through the
+woods in long, tranquil reaches—after thus learning their language and
+forms in detail, we may at length hear them chanting all together in
+one grand anthem, and comprehend them all in clear inner vision,
+covering the range like lace. But even this spectacle is far less
+sublime and not a whit more substantial than what we may behold of
+these storm-streams of air in the mountain woods.
+
+We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never
+occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that
+trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys,
+not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and
+back again, are only little more than tree-wavings—many of them not so
+much.
+
+When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through
+the calming woods. The storm-tones died away, and, turning toward the
+east, I beheld the countless hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil,
+towering above one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout
+audience. The setting sun filled them with amber light, and seemed to
+say, while they listened, “My peace I give unto you.”
+
+As I gazed on the impressive scene, all the so-called ruin of the storm
+was forgotten, and never before did these noble woods appear so fresh,
+so joyous, so immortal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+THE RIVER FLOODS
+
+
+The Sierra rivers are flooded every spring by the melting of the snow
+as regularly as the famous old Nile. They begin to rise in May, and in
+June high-water mark is reached. But because the melting does not go on
+rapidly over all the fountains, high and low, simultaneously, and the
+melted snow is not reinforced at this time of year by rain, the spring
+floods are seldom very violent or destructive. The thousand falls,
+however, and the cascades in the cañons are then in full bloom, and
+sing songs from one end of the range to the other. Of course the snow
+on the lower tributaries of the rivers is first melted, then that on
+the higher fountains most exposed to sunshine, and about a month later
+the cooler, shadowy fountains send down their treasures, thus allowing
+the main trunk streams nearly six weeks to get their waters hurried
+through the foot-hills and across the lowlands to the sea. Therefore
+very violent spring floods are avoided, and will be as long as the
+shading, restraining forests last. The rivers of the north half of the
+range are still less subject to sudden floods, because their upper
+fountains in great part lie protected from the changes of the weather
+beneath thick folds of lava, just as many of the rivers of Alaska lie
+beneath folds of ice, coming to the light farther down the range in
+large springs, while those of the high Sierra lie on the surface of
+solid granite, exposed to every change of temperature. More than ninety
+per cent. of the water derived from the snow and ice of Mount Shasta is
+at once absorbed and drained away beneath the porous lava folds of the
+mountain, where mumbling and groping in the dark they at length find
+larger fissures and tunnel-like caves from which they emerge, filtered
+and cool, in the form of large springs, some of them so large they give
+birth to rivers that set out on their journeys beneath the sun without
+any visible intermediate period of childhood. Thus the Shasta River
+issues from a large lake-like spring in Shasta Valley, and about two
+thirds of the volume of the McCloud River gushes forth suddenly from
+the face of a lava bluff in a roaring spring seventy-five yards wide.
+
+These spring rivers of the north are of course shorter than those of
+the south whose tributaries extend up to the tops of the mountains.
+Fall River, an important tributary of the Pitt or Upper Sacramento, is
+only about ten miles long, and is all falls, cascades, and springs from
+its head to its confluence with the Pitt. Bountiful springs, charmingly
+embowered, issue from the rocks at one end of it, a snowy fall a
+hundred and eighty feet high thunders at the other, and a rush of
+crystal rapids sing and dance between. Of course such streams are but
+little affected by the weather. Sheltered from evaporation their flow
+is nearly as full in the autumn as in the time of general spring
+floods. While those of the high Sierra diminish to less than the
+hundredth part of their springtime prime, shallowing in autumn to a
+series of silent pools among the rocks and hollows of their channels,
+connected by feeble, creeping threads of water, like the sluggish
+sentences of a tired writer, connected by a drizzle of “ands” and
+“buts.” Strange to say, the greatest floods occur in winter, when one
+would suppose all the wild waters would be muffled and chained in frost
+and snow. The same long, all-day storms of the so-called Rainy Season
+in California, that give rain to the lowlands, give dry frosty snow to
+the mountains. But at rare intervals warm rains and warm winds invade
+the mountains and push back the snow line from 2000 feet to 8000, or
+even higher, and then come the big floods.
+
+I was usually driven down out of the High Sierra about the end of
+November, but the winter of 1874 and 1875 was so warm and calm that I
+was tempted to seek general views of the geology and topography of the
+basin of Feather River in January. And I had just completed a hasty
+survey of the region, and made my way down to winter quarters, when one
+of the grandest flood-storms that I ever saw broke on the mountains. I
+was then in the edge of the main forest belt at a small foot-hill town
+called Knoxville, on the divide between the waters of the Feather and
+Yuba rivers. The cause of this notable flood was simply a sudden and
+copious fall of warm wind and rain on the basins of these rivers at a
+time when they contained a considerable quantity of snow. The rain was
+so heavy and long-sustained that it was, of itself, sufficient to make
+a good wild flood, while the snow which the warm wind and rain melted
+on the upper and middle regions of the basins was sufficient to make
+another flood equal to that of the rain. Now these two distinct
+harvests of flood waters were gathered simultaneously and poured out on
+the plain in one magnificent avalanche. The basins of the Yuba and
+Feather, like many others of the Sierra, are admirably adapted to the
+growth of floods of this kind. Their many tributaries radiate far and
+wide, comprehending extensive areas, and the tributaries are steeply
+inclined, while the trunks are comparatively level. While the
+flood-storm was in progress the thermometer at Knoxville ranged between
+44° and 50°; and when warm wind and warm rain fall simultaneously on
+snow contained in basins like these, both the rain and that portion of
+the snow which the rain and wind melt are at first sponged up and held
+back until the combined mass becomes sludge, which at length, suddenly
+dissolving, slips and descends all together to the trunk channel; and
+since the deeper the stream the faster it flows, the flooded portion of
+the current above overtakes the slower foot-hill portion below it, and
+all sweeping forward together with a high, overcurling front, debouches
+on the open plain with a violence and suddenness that at first seem
+wholly unaccountable. The destructiveness of the lower portion of this
+particular flood was somewhat augmented by mining gravel in the river
+channels, and by levees which gave way after having at first restrained
+and held back the accumulating waters. These exaggerating conditions
+did not, however, greatly influence the general result, the main effect
+having been caused by the rare combination of flood factors indicated
+above. It is a pity that but few people meet and enjoy storms so noble
+as this in their homes in the mountains, for, spending themselves in
+the open levels of the plains, they are likely to be remembered more by
+the bridges and houses they carry away than by their beauty or the
+thousand blessings they bring to the fields and gardens of Nature.
+
+On the morning of the flood, January 19th, all the Feather and Yuba
+landscapes were covered with running water, muddy torrents filled every
+gulch and ravine, and the sky was thick with rain. The pines had long
+been sleeping in sunshine; they were now awake, roaring and waving with
+the beating storm, and the winds sweeping along the curves of hill and
+dale, streaming through the woods, surging and gurgling on the tops of
+rocky ridges, made the wildest of wild storm melody.
+
+It was easy to see that only a small part of the rain reached the
+ground in the form of drops. Most of it was thrashed into dusty spray
+like that into which small waterfalls are divided when they dash on
+shelving rocks. Never have I seen water coming from the sky in denser
+or more passionate streams. The wind chased the spray forward in
+choking drifts, and compelled me again and again to seek shelter in the
+dell copses and back of large trees to rest and catch my breath.
+Wherever I went, on ridges or in hollows, enthusiastic water still
+flashed and gurgled about my ankles, recalling a wild winter flood in
+Yosemite when a hundred waterfalls came booming and chanting together
+and filled the grand valley with a sea-like roar.
+
+After drifting an hour or two in the lower woods, I set out for the
+summit of a hill 900 feet high, with a view to getting as near the
+heart of the storm as possible. In order to reach it I had to cross Dry
+Creek, a tributary of the Yuba that goes crawling along the base of the
+hill on the northwest. It was now a booming river as large as the
+Tuolumne at ordinary stages, its current brown with mining-mud washed
+down from many a “claim,” and mottled with sluice-boxes, fence-rails,
+and logs that had long lain above its reach. A slim foot-bridge
+stretched across it, now scarcely above the swollen current. Here I was
+glad to linger, gazing and listening, while the storm was in its
+richest mood—the gray rain-flood above, the brown river-flood beneath.
+The language of the river was scarcely less enchanting than that of the
+wind and rain; the sublime overboom of the main bouncing, exulting
+current, the swash and gurgle of the eddies, the keen dash and clash of
+heavy waves breaking against rocks, and the smooth, downy hush of
+shallow currents feeling their way through the willow thickets of the
+margin. And amid all this varied throng of sounds I heard the smothered
+bumping and rumbling of boulders on the bottom as they were shoving and
+rolling forward against one another in a wild rush, after having lain
+still for probably 100 years or more.
+
+The glad creek rose high above its banks and wandered from its channel
+out over many a briery sand-flat and meadow. Alders and willows
+waist-deep were bearing up against the current with nervous trembling
+gestures, as if afraid of being carried away, while supple branches
+bending confidingly, dipped lightly and rose again, as if stroking the
+wild waters in play. Leaving the bridge and passing on through the
+storm-thrashed woods, all the ground seemed to be moving. Pine-tassels,
+flakes of bark, soil, leaves, and broken branches were being swept
+forward, and many a rock-fragment, weathered from exposed ledges, was
+now receiving its first rounding and polishing in the wild streams of
+the storm. On they rushed through every gulch and hollow, leaping,
+gliding, working with a will, and rejoicing like living creatures.
+
+Nor was the flood confined to the ground. Every tree had a water system
+of its own spreading far and wide like miniature Amazons and
+Mississippis.
+
+Toward midday, cloud, wind, and rain reached their highest development.
+The storm was in full bloom, and formed, from my commanding outlook on
+the hilltop, one of the most glorious views I ever beheld. As far as
+the eye could reach, above, beneath, around, wind-driven rain filled
+the air like one vast waterfall. Detached clouds swept imposingly up
+the valley, as if they were endowed with independent motion and had
+special work to do in replenishing the mountain wells, now rising above
+the pine-tops, now descending into their midst, fondling their arrowy
+spires and soothing every branch and leaf with gentleness in the midst
+of all the savage sound and motion. Others keeping near the ground
+glided behind separate groves, and brought them forward into relief
+with admirable distinctness; or, passing in front, eclipsed whole
+groves in succession, pine after pine melting in their gray fringes and
+bursting forth again seemingly clearer than before.
+
+The forms of storms are in great part measured, and controlled by the
+topography of the regions where they rise and over which they pass.
+When, therefore, we attempt to study them from the valleys, or from
+gaps and openings of the forest, we are confounded by a multitude of
+separate and apparently antagonistic impressions. The bottom of the
+storm is broken up into innumerable waves and currents that surge
+against the hillsides like sea-waves against a shore, and these,
+reacting on the nether surface of the storm, erode immense cavernous
+hollows and cañons, and sweep forward the resulting detritus in long
+trains, like the moraines of glaciers. But, as we ascend, these
+partial, confusing effects disappear and the phenomena are beheld
+united and harmonious.
+
+The longer I gazed into the storm, the more plainly visible it became.
+The drifting cloud detritus gave it a kind of visible body, which
+explained many perplexing phenomena, and published its movements in
+plain terms, while the texture of the falling mass of rain rounded it
+out and rendered it more complete. Because raindrops differ in size
+they fall at different velocities and overtake and clash against one
+another, producing mist and spray. They also, of course, yield unequal
+compliance to the force of the wind, which gives rise to a still
+greater degree of interference, and passionate gusts sweep off clouds
+of spray from the groves like that torn from wave-tops in a gale. All
+these factors of irregularity in density, color, and texture of the
+general rain mass tend to make it the more appreciable and telling. It
+is then seen as one grand flood rushing over bank and brae, bending the
+pines like weeds, curving this way and that, whirling in huge eddies in
+hollows and dells, while the main current pours grandly over all, like
+ocean currents over the landscapes that lie hidden at the bottom of the
+sea.
+
+I watched the gestures of the pines while the storm was at its height,
+and it was easy to see that they were not distressed. Several large
+Sugar Pines stood near the thicket in which I was sheltered, bowing
+solemnly and tossing their long arms as if interpreting the very words
+of the storm while accepting its wildest onsets with passionate
+exhilaration. The lions were feeding. Those who have observed
+sunflowers feasting on sunshine during the golden days of Indian summer
+know that none of their gestures express thankfulness. Their celestial
+food is too heartily given, too heartily taken to leave room for
+thanks. The pines were evidently accepting the benefactions of the
+storm in the same whole-souled manner; and when I looked down among the
+budding hazels, and still lower to the young violets and fern-tufts on
+the rocks, I noticed the same divine methods of giving and taking, and
+the same exquisite adaptations of what seems an outbreak of violent and
+uncontrollable force to the purposes of beautiful and delicate life.
+Calms like sleep come upon landscapes, just as they do on people and
+trees, and storms awaken them in the same way. In the dry midsummer of
+the lower portion of the range the withered hills and valleys seem to
+lie as empty and expressionless as dead shells on a shore. Even the
+highest mountains may be found occasionally dull and uncommunicative as
+if in some way they had lost countenance and shrunk to less than half
+their real stature. But when the lightnings crash and echo in the
+cañons, and the clouds come down wreathing and crowning their bald
+snowy heads, every feature beams with expression and they rise again in
+all their imposing majesty.
+
+Storms are fine speakers, and tell all they know, but their voices of
+lightning, torrent, and rushing wind are much less numerous than the
+nameless still, small voices too low for human ears; and because we are
+poor listeners we fail to catch much that is fairly within reach. Our
+best rains are heard mostly on roofs, and winds in chimneys; and when
+by choice or compulsion we are pushed into the heart of a storm, the
+confusion made by cumbersome equipments and nervous haste and mean
+fear, prevent our hearing any other than the loudest expressions. Yet
+we may draw enjoyment from storm sounds that are beyond hearing, and
+storm movements we cannot see. The sublime whirl of planets around
+their suns is as silent as raindrops oozing in the dark among the roots
+of plants. In this great storm, as in every other, there were tones and
+gestures inexpressibly gentle manifested in the midst of what is called
+violence and fury, but easily recognized by all who look and listen for
+them. The rain brought out the colors of the woods with delightful
+freshness, the rich brown of the bark of the trees and the fallen burs
+and leaves and dead ferns; the grays of rocks and lichens; the light
+purple of swelling buds, and the warm yellow greens of the libocedrus
+and mosses. The air was steaming with delightful fragrance, not rising
+and wafting past in separate masses, but diffused through all the
+atmosphere. Pine woods are always fragrant, but most so in spring when
+the young tassels are opening and in warm weather when the various gums
+and balsams are softened by the sun. The wind was now chafing their
+innumerable needles and the warm rain was steeping them. Monardella
+grows here in large beds in the openings, and there is plenty of laurel
+in dells and manzanita on the hillsides, and the rosy, fragrant
+chamoebatia carpets the ground almost everywhere. These, with the gums
+and balsams of the woods, form the main local fragrance-fountains of
+the storm. The ascending clouds of aroma wind-rolled and rain-washed
+became pure like light and traveled with the wind as part of it. Toward
+the middle of the afternoon the main flood cloud lifted along its
+western border revealing a beautiful section of the Sacramento Valley
+some twenty or thirty miles away, brilliantly sun-lighted and
+glistering with rain-sheets as if paved with silver. Soon afterward a
+jagged bluff-like cloud with a sheer face appeared over the valley of
+the Yuba, dark-colored and roughened with numerous furrows like some
+huge lava-table. The blue Coast Range was seen stretching along the sky
+like a beveled wall, and the somber, craggy Marysville Buttes rose
+impressively out of the flooded plain like islands out of the sea. Then
+the rain began to abate and I sauntered down through the dripping
+bushes reveling in the universal vigor and freshness that inspired all
+the life about me. How clean and unworn and immortal the woods seemed
+to be!—the lofty cedars in full bloom laden with golden pollen and
+their washed plumes shining; the pines rocking gently and settling back
+into rest, and the evening sunbeams spangling on the broad leaves of
+the madroños, their tracery of yellow boughs relieved against dusky
+thickets of Chestnut Oak; liverworts, lycopodiums, ferns were exulting
+in glorious revival, and every moss that had ever lived seemed to be
+coming crowding back from the dead to clothe each trunk and stone in
+living green. The steaming ground seemed fairly to throb and tingle
+with life; smilax, fritillaria, saxifrage, and young violets were
+pushing up as if already conscious of the summer glory, and innumerable
+green and yellow buds were peeping and smiling everywhere.
+
+As for the birds and squirrels, not a wing or tail of them was to be
+seen while the storm was blowing. Squirrels dislike wet weather more
+than cats do; therefore they were at home rocking in their dry nests.
+The birds were hiding in the dells out of the wind, some of the
+strongest of them pecking at acorns and manzanita berries, but most
+were perched on low twigs, their breast feathers puffed out and keeping
+one another company through the hard time as best they could.
+
+When I arrived at the village about sundown, the good people bestirred
+themselves, pitying my bedraggled condition as if I were some benumbed
+castaway snatched from the sea, while I, in turn, warm with excitement
+and reeking like the ground, pitied them for being dry and defrauded of
+all the glory that Nature had spread round about them that day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS
+
+
+The weather of spring and summer in the middle region of the Sierra is
+usually well flecked with rains and light dustings of snow, most of
+which are far too obviously joyful and life-giving to be regarded as
+storms; and in the picturesque beauty and clearness of outlines of
+their clouds they offer striking contrasts to those boundless,
+all-embracing cloud-mantles of the storms of winter. The smallest and
+most perfectly individualized specimens present a richly modeled
+cumulous cloud rising above the dark woods, about 11 A.M., swelling
+with a visible motion straight up into the calm, sunny sky to a height
+of 12,000 to 14,000 feet above the sea, its white, pearly bosses
+relieved by gray and pale purple shadows in the hollows, and showing
+outlines as keenly defined as those of the glacier-polished domes. In
+less than an hour it attains full development and stands poised in the
+blazing sunshine like some colossal mountain, as beautiful in form and
+finish as if it were to become a permanent addition to the landscape.
+Presently a thunderbolt crashes through the crisp air, ringing like
+steel on steel, sharp and clear, its startling detonation breaking into
+a spray of echoes against the cliffs and cañon walls. Then down comes a
+cataract of rain. The big drops sift through the pine-needles, plash
+and patter on the granite pavements, and pour down the sides of ridges
+and domes in a network of gray, bubbling rills. In a few minutes the
+cloud withers to a mesh of dim filaments and disappears, leaving the
+sky perfectly clear and bright, every dust-particle wiped and washed
+out of it. Everything is refreshed and invigorated, a steam of
+fragrance rises, and the storm is finished—one cloud, one
+lightning-stroke, and one dash of rain. This is the Sierra mid-summer
+thunder-storm reduced to its lowest terms. But some of them attain much
+larger proportions, and assume a grandeur and energy of expression
+hardly surpassed by those bred in the depths of winter, producing those
+sudden floods called “cloud-bursts,” which are local, and to a
+considerable extent periodical, for they appear nearly every day about
+the same time for weeks, usually about eleven o’clock, and lasting from
+five minutes to an hour or two. One soon becomes so accustomed to see
+them that the noon sky seems empty and abandoned without them, as if
+Nature were forgetting something. When the glorious pearl and alabaster
+clouds of these noonday storms are being built I never give attention
+to anything else. No mountain or mountain-range, however divinely
+clothed with light, has a more enduring charm than those fleeting
+mountains of the sky—floating fountains bearing water for every well,
+the angels of the streams and lakes; brooding in the deep azure, or
+sweeping softly along the ground over ridge and dome, over meadow, over
+forest, over garden and grove; lingering with cooling shadows,
+refreshing every flower, and soothing rugged rock-brows with a
+gentleness of touch and gesture wholly divine.
+
+[Illustration: BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY.]
+
+The most beautiful and imposing of the summer storms rise just above
+the upper edge of the Silver Fir zone, and all are so beautiful that it
+is not easy to choose any one for particular description. The one that
+I remember best fell on the mountains near Yosemite Valley, July 19,
+1869, while I was encamped in the Silver Fir woods. A range of bossy
+cumuli took possession of the sky, huge domes and peaks rising one
+beyond another with deep cañons between them, bending this way and that
+in long curves and reaches, interrupted here and there with white
+upboiling masses that looked like the spray of waterfalls. Zigzag
+lances of lightning followed each other in quick succession, and the
+thunder was so gloriously loud and massive it seemed as if surely an
+entire mountain was being shattered at every stroke. Only the trees
+were touched, however, so far as I could see,—a few firs 200 feet high,
+perhaps, and five to six feet in diameter, were split into long rails
+and slivers from top to bottom and scattered to all points of the
+compass. Then came the rain in a hearty flood, covering the ground and
+making it shine with a continuous sheet of water that, like a
+transparent film or skin, fitted closely down over all the rugged
+anatomy of the landscape.
+
+It is not long, geologically speaking, since the first raindrop fell on
+the present landscapes of the Sierra; and in the few tens of thousands
+of years of stormy cultivation they have been blest with, how beautiful
+they have become! The first rains fell on raw, crumbling moraines and
+rocks without a plant. Now scarcely a drop can fail to find a beautiful
+mark: on the tops of the peaks, on the smooth glacier pavements, on the
+curves of the domes, on moraines full of crystals, on the thousand
+forms of yosemitic sculpture with their tender beauty of balmy, flowery
+vegetation, laving, plashing, glinting, pattering; some falling softly
+on meadows, creeping out of sight, seeking and finding every thirsty
+rootlet, some through the spires of the woods, sifting in dust through
+the needles, and whispering good cheer to each of them; some falling
+with blunt tapping sounds, drumming on the broad leaves of veratrum,
+cypripedium, saxifrage; some falling straight into fragrant corollas,
+kissing the lips of lilies, glinting on the sides of crystals, on
+shining grains of gold; some falling into the fountains of snow to
+swell their well-saved stores; some into the lakes and rivers, patting
+the smooth glassy levels, making dimples and bells and spray, washing
+the mountain windows, washing the wandering winds; some plashing into
+the heart of snowy falls and cascades as if eager to join in the dance
+and the song and beat the foam yet finer. Good work and happy work for
+the merry mountain raindrops, each one of them a brave fall in itself,
+rushing from the cliffs and hollows of the clouds into the cliffs and
+hollows of the mountains; away from the thunder of the sky into the
+thunder of the roaring rivers. And how far they have to go, and how
+many cups to fill—cassiope-cups, holding half a drop, and lake basins
+between the hills, each replenished with equal care—every drop God’s
+messenger sent on its way with glorious pomp and display of
+power—silvery new-born stars with lake and river, mountain and
+valley—all that the landscape holds—reflected in their crystal depths.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+THE WATER-OUZEL
+
+
+The waterfalls of the Sierra are frequented by only one bird,—the Ouzel
+or Water Thrush (_Cinclus Mexicanus_, SW.). He is a singularly joyous
+and lovable little fellow, about the size of a robin, clad in a plain
+waterproof suit of bluish gray, with a tinge of chocolate on the head
+and shoulders. In form he is about as smoothly plump and compact as a
+pebble that has been whirled in a pot-hole, the flowing contour of his
+body being interrupted only by his strong feet and bill, the crisp
+wing-tips, and the up-slanted wren-like tail. Among all the countless
+waterfalls I have met in the course of ten years’ exploration in the
+Sierra, whether among the icy peaks, or warm foot-hills, or in the
+profound yosemitic cañons of the middle region, not one was found
+without its Ouzel. No cañon is too cold for this little bird, none too
+lonely, provided it be rich in falling water. Find a fall, or cascade,
+or rushing rapid, anywhere upon a clear stream, and there you will
+surely find its complementary Ouzel, flitting about in the spray,
+diving in foaming eddies, whirling like a leaf among beaten foam-bells;
+ever vigorous and enthusiastic, yet self-contained, and neither seeking
+nor shunning your company.
+
+[Illustration: WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING.]
+
+If disturbed while dipping about in the margin shallows, he either sets
+off with a rapid whir to some other feeding-ground up or down the
+stream, or alights on some half-submerged rock or snag out in the
+current, and immediately begins to nod and courtesy like a wren,
+turning his head from side to side with many other odd dainty movements
+that never fail to fix the attention of the observer.
+
+He is the mountain streams’ own darling, the humming-bird of blooming
+waters, loving rocky ripple-slopes and sheets of foam as a bee loves
+flowers, as a lark loves sunshine and meadows. Among all the mountain
+birds, none has cheered me so much in my lonely wanderings,—none so
+unfailingly. For both in winter and summer he sings, sweetly, cheerily,
+independent alike of sunshine and of love, requiring no other
+inspiration than the stream on which he dwells. While water sings, so
+must he, in heat or cold, calm or storm, ever attuning his voice in
+sure accord; low in the drought of summer and the drought of winter,
+but never silent.
+
+During the golden days of Indian summer, after most of the snow has
+been melted, and the mountain streams have become feeble,—a succession
+of silent pools, linked together by shallow, transparent currents and
+strips of silvery lacework,—then the song of the Ouzel is at its lowest
+ebb. But as soon as the winter clouds have bloomed, and the mountain
+treasuries are once more replenished with snow, the voices of the
+streams and ouzels increase in strength and richness until the flood
+season of early summer. Then the torrents chant their noblest anthems,
+and then is the flood-time of our songster’s melody. As for weather,
+dark days and sun days are the same to him. The voices of most
+song-birds, however joyous, suffer a long winter eclipse; but the Ouzel
+sings on through all the seasons and every kind of storm. Indeed no
+storm can be more violent than those of the waterfalls in the midst of
+which he delights to dwell. However dark and boisterous the weather,
+snowing, blowing, or cloudy, all the same he sings, and with never a
+note of sadness. No need of spring sunshine to thaw _his_ song, for it
+never freezes. Never shall you hear anything wintry from _his_ warm
+breast; no pinched cheeping, no wavering notes between sorrow and joy;
+his mellow, fluty voice is ever tuned to downright gladness, as free
+from dejection as cock-crowing.
+
+It is pitiful to see wee frost-pinched sparrows on cold mornings in the
+mountain groves shaking the snow from their feathers, and hopping about
+as if anxious to be cheery, then hastening back to their hidings out of
+the wind, puffing out their breast-feathers over their toes, and
+subsiding among the leaves, cold and breakfastless, while the snow
+continues to fall, and there is no sign of clearing. But the Ouzel
+never calls forth a single touch of pity; not because he is strong to
+endure, but rather because he seems to live a charmed life beyond the
+reach of every influence that makes endurance necessary.
+
+One wild winter morning, when Yosemite Valley was swept its length from
+west to east by a cordial snow-storm, I sallied forth to see what I
+might learn and enjoy. A sort of gray, gloaming-like darkness filled
+the valley, the huge walls were out of sight, all ordinary sounds were
+smothered, and even the loudest booming of the falls was at times
+buried beneath the roar of the heavy-laden blast. The loose snow was
+already over five feet deep on the meadows, making extended walks
+impossible without the aid of snow-shoes. I found no great difficulty,
+however, in making my way to a certain ripple on the river where one of
+my ouzels lived. He was at home, busily gleaning his breakfast among
+the pebbles of a shallow portion of the margin, apparently unaware of
+anything extraordinary in the weather. Presently he flew out to a stone
+against which the icy current was beating, and turning his back to the
+wind, sang as delightfully as a lark in springtime.
+
+After spending an hour or two with my favorite, I made my way across
+the valley, boring and wallowing through the drifts, to learn as
+definitely as possible how the other birds were spending their time.
+The Yosemite birds are easily found during the winter because all of
+them excepting the Ouzel are restricted to the sunny north side of the
+valley, the south side being constantly eclipsed by the great frosty
+shadow of the wall. And because the Indian Cañon groves, from their
+peculiar exposure, are the warmest, the birds congregate there, more
+especially in severe weather.
+
+I found most of the robins cowering on the lee side of the larger
+branches where the snow could not fall upon them, while two or three of
+the more enterprising were making desperate efforts to reach the
+mistletoe berries by clinging nervously to the under side of the
+snow-crowned masses, back downward, like woodpeckers. Every now and
+then they would dislodge some of the loose fringes of the snow-crown,
+which would come sifting down on them and send them screaming back to
+camp, where they would subside among their companions with a shiver,
+muttering in low, querulous chatter like hungry children.
+
+Some of the sparrows were busy at the feet of the larger trees gleaning
+seeds and benumbed insects, joined now and then by a robin weary of his
+unsuccessful attempts upon the snow-covered berries. The brave
+woodpeckers were clinging to the snowless sides of the larger boles and
+overarching branches of the camp trees, making short nights from side
+to side of the grove, pecking now and then at the acorns they had
+stored in the bark, and chattering aimlessly as if unable to keep
+still, yet evidently putting in the time in a very dull way, like
+storm-bound travelers at a country tavern. The hardy nut-hatches were
+threading the open furrows of the trunks in their usual industrious
+manner, and uttering their quaint notes, evidently less distressed than
+their neighbors. The Steller jays were of course making more noisy stir
+than all the other birds combined; ever coming and going with loud
+bluster, screaming as if each had a lump of melting sludge in his
+throat, and taking good care to improve the favorable opportunity
+afforded by the storm to steal from the acorn stores of the
+woodpeckers. I also noticed one solitary gray eagle braving the storm
+on the top of a tall pine-stump just outside the main grove. He was
+standing bolt upright with his back to the wind, a tuft of snow piled
+on his square shoulders, a monument of passive endurance. Thus every
+snow-bound bird seemed more or less uncomfortable if not in positive
+distress.
+
+The storm was reflected in every gesture, and not one cheerful note,
+not to say song, came from a single bill; their cowering, joyless
+endurance offering a striking contrast to the spontaneous,
+irrepressible gladness of the Ouzel, who could no more help exhaling
+sweet song than a rose sweet fragrance. He _must_ sing though the
+heavens fall. I remember noticing the distress of a pair of robins
+during the violent earthquake of the year 1872, when the pines of the
+Valley, with strange movements, flapped and waved their branches, and
+beetling rock-brows came thundering down to the meadows in tremendous
+avalanches. It did not occur to me in the midst of the excitement of
+other observations to look for the ouzels, but I doubt not they were
+singing straight on through it all, regarding the terrible rock-thunder
+as fearlessly as they do the booming of the waterfalls.
+
+What may be regarded as the separate songs of the Ouzel are exceedingly
+difficult of description, because they are so variable and at the same
+time so confluent. Though I have been acquainted with my favorite ten
+years, and during most of this time have heard him sing nearly every
+day, I still detect notes and strains that seem new to me. Nearly all
+of his music is sweet and tender, lapsing from his round breast like
+water over the smooth lip of a pool, then breaking farther on into a
+sparkling foam of melodious notes, which, glow with subdued enthusiasm,
+yet without expressing much of the strong, gushing ecstasy of the
+bobolink or skylark.
+
+The more striking strains are perfect arabesques of melody, composed of
+a few full, round, mellow notes, embroidered with delicate trills which
+fade and melt in long slender cadences. In a general way his music is
+that of the streams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes
+of the falls are in it, the trills of rapids, the gurgling of margin
+eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of
+separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses and falling into tranquil
+pools.
+
+The Ouzel never sings in chorus with other birds, nor with his kind,
+but only with the streams. And like flowers that bloom beneath the
+surface of the ground, some of our favorite’s best song-blossoms never
+rise above the surface of the heavier music of the water. I have often
+observed him singing in the midst of beaten spray, his music completely
+buried beneath the water’s roar; yet I knew he was surely singing by
+his gestures and the movements of his bill.
+
+His food, as far as I have noticed, consists of all kinds of water
+insects, which in summer are chiefly procured along shallow margins.
+Here he wades about ducking his head under water and deftly turning
+over pebbles and fallen leaves with his bill, seldom choosing to go
+into deep water where he has to use his wings in diving.
+
+He seems to be especially fond of the larvae; of mosquitos, found in
+abundance attached to the bottom of smooth rock channels where the
+current is shallow. When feeding in such places he wades up-stream, and
+often while his head is under water the swift current is deflected
+upward along the glossy curves of his neck and shoulders, in the form
+of a clear, crystalline shell, which fairly incloses him like a
+bell-glass, the shell being broken and re-formed as he lifts and dips
+his head; while ever and anon he sidles out to where the too powerful
+current carries him off his feet; then he dexterously rises on the wing
+and goes gleaning again in shallower places.
+
+But during the winter, when the stream-banks are embossed in snow, and
+the streams themselves are chilled nearly to the freezing-point, so
+that the snow falling into them in stormy weather is not wholly
+dissolved, but forms a thin, blue sludge, thus rendering the current
+opaque—then he seeks the deeper portions of the main rivers, where he
+may dive to clear water beneath the sludge. Or he repairs to some open
+lake or mill-pond, at the bottom of which he feeds in safety.
+
+When thus compelled to betake himself to a lake, he does not plunge
+into it at once like a duck, but always alights in the first place upon
+some rock or fallen pine along the shore. Then flying out thirty or
+forty yards, more or less, according to the character of the bottom, he
+alights with a dainty glint on the surface, swims about, looks down,
+finally makes up his mind, and disappears with a sharp stroke of his
+wings. After feeding for two or three minutes he suddenly reappears,
+showers the water from his wings with one vigorous shake, and rises
+abruptly into the air as if pushed up from beneath, comes back to his
+perch, sings a few minutes, and goes out to dive again; thus coming and
+going, singing and diving at the same place for hours.
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL.]
+
+The Ouzel is usually found singly; rarely in pairs, excepting during
+the breeding season, and _very_ rarely in threes or fours. I once
+observed three thus spending a winter morning in company, upon a small
+glacier lake, on the Upper Merced, about 7500 feet above the level of
+the sea. A storm had occurred during the night, but the morning sun
+shone unclouded, and the shadowy lake, gleaming darkly in its setting
+of fresh snow, lay smooth and motionless as a mirror. My camp chanced
+to be within a few feet of the water’s edge, opposite a fallen pine,
+some of the branches of which leaned out over the lake. Here my three
+dearly welcome visitors took up their station, and at once began to
+embroider the frosty air with their delicious melody, doubly delightful
+to me that particular morning, as I had been somewhat apprehensive of
+danger in breaking my way down through the snow-choked cañons to the
+lowlands.
+
+The portion of the lake bottom selected for a feeding-ground lies at a
+depth of fifteen or twenty feet below the surface, and is covered with
+a short growth of algae and other aquatic plants,—facts I had
+previously determined while sailing over it on a raft. After alighting
+on the glassy surface, they occasionally indulged in a little play,
+chasing one another round about in small circles; then all three would
+suddenly dive together, and then come ashore and sing.
+
+The Ouzel seldom swims more than a few yards on the surface, for, not
+being web-footed, he makes rather slow progress, but by means of his
+strong, crisp wings he swims, or rather flies, with celerity under the
+surface, often to considerable distances. But it is in withstanding the
+force of heavy rapids that his strength of wing in this respect is most
+strikingly manifested. The following may be regarded as a fair
+illustration of his power of sub-aquatic flight. One stormy morning in
+winter when the Merced River was blue and green with unmelted snow, I
+observed one of my ouzels perched on a snag out in the midst of a
+swift-rushing rapid, singing cheerily, as if everything was just to his
+mind; and while I stood on the bank admiring him, he suddenly plunged
+into the sludgy current, leaving his song abruptly broken off. After
+feeding a minute or two at the bottom, and when one would suppose that
+he must inevitably be swept far down-stream, he emerged just where he
+went down, alighted on the same snag, showered the water-beads from his
+feathers, and continued his unfinished song, seemingly in tranquil ease
+as if it had suffered no interruption.
+
+[Illustration: OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT.]
+
+The Ouzel alone of all birds dares to enter a white torrent. And though
+strictly terrestrial in structure, no other is so inseparably related
+to water, not even the duck, or the bold ocean albatross, or the
+stormy-petrel. For ducks go ashore as soon as they finish feeding in
+undisturbed places, and very often make long flights over land from
+lake to lake or field to field. The same is true of most other aquatic
+birds. But the Ouzel, born on the brink of a stream, or on a snag or
+boulder in the midst of it, seldom leaves it for a single moment. For,
+notwithstanding he is often on the wing, he never flies overland, but
+whirs with, rapid, quail-like beat above the stream, tracing all its
+windings. Even when the stream is quite small, say from five to ten
+feet wide, he seldom shortens his flight by crossing a bend, however
+abrupt it may be; and even when disturbed by meeting some one on the
+bank, he prefers to fly over one’s head, to dodging out over the
+ground. When, therefore, his flight along a crooked stream is viewed
+endwise, it appears most strikingly wavered—a description on the air of
+every curve with lightning-like rapidity.
+
+The vertical curves and angles of the most precipitous torrents he
+traces with the same rigid fidelity, swooping down the inclines of
+cascades, dropping sheer over dizzy falls amid the spray, and ascending
+with the same fearlessness and ease, seldom seeking to lessen the
+steepness of the acclivity by beginning to ascend before reaching the
+base of the fall. No matter though it may be several hundred feet in
+height he holds straight on, as if about to dash headlong into the
+throng of booming rockets, then darts abruptly upward, and, after
+alighting at the top of the precipice to rest a moment, proceeds to
+feed and sing. His flight is solid and impetuous, without any
+intermission of wing-beats,—one homogeneous buzz like that of a laden
+bee on its way home. And while thus buzzing freely from fall to fall,
+he is frequently heard giving utterance to a long outdrawn train of
+unmodulated notes, in no way connected with his song, but corresponding
+closely with his flight in sustained vigor.
+
+Were the flights of all the ouzels in the Sierra traced on a chart,
+they would indicate the direction of the flow of the entire system of
+ancient glaciers, from about the period of the breaking up of the
+ice-sheet until near the close of the glacial winter; because the
+streams which the ouzels so rigidly follow are, with the unimportant
+exceptions of a few side tributaries, all flowing in channels eroded
+for them out of the solid flank of the range by the vanished
+glaciers,—the streams tracing the ancient glaciers, the ouzels tracing
+the streams. Nor do we find so complete compliance to glacial
+conditions in the life of any other mountain bird, or animal of any
+kind. Bears frequently accept the pathways laid down by glaciers as the
+easiest to travel; but they often leave them and cross over from cañon
+to cañon. So also, most of the birds trace the moraines to some extent,
+because the forests are growing on them. But they wander far, crossing
+the cañons from grove to grove, and draw exceedingly angular and
+complicated courses.
+
+The Ouzel’s nest is one of the most extraordinary pieces of bird
+architecture I ever saw, odd and novel in design, perfectly fresh and
+beautiful, and in every way worthy of the genius of the little builder.
+It is about a foot in diameter, round and bossy in outline, with a
+neatly arched opening near the bottom, somewhat like an old-fashioned
+brick oven, or Hottentot’s hut. It is built almost exclusively of green
+and yellow mosses, chiefly the beautiful fronded hypnum that covers the
+rocks and old drift-logs in the vicinity of waterfalls. These are
+deftly interwoven, and felted together into a charming little hut; and
+so situated that many of the outer mosses continue to flourish as if
+they had not been plucked. A few fine, silky-stemmed grasses are
+occasionally found interwoven with the mosses, but, with the exception
+of a thin layer lining the floor, their presence seems accidental, as
+they are of a species found growing with the mosses and are probably
+plucked with them. The site chosen for this curious mansion is usually
+some little rock-shelf within reach of the lighter particles of the
+spray of a waterfall, so that its walls are kept green and growing, at
+least during the time of high water.
+
+No harsh lines are presented by any portion of the nest as seen in
+place, but when removed from its shelf, the back and bottom, and
+sometimes a portion of the top, is found quite sharply angular, because
+it is made to conform to the surface of the rock upon which and against
+which it is built, the little architect always taking advantage of
+slight crevices and protuberances that may chance to offer, to render
+his structure stable by means of a kind of gripping and dovetailing.
+
+In choosing a building-spot, concealment does not seem to be taken into
+consideration; yet notwithstanding the nest is large and guilelessly
+exposed to view, it is far from being easily detected, chiefly because
+it swells forward like any other bulging moss-cushion growing naturally
+in such situations. This is more especially the case where the nest is
+kept fresh by being well sprinkled. Sometimes these romantic little
+huts have their beauty enhanced by rock-ferns and grasses that spring
+up around the mossy walls, or in front of the door-sill, dripping with
+crystal beads.
+
+Furthermore, at certain hours of the day, when the sunshine is poured
+down at the required angle, the whole mass of the spray enveloping the
+fairy establishment is brilliantly irised; and it is through so
+glorious a rainbow atmosphere as this that some of our blessed ouzels
+obtain their first peep at the world.
+
+Ouzels seem so completely part and parcel of the streams they inhabit,
+they scarce suggest any other origin than the streams themselves; and
+one might almost be pardoned in fancying they come direct from the
+living waters, like flowers from the ground. At least, from whatever
+cause, it never occurred to me to look for their nests until more than
+a year after I had made the acquaintance of the birds themselves,
+although I found one the very day on which I began the search. In
+making my way from Yosemite to the glaciers at the heads of the Merced
+and Tuolumne rivers, I camped in a particularly wild and romantic
+portion of the Nevada cañon where in previous excursions I had never
+failed to enjoy the company of my favorites, who were attracted here,
+no doubt, by the safe nesting-places in the shelving rocks, and by the
+abundance of food and falling water. The river, for miles above and
+below, consists of a succession of small falls from ten to sixty feet
+in height, connected by flat, plume-like cascades that go flashing from
+fall to fall, free and almost channelless, over waving folds of
+glacier-polished granite.
+
+On the south side of one of the falls, that portion of the precipice
+which is bathed by the spray presents a series of little shelves and
+tablets caused by the development of planes of cleavage in the granite,
+and by the consequent fall of masses through the action of the water.
+“Now here,” said I, “of all places, is the most charming spot for an
+Ouzel’s nest.” Then carefully scanning the fretted face of the
+precipice through the spray, I at length noticed a yellowish
+moss-cushion, growing on the edge of a level tablet within five or six
+feet of the outer folds of the fall. But apart from the fact of its
+being situated where one acquainted with the lives of ouzels would
+fancy an Ouzel’s nest ought to be, there was nothing in its appearance
+visible at first sight, to distinguish it from other bosses of
+rock-moss similarly situated with reference to perennial spray; and it
+was not until I had scrutinized it again and again, and had removed my
+shoes and stockings and crept along the face of the rock within eight
+or ten feet of it, that I could decide certainly whether it was a nest
+or a natural growth.
+
+In these moss huts three or four eggs are laid, white like
+foam-bubbles; and well may the little birds hatched from them sing
+water songs, for they hear them all their lives, and even before they
+are born.
+
+I have often observed the young just out of the nest making their odd
+gestures, and seeming in every way as much at home as their experienced
+parents, like young bees on their first excursions to the flower
+fields. No amount of familiarity with people and their ways seems to
+change them in the least. To all appearance their behavior is just the
+same on seeing a man for the first time, as when they have seen him
+frequently.
+
+[Illustration: THE OUZEL AT HOME.]
+
+On the lower reaches of the rivers where mills are built, they sing on
+through the din of the machinery, and all the noisy confusion of dogs,
+cattle, and workmen. On one occasion, while a wood-chopper was at work
+on the river-bank, I observed one cheerily singing within reach of the
+flying chips. Nor does any kind of unwonted disturbance put him in bad
+humor, or frighten him out of calm self-possession. In passing through
+a narrow gorge, I once drove one ahead of me from rapid to rapid,
+disturbing him four times in quick succession where he could not very
+well fly past me on account of the narrowness of the channel. Most
+birds under similar circumstances fancy themselves pursued, and become
+suspiciously uneasy; but, instead of growing nervous about it, he made
+his usual dippings, and sang one of his most tranquil strains. When
+observed within a few yards their eyes are seen to express remarkable
+gentleness and intelligence; but they seldom allow so near a view
+unless one wears clothing of about the same color as the rocks and
+trees, and knows how to sit still. On one occasion, while rambling
+along the shore of a mountain lake, where the birds, at least those
+born that season, had never seen a man, I sat down to rest on a large
+stone close to the water’s edge, upon which it seemed the ouzels and
+sandpipers were in the habit of alighting when they came to feed on
+that part of the shore, and some of the other birds also, when they
+came down to wash or drink. In a few minutes, along came a whirring
+Ouzel and alighted on the stone beside me, within reach of my hand.
+Then suddenly observing me, he stooped nervously as if about to fly on
+the instant, but as I remained as motionless as the stone, he gained
+confidence, and looked me steadily in the face for about a minute, then
+flew quietly to the outlet and began to sing. Next came a sandpiper and
+gazed at me with much the same guileless expression of eye as the
+Ouzel. Lastly, down with a swoop came a Steller’s jay out of a
+fir-tree, probably with the intention of moistening his noisy throat.
+But instead of sitting confidingly as my other visitors had done, he
+rushed off at once, nearly tumbling heels over head into the lake in
+his suspicious confusion, and with loud screams roused the
+neighborhood.
+
+Love for song-birds, with their sweet human voices, appears to be more
+common and unfailing than love for flowers. Every one loves flowers to
+some extent, at least in life’s fresh morning, attracted by them as
+instinctively as humming-birds and bees. Even the young Digger Indians
+have sufficient love for the brightest of those found growing on the
+mountains to gather them and braid them, as decorations for the hair.
+And I was glad to discover, through the few Indians that could be
+induced to talk on the subject, that they have names for the wild rose
+and the lily, and other conspicuous flowers, whether available as food
+or otherwise. Most men, however, whether savage or civilized, become
+apathetic toward all plants that have no other apparent use than the
+use of beauty. But fortunately one’s first instinctive love of
+song-birds is never wholly obliterated, no matter what the influences
+upon our lives may be. I have often been delighted to see a pure,
+spiritual glow come into the countenances of hard business-men and old
+miners, when a song-bird chanced to alight near them. Nevertheless, the
+little mouthful of meat that swells out the breasts of some song-birds
+is too often the cause of their death. Larks and robins in particular
+are brought to market in hundreds. But fortunately the Ouzel has no
+enemy so eager to eat his little body as to follow him into the
+mountain solitudes. I never knew him to be chased even by hawks.
+
+An acquaintance of mine, a sort of foot-hill mountaineer, had a pet
+cat, a great, dozy, overgrown creature, about as broad-shouldered as a
+lynx. During the winter, while the snow lay deep, the mountaineer sat
+in his lonely cabin among the pines smoking his pipe and wearing the
+dull time away. Tom was his sole companion, sharing his bed, and
+sitting beside him on a stool with much the same drowsy expression of
+eye as his master. The good-natured bachelor was content with his hard
+fare of soda-bread and bacon, but Tom, the only creature in the world
+acknowledging dependence on him, must needs be provided with fresh
+meat. Accordingly he bestirred himself to contrive squirrel-traps, and
+waded the snowy woods with his gun, making sad havoc among the few
+winter birds, sparing neither robin, sparrow, nor tiny nuthatch, and
+the pleasure of seeing Tom eat and grow fat was his great reward.
+
+One cold afternoon, while hunting along the river-bank, he noticed a
+plain-feathered little bird skipping about in the shallows, and
+immediately raised his gun. But just then the confiding songster began
+to sing, and after listening to his summery melody the charmed hunter
+turned away, saying, “Bless your little heart, I can’t shoot you, not
+even for Tom.”
+
+[Illustration: YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN
+CAÑON.]
+
+Even so far north as icy Alaska, I have found my glad singer. When I
+was exploring the glaciers between Mount Fairweather and the Stikeen
+River, one cold day in November, after trying in vain to force a way
+through the innumerable icebergs of Sum Dum Bay to the great glaciers
+at the head of it, I was weary and baffled and sat resting in my canoe
+convinced at last that I would have to leave this part of my work for
+another year. Then I began to plan my escape to open water before the
+young ice which was beginning to form should shut me in. While I thus
+lingered drifting with the bergs, in the midst of these gloomy
+forebodings and all the terrible glacial desolation and grandeur, I
+suddenly heard the well-known whir of an Ouzel’s wings, and, looking
+up, saw my little comforter coming straight across the ice from the
+shore. In a second or two he was with me, flying three times round my
+head with a happy salute, as if saying, “Cheer up, old friend; you see
+I’m here, and all’s well.” Then he flew back to the shore, alighted on
+the topmost jag of a stranded iceberg, and began to nod and bow as
+though he were on one of his favorite boulders in the midst of a sunny
+Sierra cascade.
+
+The species is distributed all along the mountain-ranges of the Pacific
+Coast from Alaska to Mexico, and east to the Rocky Mountains.
+Nevertheless, it is as yet comparatively little known. Audubon and
+Wilson did not meet it. Swainson was, I believe, the first naturalist
+to describe a specimen from Mexico. Specimens were shortly afterward
+procured by Drummond near the sources of the Athabasca River, between
+the fifty-fourth and fifty-sixth parallels; and it has been collected
+by nearly all of the numerous exploring expeditions undertaken of late
+through our Western States and Territories; for it never fails to
+engage the attention of naturalists in a very particular manner.
+
+Such, then, is our little cinclus, beloved of every one who is so
+fortunate as to know him. Tracing on strong wing every curve of the
+most precipitous torrents from one extremity of the Sierra to the
+other; not fearing to follow them through their darkest gorges and
+coldest snow-tunnels; acquainted with every waterfall, echoing their
+divine music; and throughout the whole of their beautiful lives
+interpreting all that we in our unbelief call terrible in the
+utterances of torrents and storms, as only varied expressions of God’s
+eternal love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+THE WILD SHEEP
+(_Ovis montana_)
+
+
+The wild sheep ranks highest among the animal mountaineers of the
+Sierra. Possessed of keen sight and scent, and strong limbs, he dwells
+secure amid the loftiest summits, leaping unscathed from crag to crag,
+up and down the fronts of giddy precipices, crossing foaming torrents
+and slopes of frozen snow, exposed to the wildest storms, yet
+maintaining a brave, warm life, and developing from generation to
+generation in perfect strength and beauty.
+
+Nearly all the lofty mountain-chains of the globe are inhabited by wild
+sheep, most of which, on account of the remote and all but inaccessible
+regions where they dwell, are imperfectly known as yet. They are
+classified by different naturalists under from five to ten distinct
+species or varieties, the best known being the burrhel of the Himalaya
+(_Ovis burrhel_, Blyth); the argali, the large wild sheep of central
+and northeastern Asia (_O. ammon_, Linn., or _Caprovis argali_); the
+Corsican mouflon (_O. musimon_, Pal.); the aoudad of the mountains of
+northern Africa (_Ammotragus tragelaphus_); and the Rocky Mountain
+bighorn (_O. montana_, Cuv.). To this last-named species belongs the
+wild sheep of the Sierra. Its range, according to the late Professor
+Baird of the Smithsonian Institution, extends “from the region of the
+upper Missouri and Yellowstone to the Rocky Mountains and the high
+grounds adjacent to them on the eastern slope, and as far south as the
+Rio Grande. Westward it extends to the coast ranges of Washington,
+Oregon, and California, and follows the highlands some distance into
+Mexico.”[1] Throughout the vast region bounded on the east by the
+Wahsatch Mountains and on the west by the Sierra there are more than a
+hundred subordinate ranges and mountain groups, trending north and
+south, range beyond range, with summits rising from eight to twelve
+thousand feet above the level of the sea, probably all of which,
+according to my own observations, is, or has been, inhabited by this
+species.
+
+Compared with the argali, which, considering its size and the vast
+extent of its range, is probably the most important of all the wild
+sheep, our species is about the same size, but the horns are less
+twisted and less divergent. The more important characteristics are,
+however, essentially the same, some of the best naturalists maintaining
+that the two are only varied forms of one species. In accordance with
+this view, Cuvier conjectures that since central Asia seems to be the
+region where the sheep first appeared, and from which it has been
+distributed, the argali may have been distributed over this continent
+from Asia by crossing Bering Strait on ice. This conjecture is not so
+ill founded as at first sight would appear; for the Strait is only
+about fifty miles wide, is interrupted by three islands, and is jammed
+with ice nearly every winter. Furthermore the argali is abundant on the
+mountains adjacent to the Strait at East Cape, where it is well known
+to the Tschuckchi hunters and where I have seen many of their horns.
+
+On account of the extreme variability of the sheep under culture, it is
+generally supposed that the innumerable domestic breeds have all been
+derived from the few wild species; but the whole question is involved
+in obscurity. According to Darwin, sheep have been domesticated from a
+very ancient period, the remains of a small breed, differing from any
+now known, having been found in the famous Swiss lake-dwellings.
+
+Compared with the best-known domestic breeds, we find that our wild
+species is much larger, and, instead of an all-wool garment, wears a
+thick over-coat of hair like that of the deer, and an under-covering of
+fine wool. The hair, though rather coarse, is comfortably soft and
+spongy, and lies smooth, as if carefully tended with comb and brush.
+The predominant color during most of the year is brownish-gray, varying
+to bluish-gray in the autumn; the belly and a large, conspicuous patch
+on the buttocks are white; and the tail, which is very short, like that
+of a deer, is black, with a yellowish border. The wool is white, and
+grows in beautiful spirals down out of sight among the shining hair,
+like delicate climbing vines among stalks of corn.
+
+The horns of the male are of immense size, measuring in their greater
+diameter from five to six and a half inches, and from two and a half to
+three feet in length around the curve. They are yellowish-white in
+color, and ridged transversely, like those of the domestic ram. Their
+cross-section near the base is somewhat triangular in outline, and
+flattened toward the tip. Rising boldly from the top of the head, they
+curve gently backward and outward, then forward and outward, until
+about three fourths of a circle is described, and until the flattened,
+blunt tips are about two feet or two and a half feet apart. Those of
+the female are flattened throughout their entire length, are less
+curved than those of the male, and much smaller, measuring less than a
+foot along the curve.
+
+A ram and ewe that I obtained near the Modoc lava-beds, to the
+northeast of Mount Shasta, measured as follows:
+
+_Ram._ _Ewe._ 
+_ft._ _in._ _ft._ _in._
+Height at shoulders 3 6 3 0
+Girth around shoulders 3 11 3 3¾
+Length from nose to root of tail 5 10¼ 4 3½
+Length of ears 0 4¾ 0 5
+Length of tail 0 4½ 0 4½
+Length of horns around curve 2 9 0 11½
+Distance across from tip to tip of horns 2 5½  
+Circumference of horns at base 1 4 0 6
+
+The measurements of a male obtained in the Rocky Mountains by Audubon
+vary but little as compared with the above. The weight of his specimen
+was 344 pounds,[2] which is, perhaps, about an average for full-grown
+males. The females are about a third lighter.
+
+Besides these differences in size, color, hair, etc., as noted above,
+we may observe that the domestic sheep, in a general way, is
+expressionless, like a dull bundle of something only half alive, while
+the wild is as elegant and graceful as a deer, every movement
+manifesting admirable strength and character. The tame is timid; the
+wild is bold. The tame is always more or less ruffled and dirty; while
+the wild is as smooth and clean as the flowers of his mountain
+pastures.
+
+The earliest mention that I have been able to find of the wild sheep in
+America is by Father Picolo, a Catholic missionary at Monterey, in the
+year 1797, who, after describing it, oddly enough, as “a kind of deer
+with a sheep-like head, and about as large as a calf one or two years
+old,” naturally hurries on to remark: “I have eaten of these beasts;
+their flesh is very tender and delicious.” Mackenzie, in his northern
+travels, heard the species spoken of by the Indians as “white
+buffaloes.” And Lewis and Clark tell us that, in a time of great
+scarcity on the head waters of the Missouri, they saw plenty of wild
+sheep, but they were “too shy to be shot.”
+
+A few of the more energetic of the Pah Ute Indians hunt the wild sheep
+every season among the more accessible sections of the High Sierra, in
+the neighborhood of passes, where, from having been pursued, they have
+become extremely wary; but in the rugged wilderness of peaks and
+cañons, where the foaming tributaries of the San Joaquin and King’s
+rivers take their rise, they fear no hunter save the wolf, and are more
+guileless and approachable than their tame kindred.
+
+While engaged in the work of exploring high regions where they delight
+to roam I have been greatly interested in studying their habits. In the
+months of November and December, and probably during a considerable
+portion of midwinter, they all flock together, male and female, old and
+young. I once found a complete band of this kind numbering upward of
+fifty, which, on being alarmed, went bounding away across a jagged
+lava-bed at admirable speed, led by a majestic old ram, with the lambs
+safe in the middle of the flock.
+
+In spring and summer, the full-grown rams form separate bands of from
+three to twenty, and are usually found feeding along the edges of
+glacier meadows, or resting among the castle-like crags of the high
+summits; and whether quietly feeding, or scaling the wild cliffs, their
+noble forms and the power and beauty of their movements never fail to
+strike the beholder with lively admiration.
+
+Their resting-places seem to be chosen with reference to sunshine and a
+wide outlook, and most of all to safety. Their feeding-grounds are
+among the most beautiful of the wild gardens, bright with daisies and
+gentians and mats of purple bryanthus, lying hidden away on rocky
+headlands and cañon sides, where sunshine is abundant, or down in the
+shady glacier valleys, along the banks of the streams and lakes, where
+the plushy sod is greenest. Here they feast all summer, the happy
+wanderers, perhaps relishing the beauty as well as the taste of the
+lovely flora on which they feed.
+
+[Illustration: SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA.]
+
+When the winter storms set in, loading their highland pastures with
+snow, then, like the birds, they gather and go to lower climates,
+usually descending the eastern flank of the range to the rough,
+volcanic table-lands and treeless ranges of the Great Basin adjacent to
+the Sierra. They never make haste, however, and seem to have no dread
+of storms, many of the strongest only going down leisurely to bare,
+wind-swept ridges, to feed on bushes and dry bunch-grass, and then
+returning up into the snow. Once I was snow-bound on Mount Shasta for
+three days, a little below the timber line. It was a dark and stormy
+time, well calculated to test the skill and endurance of mountaineers.
+The snow-laden gale drove on night and day in hissing, blinding floods,
+and when at length it began to abate, I found that a small band of wild
+sheep had weathered the storm in the lee of a clump of Dwarf Pines a
+few yards above my storm-nest, where the snow was eight or ten feet
+deep. I was warm back of a rock, with blankets, bread, and fire. My
+brave companions lay in the snow, without food, and with only the
+partial shelter of the short trees, yet they made no sign of suffering
+or faint-heartedness.
+
+In the months of May and June, the wild sheep bring forth their young
+in solitary and almost inaccessible crags, far above the nesting-rocks
+of the eagle. I have frequently come upon the beds of the ewes and
+lambs at an elevation of from 12,000 to 13,000 feet above sea-level.
+These beds are simply oval-shaped hollows, pawed out among loose,
+disintegrating rock-chips and sand, upon some sunny spot commanding a
+good outlook, and partially sheltered from the winds that sweep those
+lofty peaks almost without intermission. Such is the cradle of the
+little mountaineer, aloft in the very sky; rocked in storms, curtained
+in clouds, sleeping in thin, icy air; but, wrapped in his hairy coat,
+and nourished by a strong, warm mother, defended from the talons of the
+eagle and the teeth of the sly coyote, the bonny lamb grows apace. He
+soon learns to nibble the tufted rock-grasses and leaves of the white
+spirsea; his horns begin to shoot, and before summer is done he is
+strong and agile, and goes forth with the flock, watched by the same
+divine love that tends the more helpless human lamb in its cradle by
+the fireside.
+
+Nothing is more commonly remarked by noisy, dusty trail-travelers in
+the Sierra than the want of animal life—no song-birds, no deer, no
+squirrels, no game of any kind, they say. But if such could only go
+away quietly into the wilderness, sauntering afoot and alone with
+natural deliberation, they would soon learn that these mountain
+mansions are not without inhabitants, many of whom, confiding and
+gentle, would not try to shun their acquaintance.
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM (DOMESTIC).]
+
+In the fall of 1873 I was tracing the South Fork of the San Joaquin up
+its wild cañon to its farthest glacier fountains. It was the season of
+alpine Indian summer. The sun beamed lovingly; the squirrels were
+nutting in the pine-trees, butterflies hovered about the last of the
+goldenrods, the willow and maple thickets were yellow, the meadows
+brown, and the whole sunny, mellow landscape glowed like a countenance
+in the deepest and sweetest repose. On my way over the glacier-polished
+rocks along the river, I came to an expanded portion of the cañon,
+about two miles long and half a mile wide, which formed a level park
+inclosed with picturesque granite walls like those of Yosemite Valley.
+Down through the middle of it poured the beautiful river shining and
+spangling in the golden light, yellow groves on its banks, and strips
+of brown meadow; while the whole park was astir with wild life, some of
+which even the noisiest and least observing of travelers must have seen
+had they been with me. Deer, with their supple, well-grown fawns,
+bounded from thicket to thicket as I advanced; grouse kept rising from
+the brown grass with a great whirring of wings, and, alighting on the
+lower branches of the pines and poplars, allowed a near approach, as if
+curious to see me. Farther on, a broad-shouldered wildcat showed
+himself, coming out of a grove, and crossing the river on a flood-jamb
+of logs, halting for a moment to look back. The bird-like tamias
+frisked about my feet everywhere among the pine-needles and seedy
+grass-tufts; cranes waded the shallows of the river-bends, the
+kingfisher rattled from perch to perch, and the blessed ouzel sang amid
+the spray of every cascade. Where may lonely wanderer find a more
+interesting family of mountain-dwellers, earth-born companions and
+fellow-mortals? It was afternoon when I joined them, and the glorious
+landscape began to fade in the gloaming before I awoke from their
+enchantment. Then I sought a camp-ground on the river-bank, made a
+cupful of tea, and lay down to sleep on a smooth place among the yellow
+leaves of an aspen grove. Next day I discovered yet grander landscapes
+and grander life. Following the river over huge, swelling rock-bosses
+through a majestic cañon, and past innumerable cascades, the scenery in
+general became gradually wilder and more alpine. The Sugar Pine and
+Silver Firs gave place to the hardier Cedar and Hemlock Spruce. The
+cañon walls became more rugged and bare, and gentians and arctic
+daisies became more abundant in the gardens and strips of meadow along
+the streams. Toward the middle of the afternoon I came to another
+valley, strikingly wild and original in all its features, and perhaps
+never before touched by human foot. As regards area of level
+bottom-land, it is one of the very smallest of the Yosemite type, but
+its walls are sublime, rising to a height of from 2000 to 4000 feet
+above the river. At the head of the valley the main cañon forks, as is
+found to be the case in all yosemites. The formation of this one is due
+chiefly to the action of two great glaciers, whose fountains lay to the
+eastward, on the flanks of Mounts Humphrey and Emerson and a cluster of
+nameless peaks farther south.
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP.]
+
+The gray, boulder-chafed river was singing loudly through the valley,
+but above its massy roar I heard the booming of a waterfall, which drew
+me eagerly on; and just as I emerged from the tangled groves and
+brier-thickets at the head of the valley, the main fork of the river
+came in sight, falling fresh from its glacier fountains in a snowy
+cascade, between granite walls 2000 feet high. The steep incline down
+which the glad waters thundered seemed to bar all farther progress. It
+was not long, however, before I discovered a crooked seam in the rock,
+by which I was enabled to climb to the edge of a terrace that crosses
+the cañon, and divides the cataract nearly in the middle. Here I sat
+down to take breath and make some entries in my note-book, taking
+advantage, at the same time, of my elevated position above the trees to
+gaze back over the valley into the heart of the noble landscape, little
+knowing the while what neighbors were near.
+
+After spending a few minutes in this way, I chanced to look across the
+fall, and there stood three sheep quietly observing me. Never did the
+sudden appearance of a mountain, or fall, or human friend more forcibly
+seize and rivet my attention. Anxiety to observe accurately held me
+perfectly still. Eagerly I marked the flowing undulations of their
+firm, braided muscles, their strong legs, ears, eyes, heads, their
+graceful rounded necks, the color of their hair, and the bold,
+upsweeping curves of their noble horns. When they moved I watched every
+gesture, while they, in no wise disconcerted either by my attention or
+by the tumultuous roar of the water, advanced deliberately alongside
+the rapids, between the two divisions of the cataract, turning now and
+then to look at me. Presently they came to a steep, ice-burnished
+acclivity, which they ascended by a succession of quick, short,
+stiff-legged leaps, reaching the top without a struggle. This was the
+most startling feat of mountaineering I had ever witnessed, and,
+considering only the mechanics of the thing, my astonishment could
+hardly have been greater had they displayed wings and taken to flight.
+“Surefooted” mules on such ground would have fallen and rolled like
+loosened boulders. Many a time, where the slopes are far lower, I have
+been compelled to take off my shoes and stockings, tie them to my belt,
+and creep barefooted, with the utmost caution. No wonder then, that I
+watched the progress of these animal mountaineers with keen sympathy,
+and exulted in the boundless sufficiency of wild nature displayed in
+their invention, construction, and keeping. A few minutes later I
+caught sight of a dozen more in one band, near the foot of the upper
+fall. They were standing on the same side of the river with me, only
+twenty-five or thirty yards away, looking as unworn and perfect as if
+created on the spot. It appeared by their tracks, which I had seen in
+the Little Yosemite, and by their present position, that when I came up
+the cañon they were all feeding together down in the valley, and in
+their haste to reach high ground, where they could look about them to
+ascertain the nature of the strange disturbance, they were divided,
+three ascending on one side the river, the rest on the other.
+
+The main band, headed by an experienced chief, now began to cross the
+wild rapids between the two divisions of the cascade. This was another
+exciting feat; for, among all the varied experiences of mountaineers,
+the crossing of boisterous, rock-dashed torrents is found to be one of
+the most trying to the nerves. Yet these fine fellows walked fearlessly
+to the brink, and jumped from boulder to boulder, holding themselves in
+easy poise above the whirling, confusing current, as if they were doing
+nothing extraordinary.
+
+[Illustration: CROSSING A CAÑON STREAM.]
+
+In the immediate foreground of this rare picture there was a fold of
+ice-burnished granite, traversed by a few bold lines in which
+rock-ferns and tufts of bryanthus were growing, the gray cañon walls on
+the sides, nobly sculptured and adorned with brown cedars and pines;
+lofty peaks in the distance, and in the middle ground the snowy fall,
+the voice and soul of the landscape; fringing bushes beating time to
+its thunder-tones, the brave sheep in front of it, their gray forms
+slightly obscured in the spray, yet standing out in good, heavy relief
+against the close white water, with their huge horns rising like the
+upturned roots of dead pine-trees, while the evening sunbeams streaming
+up the cañon colored all the picture a rosy purple and made it
+glorious. After crossing the river, the dauntless climbers, led by
+their chief, at once began to scale the cañon wall, turning now right,
+now left, in long, single file, keeping well apart out of one another’s
+way, and leaping in regular succession from crag to crag, now ascending
+slippery dome-curves, now walking leisurely along the edges of
+precipices, stopping at times to gaze down at me from some flat-topped
+rock, with heads held aslant, as if curious to learn what I thought
+about it, or whether I was likely to follow them. After reaching the
+top of the wall, which, at this place, is somewhere between 1500 and
+2000 feet high, they were still visible against the sky as they
+lingered, looking down in groups of twos or threes.
+
+Throughout the entire ascent they did not make a single awkward step,
+or an unsuccessful effort of any kind. I have frequently seen tame
+sheep in mountains jump upon a sloping rock-surface, hold on
+tremulously a few seconds, and fall back baffled and irresolute. But in
+the most trying situations, where the slightest want or inaccuracy
+would have been fatal, these always seemed to move in comfortable
+reliance on their strength and skill, the limits of which they never
+appeared to know. Moreover, each one of the flock, while following the
+guidance of the most experienced, yet climbed with intelligent
+independence as a perfect individual, capable of separate existence
+whenever it should wish or be compelled to withdraw from the little
+clan. The domestic sheep, on the contrary, is only a fraction of an
+animal, a whole flock being required to form an individual, just as
+numerous flowerets are required to make one complete sunflower.
+
+Those shepherds who, in summer, drive their flocks to the mountain
+pastures, and, while watching them night and day, have seen them
+frightened by bears and storms, and scattered like wind-driven chaff,
+will, in some measure, be able to appreciate the self-reliance and
+strength and noble individuality of Nature’s sheep.
+
+Like the Alp-climbing ibex of Europe, our mountaineer is said to plunge
+headlong down the faces of sheer precipices, and alight on his big
+horns. I know only two hunters who claim to have actually witnessed
+this feat; I never was so fortunate. They describe the act as a diving
+head-foremost. The horns are so large at the base that they cover the
+upper portion of the head down nearly to a level with the eyes, and the
+skull is exceedingly strong. I struck an old, bleached specimen on
+Mount Ritter a dozen blows with my ice-ax without breaking it. Such
+skulls would not fracture very readily by the wildest rock-diving, but
+other bones could hardly be expected to hold together in such a
+performance; and the mechanical difficulties in the way of controlling
+their movements, after striking upon an irregular surface, are, in
+themselves, sufficient to show this boulder-like method of progression
+to be impossible, even in the absence of all other evidence on the
+subject; moreover, the ewes follow wherever the rams may lead, although
+their horns are mere spikes. I have found many pairs of the horns of
+the old rams considerably battered, doubtless a result of fighting. I
+was particularly interested in the question, after witnessing the
+performances of this San Joaquin band upon the glaciated rocks at the
+foot of the falls; and as soon as I procured specimens and examined
+their feet, all the mystery disappeared. The secret, considered in
+connection with exceptionally strong muscles, is simply this: the wide
+posterior portion of the bottom of the foot, instead of wearing down
+and becoming flat and hard, like the feet of tame sheep and horses,
+bulges out in a soft, rubber-like pad or cushion, which not only grips
+and holds well on smooth rocks, but fits into small cavities, and down
+upon or against slight protuberances. Even the hardest portions of the
+edge of the hoof are comparatively soft and elastic; furthermore, the
+toes admit of an extraordinary amount of both lateral and vertical
+movement, allowing the foot to accommodate itself still more perfectly
+to the irregularities of rock surfaces, while at the same time
+increasing the gripping power.
+
+At the base of Sheep Rock, one of the winter strongholds of the Shasta
+flocks, there lives a stock-raiser who has had the advantage of
+observing the movements of wild sheep every winter; and, in the course
+of a conversation with him on the subject of their diving habits, he
+pointed to the front of a lava headland about 150 feet high, which is
+only eight or ten degrees out of the perpendicular. “There,” said he,
+“I followed a band of them fellows to the back of that rock yonder, and
+expected to capture them all, for I thought I had a dead thing on them.
+I got behind them on a narrow bench that runs along the face of the
+wall near the top and comes to an end where they couldn’t get away
+without falling and being killed; but they jumped off, and landed all
+right, as if that were the regular thing with them.”
+
+“What!” said I, “jumped 150 feet perpendicular! Did you see them do
+it?”
+
+“No,” he replied, “I didn’t see them going down, for I was behind them;
+but I saw them go off over the brink, and then I went below and found
+their tracks where they struck on the loose rubbish at the bottom. They
+just _sailed right off_, and landed on their feet right side up. That
+is the kind of animal _they_ is—beats anything else that goes on four
+legs.”
+
+[Illustration: WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE.]
+
+On another occasion, a flock that was pursued by hunters retreated to
+another portion of this same cliff where it is still higher, and, on
+being followed, they were seen jumping down in perfect order, one
+behind another, by two men who happened to be chopping where they had a
+fair view of them and could watch their progress from top to bottom of
+the precipice. Both ewes and rams made the frightful descent without
+evincing any extraordinary concern, hugging the rock closely, and
+controlling the velocity of their half falling, half leaping movements
+by striking at short intervals and holding back with their cushioned,
+rubber feet upon small ledges and roughened inclines until near the
+bottom, when they “sailed off” into the free air and alighted on their
+feet, but with their bodies so nearly in a vertical position that they
+appeared to be diving.
+
+It appears, therefore, that the methods of this wild mountaineering
+become clearly comprehensible as soon as we make ourselves acquainted
+with the rocks, and the kind of feet and muscles brought to bear upon
+them.
+
+The Modoc and Pah Ute Indians are, or rather have been, the most
+successful hunters of the wild sheep in the regions that have come
+under my own observation. I have seen large numbers of heads and horns
+in the caves of Mount Shasta and the Modoc lava-beds, where the Indians
+had been feasting in stormy weather; also in the cañons of the Sierra
+opposite Owen’s Valley; while the heavy obsidian arrow-heads found on
+some of the highest peaks show that this warfare has long been going
+on.
+
+In the more accessible ranges that stretch across the desert regions of
+western Utah and Nevada, considerable numbers of Indians used to hunt
+in company like packs of wolves, and being perfectly acquainted with
+the topography of their hunting-grounds, and with the habits and
+instincts of the game, they were pretty successful. On the tops of
+nearly every one of the Nevada mountains that I have visited, I found
+small, nest-like inclosures built of stones, in which, as I afterward
+learned, one or more Indians would lie in wait while their companions
+scoured the ridges below, knowing that the alarmed sheep would surely
+run to the summit, and when they could be made to approach with the
+wind they were shot at short range.
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP.]
+
+Still larger bands of Indians used to make extensive hunts upon some
+dominant mountain much frequented by the sheep, such as Mount Grant on
+the Wassuck Range to the west of Walker Lake. On some particular spot,
+favorably situated with reference to the well-known trails of the
+sheep, they built a high-walled corral, with long guiding wings
+diverging from the gateway; and into this inclosure they sometimes
+succeeded in driving the noble game. Great numbers of Indians were of
+course required, more, indeed, than they could usually muster, counting
+in squaws, children, and all; they were compelled, therefore, to build
+rows of dummy hunters out of stones, along the ridge-tops which they
+wished to prevent the sheep from crossing. And, without discrediting
+the sagacity of the game, these dummies were found effective; for, with
+a few live Indians moving about excitedly among them, they could hardly
+be distinguished at a little distance from men, by any one not in the
+secret. The whole ridge-top then seemed to be alive with hunters.
+
+The only animal that may fairly be regarded as a companion or rival of
+the sheep is the so-called Rocky Mountain goat (_Aplocerus montana_,
+Rich.), which, as its name indicates, is more antelope than goat. He,
+too, is a brave and hardy climber, fearlessly crossing the wildest
+summits, and braving the severest storms, but he is shaggy,
+short-legged, and much less dignified in demeanor than the sheep. His
+jet-black horns are only about five or six inches in length, and the
+long, white hair with which he is covered obscures the expression of
+his limbs. I have never yet seen a single specimen in the Sierra,
+though possibly a few flocks may have lived on Mount Shasta a
+comparatively short time ago.
+
+The ranges of these two mountaineers are pretty distinct, and they see
+but little of each other; the sheep being restricted mostly to the dry,
+inland mountains; the goat or chamois to the wet, snowy glacier-laden
+mountains of the northwest coast of the continent in Oregon,
+Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. Probably more than 200 dwell
+on the icy, volcanic cone of Mount Rainier; and while I was exploring
+the glaciers of Alaska I saw flocks of these admirable mountaineers
+nearly every day, and often followed their trails through the mazes of
+bewildering crevasses, in which they are excellent guides.
+
+Three species of deer are found in California,—the black-tailed,
+white-tailed, and mule deer. The first mentioned (_Cervus Columbianus_)
+is by far the most abundant, and occasionally meets the sheep during
+the summer on high glacier meadows, and along the edge of the timber
+line; but being a forest animal, seeking shelter and rearing its young
+in dense thickets, it seldom visits the wild sheep in its higher homes.
+The antelope, though not a mountaineer, is occasionally met in winter
+by the sheep while feeding along the edges of the sage-plains and bare
+volcanic hills to the east of the Sierra. So also is the mule deer,
+which is almost restricted in its range to this eastern region. The
+white-tailed species belongs to the coast ranges.
+
+Perhaps no wild animal in the world is without enemies, but
+highlanders, as a class, have fewer than lowlanders. The wily panther,
+slipping and crouching among long grass and bushes, pounces upon the
+antelope and deer, but seldom crosses the bald, craggy thresholds of
+the sheep. Neither can the bears be regarded as enemies; for, though
+they seek to vary their every-day diet of nuts and berries by an
+occasional meal of mutton, they prefer to hunt tame and helpless
+flocks. Eagles and coyotes, no doubt, capture an unprotected lamb at
+times, or some unfortunate beset in deep, soft snow, but these cases
+are little more than accidents. So, also, a few perish in
+long-continued snow-storms, though, in all my mountaineering, I have
+not found more than five or six that seemed to have met their fate in
+this way. A little band of three were discovered snow-bound in Bloody
+Canon a few years ago, and were killed with an ax by mountaineers, who
+chanced to be crossing the range in winter.
+
+Man is the most dangerous enemy of all, but even from him our brave
+mountain-dweller has little to fear in the remote solitudes of the High
+Sierra. The golden plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin were lately
+thronged with bands of elk and antelope, but, being fertile and
+accessible, they were required for human pastures. So, also, are many
+of the feeding-grounds of the deer—hill, valley, forest, and meadow—but
+it will be long before man will care to take the highland castles of
+the sheep. And when we consider here how rapidly entire species of
+noble animals, such as the elk, moose, and buffalo, are being pushed to
+the very verge of extinction, all lovers of wildness will rejoice with
+me in the rocky security of _Ovis montana_, the bravest of all the
+Sierra mountaineers.
+
+ [1] Pacific Railroad Survey, Vol. VIII, page 678.
+
+
+ [2] Audubon and Bachman’s “Quadrupeds of North America.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS
+
+
+Murphy’s camp is a curious old mining-town in Calaveras County, at an
+elevation of 2400 feet above the sea, situated like a nest in the
+center of a rough, gravelly region, rich in gold. Granites, slates,
+lavas, limestone, iron ores, quartz veins, auriferous gravels, remnants
+of dead fire-rivers and dead water-rivers are developed here side by
+side within a radius of a few miles, and placed invitingly open before
+the student like a book, while the people and the region beyond the
+camp furnish mines of study of never-failing interest and variety.
+
+When I discovered this curious place, I was tracing the channels of the
+ancient pre-glacial rivers, instructive sections of which have been
+laid bare here and in the adjacent regions by the miners. Rivers,
+according to the poets, “go on forever”; but those of the Sierra are
+young as yet and have scarcely learned the way down to the sea; while
+at least one generation of them have died and vanished together with
+most of the basins they drained. All that remains of them to tell their
+history is a series of interrupted fragments of channels, mostly choked
+with gravel, and buried beneath broad, thick sheets of lava. These are
+known as the “Dead Rivers of California,” and the gravel deposited in
+them is comprehensively called the “Blue Lead.” In some places the
+channels of the present rivers trend in the same direction, or nearly
+so, as those of the ancient rivers; but, in general, there is little
+correspondence between them, the entire drainage having been changed,
+or, rather, made new. Many of the hills of the ancient landscapes have
+become hollows, and the old hollows have become hills. Therefore the
+fragmentary channels, with their loads of auriferous gravel, occur in
+all kinds of unthought-of places, trending obliquely, or even at right
+angles to the present drainage, across the tops of lofty ridges or far
+beneath them, presenting impressive illustrations of the magnitude of
+the changes accomplished since those ancient streams were annihilated.
+The last volcanic period preceding the regeneration of the Sierra
+landscapes seems to have come on over all the range almost
+simultaneously, like the glacial period, notwithstanding lavas of
+different age occur together in many places, indicating numerous
+periods of activity in the Sierra fire-fountains. The most important of
+the ancient river-channels in this region is a section that extends
+from the south side of the town beneath Coyote Creek and the ridge
+beyond it to the Cañon of the Stanislaus; but on account of its depth
+below the general surface of the present valleys the rich gold gravels
+it is known to contain cannot be easily worked on a large scale. Their
+extraordinary richness may be inferred from the fact that many claims
+were profitably worked in them by sinking shafts to a depth of 200 feet
+or more, and hoisting the dirt by a windlass. Should the dip of this
+ancient channel be such as to make the Stanislaus Cañon available as a
+dump, then the grand deposit might be worked by the hydraulic method,
+and although a long, expensive tunnel would be required, the scheme
+might still prove profitable, for there is “millions in it.”
+
+The importance of these ancient gravels as gold fountains is well known
+to miners. Even the superficial placers of the present streams have
+derived much of their gold from them. According to all accounts, the
+Murphy placers have been very rich—“terrific rich,” as they say here.
+The hills have been cut and scalped, and every gorge and gulch and
+valley torn to pieces and disemboweled, expressing a fierce and
+desperate energy hard to understand. Still, any kind of effort-making
+is better than inaction, and there is something sublime in seeing men
+working in dead earnest at anything, pursuing an object with
+glacier-like energy and persistence. Many a brave fellow has recorded a
+most eventful chapter of life on these Calaveras rocks. But most of the
+pioneer miners are sleeping now, their wild day done, while the few
+survivors linger languidly in the washed-out gulches or sleepy village
+like harried bees around the ruins of their hive. “We have no industry
+left _now_,” they told me, “and no men; everybody and everything
+hereabouts has gone to decay. We are only bummers—out of the game, a
+thin scatterin’ of poor, dilapidated cusses, compared with what we used
+to be in the grand old gold-days. We were giants then, and you can look
+around here and see our tracks.” But although these lingering pioneers
+are perhaps more exhausted than the mines, and about as dead as the
+dead rivers, they are yet a rare and interesting set of men, with much
+gold mixed with the rough, rocky gravel of their characters; and they
+manifest a breeding and intelligence little looked for in such
+surroundings as theirs. As the heavy, long-continued grinding of the
+glaciers brought out the features of the Sierra, so the intense
+experiences of the gold period have brought out the features of these
+old miners, forming a richness and variety of character little known as
+yet. The sketches of Bret Harte, Hayes, and Miller have not exhausted
+this field by any means. It is interesting to note the extremes
+possible in one and the same character: harshness and gentleness,
+manliness and childishness, apathy and fierce endeavor. Men who, twenty
+years ago, would not cease their shoveling to save their lives, now
+play in the streets with children. Their long, Micawber-like waiting
+after the exhaustion of the placers has brought on an exaggerated form
+of dotage. I heard a group of brawny pioneers in the street eagerly
+discussing the quantity of tail required for a boy’s kite; and one
+graybeard undertook the sport of flying it, volunteering the
+information that he was a boy, “always was a boy, and d—n a man who was
+not a boy inside, however ancient outside!” Mines, morals, politics,
+the immortality of the soul, etc., were discussed beneath shade-trees
+and in saloons, the time for each being governed apparently by the
+temperature. Contact with Nature, and the habits of observation
+acquired in gold-seeking, had made them all, to some extent,
+collectors, and, like wood-rats, they had gathered all kinds of odd
+specimens into their cabins, and now required me to examine them. They
+were themselves the oddest and most interesting specimens. One of them
+offered to show me around the old diggings, giving me fair warning
+before setting out that I might not like him, “because,” said he,
+“people say I’m eccentric. I notice everything, and gather beetles and
+snakes and anything that’s queer; and so some don’t like me, and call
+me eccentric. I’m always trying to find out things. Now, there’s a
+weed; the Indians eat it for greens. What do you call those long-bodied
+flies with big heads?” “Dragon-flies,” I suggested. “Well, their jaws
+work sidewise, instead of up and down, and grasshoppers’ jaws work the
+same way, and therefore I think they are the same species. I always
+notice everything like that, and just because I do, they say I’m
+eccentric,” etc.
+
+Anxious that I should miss none of the wonders of their old gold-field,
+the good people had much to say about the marvelous beauty of Cave City
+Cave, and advised me to explore it. This I was very glad to do, and
+finding a guide who knew the way to the mouth of it, I set out from
+Murphy the next morning.
+
+The most beautiful and extensive of the mountain caves of California
+occur in a belt of metamorphic limestone that is pretty generally
+developed along the western flank of the Sierra from the McCloud River
+on the north to the Kaweah on the south, a distance of over 400 miles,
+at an elevation of from 2000 to 7000 feet above the sea. Besides this
+regular belt of caves, the California landscapes are diversified by
+long imposing ranks of sea-caves, rugged and variable in architecture,
+carved in the coast headlands and precipices by centuries of
+wave-dashing; and innumerable lava-caves, great and small, originating
+in the unequal flowing and hardening of the lava sheets in which they
+occur, fine illustrations of which are presented in the famous Modoc
+Lava Beds, and around the base of icy Shasta. In this comprehensive
+glance we may also notice the shallow wind-worn caves in stratified
+sandstones along the margins of the plains; and the cave-like recesses
+in the Sierra slates and granites, where bears and other mountaineers
+find shelter during the fall of sudden storms. In general, however, the
+grand massive uplift of the Sierra, as far as it has been laid-bare to
+observation, is about as solid and caveless as a boulder.
+
+Fresh beauty opens one’s eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very
+abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps
+prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing,
+therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the
+sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or
+in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns
+underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those
+out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our
+return to common every-day beauty.
+
+Our way from Murphy’s to the cave lay across a series of picturesque,
+moory ridges in the chaparral region between the brown foot-hills and
+the forests, a flowery stretch of rolling hill-waves breaking here and
+there into a kind of rocky foam on the higher summits, and sinking into
+delightful bosky hollows embowered with vines. The day was a fine
+specimen of California summer, pure sunshine, unshaded most of the time
+by a single cloud. As the sun rose higher, the heated air began to flow
+in tremulous waves from every southern slope. The sea-breeze that
+usually comes up the foot-hills at this season, with cooling on its
+wings, was scarcely perceptible. The birds were assembled beneath leafy
+shade, or made short, languid flights in search of food, all save the
+majestic buzzard; with broad wings outspread he sailed the warm air
+unwearily from ridge to ridge, seeming to enjoy the fervid sunshine
+like a butterfly. Squirrels, too, whose spicy ardor no heat or cold may
+abate, were nutting among the pines, and the innumerable hosts of the
+insect kingdom were throbbing and wavering unwearied as sunbeams.
+
+This brushy, berry-bearing region used to be a deer and bear pasture,
+but since the disturbances of the gold period these fine animals have
+almost wholly disappeared. Here, also, once roamed the mastodon and
+elephant, whose bones are found entombed in the river gravels and
+beneath thick folds of lava. Toward noon, as we were riding slowly over
+bank and brae, basking in the unfeverish sun-heat, we witnessed the
+upheaval of a new mountain-range, a Sierra of clouds abounding in
+landscapes as truly sublime and beautiful—if only we have a mind to
+think so and eyes to see—as the more ancient rocky Sierra beneath it,
+with its forests and waterfalls; reminding us that, as there is a lower
+world of caves, so, also, there is an upper world of clouds. Huge,
+bossy cumuli developed with astonishing rapidity from mere buds,
+swelling with visible motion into colossal mountains, and piling
+higher, higher, in long massive ranges, peak beyond peak, dome over
+dome, with many a picturesque valley and shadowy cave between; while
+the dark firs and pines of the upper benches of the Sierra were
+projected against their pearl bosses with exquisite clearness of
+outline. These cloud mountains vanished in the azure as quickly as they
+were developed, leaving no detritus; but they were not a whit less real
+or interesting on this account. The more enduring hills over which we
+rode were vanishing as surely as they, only not so fast, a difference
+which is great or small according to the standpoint from which it is
+contemplated.
+
+At the bottom of every dell we found little homesteads embosomed in
+wild brush and vines wherever the recession of the hills left patches
+of arable ground. These secluded flats are settled mostly by Italians
+and Germans, who plant a few vegetables and grape-vines at odd times,
+while their main business is mining and prospecting. In spite of all
+the natural beauty of these dell cabins, they can hardly be called
+homes. They are only a better kind of camp, gladly abandoned whenever
+the hoped-for gold harvest has been gathered. There is an air of
+profound unrest and melancholy about the best of them. Their beauty is
+thrust upon them by exuberant Nature, apart from which they are only a
+few logs and boards rudely jointed and without either ceiling or floor,
+a rough fireplace with corresponding cooking utensils, a shelf-bed, and
+stool. The ground about them is strewn with battered prospecting-pans,
+picks, sluice-boxes, and quartz specimens from many a ledge, indicating
+the trend of their owners’ hard lives.
+
+The ride from Murphy’s to the cave is scarcely two hours long, but we
+lingered among quartz-ledges and banks of dead river gravel until long
+after noon. At length emerging from a narrow-throated gorge, a small
+house came in sight set in a thicket of fig-trees at the base of a
+limestone hill. “That,” said my guide, pointing to the house, “is Cave
+City, and the cave is in that gray hill.” Arriving at the one house of
+this one-house city, we were boisterously welcomed by three drunken men
+who had come to town to hold a spree. The mistress of the house tried
+to keep order, and in reply to our inquiries told us that the cave
+guide was then in the cave with a party of ladies. “And must we wait
+until he returns?” we asked. No, that was unnecessary; we might take
+candles and go into the cave alone, provided we shouted from time to
+time so as to be found by the guide, and were careful not to fall over
+the rocks or into the dark pools. Accordingly taking a trail from the
+house, we were led around the base of the hill to the mouth of the
+cave, a small inconspicuous archway, mossy around the edges and shaped
+like the door of a water-ouzel’s nest, with no appreciable hint or
+advertisement of the grandeur of the many crystal chambers within.
+Lighting our candles, which seemed to have no illuminating power in the
+thick darkness, we groped our way onward as best we could along narrow
+lanes and alleys, from chamber to chamber, around rustic columns and
+heaps of fallen rocks, stopping to rest now and then in particularly
+beautiful places—fairy alcoves furnished with admirable variety of
+shelves and tables, and round bossy stools covered with sparkling
+crystals. Some of the corridors were muddy, and in plodding along these
+we seemed to be in the streets of some prairie village in spring-time.
+Then we would come to handsome marble stairways conducting right and
+left into upper chambers ranged above one another three or four stories
+high, floors, ceilings, and walls lavishly decorated with innumerable
+crystalline forms. After thus wandering exploringly, and alone for a
+mile or so, fairly enchanted, a murmur of voices and a gleam of light
+betrayed the approach of the guide and his party, from whom, when they
+came up, we received a most hearty and natural stare, as we stood half
+concealed in a side recess among stalagmites. I ventured to ask the
+dripping, crouching company how they had enjoyed their saunter, anxious
+to learn how the strange sunless scenery of the underworld had
+impressed them. “Ah, it’s nice! It’s splendid!” they all replied and
+echoed. “The Bridal Chamber back here is just glorious! This morning we
+came down from the Calaveras Big Tree Grove, and the trees are nothing
+to it.” After making this curious comparison they hastened sunward, the
+guide promising to join us shortly on the bank of a deep pool, where we
+were to wait for him. This is a charming little lakelet of unknown
+depth, never yet stirred by a breeze, and its eternal calm excites the
+imagination even more profoundly than the silvery lakes of the glaciers
+rimmed with meadows and snow and reflecting sublime mountains.
+
+Our guide, a jolly, rollicking Italian, led us into the heart of the
+hill, up and down, right and left, from chamber to chamber more and
+more magnificent, all a-glitter like a glacier cave with icicle-like
+stalactites and stalagmites combined in forms of indescribable beauty.
+We were shown one large room that was occasionally used as a
+dancing-hall; another that was used as a chapel, with natural pulpit
+and crosses and pews, sermons in every stone, where a priest had said
+mass. Mass-saying is not so generally developed in connection with
+natural wonders as dancing. One of the first conceits excited by the
+giant Sequoias was to cut one of them down and dance on its stump. We
+have also seen dancing in the spray of Niagara; dancing in the famous
+Bower Cave above Coulterville; and nowhere have I seen so much dancing
+as in Yosemite. A dance on the inaccessible South Dome would likely
+follow the making of an easy way to the top of it.
+
+It was delightful to witness here the infinite deliberation of Nature,
+and the simplicity of her methods in the production of such mighty
+results, such perfect repose combined with restless enthusiastic
+energy. Though cold and bloodless as a landscape of polar ice, building
+was going on in the dark with incessant activity. The archways and
+ceilings were everywhere hung with down-growing crystals, like inverted
+groves of leafless saplings, some of them large, others delicately
+attenuated, each tipped with a single drop of water, like the terminal
+bud of a pine-tree. The only appreciable sounds were the dripping and
+tinkling of water failing into pools or faintly plashing on the crystal
+floors.
+
+In some places the crystal decorations are arranged in graceful flowing
+folds deeply plicated like stiff silken drapery. In others straight
+lines of the ordinary stalactite forms are combined with reference to
+size and tone in a regularly graduated system like the strings of a
+harp with musical tones corresponding thereto; and on these stone harps
+we played by striking the crystal strings with a stick. The delicious
+liquid tones they gave forth seemed perfectly divine as they sweetly
+whispered and wavered through the majestic halls and died away in
+faintest cadence,—the music of fairy-land. Here we lingered and
+reveled, rejoicing to find so much music in stony silence, so much
+splendor in darkness, so many mansions in the depths of the mountains,
+buildings ever in process of construction, yet ever finished,
+developing from perfection to perfection, profusion without
+overabundance; every particle visible or invisible in glorious motion,
+marching to the music of the spheres in a region regarded as the abode
+of eternal stillness and death.
+
+The outer chambers of mountain caves are frequently selected as homes
+by wild beasts. In the Sierra, however, they seem to prefer homes and
+hiding-places in chaparral and beneath shelving precipices, as I have
+never seen their tracks in any of the caves. This is the more
+remarkable because notwithstanding the darkness and oozing water there
+is nothing uncomfortably cellar-like or sepulchral about them.
+
+When we emerged into the bright landscapes of the sun everything looked
+brighter, and we felt our faith in Nature’s beauty strengthened, and
+saw more clearly that beauty is universal and immortal, above, beneath,
+on land and sea, mountain and plain, in heat and cold, light and
+darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+THE BEE-PASTURES
+
+
+When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its
+entire length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy
+Sierra to the ocean.
+
+Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin
+wilderness—through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers,
+along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain,
+park and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the
+mountains—throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber
+line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish, abundance. Here they grew more or
+less apart in special sheets and patches of no great size, there in
+broad, flowing folds hundreds of miles in length—zones of polleny
+forests, zones of flowery chaparral, stream-tangles of rubus and wild
+rose, sheets of golden composite, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds
+of bryanthus and clover, and so on, certain species blooming somewhere
+all the year round.
+
+But of late years plows and sheep have made sad havoc in these glorious
+pastures, destroying tens of thousands of the flowery acres like a
+fire, and banishing many species of the best honey-plants to rocky
+cliffs and fence-corners, while, on the other hand, cultivation thus
+far has given no adequate compensation, at least in kind; only acres of
+alfalfa for miles of the richest wild pasture, ornamental roses and
+honeysuckles around cottage doors for cascades of wild roses in the
+dells, and small, square orchards and orange-groves for broad
+mountain-belts of chaparral.
+
+The Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March,
+April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so
+marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a
+distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred
+flowers at every step. Mints, gilias, nemophilas, castilleias, and
+innumerable compositae were so crowded together that, had ninety-nine
+per cent. of them been taken away, the plain would still have seemed to
+any but Californians extravagantly flowery. The radiant, honeyful
+corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another,
+glowed in the living light like a sunset sky—one sheet of purple and
+gold, with the bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it from
+the north, the San Joaquin from the south, and their many tributaries
+sweeping in at right angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into
+sections fringed with trees.
+
+Along the rivers there is a strip of bottom-land, countersunk beneath
+the general level, and wider toward the foot-hills, where magnificent
+oaks, from three to eight feet in diameter, cast grateful masses of
+shade over the open, prairie-like levels. And close along the water’s
+edge there was a fine jungle of tropical luxuriance, composed of
+wild-rose and bramble bushes and a great variety of climbing vines,
+wreathing and interlacing the branches and trunks of willows and
+alders, and swinging across from summit to summit in heavy festoons.
+Here the wild bees reveled in fresh bloom long after the flowers of the
+drier plain had withered and gone to seed. And in midsummer, when the
+“blackberries” were ripe, the Indians came from the mountains to
+feast—men, women, and babies in long, noisy trains, often joined by the
+farmers of the neighborhood, who gathered this wild fruit with
+commendable appreciation of its superior flavor, while their home
+orchards were full of ripe peaches, apricots, nectarines, and figs, and
+their vineyards were laden with grapes. But, though these luxuriant,
+shaggy river-beds were thus distinct from the smooth, treeless plain,
+they made no heavy dividing lines in general views. The whole appeared
+as one continuous sheet of bloom bounded only by the mountains.
+
+When I first saw this central garden, the most extensive and regular of
+all the bee-pastures of the State, it seemed all one sheet of plant
+gold, hazy and vanishing in the distance, distinct as a new map along
+the foot-hills at my feet.
+
+Descending the eastern slopes of the Coast Range through beds of gilias
+and lupines, and around many a breezy hillock and bush-crowned
+headland, I at length waded out into the midst of it. All the ground
+was covered, not with grass and green leaves, but with radiant
+corollas, about ankle-deep next the foot-hills, knee-deep or more five
+or six miles out. Here were bahia, madia, madaria, burrielia,
+chrysopsis, corethrogyne, grindelia, etc., growing in close social
+congregations of various shades of yellow, blending finely with the
+purples of clarkia, orthocarpus, and oenothera, whose delicate petals
+were drinking the vital sunbeams without giving back any sparkling
+glow.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA.]
+
+Because so long a period of extreme drought succeeds the rainy season,
+most of the vegetation is composed of annuals, which spring up
+simultaneously, and bloom together at about the same height above the
+ground, the general surface being but slightly ruffled by the taller
+phacelias, pentstemons, and groups of _Salvia carduacea_, the king of
+the mints.
+
+Sauntering in any direction, hundreds of these happy sun-plants brushed
+against my feet at every step, and closed over them as if I were wading
+in liquid gold. The air was sweet with fragrance, the larks sang their
+blessed songs, rising on the wing as I advanced, then sinking out of
+sight in the polleny sod, while myriads of wild bees stirred the lower
+air with their monotonous hum—monotonous, yet forever fresh and sweet
+as every-day sunshine. Hares and spermophiles showed themselves in
+considerable numbers in shallow places, and small bands of antelopes
+were almost constantly in sight, gazing curiously from some slight
+elevation, and then bounding swiftly away with unrivaled grace of
+motion. Yet I could discover no crushed flowers to mark their track,
+nor, indeed, any destructive action of any wild foot or tooth whatever.
+
+The great yellow days circled by uncounted, while I drifted toward the
+north, observing the countless forms of life thronging about me, lying
+down almost anywhere on the approach of night. And what glorious
+botanical beds I had! Oftentimes on awaking I would find several new
+species leaning over me and looking me full in the face, so that my
+studies would begin before rising.
+
+About the first of May I turned eastward, crossing the San Joaquin
+River between the mouths of the Tuolumne and Merced, and by the time I
+had reached the Sierra foot-hills most of the vegetation had gone to
+seed and become as dry as hay.
+
+All the seasons of the great plain are warm or temperate, and
+bee-flowers are never wholly wanting; but the grand springtime—the
+annual resurrection—is governed by the rains, which usually set in
+about the middle of November or the beginning of December. Then the
+seeds, that for six months have lain on the ground dry and fresh as if
+they had been gathered into barns, at once unfold their treasured life.
+The general brown and purple of the ground, and the dead vegetation of
+the preceding year, give place to the green of mosses and liverworts
+and myriads of young leaves. Then one species after another comes into
+flower, gradually overspreading the green with yellow and purple, which
+lasts until May.
+
+The “rainy season” is by no means a gloomy, soggy period of constant
+cloudiness and rain. Perhaps nowhere else in North America, perhaps in
+the world, are the months of December, January, February, and March so
+full of bland, plant-building sunshine. Referring to my notes of the
+winter and spring of 1868-69, every day of which I spent out of doors,
+on that section of the plain lying between the Tuolumne and Merced
+rivers, I find that the first rain of the season fell on December 18th.
+January had only six rainy days—that is, days on which rain fell;
+February three, March five, April three, and May three, completing the
+so-called rainy season, which was about an average one. The ordinary
+rain-storm of this region is seldom very cold or violent. The winds,
+which in settled weather come from the northwest, veer round into the
+opposite direction, the sky fills gradually and evenly with one general
+cloud, from which, the rain falls steadily, often for days in
+succession, at a temperature of about 45° or 50°.
+
+More than seventy-five per cent. of all the rain of this season came
+from the northwest, down the coast over southeastern Alaska, British
+Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, though the local winds of these
+circular storms blow from the southeast. One magnificent local storm
+from the northwest fell on March 21. A massive, round-browed cloud came
+swelling and thundering over the flowery plain in most imposing
+majesty, its bossy front burning white and purple in the full blaze of
+the sun, while warm rain poured from its ample fountains like a
+cataract, beating down flowers and bees, and flooding the dry
+watercourses as suddenly as those of Nevada are flooded by the
+so-called “cloudbursts.” But in less than half an hour not a trace of
+the heavy, mountain-like cloud-structure was left in the sky, and the
+bees were on the wing, as if nothing more gratefully refreshing could
+have been sent them.
+
+By the end of January four species of plants were in flower, and five
+or six mosses had already adjusted their hoods and were in the prime of
+life; but the flowers were not sufficiently numerous as yet to affect
+greatly the general green of the young leaves. Violets made their
+appearance in the first week of February, and toward the end of this
+month the warmer portions of the plain were already golden with myriads
+of the flowers of rayed composite.
+
+This was the full springtime. The sunshine grew warmer and richer, new
+plants bloomed every day; the air became more tuneful with humming
+wings, and sweeter with the fragrance of the opening flowers. Ants and
+ground squirrels were getting ready for their summer work, rubbing
+their benumbed limbs, and sunning themselves on the husk-piles before
+their doors, and spiders were busy mending their old webs, or weaving
+new ones.
+
+In March, the vegetation was more than doubled in depth and color;
+claytonia, calandrinia, a large white gilia, and two nemophilas were in
+bloom, together with a host of yellow composite, tall enough now to
+bend in the wind and show wavering ripples of shade.
+
+In April, plant-life, as a whole, reached its greatest height, and the
+plain, over all its varied surface, was mantled with a close, furred
+plush of purple and golden corollas. By the end of this month, most of
+the species had ripened their seeds, but undecayed, still seemed to be
+in bloom from the numerous corolla-like involucres and whorls of chaffy
+scales of the composite. In May, the bees found in flower only a few
+deep-set liliaceous plants and eriogonums.
+
+June, July, August, and September is the season of rest and sleep,—a
+winter of dry heat,—followed in October by a second outburst of bloom
+at the very driest time of the year. Then, after the shrunken mass of
+leaves and stalks of the dead vegetation crinkle and turn to dust
+beneath the foot, as if it had been baked in an oven, _Hemizonia
+virgata_, a slender, unobtrusive little plant, from six inches to three
+feet high, suddenly makes its appearance in patches miles in extent,
+like a resurrection of the bloom of April. I have counted upward of
+3000 flowers, five eighths of an inch in diameter, on a single plant.
+Both its leaves and stems are so slender as to be nearly invisible, at
+a distance of a few yards, amid so showy a multitude of flowers. The
+ray and disk flowers are both yellow, the stamens purple, and the
+texture of the rays is rich and velvety, like the petals of garden
+pansies. The prevailing wind turns all the heads round to the
+southeast, so that in facing northwestward we have the flowers looking
+us in the face. In my estimation, this little plant, the last born of
+the brilliant host of compositae that glorify the plain, is the most
+interesting of all. It remains in flower until November, uniting with
+two or three species of wiry eriogonums, which continue the floral
+chain around December to the spring flowers of January. Thus, although
+the main bloom and honey season is only about three months long, the
+floral circle, however thin around some of the hot, rainless months, is
+never completely broken.
+
+How long the various species of wild bees have lived in this
+honey-garden, nobody knows; probably ever since the main body of the
+present flora gained possession of the land, toward the close of the
+glacial period. The first brown honey-bees brought to California are
+said to have arrived in San Francisco in March, 1853. A bee-keeper by
+the name of Shelton purchased a lot, consisting of twelve swarms, from
+some one at Aspinwall, who had brought them from New York. When landed
+at San Francisco, all the hives contained live bees, but they finally
+dwindled to one hive, which was taken to San José. The little
+immigrants flourished and multiplied in the bountiful pastures of the
+Santa Clara Valley, sending off three swarms the first season. The
+owner was killed shortly afterward, and in settling up his estate, two
+of the swarms were sold at auction for $105 and $110 respectively.
+Other importations were made, from time to time, by way of the Isthmus,
+and, though great pains were taken to insure success, about one half
+usually died on the way. Four swarms were brought safely across the
+plains in 1859, the hives being placed in the rear end of a wagon,
+which was stopped in the afternoon to allow the bees to fly and feed in
+the floweriest places that were within reach until dark, when the hives
+were closed.
+
+In 1855, two years after the time of the first arrivals from New York,
+a single swarm was brought over from San José, and let fly in the Great
+Central Plain. Bee-culture, however, has never gained much attention
+here, notwithstanding the extraordinary abundance of honey-bloom, and
+the high price of honey during the early years. A few hives are found
+here and there among settlers who chanced to have learned something
+about the business before coming to the State. But sheep, cattle,
+grain, and fruit raising are the chief industries, as they require less
+skill and care, while the profits thus far have been greater. In 1856
+honey sold here at from one and a half to two dollars per pound. Twelve
+years later the price had fallen to twelve and a half cents. In 1868 I
+sat down to dinner with a band of ravenous sheep-shearers at a ranch on
+the San Joaquin, where fifteen or twenty hives were kept, and our host
+advised us not to spare the large pan of honey he had placed on the
+table, as it was the cheapest article he had to offer. In all my walks,
+however, I have never come upon a regular bee-ranch in the Central
+Valley like those so common and so skilfully managed in the southern
+counties of the State. The few pounds of honey and wax produced are
+consumed at home, and are scarcely taken into account among the coarser
+products of the farm. The swarms that escape from their careless owners
+have a weary, perplexing time of it in seeking suitable homes. Most of
+them make their way to the foot-hills of the mountains, or to the trees
+that line the banks of the rivers, where some hollow log or trunk may
+be found. A friend of mine, while out hunting on the San Joaquin, came
+upon an old coon trap, hidden among some tall grass, near the edge of
+the river, upon which he sat down to rest. Shortly afterward his
+attention was attracted to a crowd of angry bees that were flying
+excitedly about his head, when he discovered that he was sitting upon
+their hive, which was found to contain more than 200 pounds of honey.
+Out in the broad, swampy delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin
+rivers, the little wanderers have been known to build their combs in a
+bunch of rushes, or stiff, wiry grass, only slightly protected from the
+weather, and in danger every spring of being carried away by floods.
+They have the advantage, however, of a vast extent of fresh pasture,
+accessible only to themselves.
+
+The present condition of the Grand Central Garden is very different
+from that we have sketched. About twenty years ago, when the gold
+placers had been pretty thoroughly exhausted, the attention of
+fortune-seekers—not home-seekers—was, in great part, turned away from
+the mines to the fertile plains, and many began experiments in a kind
+of restless, wild agriculture. A load of lumber would be hauled to some
+spot on the free wilderness, where water could be easily found, and a
+rude box-cabin built. Then a gang-plow was procured, and a dozen
+mustang ponies, worth ten or fifteen dollars apiece, and with these
+hundreds of acres were stirred as easily as if the land had been under
+cultivation for years, tough, perennial roots being almost wholly
+absent. Thus a ranch was established, and from these bare wooden huts,
+as centers of desolation, the wild flora vanished in ever-widening
+circles. But the arch destroyers are the shepherds, with their flocks
+of hoofed locusts, sweeping over the ground like a fire, and trampling
+down every rod that escapes the plow as completely as if the whole
+plain were a cottage garden-plot without a fence. But notwithstanding
+these destroyers, a thousand swarms of bees may be pastured here for
+every one now gathering honey. The greater portion is still covered
+every season with a repressed growth of bee-flowers, for most of the
+species are annuals, and many of them are not relished by sheep or
+cattle, while the rapidity of their growth enables them to develop and
+mature their seeds before any foot has time to crush them. The ground
+is, therefore, kept sweet, and the race is perpetuated, though only as
+a suggestive shadow of the magnificence of its wildness.
+
+The time will undoubtedly come when the entire area of this noble
+valley will be tilled like a garden, when the fertilizing waters of the
+mountains, now flowing to the sea, will be distributed to every acre,
+giving rise to prosperous towns, wealth, arts, etc. Then, I suppose,
+there will be few left, even among botanists, to deplore the vanished
+primeval flora. In the mean time, the pure waste going on—the wanton
+destruction of the innocents—is a sad sight to see, and the sun may
+well be pitied in being compelled to look on.
+
+The bee-pastures of the Coast Ranges last longer and are more varied
+than those of the great plain, on account of differences of soil and
+climate, moisture, and shade, etc. Some of the mountains are upward of
+4000 feet in height, and small streams, springs, oozy bogs, etc., occur
+in great abundance and variety in the wooded regions, while open parks,
+flooded with sunshine, and hill-girt valleys lying at different
+elevations, each with its own peculiar climate and exposure, possess
+the required conditions for the development of species and families of
+plants widely varied.
+
+Next the plain there is, first, a series of smooth hills, planted with
+a rich and showy vegetation that differs but little from that of the
+plain itself—as if the edge of the plain had been lifted and bent into
+flowing folds, with all its flowers in place, only toned down a little
+as to their luxuriance, and a few new species introduced, such as the
+hill lupines, mints, and gilias. The colors show finely when thus held
+to view on the slopes; patches of red, purple, blue, yellow, and white,
+blending around the edges, the whole appearing at a little distance
+like a map colored in sections.
+
+Above this lies the park and chaparral region, with oaks, mostly
+evergreen, planted wide apart, and blooming shrubs from three to ten
+feet high; manzanita and ceanothus of several species, mixed with
+rhamnus, cercis, pickeringia, cherry, amelanchier, and adenostoma, in
+shaggy, interlocking thickets, and many species of hosackia, clover,
+monardella, castilleia, etc., in the openings.
+
+The main ranges send out spurs somewhat parallel to their axes,
+inclosing level valleys, many of them quite extensive, and containing a
+great profusion of sun-loving bee-flowers in their wild state; but
+these are, in great part, already lost to the bees by cultivation.
+
+Nearer the coast are the giant forests of the redwoods, extending from
+near the Oregon line to Santa Cruz. Beneath the cool, deep shade of
+these majestic trees the ground is occupied by ferns, chiefly
+woodwardia and aspidiums, with only a few flowering plants—oxalis,
+trientalis, erythronium, fritillaria, smilax, and other shade-lovers.
+But all along the redwood belt there are sunny openings on hill-slopes
+looking to the south, where the giant trees stand back, and give the
+ground to the small sunflowers and the bees. Around the lofty redwood
+walls of these little bee-acres there is usually a fringe of Chestnut
+Oak, Laurel, and Madroño, the last of which is a surpassingly beautiful
+tree, and a great favorite with the bees. The trunks of the largest
+specimens are seven or eight feet thick, and about fifty feet high; the
+bark red and chocolate colored, the leaves plain, large, and glossy,
+like those of _Magnolia grandiflora_, while the flowers are
+yellowish-white, and urn-shaped, in well-proportioned panicles, from
+five to ten inches long. When in full bloom, a single tree seems to be
+visited at times by a whole hive of bees at once, and the deep hum of
+such a multitude makes the listener guess that more than the ordinary
+work of honey-winning must be going on.
+
+How perfectly enchanting and care-obliterating are these withdrawn
+gardens of the woods—long vistas opening to the sea—sunshine sifting
+and pouring upon the flowery ground in a tremulous, shifting mosaic, as
+the light-ways in the leafy wall open and close with the swaying
+breeze—shining leaves and flowers, birds and bees, mingling together in
+springtime harmony, and soothing fragrance exhaling from a thousand
+thousand fountains! In these balmy, dissolving days, when the deep
+heart-beats of Nature are felt thrilling rocks and trees and everything
+alike, common business and friends are happily forgotten, and even the
+natural honey-work of bees, and the care of birds for their young, and
+mothers for their children, seem slightly out of place.
+
+To the northward, in Humboldt and the adjacent counties, whole
+hillsides are covered with rhododendron, making a glorious melody of
+bee-bloom in the spring. And the Western azalea, hardly less flowery,
+grows in massy thickets three to eight feet high around the edges of
+groves and woods as far south as San Luis Obispo, usually accompanied
+by manzanita; while the valleys, with their varying moisture and shade,
+yield a rich variety of the smaller honey-flowers, such as mentha,
+lycopus, micromeria, audibertia, trichostema, and other mints; with
+vaccinium, wild strawberry, geranium, calais, and goldenrod; and in the
+cool glens along the stream-banks, where the shade of trees is not too
+deep, spiraea, dog-wood, heteromeles, and calycanthus, and many species
+of rubus form interlacing tangles, some portion of which continues in
+bloom for months.
+
+Though the coast region was the first to be invaded and settled by
+white men, it has suffered less from a bee point of view than either of
+the other main divisions, chiefly, no doubt, because of the unevenness
+of the surface, and because it is owned and protected instead of lying
+exposed to the flocks of the wandering “sheepmen.” These remarks apply
+more particularly to the north half of the coast. Farther south there
+is less moisture, less forest shade, and the honey flora is less
+varied.
+
+The Sierra region is the largest of the three main divisions of the
+bee-lands of the State, and the most regularly varied in its
+subdivisions, owing to their gradual rise from the level of the Central
+Plain to the alpine summits. The foot-hill region is about as dry and
+sunful, from the end of May until the setting in of the winter rains,
+as the plain. There are no shady forests, no damp glens, at all like
+those lying at the same elevations in the Coast Mountains. The social
+compositae of the plain, with a few added species, form the bulk of the
+herbaceous portion of the vegetation up to a height of 1500 feet or
+more, shaded lightly here and there with oaks and Sabine Pines, and
+interrupted by patches of ceanothus and buckeye. Above this, and just
+below the forest region, there is a dark, heath-like belt of chaparral,
+composed almost exclusively of _Adenostoma fasciculata_, a bush
+belonging to the rose family, from five to eight feet high, with small,
+round leaves in fascicles, and bearing a multitude of small white
+flowers in panicles on the ends of the upper branches. Where it occurs
+at all, it usually covers all the ground with a close, impenetrable
+growth, scarcely broken for miles.
+
+Up through the forest region, to a height of about 9000 feet above
+sea-level, there are ragged patches of manzanita, and five or six
+species of ceanothus, called deer-brush or California lilac. These are
+the most important of all the honey-bearing bushes of the Sierra.
+_Chamaebatia foliolosa_, a little shrub about a foot high, with flowers
+like the strawberry, makes handsome carpets beneath the pines, and
+seems to be a favorite with the bees; while pines themselves furnish
+unlimited quantities of pollen and honey-dew. The product of a single
+tree, ripening its pollen at the right time of year, would be
+sufficient for the wants of a whole hive. Along the streams there is a
+rich growth of lilies, larkspurs, pedicularis, castilleias, and clover.
+The alpine region contains the flowery glacier meadows, and countless
+small gardens in all sorts of places full of potentilla of several
+species, spraguea, ivesia, epilobium, and goldenrod, with beds of
+bryanthus and the charming cassiope covered with sweet bells. Even the
+tops of the mountains are blessed with flowers,—dwarf phlox,
+polemonium, ribes, hulsea, etc. I have seen wild bees and butterflies
+feeding at a height of 13,000 feet above the sea. Many, however, that
+go up these dangerous heights never come down again. Some, undoubtedly,
+perish in storms, and I have found thousands lying dead or benumbed on
+the surface of the glaciers, to which they had perhaps been attracted
+by the white glare, taking them for beds of bloom.
+
+From swarms that escaped their owners in the lowlands, the honey-bee is
+now generally distributed throughout the whole length of the Sierra, up
+to an elevation of 8000 feet above sea-level. At this height they
+flourish without care, though the snow every winter is deep. Even
+higher than this several bee-trees have been cut which contained over
+200 pounds of honey.
+
+The destructive action of sheep has not been so general on the mountain
+pastures as on those of the great plain, but in many places it has been
+more complete, owing to the more friable character of the soil, and its
+sloping position. The slant digging and down-raking action of hoofs on
+the steeper slopes of moraines has uprooted and buried many of the
+tender plants from year to year, without allowing them time to mature
+their seeds. The shrubs, too, are badly bitten, especially the various
+species of ceanothus. Fortunately, neither sheep nor cattle care to
+feed on the manzanita, spiraea, or adenostoma; and these fine
+honey-bushes are too stiff and tall, or grow in places too rough and
+inaccessible, to be trodden under foot. Also the cañon walls and
+gorges, which form so considerable a part of the area of the range,
+while inaccessible to domestic sheep, are well fringed with
+honey-shrubs, and contain thousands of lovely bee-gardens, lying hid in
+narrow side-cañons and recesses fenced with avalanche taluses, and on
+the top of flat, projecting headlands, where only bees would think to
+look for them.
+
+But, on the other hand, a great portion of the woody plants that escape
+the feet and teeth of the sheep are destroyed by the shepherds by means
+of running fires, which are set everywhere during the dry autumn for
+the purpose of burning off the old fallen trunks and underbrush, with a
+view to improving the pastures, and making more open ways for the
+flocks. These destructive sheep-fires sweep through nearly the entire
+forest belt of the range, from one extremity to the other, consuming
+not only the underbrush, but the young trees and seedlings on which the
+permanence of the forests depends; thus setting in motion a long train
+of evils which will certainly reach far beyond bees and beekeepers.
+
+[Illustration: WILD BEE GARDEN.]
+
+The plow has not yet invaded the forest region to any appreciable
+extent, neither has it accomplished much in the foot-hills. Thousands
+of bee-ranches might be established along the margin of the plain, and
+up to a height of 4000 feet, wherever water could be obtained. The
+climate at this elevation admits of the making of permanent homes, and
+by moving the hives to higher pastures as the lower pass out of bloom,
+the annual yield of honey would be nearly doubled. The foot-hill
+pastures, as we have seen, fail about the end of May, those of the
+chaparral belt and lower forests are in full bloom in June, those of
+the upper and alpine region in July, August, and September. In
+Scotland, after the best of the Lowland bloom is past, the bees are
+carried in carts to the Highlands, and set free on the heather hills.
+In France, too, and in Poland, they are carried from pasture to pasture
+among orchards and fields in the same way, and along the rivers in
+barges to collect the honey of the delightful vegetation of the banks.
+In Egypt they are taken far up the Nile, and floated slowly home again,
+gathering the honey-harvest of the various fields on the way, timing
+their movements in accord with the seasons. Were similar methods
+pursued in California the productive season would last nearly all the
+year.
+
+The average elevation of the north half of the Sierra is, as we have
+seen, considerably less than that of the south half, and small streams,
+with the bank and meadow gardens dependent upon them, are less
+abundant. Around the head waters of the Yuba, Feather, and Pitt rivers,
+the extensive tablelands of lava are sparsely planted with pines,
+through which the sunshine reaches the ground with little interruption.
+Here flourishes a scattered, tufted growth of golden applopappus,
+linosyris, bahia, wyetheia, arnica, artemisia, and similar plants; with
+manzanita, cherry, plum, and thorn in ragged patches on the cooler
+hill-slopes. At the extremities of the Great Central Plain, the Sierra
+and Coast Ranges curve around and lock together in a labyrinth of
+mountains and valleys, throughout which their floras are mingled,
+making at the north, with its temperate climate and copious rainfall, a
+perfect paradise for bees, though, strange to say, scarcely a single
+regular bee-ranch has yet been established in it.
+
+Of all the upper flower fields of the Sierra, Shasta is the most
+honeyful, and may yet surpass in fame the celebrated honey hills of
+Hybla and hearthy Hymettus. Regarding this noble mountain from a bee
+point of view, encircled by its many climates, and sweeping aloft from
+the torrid plain into the frosty azure, we find the first 5000 feet
+from the summit generally snow-clad, and therefore about as honeyless
+as the sea. The base of this arctic region is girdled by a belt of
+crumbling lava measuring about 1000 feet in vertical breadth, and is
+mostly free from snow in summer. Beautiful lichens enliven the faces of
+the cliffs with their bright colors, and in some of the warmer nooks
+there are a few tufts of alpine daisies, wall-flowers and pentstemons;
+but, notwithstanding these bloom freely in the late summer, the zone as
+a whole is almost as honeyless as the icy summit, and its lower edge
+may be taken as the honey-line. Immediately below this comes the forest
+zone, covered with a rich growth of conifers, chiefly Silver Firs, rich
+in pollen and honey-dew, and diversified with countless garden
+openings, many of them less than a hundred yards across. Next, in
+orderly succession, comes the great bee zone. Its area far surpasses
+that of the icy summit and both the other zones combined, for it goes
+sweeping majestically around the entire mountain, with a breadth of six
+or seven miles and a circumference of nearly a hundred miles.
+
+Shasta, as we have already seen, is a fire-mountain created by a
+succession of eruptions of ashes and molten lava, which, flowing over
+the lips of its several craters, grew outward and upward like the trunk
+of a knotty exogenous tree. Then followed a strange contrast. The
+glacial winter came on, loading the cooling mountain with ice, which
+flowed slowly outward in every direction, radiating from the summit in
+the form of one vast conical glacier—a down-crawling mantle of ice upon
+a fountain of smoldering fire, crushing and grinding for centuries its
+brown, flinty lavas with incessant activity, and thus degrading and
+remodeling the entire mountain. When, at length, the glacial period
+began to draw near its close, the ice-mantle was gradually melted off
+around the bottom, and, in receding and breaking into its present
+fragmentary condition, irregular rings and heaps of moraine matter were
+stored upon its flanks. The glacial erosion of most of the Shasta lavas
+produces detritus, composed of rough, sub-angular boulders of moderate
+size and of porous gravel and sand, which yields freely to the
+transporting power of running water. Magnificent floods from the ample
+fountains of ice and snow working with sublime energy upon this
+prepared glacial detritus, sorted it out and carried down immense
+quantities from the higher slopes, and reformed it in smooth,
+delta-like beds around the base; and it is these flood-beds joined
+together that now form the main honey-zone of the old volcano.
+
+Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, has Mother
+Nature accomplished her beneficent designs—now a flood of fire, now a
+flood of ice, now a flood of water; and at length an outburst of
+organic life, a milky way of snowy petals and wings, girdling the
+rugged mountain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams beating
+against its sides had broken into a foam of plant-bloom and bees, as
+sea-waves break and bloom on a rock shore.
+
+In this flowery wilderness the bees rove and revel, rejoicing in the
+bounty of the sun, clambering eagerly through bramble and hucklebloom,
+ringing the myriad bells of the manzanita, now humming aloft among
+polleny willows and firs, now down on the ashy ground among gilias and
+buttercups, and anon plunging deep into snowy banks of cherry and
+buckthorn. They consider the lilies and roll into them, and, like
+lilies, they toil not, for they are impelled by sun-power, as
+water-wheels by water-power; and when the one has plenty of
+high-pressure water, the other plenty of sunshine, they hum and quiver
+alike. Sauntering in the Shasta bee-lands in the sun-days of summer,
+one may readily infer the time of day from the comparative energy of
+bee-movements alone—drowsy and moderate in the cool of the morning,
+increasing in energy with the ascending sun, and, at high noon,
+thrilling and quivering in wild ecstasy, then gradually declining again
+to the stillness of night. In my excursions among the glaciers I
+occasionally meet bees that are hungry, like mountaineers who venture
+too far and remain too long above the bread-line; then they droop and
+wither like autumn leaves. The Shasta bees are perhaps better fed than
+any others in the Sierra. Their field-work is one perpetual feast; but,
+however exhilarating the sunshine or bountiful the supply of flowers,
+they are always dainty feeders. Humming-moths and hummingbirds seldom
+set foot upon a flower, but poise on the wing in front of it, and reach
+forward as if they were sucking through straws. But bees, though, as
+dainty as they, hug their favorite flowers with profound cordiality,
+and push their blunt, polleny faces against them, like babies on their
+mother’s bosom. And fondly, too, with eternal love, does Mother Nature
+clasp her small bee-babies, and suckle them, multitudes at once, on her
+warm Shasta breast.
+
+Besides the common honey-bee there are many other species here—fine
+mossy, burly fellows, who were nourished on the mountains thousands of
+sunny seasons before the advent of the domestic species. Among these
+are the bumblebees, mason-bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters.
+Butterflies, too, and moths of every size and pattern; some
+broad-winged like bats, flapping slowly, and sailing in easy curves;
+others like small, flying violets, shaking about loosely in short,
+crooked flights close to the flowers, feasting luxuriously night and
+day. Great numbers of deer also delight to dwell in the brushy portions
+of the bee-pastures.
+
+Bears, too, roam the sweet wilderness, their blunt, shaggy forms
+harmonizing well with the trees and tangled bushes, and with the bees,
+also, notwithstanding the disparity in size. They are fond of all good
+things, and enjoy them to the utmost, with but little troublesome
+discrimination—flowers and leaves as well as berries, and the bees
+themselves as well as their honey. Though the California bears have as
+yet had but little experience with honeybees, they often succeed in
+reaching their bountiful stores, and it seems doubtful whether bees
+themselves enjoy honey with so great a relish. By means of their
+powerful teeth and claws they can gnaw and tear open almost any hive
+conveniently accessible. Most honey-bees, however, in search of a home
+are wise enough to make choice of a hollow in a living tree, a
+considerable distance above the ground, when such places are to be had;
+then they are pretty secure, for though the smaller black and brown
+bears climb well, they are unable to break into strong hives while
+compelled to exert themselves to keep from falling, and at the same
+time to endure the stings of the fighting bees without having their
+paws free to rub them off. But woe to the black bumblebees discovered
+in their mossy nests in the ground! With a few strokes of their huge
+paws the bears uncover the entire establishment, and, before time is
+given for a general buzz, bees old and young, larvae, honey, stings,
+nest, and all are taken in one ravishing mouthful.
+
+Not the least influential of the agents concerned in the superior
+sweetness of the Shasta flora are its storms—storms I mean that are
+strictly local, bred and born on the mountain. The magical rapidity
+with which they are grown on the mountain-top, and bestow their charity
+in rain and snow, never fails to astonish the inexperienced lowlander.
+Often in calm, glowing days, while the bees are still on the wing, a
+storm-cloud may be seen far above in the pure ether, swelling its pearl
+bosses, and growing silently, like a plant. Presently a clear, ringing
+discharge of thunder is heard, followed by a rush of wind that comes
+sounding over the bending woods like the roar of the ocean, mingling
+raindrops, snow-flowers, honey-flowers, and bees in wild storm harmony.
+
+Still more impressive are the warm, reviving days of spring in the
+mountain pastures. The blood of the plants throbbing beneath the
+life-giving sunshine seems to be heard and felt. Plant growth goes on
+before our eyes, and every tree in the woods, and every bush and flower
+is seen as a hive of restless industry. The deeps of the sky are
+mottled with singing wings of every tone and color; clouds of brilliant
+chrysididae dancing and swirling in exquisite rhythm, golden-barred
+vespidae, dragon-flies, butterflies, grating cicadas, and jolly,
+rattling grasshoppers, fairly enameling the light.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.—WHITE SAGE.]
+
+On bright, crisp mornings a striking optical effect may frequently be
+observed from the shadows of the higher mountains while the sunbeams
+are pouring past overhead. Then every insect, no matter what may be its
+own proper color, burns white in the light. Gauzy-winged hymenoptera,
+moths, jet-black beetles, all are transfigured alike in pure, spiritual
+white, like snowflakes.
+
+In Southern California, where bee-culture has had so much skilful
+attention of late years, the pasturage is not more abundant, or more
+advantageously varied as to the number of its honey-plants and their
+distribution over mountain and plain, than that of many other portions
+of the State where the industrial currents flow in other channels. The
+famous White Sage (_Audibertia_), belonging to the mint family,
+flourishes here in all its glory, blooming in May, and yielding great
+quantities of clear, pale honey, which is greatly prized in every
+market it has yet reached. This species grows chiefly in the valleys
+and low hills. The Black Sage on the mountains is part of a dense,
+thorny chaparral, which is composed chiefly of adenostoma, ceanothus,
+manzanita, and cherry—not differing greatly from that of the southern
+portion of the Sierra, but more dense and continuous, and taller, and
+remaining longer in bloom. Stream-side gardens, so charming a feature
+of both the Sierra and Coast Mountains, are less numerous in Southern
+California, but they are exceedingly rich in honey-flowers, wherever
+found,—melilotus, columbine, collinsia, verbena, zauschneria, wild
+rose, honeysuckle, philadelphus, and lilies rising from the warm, moist
+dells in a very storm of exuberance. Wild buckwheat of many species is
+developed in abundance over the dry, sandy valleys and lower slopes of
+the mountains, toward the end of summer, and is, at this time, the main
+dependence of the bees, reinforced here and there by orange groves,
+alfalfa fields, and small home gardens.
+
+The main honey months, in ordinary seasons, are April, May, June, July,
+and August; while the other months are usually flowery enough to yield
+sufficient for the bees.
+
+According to Mr. J.T. Gordon, President of the Los Angeles County
+Bee-keepers’ Association, the first bees introduced into the county
+were a single hive, which cost $150 in San Francisco, and arrived in
+September, 1854.[1] In April, of the following year, this hive sent out
+two swarms, which were sold for $100 each. From this small beginning
+the bees gradually multiplied to about 3000 swarms in the year 1873. In
+1876 it was estimated that there were between 15,000 and 20,000 hives
+in the county, producing an annual yield of about 100 pounds to the
+hive—in some exceptional cases, a much greater yield.
+
+In San Diego County, at the beginning of the season of 1878, there were
+about 24,000 hives, and the shipments from the one port of San Diego
+for the same year, from July 17 to November 10, were 1071 barrels,
+15,544 cases, and nearly 90 tons. The largest bee-ranches have about a
+thousand hives, and are carefully and skilfully managed, every
+scientific appliance of merit being brought into use. There are few
+bee-keepers, however, who own half as many as this, or who give their
+undivided attention to the business. Orange culture, at present, is
+heavily overshadowing every other business.
+
+A good many of the so-called bee-ranches of Los Angeles and San Diego
+counties are still of the rudest pioneer kind imaginable. A man
+unsuccessful in everything else hears the interesting story of the
+profits and comforts of bee-keeping, and concludes to try it; he buys a
+few colonies, or gets them, from some overstocked ranch on shares,
+takes them back to the foot of some cañon, where the pasturage is
+fresh, squats on the land, with, or without, the permission of the
+owner, sets up his hives, makes a box-cabin for himself, scarcely
+bigger than a bee-hive, and awaits his fortune.
+
+Bees suffer sadly from famine during the dry years which occasionally
+occur in the southern and middle portions of the State. If the rainfall
+amounts only to three or four inches, instead of from twelve to twenty,
+as in ordinary seasons, then sheep and cattle die in thousands, and so
+do these small, winged cattle, unless they are carefully fed, or
+removed to other pastures. The year 1877 will long be remembered as
+exceptionally rainless and distressing. Scarcely a flower bloomed on
+the dry valleys away from the stream-sides, and not a single
+grain-field depending upon rain was reaped. The seed only sprouted,
+came up a little way, and withered. Horses, cattle, and sheep grew
+thinner day by day, nibbling at bushes and weeds, along the shallowing
+edges of streams, many of which were dried up altogether, for the first
+time since the settlement of the country.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE.
+CARDINAL FLOWER.]
+
+In the course of a trip I made during the summer of that year through
+Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles
+counties, the deplorable effects of the drought were everywhere
+visible—leafless fields, dead and dying cattle, dead bees, and
+half-dead people with dusty, doleful faces. Even the birds and
+squirrels were in distress, though their suffering was less painfully
+apparent than that of the poor cattle. These were falling one by one in
+slow, sure starvation along the banks of the hot, sluggish streams,
+while thousands of buzzards correspondingly fat were sailing above
+them, or standing gorged on the ground beneath the trees, waiting with
+easy faith for fresh carcasses. The quails, prudently considering the
+hard times, abandoned all thought of pairing. They were too poor to
+marry, and so continued in flocks all through the year without
+attempting to rear young. The ground-squirrels, though an exceptionally
+industrious and enterprising race, as every farmer knows, were hard
+pushed for a living; not a fresh leaf or seed was to be found save in
+the trees, whose bossy masses of dark green foliage presented a
+striking contrast to the ashen baldness of the ground beneath them. The
+squirrels, leaving their accustomed feeding-grounds, betook themselves
+to the leafy oaks to gnaw out the acorn stores of the provident
+woodpeckers, but the latter kept up a vigilant watch upon their
+movements. I noticed four woodpeckers in league against one squirrel,
+driving the poor fellow out of an oak that they claimed. He dodged
+round the knotty trunk from side to side, as nimbly as he could in his
+famished condition, only to find a sharp bill everywhere. But the fate
+of the bees that year seemed the saddest of all. In different portions
+of Los Angeles and San Diego counties, from one half to three fourths
+of them died of sheer starvation. Not less than 18,000 colonies
+perished in these two counties alone, while in the adjacent counties
+the death-rate was hardly less.
+
+[Illustration: WILD BUCKWHEAT.—A BEE RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS.]
+
+Even the colonies nearest to the mountains suffered this year, for the
+smaller vegetation on the foot-hills was affected by the drought almost
+as severely as that of the valleys and plains, and even the hardy,
+deep-rooted chaparral, the surest dependence of the bees, bloomed
+sparingly, while much of it was beyond reach. Every swarm could have
+been saved, however, by promptly supplying them with food when their
+own stores began to fail, and before they became enfeebled and
+discouraged; or by cutting roads back into the mountains, and taking
+them into the heart of the flowery chaparral. The Santa Lucia, San
+Rafael, San Gabriel, San Jacinto, and San Bernardino ranges are almost
+untouched as yet save by the wild bees. Some idea of their resources,
+and of the advantages and disadvantages they offer to bee-keepers, may
+be formed from an excursion that I made into the San Gabriel Range
+about the beginning of August of “the dry year.” This range, containing
+most of the characteristic features of the other ranges just mentioned,
+overlooks the Los Angeles vineyards and orange groves from the north,
+and is more rigidly inaccessible in the ordinary meaning of the word
+than any other that I ever attempted to penetrate. The slopes are
+exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot, and they are covered with
+thorny bushes from five to ten feet high. With the exception of little
+spots not visible in general views, the entire surface is covered with
+them, massed in close hedge growth, sweeping gracefully down into every
+gorge and hollow, and swelling over every ridge and summit in shaggy,
+ungovernable exuberance, offering more honey to the acre for half the
+year than the most crowded clover-field. But when beheld from the open
+San Gabriel Valley, beaten with dry sunshine, all that was seen of the
+range seemed to wear a forbidding aspect. From base to summit all
+seemed gray, barren, silent, its glorious chaparral appearing like dry
+moss creeping over its dull, wrinkled ridges and hollows.
+
+Setting out from Pasadena, I reached the foot of the range about
+sundown; and being weary and heated with my walk across the shadeless
+valley, concluded to camp for the night. After resting a few moments, I
+began to look about among the flood-boulders of Eaton Creek for a
+camp-ground, when I came upon a strange, dark-looking man who had been
+chopping cord-wood. He seemed surprised at seeing me, so I sat down
+with him on the live-oak log he had been cutting, and made haste to
+give a reason for my appearance in his solitude, explaining that I was
+anxious to find out something about the mountains, and meant to make my
+way up Eaton Creek next morning. Then he kindly invited me to camp with
+him, and led me to his little cabin, situated at the foot of the
+mountains, where a small spring oozes out of a bank overgrown with
+wild-rose bushes. After supper, when the daylight was gone, he
+explained that he was out of candles; so we sat in the dark, while he
+gave me a sketch of his life in a mixture of Spanish and English. He
+was born in Mexico, his father Irish, his mother Spanish. He had been a
+miner, rancher, prospector, hunter, etc., rambling always, and wearing
+his life away in mere waste; but now he was going to settle down. His
+past life, he said, was of “no account,” but the future was promising.
+He was going to “make money and marry a Spanish woman.” People mine
+here for water as for gold. He had been running a tunnel into a spur of
+the mountain back of his cabin. “My prospect is good,” he said, “and if
+I chance to strike a good, strong flow, I’ll soon be worth $5000 or
+$10,000. For that flat out there,” referring to a small, irregular
+patch of bouldery detritus, two or three acres in size, that had been
+deposited by Eaton Creek during some flood season,—“that flat is large
+enough for a nice orange-grove, and the bank behind the cabin will do
+for a vineyard, and after watering my own trees and vines I will have
+some water left to sell to my neighbors below me, down the valley. And
+then,” he continued, “I can keep bees, and make money that way, too,
+for the mountains above here are just full of honey in the summer-time,
+and one of my neighbors down here says that he will let me have a whole
+lot of hives, on shares, to start with. You see I’ve a good thing; I’m
+all right now.” All this prospective affluence in the sunken,
+boulder-choked flood-bed of a mountain-stream! Leaving the bees out of
+the count, most fortune-seekers would as soon think of settling on the
+summit of Mount Shasta. Next morning, wishing my hopeful entertainer
+good luck, I set out on my shaggy excursion.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT, SPANISH BAYONET.]
+
+About half an hour’s walk above the cabin, I came to “The Fall,” famous
+throughout the valley settlements as the finest yet discovered in the
+San Gabriel Mountains. It is a charming little thing, with a low, sweet
+voice, singing like a bird, as it pours from a notch in a short ledge,
+some thirty-five or forty feet into a round mirror-pool. The face of
+the cliff back of it, and on both sides, is smoothly covered and
+embossed with mosses, against which the white water shines out in showy
+relief, like a silver instrument in a velvet case. Hither come the San
+Gabriel lads and lassies, to gather ferns and dabble away their hot
+holidays in the cool water, glad to escape from their commonplace
+palm-gardens and orange-groves. The delicate maidenhair grows on
+fissured rocks within reach of the spray, while broad-leaved maples and
+sycamores cast soft, mellow shade over a rich profusion of bee-flowers,
+growing among boulders in front of the pool—the fall, the flowers, the
+bees, the ferny rocks, and leafy shade forming a charming little poem
+of wildness, the last of a series extending down the flowery slopes of
+Mount San Antonio through the rugged, foam-beaten bosses of the main
+Eaton Canon.
+
+From the base of the fall I followed the ridge that forms the western
+rim of the Eaton basin to the summit of one of the principal peaks,
+which is about 5000 feet above sea-level. Then, turning eastward, I
+crossed the middle of the basin, forcing a way over its many
+subordinate ridges and across its eastern rim, having to contend almost
+everywhere with the floweriest and most impenetrable growth of
+honey-bushes I had ever encountered since first my mountaineering
+began. Most of the Shasta chaparral is leafy nearly to the ground; here
+the main stems are naked for three or four feet, and interspiked with
+dead twigs, forming a stiff _chevaux de frise_ through which even the
+bears make their way with difficulty. I was compelled to creep for
+miles on all fours, and in following the bear-trails often found tufts
+of hair on the bushes where they had forced themselves through.
+
+For 100 feet or so above the fall the ascent was made possible only by
+tough cushions of club-moss that clung to the rock. Above this the
+ridge weathers away to a thin knife-blade for a few hundred yards, and
+thence to the summit of the range it carries a bristly mane of
+chaparral. Here and there small openings occur on rocky places,
+commanding fine views across the cultivated valley to the ocean. These
+I found by the tracks were favorite outlooks and resting-places for the
+wild animals—bears, wolves, foxes, wildcats, etc.—which abound here,
+and would have to be taken into account in the establishment of
+bee-ranches. In the deepest thickets I found wood-rat villages—groups
+of huts four to six feet high, built of sticks and leaves in rough,
+tapering piles, like musk-rat cabins. I noticed a good many bees, too,
+most of them wild. The tame honey-bees seemed languid and wing-weary,
+as if they had come all the way up from the flowerless valley.
+
+After reaching the summit I had time to make only a hasty survey of the
+basin, now glowing in the sunset gold, before hastening down into one
+of the tributary cañons in search, of water. Emerging from a
+particularly tedious breadth of chaparral, I found myself free and
+erect in a beautiful park-like grove of Mountain Live Oak, where the
+ground was planted with aspidiums and brier-roses, while the glossy
+foliage made a close canopy overhead, leaving the gray dividing trunks
+bare to show the beauty of their interlacing arches. The bottom of the
+cañon was dry where I first reached it, but a bunch of scarlet mimulus
+indicated water at no great distance, and I soon discovered about a
+bucketful in a hollow of the rock. This, however, was full of dead
+bees, wasps, beetles, and leaves, well steeped and simmered, and would,
+therefore, require boiling and filtering through fresh charcoal before
+it could be made available. Tracing the dry channel about a mile
+farther down to its junction with a larger tributary cañon, I at length
+discovered a lot of boulder pools, clear as crystal, brimming full, and
+linked together by glistening streamlets just strong enough to sing
+audibly. Flowers in full bloom adorned their margins, lilies ten feet
+high, larkspur, columbines, and luxuriant ferns, leaning and
+overarching in lavish abundance, while a noble old Live Oak spread its
+rugged arms over all. Here I camped, making my bed on smooth
+cobblestones.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-KEEPER’S CABIN.—BURRIELIA (ABOVE).—MADIA (BELOW).]
+
+Next day, in the channel of a tributary that heads on Mount San
+Antonio, I passed about fifteen or twenty gardens like the one in which
+I slept—lilies in every one of them, in the full pomp of bloom. My
+third camp was made near the middle of the general basin, at the head
+of a long system of cascades from ten to 200 feet high, one following
+the other in close succession down a rocky, inaccessible cañon, making
+a total descent of nearly 1700 feet. Above the cascades the main stream
+passes through a series of open, sunny levels, the largest of which are
+about an acre in size, where the wild bees and their companions were
+feasting on a showy growth of zauschneria, painted cups, and
+monardella; and gray squirrels were busy harvesting the burs of the
+Douglas Spruce, the only conifer I met in the basin.
+
+The eastern slopes of the basin are in every way similar to those we
+have described, and the same may be said of other portions of the
+range. From the highest summit, far as the eye could reach, the
+landscape was one vast bee-pasture, a rolling wilderness of
+honey-bloom, scarcely broken by bits of forest or the rocky outcrops of
+hilltops and ridges.
+
+Behind the San Bernardino Range lies the wild “sage-brush country,”
+bounded on the east by the Colorado River, and extending in a general
+northerly direction to Nevada and along the eastern base of the Sierra
+beyond Mono Lake.
+
+The greater portion of this immense region, including Owen’s Valley,
+Death Valley, and the Sink of the Mohave, the area of which is nearly
+one fifth that of the entire State, is usually regarded as a desert,
+not because of any lack in the soil, but for want of rain, and rivers
+available for irrigation. Very little of it, however, is desert in the
+eyes of a bee.
+
+Looking now over all the available pastures of California, it appears
+that the business of beekeeping is still in its infancy. Even in the
+more enterprising of the southern counties, where so vigorous a
+beginning has been made, less than a tenth of their honey resources
+have as yet been developed; while in the Great Plain, the Coast Ranges,
+the Sierra Nevada, and the northern region about Mount Shasta, the
+business can hardly be said to exist at all. What the limits of its
+developments in the future may be, with the advantages of cheaper
+transportation and the invention of better methods in general, it is
+not easy to guess. Nor, on the other hand, are we able to measure the
+influence on bee interests likely to follow the destruction of the
+forests, now rapidly falling before fire and the ax. As to the sheep
+evil, that can hardly become greater than it is at the present day. In
+short, notwithstanding the wide-spread deterioration and destruction of
+every kind already effected, California, with her incomparable climate
+and flora, is still, as far as I know, the best of all the bee-lands of
+the world.
+
+ [1] Fifteen hives of Italian bees were introduced into Los Angeles
+ County in 1855, and in 1876 they had increased to 500. The marked
+ superiority claimed for them over the common species is now attracting
+ considerable attention.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10012 ***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Mountains of California, by John Muir</title>
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10012 ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="cover" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>The Mountains of California</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by John Muir</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">I THE SIERRA NEVADA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">II THE GLACIERS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">III THE SNOW</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">IV A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">V THE PASSES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">VI THE GLACIER LAKES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">VII THE GLACIER MEADOWS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII THE FORESTS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">IX THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">X A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">XI THE RIVER FLOODS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">XII SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">XIII THE WATER-OUZEL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">XIV THE WILD SHEEP</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">XV IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">XVI THE BEE-PASTURES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus01"></a>
+<img src="images/img01.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="HOOFED LOCUSTS" />
+<p class="caption">HOOFED LOCUSTS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<table summary="" >
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus01">HOOFED LOCUSTS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus02">MOUNT TAMALPAIS&mdash;NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus03">MAP OF THE SIERRA NEVADA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus04">MOUNT SHASTA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus05">MOUNT HOOD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus06">MAP OF THE GLACIER COUNTRY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus07">MOUNT RAINIER; NORTH PUYALLUP GLACIER FROM EAGLE CLIFF</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus08">KOLANA ROCK, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus09">GENERAL GRANT TREE, GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus10">MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus11">MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION BOUNDARY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus12">RANCHERIA FALLS, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus13">VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CAÑON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus14">LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus15">THE DEATH OF A LAKE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus16">SHADOW LAKE (MERCED LAKE), YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus17">VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus18">LAKE STARR KING</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus19">VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus20">EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus21">VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus22">NUT PINE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus23">THE GROVE FORM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus24">LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN CHARACTER OF WOODS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus25">SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus26">YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus27">FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus28">PINUS PONDEROSA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus29">SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus30">INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus31">FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus32">VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus33">SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA GLACIERS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus34">SEQUOIA GIGANTEA. VIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus35">MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAÑON&mdash;YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus36">VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus37">JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus38">STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus39">STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus40">GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus41">A DWARF PINE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus42">OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus43">PATE VALLEY, SHOWING THE OAKS. TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus44">TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE WHEN SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus45">SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus46">TRYING THE BOW</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus47">A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus48">YELLOW PINE AND LIBOCEDRUS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus49">BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus50">WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus51">ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus52">OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus53">THE OUZEL AT HOME</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus54">YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-COUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CAÑON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus55">SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus56">HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus57">HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus58">CROSSING A CAÑON STREAM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus59">WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus60">INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus61">A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus62">WILD BEE GARDEN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus63">IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.&mdash;WHITE SAGE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus64">A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE.&mdash;CARDINAL FLOWER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus65">WILD BUCKWHEAT.&mdash;A BEE-RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus66">A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT.&mdash;SPANISH BAYONET</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus67">A BEE-KEEPER&rsquo;S CABIN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I<br/>
+THE SIERRA NEVADA</h2>
+
+<p>
+Go where you may within the bounds of California, mountains are ever in sight,
+charming and glorifying every landscape. Yet so simple and massive is the
+topography of the State in general views, that the main central portion
+displays only one valley, and two chains of mountains which seem almost
+perfectly regular in trend and height: the Coast Range on the west side, the
+Sierra Nevada on the east. These two ranges coming together in curves on the
+north and south inclose a magnificent basin, with a level floor more than 400
+miles long, and from 35 to 60 miles wide. This is the grand Central Valley of
+California, the waters of which have only one outlet to the sea through the
+Golden Gate. But with this general simplicity of features there is great
+complexity of hidden detail. The Coast Range, rising as a grand green barrier
+against the ocean, from 2000 to 8000 feet high, is composed of innumerable
+forest-crowned spurs, ridges, and rolling hill-waves which inclose a multitude
+of smaller valleys; some looking out through long, forest-lined vistas to the
+sea; others, with but few trees, to the Central Valley; while a thousand others
+yet smaller are embosomed and concealed in mild, round-browed hills, each, with
+its own climate, soil, and productions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Making your way through the mazes of the Coast Range to the summit of any of
+the inner peaks or passes opposite San Francisco, in the clear springtime, the
+grandest and most telling of all California landscapes is outspread before you.
+At your feet lies the great Central Valley glowing golden in the sunshine,
+extending north and south farther than the eye can reach, one smooth, flowery,
+lake-like bed of fertile soil. Along its eastern margin rises the mighty
+Sierra, miles in height, reposing like a smooth, cumulous cloud in the sunny
+sky, and so gloriously colored, and so luminous, it seems to be not clothed
+with light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.
+Along the top, and extending a good way down, you see a pale, pearl-gray belt
+of snow; and below it a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the extension of
+the forests; and along the base of the range a broad belt of rose-purple and
+yellow, where lie the minor&rsquo;s gold-fields and the foot-hill gardens. All
+these colored belts blending smoothly make a wall of light ineffably fine, and
+as beautiful as a rainbow, yet firm as adamant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, from the summit
+of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or plowed as yet,
+was one furred, rich sheet of golden compositae, and the luminous wall of the
+mountains shone in all its glory. Then it seemed to me the Sierra should be
+called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten
+years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its
+glorious floods of light, seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks,
+the noonday radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the
+alpenglow, and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of
+irised spray, it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the
+most divinely beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Sierra is about 500 miles long, 70 miles wide, and from 7000 to nearly
+15,000 feet high. In general views no mark of man is visible on it, nor
+anything to suggest the richness of the life it cherishes, or the depth and
+grandeur of its sculpture. None of its magnificent forest-crowned ridges rises
+much above the general level to publish its wealth. No great valley or lake is
+seen, or river, or group of well-marked features of any kind, standing out in
+distinct pictures. Even the summit-peaks, so clear and high in the sky, seem
+comparatively smooth and featureless. Nevertheless, glaciers are still at work
+in the shadows of the peaks, and thousands of lakes and meadows shine and bloom
+beneath them, and the whole range is furrowed with cañons to a depth of from
+2000 to 5000 feet, in which once flowed majestic glaciers, and in which now
+flow and sing a band of beautiful rivers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though of such stupendous depth, these famous cañons are not raw, gloomy,
+jagged-walled gorges, savage and inaccessible. With rough passages here and
+there they still make delightful pathways for the mountaineer, conducting from
+the fertile lowlands to the highest icy fountains, as a kind of mountain
+streets full of charming life and light, graded and sculptured by the ancient
+glaciers, and presenting, throughout all their courses, a rich variety of novel
+and attractive scenery, the most attractive that has yet been discovered in the
+mountain-ranges of the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In many places, especially in the middle region of the western flank of the
+range, the main cañons widen into spacious valleys or parks, diversified like
+artificial landscape-gardens, with charming groves and meadows, and thickets of
+blooming bushes, while the lofty, retiring walls, infinitely varied in form and
+sculpture, are fringed with ferns, flowering-plants of many species, oaks, and
+evergreens, which find anchorage on a thousand narrow steps and benches; while
+the whole is enlivened and made glorious with rejoicing streams that come
+dancing and foaming over the sunny brows of the cliffs to join the shining
+river that flows in tranquil beauty down the middle of each one of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The walls of these park valleys of the Yosemite kind are made up of rocks
+mountains in size, partly separated from each other by narrow gorges and
+side-cañons; and they are so sheer in front, and so compactly built together on
+a level floor, that, comprehensively seen, the parks they inclose look like
+immense halls or temples lighted from above. Every rock seems to glow with
+life. Some lean back in majestic repose; others, absolutely sheer, or nearly
+so, for thousands of feet, advance their brows in thoughtful attitudes beyond
+their companions, giving welcome to storms and calms alike, seemingly conscious
+yet heedless of everything going on about them, awful in stern majesty, types
+of permanence, yet associated with beauty of the frailest and most fleeting
+forms; their feet set in pine-groves and gay emerald meadows, their brows in
+the sky; bathed in light, bathed in floods of singing water, while snow-clouds,
+avalanches, and the winds shine and surge and wreathe about them as the years
+go by, as if into these mountain mansions Nature had taken pains to gather her
+choicest treasures to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with
+her.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus02"></a>
+<img src="images/img02.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MOUNT TAMALPAIS" />
+<p class="caption">MOUNT TAMALPAIS&mdash;NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Here, too, in the middle region of deepest cañons are the grandest
+forest-trees, the Sequoia, king of conifers, the noble Sugar and Yellow Pines,
+Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, and the Silver Firs, each a giant of its kind,
+assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all other coniferous
+forests in the world, both in the number of its species and in the size and
+beauty of its trees. The winds flow in melody through their colossal spires,
+and they are vocal everywhere with the songs of birds and running water. Miles
+of fragrant ceanothus and manzanita bushes bloom beneath them, and lily gardens
+and meadows, and damp, ferny glens in endless variety of fragrance and color,
+compelling the admiration of every observer. Sweeping on over ridge and valley,
+these noble trees extend a continuous belt from end to end of the range, only
+slightly interrupted by sheer-walled cañons at intervals of about fifteen and
+twenty miles. Here the great burly brown bears delight to roam, harmonizing
+with the brown boles of the trees beneath which they feed. Deer, also, dwell
+here, and find food and shelter in the ceanothus tangles, with a multitude of
+smaller people. Above this region of giants, the trees grow smaller until the
+utmost limit of the timber line is reached on the stormy mountain-slopes at a
+height of from ten to twelve thousand feet above the sea, where the Dwarf Pine
+is so lowly and hard beset by storms and heavy snow, it is pressed into flat
+tangles, over the tops of which we may easily walk. Below the main forest belt
+the trees likewise diminish in size, frost and burning drought repressing and
+blasting alike.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus03"></a>
+<img src="images/img03.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MAP OF THE SIERRA NEVADA" />
+<p class="caption">MAP OF THE SIERRA NEVADA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The rose-purple zone along the base of the range comprehends nearly all the
+famous gold region of California. And here it was that miners from every
+country under the sun assembled in a wild, torrent-like rush to seek their
+fortunes. On the banks of every river, ravine, and gully they have left their
+marks. Every gravel- and boulder-bed has been desperately riddled over and over
+again. But in this region the pick and shovel, once wielded with savage
+enthusiasm, have been laid away, and only quartz-mining is now being carried on
+to any considerable extent. The zone in general is made up of low, tawny,
+waving foot-hills, roughened here and there with brush and trees, and
+outcropping masses of slate, colored gray and red with lichens. The smaller
+masses of slate, rising abruptly from the dry, grassy sod in leaning slabs,
+look like ancient tombstones in a deserted burying-ground. In early spring, say
+from February to April, the whole of this foot-hill belt is a paradise of bees
+and flowers. Refreshing rains then fall freely, birds are busy building their
+nests, and the sunshine is balmy and delightful. But by the end of May the
+soil, plants, and sky seem to have been baked in an oven. Most of the plants
+crumble to dust beneath the foot, and the ground is full of cracks; while the
+thirsty traveler gazes with eager longing through the burning glare to the
+snowy summits looming like hazy clouds in the distance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trees, mostly <i>Quercus Douglasii</i> and <i>Pinus Sabiniana</i>, thirty
+to forty feet high, with thin, pale-green foliage, stand far apart and cast but
+little shade. Lizards glide about on the rocks enjoying a constitution that no
+drought can dry, and ants in amazing numbers, whose tiny sparks of life seem to
+burn the brighter with the increasing heat, ramble industriously in long trains
+in search of food. Crows, ravens, magpies&mdash;friends in
+distress&mdash;gather on the ground beneath the best shade-trees, panting with
+drooping wings and bills wide open, scarce a note from any of them during the
+midday hours. Quails, too, seek the shade during the heat of the day about
+tepid pools in the channels of the larger mid-river streams. Rabbits scurry
+from thicket to thicket among the ceanothus bushes, and occasionally a
+long-eared hare is seen cantering gracefully across the wider openings. The
+nights are calm and dewless during the summer, and a thousand voices proclaim
+the abundance of life, notwithstanding the desolating effect of dry sunshine on
+the plants and larger animals. The hylas make a delightfully pure and tranquil
+music after sunset; and coyotes, the little, despised dogs of the wilderness,
+brave, hardy fellows, looking like withered wisps of hay, bark in chorus for
+hours. Mining-towns, most of them dead, and a few living ones with bright bits
+of cultivation about them, occur at long intervals along the belt, and cottages
+covered with climbing roses, in the midst of orange and peach orchards, and
+sweet-scented hay-fields in fertile flats where water for irrigation may be
+had. But they are mostly far apart, and make scarce any mark in general views.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every winter the High Sierra and the middle forest region get snow in glorious
+abundance, and even the foot-hills are at times whitened. Then all the range
+looks like a vast beveled wall of purest marble. The rough places are then made
+smooth, the death and decay of the year is covered gently and kindly, and the
+ground seems as clean as the sky. And though silent in its flight from the
+clouds, and when it is taking its place on rock, or tree, or grassy meadow, how
+soon the gentle snow finds a voice! Slipping from the heights, gathering in
+avalanches, it booms and roars like thunder, and makes a glorious show as it
+sweeps down the mountain-side, arrayed in long, silken streamers and wreathing,
+swirling films of crystal dust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The north half of the range is mostly covered with floods of lava, and dotted
+with volcanoes and craters, some of them recent and perfect in form, others in
+various stages of decay. The south half is composed of granite nearly from base
+to summit, while a considerable number of peaks, in the middle of the range,
+are capped with metamorphic slates, among which are Mounts Dana and Gibbs to
+the east of Yosemite Valley. Mount Whitney, the culminating point of the range
+near its southern extremity, lifts its helmet-shaped crest to a height of
+nearly 14,700 feet. Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a height
+of 14,440 feet at the northern extremity, and forms a noble landmark for all
+the surrounding region within a radius of a hundred miles. Residual masses of
+volcanic rocks occur throughout most of the granitic southern portion also, and
+a considerable number of old volcanoes on the flanks, especially along the
+eastern base of the range near Mono Lake and southward. But it is only to the
+northward that the entire range, from base to summit, is covered with lava.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the summit of Mount Whitney only granite is seen. Innumerable peaks and
+spires but little lower than its own storm-beaten crags rise in groups like
+forest-trees, in full view, segregated by cañons of tremendous depth and
+ruggedness. On Shasta nearly every feature in the vast view speaks of the old
+volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in Oregon, the icy volcanoes of Mount
+Pitt and the Three Sisters rise above the dark evergreen woods. Southward
+innumerable smaller craters and cones are distributed along the axis of the
+range and on each flank. Of these, Lassen&rsquo;s Butte is the highest, being
+nearly 11,000 feet above sea-level. Miles of its flanks are reeking and
+bubbling with hot springs, many of them so boisterous and sulphurous they seem
+over ready to become spouting geysers like those of the Yellowstone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Cinder Cone near marks the most recent volcanic eruption in the Sierra. It
+is a symmetrical truncated cone about 700 feet high, covered with gray cinders
+and ashes, and has a regular unchanged crater on its summit, in which a few
+small Two-leaved Pines are growing. These show that the age of the cone is not
+less than eighty years. It stands between two lakes, which a short time ago
+were one. Before the cone was built, a flood of rough vesicular lava was poured
+into the lake, cutting it in two, and, overflowing its banks, the fiery flood
+advanced into the pine-woods, overwhelming the trees in its way, the charred
+ends of some of which may still be seen projecting from beneath the snout of
+the lava-stream where it came to rest. Later still there was an eruption of
+ashes and loose obsidian cinders, probably from the same vent, which, besides
+forming the Cinder Cone, scattered a heavy shower over the surrounding woods
+for miles to a depth of from six inches to several feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The history of this last Sierra eruption is also preserved in the traditions of
+the Pitt River Indians. They tell of a fearful time of darkness, when the sky
+was black with ashes and smoke that threatened every living thing with death,
+and that when at length the sun appeared once more it was red like blood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Less recent craters in great numbers roughen the adjacent region; some of them
+with lakes in their throats, others overgrown with trees and flowers, Nature in
+these old hearths and firesides having literally given beauty for ashes. On the
+northwest side of Mount Shasta there is a subordinate cone about 3000 feet
+below the summit, which, has been active subsequent to the breaking up of the
+main ice-cap that once covered the mountain, as is shown by its comparatively
+unwasted crater and the streams of unglaciated lava radiating from it. The main
+summit is about a mile and a half in diameter, bounded by small crumbling peaks
+and ridges, among which we seek in vain for the outlines of the ancient crater.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These ruinous masses, and the deep glacial grooves that flute the sides of the
+mountain, show that it has been considerably lowered and wasted by ice; how
+much we have no sure means of knowing. Just below the extreme summit hot
+sulphurous gases and vapor issue from irregular fissures, mixed with spray
+derived from melting snow, the last feeble expression of the mighty force that
+built the mountain. Not in one great convulsion was Shasta given birth. The
+crags of the summit and the sections exposed by the glaciers down the sides
+display enough of its internal framework to prove that comparatively long
+periods of quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which
+the cooling lavas ceased to flow, and became permanent additions to the bulk of
+the growing mountain. With alternate haste and deliberation eruption succeeded
+eruption till the old volcano surpassed even its present sublime height.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus04"></a>
+<img src="images/img04.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MOUNT SHASTA" />
+<p class="caption">MOUNT SHASTA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Standing on the icy top of this, the grandest of all the fire-mountains of the
+Sierra, we can hardly fail to look forward to its next eruption. Gardens,
+vineyards, homes have been planted confidingly on the flanks of volcanoes
+which, after remaining steadfast for ages, have suddenly blazed into violent
+action, and poured forth overwhelming floods of fire. It is known that more
+than a thousand years of cool calm have intervened between violent eruptions.
+Like gigantic geysers spouting molten rock instead of water, volcanoes work and
+rest, and we have no sure means of knowing whether they are dead when still, or
+only sleeping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Along the western base of the range a telling series of sedimentary rocks
+containing the early history of the Sierra are now being studied. But leaving
+for the present these first chapters, we see that only a very short geological
+time ago, just before the coming on of that winter of winters called the
+glacial period, a vast deluge of molten rocks poured from many a chasm and
+crater on the flanks and summit of the range, filling lake basins and river
+channels, and obliterating nearly every existing feature on the northern
+portion. At length these all-destroying floods ceased to flow. But while the
+great volcanic cones built up along the axis still burned and smoked, the whole
+Sierra passed under the domain of ice and snow. Then over the bald,
+featureless, fire-blackened mountains, glaciers began to crawl, covering them
+from the summits to the sea with a mantle of ice; and then with infinite
+deliberation the work went on of sculpturing the range anew. These mighty
+agents of erosion, halting never through unnumbered centuries, crushed and
+ground the flinty lavas and granites beneath their crystal folds, wasting and
+building until in the fullness of time the Sierra was born again, brought to
+light nearly as we behold it today, with glaciers and snow-crushed pines at the
+top of the range, wheat-fields and orange-groves at the foot of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This change from icy darkness and death to life and beauty was slow, as we
+count time, and is still going on, north and south, over all the world wherever
+glaciers exist, whether in the form of distinct rivers, as in Switzerland,
+Norway, the mountains of Asia, and the Pacific Coast; or in continuous mantling
+folds, as in portions of Alaska, Greenland, Franz-Joseph-Land, Nova Zembla,
+Spitzbergen, and the lands about the South Pole. But in no country, as far as I
+know, may these majestic changes be studied to better advantage than in the
+plains and mountains of California.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Toward the close of the glacial period, when the snow-clouds became less
+fertile and the melting waste of sunshine became greater, the lower folds of
+the ice-sheet in California, discharging fleets of icebergs into the sea, began
+to shallow and recede from the lowlands, and then move slowly up the flanks of
+the Sierra in compliance with the changes of climate. The great white mantle on
+the mountains broke up into a series of glaciers more or less distinct and
+river-like, with many tributaries, and these again were melted and divided into
+still smaller glaciers, until now only a few of the smallest residual topmost
+branches of the grand system exist on the cool slopes of the summit peaks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Plants and animals, biding their time, closely followed the retiring ice,
+bestowing quick and joyous animation on the new-born landscapes. Pine-trees
+marched up the sun-warmed moraines in long, hopeful files, taking the ground
+and establishing themselves as soon as it was ready for them; brown-spiked
+sedges fringed the shores of the newborn lakes; young rivers roared in the
+abandoned channels of the glaciers; flowers bloomed around the feet of the
+great burnished domes,&mdash;while with quick fertility mellow beds of soil,
+settling and warming, offered food to multitudes of Nature&rsquo;s waiting
+children, great and small, animals as well as plants; mice, squirrels, marmots,
+deer, bears, elephants, etc. The ground burst into bloom with magical rapidity,
+and the young forests into bird-song: life in every form warming and sweetening
+and growing richer as the years passed away over the mighty Sierra so lately
+suggestive of death and consummate desolation only.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is hard without long and loving study to realize the magnitude of the work
+done on these mountains during the last glacial period by glaciers, which are
+only streams of closely compacted snow-crystals. Careful study of the phenomena
+presented goes to show that the pre-glacial condition of the range was
+comparatively simple: one vast wave of stone in which a thousand mountains,
+domes, cañons, ridges, etc., lay concealed. And in the development of these
+Nature chose for a tool not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split
+asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers
+noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and
+sea. Laboring harmoniously in united strength they crushed and ground and wore
+away the rocks in their march, making vast beds of soil, and at the same time
+developed and fashioned the landscapes into the delightful variety of hill and
+dale and lordly mountain that mortals call beauty. Perhaps more than a mile in
+average depth has the range been thus degraded during the last glacial
+period,&mdash;a quantity of mechanical work almost inconceivably great. And our
+admiration must be excited again and again as we toil and study and learn that
+this vast job of rockwork, so far-reaching in its influences, was done by
+agents so fragile and small as are these flowers of the mountain clouds. Strong
+only by force of numbers, they carried away entire mountains, particle by
+particle, block by block, and cast them into the sea; sculptured, fashioned,
+modeled all the range, and developed its predestined beauty. All these new
+Sierra landscapes were evidently predestined, for the physical structure of the
+rocks on which the features of the scenery depend was acquired while they lay
+at least a mile deep below the pre-glacial surface. And it was while these
+features were taking form in the depths of the range, the particles of the
+rocks marching to their appointed places in the dark with reference to the
+coming beauty, that the particles of icy vapor in the sky marching to the same
+music assembled to bring them to the light. Then, after their grand task was
+done, these bands of snow-flowers, these mighty glaciers, were melted and
+removed as if of no more importance than dew destined to last but an hour. Few,
+however, of Nature&rsquo;s agents have left monuments so noble and enduring as
+they. The great granite domes a mile high, the cañons as deep, the noble peaks,
+the Yosemite valleys, these, and indeed nearly all other features of the Sierra
+scenery, are glacier monuments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Contemplating the works of these flowers of the sky, one may easily fancy them
+endowed with life: messengers sent down to work in the mountain mines on
+errands of divine love. Silently flying through the darkened air, swirling,
+glinting, to their appointed places, they seem to have taken counsel together,
+saying, &ldquo;Come, we are feeble; let us help one another. We are many, and
+together we will be strong. Marching in close, deep ranks, let us roll away the
+stones from these mountain sepulchers, and set the landscapes free. Let us
+uncover these clustering domes. Here let us carve a lake basin; there, a
+Yosemite Valley; here, a channel for a river with fluted steps and brows for
+the plunge of songful cataracts. Yonder let us spread broad sheets of soil,
+that man and beast may be fed; and here pile trains of boulders for pines and
+giant Sequoias. Here make ground for a meadow; there, for a garden and grove,
+making it smooth and fine for small daisies and violets and beds of heathy
+bryanthus, spicing it well with crystals, garnet feldspar, and zircon.&rdquo;
+Thus and so on it has oftentimes seemed to me sang and planned and labored the
+hearty snow-flower crusaders; and nothing that I can write can possibly
+exaggerate the grandeur and beauty of their work. Like morning mist they have
+vanished in sunshine, all save the few small companies that still linger on the
+coolest mountainsides, and, as residual glaciers, are still busily at work
+completing the last of the lake basins, the last beds of soil, and the
+sculpture of some of the highest peaks.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus05"></a>
+<img src="images/img05.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MOUNT HOOD" />
+<p class="caption">MOUNT HOOD</p>
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II<br/>
+THE GLACIERS</h2>
+
+<p>
+Of the small residual glaciers mentioned in the preceding chapter, I have found
+sixty-five in that portion of the range lying between latitude 36° 30&#x2032;
+and 39°. They occur singly or in small groups on the north sides of the peaks
+of the High Sierra, sheltered beneath broad frosty shadows, in amphitheaters of
+their own making, where the snow, shooting down from the surrounding heights in
+avalanches, is most abundant. Over two thirds of the entire number lie between
+latitude 37° and 38°, and form the highest fountains of the San Joaquin,
+Merced, Tuolumne, and Owen&rsquo;s rivers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The glaciers of Switzerland, like those of the Sierra, are mere wasting
+remnants of mighty ice-floods that once filled the great valleys and poured
+into the sea. So, also, are those of Norway, Asia, and South America. Even the
+grand continuous mantles of ice that still cover Greenland, Spitsbergen, Nova
+Zembla, Franz-Joseph-Land, parts of Alaska, and the south polar region are
+shallowing and shrinking. Every glacier in the world is smaller than it once
+was. All the world is growing warmer, or the crop of snow-flowers is
+diminishing. But in contemplating the condition of the glaciers of the world,
+we must bear in mind while trying to account for the changes going on that the
+same sunshine that wastes them builds them. Every glacier records the
+expenditure of an enormous amount of sun-heat in lifting the vapor for the snow
+of which it is made from the ocean to the mountains, as Tyndall strikingly
+shows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The number of glaciers in the Alps, according to the Schlagintweit brothers, is
+1100, of which 100 may be regarded as primary, and the total area of ice, snow,
+and <i>névé</i> is estimated at 1177 square miles, or an average for each
+glacier of little more than one square mile. On the same authority, the average
+height above sea-level at which they melt is about 7414 feet. The Grindelwald
+glacier descends below 4000 feet, and one of the Mont Blanc glaciers reaches
+nearly as low a point. One of the largest of the Himalaya glaciers on the head
+waters of the Ganges does not, according to Captain Hodgson, descend below
+12,914 feet. The largest of the Sierra glaciers on Mount Shasta descends to
+within 9500 feet of the level of the sea, which, as far as I have observed, is
+the lowest point reached by any glacier within the bounds of California, the
+average height of all being not far from 11,000 feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The changes that have taken place in the glacial conditions of the Sierra from
+the time of greatest extension is well illustrated by the series of glaciers of
+every size and form extending along the mountains of the coast to Alaska. A
+general exploration of this instructive region shows that to the north of
+California, through Oregon and Washington, groups of active glaciers still
+exist on all the high volcanic cones of the Cascade Range,&mdash;Mount Pitt,
+the Three Sisters, Mounts Jefferson, Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier, Baker,
+and others,&mdash;some of them of considerable size, though none of them
+approach the sea. Of these mountains Rainier, in Washington, is the highest and
+iciest. Its dome-like summit, between 14,000 and 15,000 feet high, is capped
+with ice, and eight glaciers, seven to twelve miles long, radiate from it as a
+center, and form the sources of the principal streams of the State. The
+lowest-descending of this fine group flows through beautiful forests to within
+3500 feet of the sea-level, and sends forth a river laden with glacier mud and
+sand. On through British Columbia and southeastern Alaska the broad, sustained
+mountain-chain, extending along the coast, is generally glacier-bearing. The
+upper branches of nearly all the main cañons and fiords are occupied by
+glaciers, which gradually increase in size, and descend lower until the high
+region between Mount Fairweather and Mount St. Elias is reached, where a
+considerable number discharge into the waters of the ocean. This is
+preëminently the ice-land of Alaska and of the entire Pacific Coast.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus06"></a>
+<img src="images/img06.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MAP OF THE GLACIER COUNTRY" />
+<p class="caption">MAP OF THE GLACIER COUNTRY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Northward from here the glaciers gradually diminish in size and thickness, and
+melt at higher levels. In Prince William Sound and Cook&rsquo;s Inlet many fine
+glaciers are displayed, pouring from the surrounding mountains; but to the
+north of latitude 62° few, if any, glaciers remain, the ground being mostly low
+and the snowfall light. Between latitude 56° and 60° there are probably more
+than 5000 glaciers, not counting the smallest. Hundreds of the largest size
+descend through the forests to the level of the sea, or near it, though as far
+as my own observations have reached, after a pretty thorough examination of the
+region, not more than twenty-five discharge icebergs into the sea. All the long
+high-walled fiords into which these great glaciers of the first class flow are
+of course crowded with icebergs of every conceivable form, which are detached
+with thundering noise at intervals of a few minutes from an imposing ice-wall
+that is thrust forward into deep water. But these Pacific Coast icebergs are
+small as compared with those of Greenland and the Antarctic region, and only a
+few of them escape from the intricate system of channels, with which this
+portion of the coast is fringed, into the open sea. Nearly all of them are
+swashed and drifted by wind and tide back and forth in the fiords until finally
+melted by the ocean water, the sunshine, the warm winds, and the copious rains
+of summer. Only one glacier on the coast, observed by Prof. Russell, discharges
+its bergs directly into the open sea, at Icy Cape, opposite Mount St. Elias.
+The southernmost of the glaciers that reach the sea occupies a narrow,
+picturesque fiord about twenty miles to the northwest of the mouth of the
+Stikeen River, in latitude 56° 50&#x2032;. The fiord is called by the natives
+&ldquo;Hutli,&rdquo; or Thunder Bay, from the noise made by the discharge of
+the icebergs. About one degree farther north there are four of these complete
+glaciers, discharging at the heads of the long arms of Holkam Bay. At the head
+of the Tahkoo Inlet, still farther north, there is one; and at the head and
+around the sides of Glacier Bay, trending in a general northerly direction from
+Cross Sound in latitude 58° to 59°, there are seven of these complete glaciers
+pouring bergs into the bay and its branches, and keeping up an eternal
+thundering. The largest of this group, the Muir, has upward of 200 tributaries,
+and a width below the confluence of the main tributaries of about twenty-five
+miles. Between the west side of this icy bay and the ocean all the ground, high
+and low, excepting the peaks of the Fairweather Range, is covered with a mantle
+of ice from 1000 to probably 3000 feet thick, which discharges by many distinct
+mouths.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus07"></a>
+<img src="images/img07.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MOUNT RAINIER" />
+<p class="caption">MOUNT RAINIER; NORTH PUYALLUP GLACIER FROM EAGLE CLIFF</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+This fragmentary ice-sheet, and the immense glaciers about Mount St. Elias,
+together with the multitude of separate river-like glaciers that load the
+slopes of the coast mountains, evidently once formed part of a continuous
+ice-sheet that flowed over all the region hereabouts, and only a comparatively
+short time ago extended as far southward as the mouth of the Strait of Juan de
+Fuca, probably farther. All the islands of the Alexander Archipelago, as well
+as the headlands and promontories of the mainland, display telling traces of
+this great mantle that are still fresh and unmistakable. They all have the
+forms of the greatest strength with reference to the action of a vast rigid
+press of oversweeping ice from the north and northwest, and their surfaces have
+a smooth, rounded, overrubbed appearance, generally free from angles. The
+intricate labyrinth of canals, channels, straits, passages, sounds, narrows,
+etc. between the islands, and extending into the mainland, of course manifest
+in their forms and trends and general characteristics the same subordination to
+the grinding action of universal glaciation as to their origin, and differ from
+the islands and banks of the fiords only in being portions of the pre-glacial
+margin of the continent more deeply eroded, and therefore covered by the ocean
+waters which flowed into them as the ice was melted out of them. The formation
+and extension of fiords in this manner is still going on, and may be witnessed
+in many places in Glacier Bay, Yakutat Bay, and adjacent regions. That the
+domain of the sea is being extended over the land by the wearing away of its
+shores, is well known, but in these icy regions of Alaska, and even as far
+south as Vancouver Island, the coast rocks have been so short a time exposed to
+wave-action they are but little wasted as yet. In these regions the extension
+of the sea effected by its own action in post-glacial time is scarcely
+appreciable as compared with that effected by ice-action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Traces of the vanished glaciers made during the period of greater extension
+abound on the Sierra as far south as latitude 36°. Even the polished rock
+surfaces, the most evanescent of glacial records, are still found in a
+wonderfully perfect state of preservation on the upper half of the middle
+portion of the range, and form the most striking of all the glacial phenomena.
+They occur in large irregular patches in the summit and middle regions, and
+though they have been subjected to the action of the weather with its corroding
+storms for thousands of years, their mechanical excellence is such that they
+still reflect the sunbeams like glass, and attract the attention of every
+observer. The attention of the mountaineer is seldom arrested by moraines,
+however regular and high they may be, or by cañons, however deep, or by rocks,
+however noble in form and sculpture; but he stoops and rubs his hands
+admiringly on the shining surfaces and trios hard to account for their
+mysterious smoothness. He has seen the snow descending in avalanches, but
+concludes this cannot be the work of snow, for he finds it where no avalanches
+occur. Nor can water have done it, for he sees this smoothness glowing on the
+sides and tops of the highest domes. Only the winds of all the agents he knows
+seem capable of flowing in the directions indicated by the scoring. Indians,
+usually so little curious about geological phenomena, have come to me
+occasionally and asked me, &ldquo;What makeum the ground so smooth at Lake
+Tenaya?&rdquo; Even horses and dogs gaze wonderingly at the strange brightness
+of the ground, and smell the polished spaces and place their feet cautiously on
+them when they come to them for the first time, as if afraid of sinking. The
+most perfect of the polished pavements and walls lie at an elevation of from
+7000 to 9000 feet above the sea, where the rock is compact silicious granite.
+Small dim patches may be found as low as 3000 feet on the driest and most
+enduring portions of sheer walls with a southern exposure, and on compact
+swelling bosses partially protected from rain by a covering of large boulders.
+On the north half of the range the striated and polished surfaces are less
+common, not only because this part of the chain is lower, but because the
+surface rocks are chiefly porous lavas subject to comparatively rapid waste.
+The ancient moraines also, though well preserved on most of the south half of
+the range, are nearly obliterated to the northward, but then material is found
+scattered and disintegrated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A similar blurred condition of the superficial records of glacial action
+obtains throughout most of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska,
+due in great part to the action of excessive moisture. Even in southeastern
+Alaska, where the most extensive glaciers on the continent are, the more
+evanescent of the traces of their former greater extension, though
+comparatively recent, are more obscure than those of the ancient California
+glaciers whore the climate is drier and the rocks more resisting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These general views of the glaciers of the Pacific Coast will enable my readers
+to see something of the changes that have taken place in California, and will
+throw light on the residual glaciers of the High Sierra.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Prior to the autumn of 1871 the glaciers of the Sierra were unknown. In October
+of that year I discovered the Black Mountain Glacier in a shadowy amphitheater
+between Black and Rod Mountains, two of the peaks of the Merced group. This
+group is the highest portion of a spur that straggles out from the main axis of
+the range in the direction of Yosemite Valley. At the time of this interesting
+discovery I was exploring the <i>névé</i> amphitheaters of the group, and
+tracing the courses of the ancient glaciers that once poured from its ample
+fountains through the Illilouette Basin and the Yosemite Valley, not expecting
+to find any active glaciers so far south in the land of sunshine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beginning on the northwestern extremity of the group, I explored the chief
+tributary basins in succession, their moraines, roches moutonnées, and splendid
+glacier pavements, taking them in regular succession without any reference to
+the time consumed in their study. The monuments of the tributary that poured
+its ice from between Red and Black Mountains I found to be the most interesting
+of them all; and when I saw its magnificent moraines extending in majestic
+curves from the spacious amphitheater between the mountains, I was exhilarated
+with the work that lay before me. It was one of the golden days of the Sierra
+Indian summer, when the rich sunshine glorifies every landscape however rocky
+and cold, and suggests anything rather than glaciers. The path of the vanished
+glacier was warm now, and shone in many places as if washed with silver. The
+tall pines growing on the moraines stood transfigured in the glowing light, the
+poplar groves on the levels of the basin were masses of orange-yellow, and the
+late-blooming goldenrods added gold to gold. Pushing on over my rosy glacial
+highway, I passed lake after lake set in solid basins of granite, and many a
+thicket and meadow watered by a stream that issues from the amphitheater and
+links the lakes together; now wading through plushy bogs knee-deep in yellow
+and purple sphagnum; now passing over bare rock. The main lateral moraines that
+bounded the view on either hand are from 100 to nearly 200 feet high, and about
+as regular as artificial embankments, and covered with a superb growth of
+Silver Fir and Pine. But this garden and forest luxuriance was speedily left
+behind. The trees were dwarfed as I ascended; patches of the alpine bryanthus
+and cassiope began to appear, and arctic willows pressed into flat carpets by
+the winter snow. The lakelets, which a few miles down the valley were so richly
+embroidered with flowery meadows, had here, at an elevation of 10,000 feet,
+only small brown mats of carex, leaving bare rocks around more than half their
+shores. Yet amid this alpine suppression the Mountain Pine bravely tossed his
+storm-beaten branches on the ledges and buttresses of Red Mountain, some
+specimens being over 100 feet high, and 24 feet in circumference, seemingly as
+fresh and vigorous as the giants of the lower zones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Evening came on just as I got fairly within the portal of the main
+amphitheater. It is about a mile wide, and a little less than two miles long.
+The crumbling spurs and battlements of Red Mountain bound it on the north, the
+somber, rudely sculptured precipices of Black Mountain on the south, and a
+hacked, splintery <i>col</i>, curving around from mountain to mountain, shuts
+it in on the east.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I chose a camping-ground on the brink of one of the lakes where a thicket of
+Hemlock Spruce sheltered me from the night wind. Then, after making a
+tin-cupful of tea, I sat by my camp-fire reflecting on the grandeur and
+significance of the glacial records I had seen. As the night advanced the
+mighty rock walls of my mountain mansion seemed to come nearer, while the
+starry sky in glorious brightness stretched across like a ceiling from wall to
+wall, and fitted closely down into all the spiky irregularities of the summits.
+Then, after a long fireside rest and a glance at my note-book, I cut a few
+leafy branches for a bed, and fell into the clear, death-like sleep of the
+tired mountaineer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Early next morning I set out to trace the grand old glacier that had done so
+much for the beauty of the Yosemite region back to its farthest fountains,
+enjoying the charm that every explorer feels in Nature&rsquo;s untrodden
+wildernesses. The voices of the mountains were still asleep. The wind scarce
+stirred the pine-needles. The sun was up, but it was yet too cold for the birds
+and the few burrowing animals that dwell here. Only the stream, cascading from
+pool to pool, seemed to be wholly awake. Yet the spirit of the opening day
+called to action. The sunbeams came streaming gloriously through the jagged
+openings of the <i>col</i>, glancing on the burnished pavements and lighting
+the silvery lakes, while every sun-touched rock burned white on its edges like
+melting iron in a furnace. Passing round the north shore of my camp lake I
+followed the central stream past many cascades from lakelet to lakelet. The
+scenery became more rigidly arctic, the Dwarf Pines and Hemlocks disappeared,
+and the stream was bordered with icicles. As the sun rose higher rocks were
+loosened on shattered portions of the cliffs, and came down in rattling
+avalanches, echoing wildly from crag to crag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The main lateral moraines that extend from the jaws of the amphitheater into
+the Illilouette Basin are continued in straggling masses along the walls of the
+amphitheater, while separate boulders, hundreds of tons in weight, are left
+stranded here and there out in the middle of the channel. Here, also, I
+observed a series of small terminal moraines ranged along the south wall of the
+amphitheater, corresponding in size and form with the shadows cast by the
+highest portions. The meaning of this correspondence between moraines and
+shadows was afterward made plain. Tracing the stream back to the last of its
+chain of lakelets, I noticed a deposit of fine gray mud on the bottom except
+where the force of the entering current had prevented its settling. It looked
+like the mud worn from a grindstone, and I at once suspected its glacial
+origin, for the stream that was carrying it came gurgling out of the base of a
+raw moraine that seemed in process of formation. Not a plant or weather-stain
+was visible on its rough, unsettled surface. It is from 60 to over 100 feet
+high, and plunges forward at an angle of 38°. Cautiously picking my way, I
+gained the top of the moraine and was delighted to see a small but well
+characterized glacier swooping down from the gloomy precipices of Black
+Mountain in a finely graduated curve to the moraine on which I stood. The
+compact ice appeared on all the lower portions of the glacier, though gray with
+dirt and stones embedded in it. Farther up the ice disappeared beneath coarse
+granulated snow. The surface of the glacier was further characterized by dirt
+bands and the outcropping edges of the blue veins, showing the laminated
+structure of the ice. The uppermost crevasse, or &ldquo;bergschrund,&rdquo;
+where the <i>névé</i> was attached to the mountain, was from 12 to 14 feet
+wide, and was bridged in a few places by the remains of snow avalanches.
+Creeping along the edge of the schrund, holding on with benumbed fingers, I
+discovered clear sections where the bedded structure was beautifully revealed.
+The surface snow, though sprinkled with stones shot down from the cliffs, was
+in some places almost pure, gradually becoming crystalline and changing to
+whitish porous ice of different shades of color, and this again changing at a
+depth of 20 or 30 feet to blue ice, some of the ribbon-like bands of which were
+nearly pure, and blended with the paler bands in the most gradual and delicate
+manner imaginable. A series of rugged zigzags enabled me to make my way down
+into the weird under-world of the crevasse. Its chambered hollows were hung
+with a multitude of clustered icicles, amid which pale, subdued light pulsed
+and shimmered with indescribable loveliness. Water dripped and tinkled
+overhead, and from far below came strange, solemn murmurings from currents that
+were feeling their way through veins and fissures in the dark. The chambers of
+a glacier are perfectly enchanting, notwithstanding one feels out of place in
+their frosty beauty. I was soon cold in my shirt-sleeves, and the leaning wall
+threatened to engulf me; yet it was hard to leave the delicious music of the
+water and the lovely light. Coming again to the surface, I noticed boulders of
+every size on their journeys to the terminal moraine&mdash;journeys of more
+than a hundred years, without a single stop, night or day, winter or summer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun gave birth to a network of sweet-voiced rills that ran gracefully down
+the glacier, curling and swirling in their shining channels, and cutting clear
+sections through the porous surface-ice into the solid blue, where the
+structure of the glacier was beautifully illustrated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The series of small terminal moraines which I had observed in the morning,
+along the south wall of the amphitheater, correspond in every way with the
+moraine of this glacier, and their distribution with reference to shadows was
+now understood. When the climatic changes came on that caused the melting and
+retreat of the main glacier that filled the amphitheater, a series of residual
+glaciers were left in the cliff shadows, under the protection of which they
+lingered, until they formed the moraines we are studying. Then, as the snow
+became still less abundant, all of them vanished in succession, except the one
+just described; and the cause of its longer life is sufficiently apparent in
+the greater area of snow-basin it drains, and its more perfect protection from
+wasting sunshine. How much longer this little glacier will last depends, of
+course, on the amount of snow it receives from year to year, as compared with
+melting waste.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this discovery, I made excursions over all the High Sierra, pushing my
+explorations summer after summer, and discovered that what at first sight in
+the distance looked like extensive snow-fields, wore in great part glaciers,
+busily at work completing the sculpture of the summit-peaks so grandly blocked
+out by their giant predecessors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On August 21, I set a series of stakes in the Maclure Glacier, near Mount
+Lyell, and found its rate of motion to be little more than an inch a day in the
+middle, showing a great contrast to the Muir Glacier in Alaska, which, near the
+front, flows at a rate of from five to ten feet in twenty-four hours. Mount
+Shasta has three glaciers, but Mount Whitney, although it is the highest
+mountain in the range, does not now cherish a single glacier. Small patches of
+lasting snow and ice occur on its northern slopes, but they are shallow, and
+present no well marked evidence of glacial motion. Its sides, however, are
+scored and polished in many places by the action of its ancient glaciers that
+flowed east and west as tributaries of the great glaciers that once filled the
+valleys of the Kern and Owen&rsquo;s rivers.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III<br/>
+THE SNOW</h2>
+
+<p>
+The first snow that whitens the Sierra, usually falls about the end of October
+or early in November, to a depth of a few inches, after months of the most
+charming Indian summer weather imaginable. But in a few days, this light
+covering mostly melts from the slopes exposed to the sun and causes but little
+apprehension on the part of mountaineers who may be lingering among the high
+peaks at this time. The first general winter storm that yields snow that is to
+form a lasting portion of the season&rsquo;s supply, seldom breaks on the
+mountains before the end of November. Then, warned by the sky, cautions
+mountaineers, together with the wild sheep, deer, and most of the birds and
+bears, make haste to the lowlands or foot-hills; and burrowing marmots,
+mountain beavers, wood-rats, and such people go into winter quarters, some of
+them not again to see the light of day until the general awakening and
+resurrection of the spring in June or July. The first heavy fall is usually
+from about two to four feet in depth. Then, with intervals of splendid
+sunshine, storm succeeds storm, heaping snow on snow, until thirty to fifty
+feet has fallen. But on account of its settling and compacting, and the almost
+constant waste from melting and evaporation, the average depth actually found
+at any time seldom exceeds ten feet in the forest region, or fifteen feet along
+the slopes of the summit peaks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even during the coldest weather evaporation never wholly ceases, and the
+sunshine that abounds between the storms is sufficiently powerful to melt the
+surface more or less through all the winter months. Waste from melting also
+goes on to some extent on the bottom from heat stored up in the rocks, and
+given off slowly to the snow in contact with them, as is shown by the rising of
+the streams on all the higher regions after the first snowfall, and their
+steady sustained flow all winter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The greater portion of the snow deposited around the lofty summits of the range
+falls in small crisp flakes and broken crystals, or, when accompanied by strong
+winds and low temperature, the crystals, instead of being locked together in
+their fall to form tufted flakes, are beaten and broken into meal and fine
+dust. But down in the forest region the greater portion comes gently to the
+ground, light and feathery, some of the flakes in mild weather being nearly an
+inch in diameter, and it is evenly distributed and kept from drifting to any
+great extent by the shelter afforded by the large trees. Every tree during the
+progress of gentle storms is loaded with, fairy bloom at the coldest and
+darkest time of year, bending the branches, and hushing every singing needle.
+But as soon as the storm is over, and the sun shines, the snow at once begins
+to shift and settle and fall from the branches in miniature avalanches, and the
+white forest soon becomes green again. The snow on the ground also settles and
+thaws every bright day, and freezes at night, until it becomes coarsely
+granulated, and loses every trace of its rayed crystalline structure, and then
+a man may walk firmly over its frozen surface as if on ice. The forest region
+up to an elevation of 7000 feet is usually in great part free from snow in
+June, but at this time the higher regions are still heavy-laden, and are not
+touched by spring weather to any considerable extent before the middle or end
+of July.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the most striking effects of the snow on the mountains is the burial of
+the rivers and small lakes.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+As the snow fa&rsquo;s in the river<br/>
+A moment white, then lost forever,
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+sang Burns, in illustrating the fleeting character of human pleasure. The first
+snowflakes that fall into the Sierra rivers vanish thus suddenly; but in great
+storms, when the temperature is low, the abundance of the snow at length chills
+the water nearly to the freezing-point, and then, of course, it ceases to melt
+and consume the snow so suddenly. The falling flakes and crystals form,
+cloud-like masses of blue sludge, which are swept forward with the current and
+carried down to warmer climates many miles distant, while some are lodged
+against logs and rocks and projecting points of the banks, and last for days,
+piled high above the level of the water, and show white again, instead of being
+at once &ldquo;lost forever,&rdquo; while the rivers themselves are at length
+lost for months during the snowy period. The snow is first built out from the
+banks in bossy, over-curling drifts, compacting and cementing until the streams
+are spanned. They then flow in the dark beneath a continuous covering across
+the snowy zone, which is about thirty miles wide. All the Sierra rivers and
+their tributaries in these high regions are thus lost every winter, as if
+another glacial period had come on. Not a drop of running water is to be seen
+excepting at a few points where large falls occur, though the rush and rumble
+of the heavier currents may still be heard. Toward spring, when the weather is
+warm during the day and frosty at night, repeated thawing and freezing and new
+layers of snow render the bridging-masses dense and firm, so that one may
+safely walk across the streams, or even lead a horse across them without danger
+of falling through. In June the thinnest parts of the winter ceiling, and those
+most exposed to sunshine, begin to give way, forming dark, rugged-edged,
+pit-like sinks, at the bottom of which the rushing water may be seen. At the
+end of June only here and there may the mountaineer find a secure snow-bridge.
+The most lasting of the winter bridges, thawing from below as well as from
+above, because of warm currents of air passing through the tunnels, are
+strikingly arched and sculptured; and by the occasional freezing of the oozing,
+dripping water of the ceiling they become brightly and picturesquely icy. In
+some of the reaches, where there is a free margin, we may walk through them.
+Small skylights appearing here and there, these tunnels are not very dark. The
+roaring river fills all the arching way with impressively loud reverberating
+music, which is sweetened at times by the ouzel, a bird that is not afraid to
+go wherever a stream may go, and to sing wherever a stream sings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the small alpine pools and lakelets are in like manner obliterated from the
+winter landscapes, either by being first frozen and then covered by snow, or by
+being filled in by avalanches. The first avalanche of the season shot into a
+lake basin may perhaps find the surface frozen. Then there is a grand crashing
+of breaking ice and dashing of waves mingled with the low, deep booming of the
+avalanche. Detached masses of the invading snow, mixed with fragments of ice,
+drift about in sludgy, island-like heaps, while the main body of it forms a
+talus with its base wholly or in part resting on the bottom of the basin, as
+controlled by its depth and the size of the avalanche. The next avalanche, of
+course, encroaches still farther, and so on with each in succession until the
+entire basin may be filled and its water sponged up or displaced. This huge
+mass of sludge, more or less mixed with sand, stones, and perhaps timber, is
+frozen to a considerable depth, and much sun-heat is required to thaw it. Some
+of these unfortunate lakelets are not clear of ice and snow until near the end
+of summer. Others are never quite free, opening only on the side opposite the
+entrance of the avalanches. Some show only a narrow crescent of water lying
+between the shore and sheer bluffs of icy compacted snow, masses of which
+breaking off float in front like icebergs in a miniature Arctic Ocean, while
+the avalanche heaps leaning back against the mountains look like small
+glaciers. The frontal cliffs are in some instances quite picturesque, and with
+the berg-dotted waters in front of them lighted with sunshine are exceedingly
+beautiful. It often happens that while one side of a lake basin is hopelessly
+snow-buried and frozen, the other, enjoying sunshine, is adorned with beautiful
+flower-gardens. Some of the smaller lakes are extinguished in an instant by a
+heavy avalanche either of rocks or snow. The rolling, sliding, ponderous mass
+entering on one side sweeps across the bottom and up the opposite side,
+displacing the water and even scraping the basin clean, and shoving the
+accumulated rocks and sediments up the farther bank and taking full possession.
+The dislodged water is in part absorbed, but most of it is sent around the
+front of the avalanche and down the channel of the outlet, roaring and hurrying
+as if frightened and glad to escape.
+</p>
+
+<h4>SNOW-BANNERS</h4>
+
+<p>
+The most magnificent storm phenomenon I ever saw, surpassing in showy grandeur
+the most imposing effects of clouds, floods, or avalanches, was the peaks of
+the High Sierra, back of Yosemite Valley, decorated with snow-banners. Many of
+the starry snow-flowers, out of which these banners are made, fall before they
+are ripe, while most of those that do attain perfect development as six-rayed
+crystals glint and chafe against one another in their fall through the frosty
+air, and are broken into fragments. This dry fragmentary snow is still further
+prepared for the formation of banners by the action of the wind. For, instead
+of finding rest at once, like the snow which falls into the tranquil depths of
+the forests, it is rolled over and over, beaten against rock-ridges, and
+swirled in pits and hollows, like boulders, pebbles, and sand in the pot-holes
+of a river, until finally the delicate angles of the crystals are worn off, and
+the whole mass is reduced to dust. And whenever storm-winds find this prepared
+snow-dust in a loose condition on exposed slopes, where there is a free upward
+sweep to leeward, it is tossed back into the sky, and borne onward from peak to
+peak in the form of banners or cloudy drifts, according to the velocity of the
+wind and the conformation of the slopes up or around which it is driven. While
+thus flying through the air, a small portion makes good its escape, and remains
+in the sky as vapor. But far the greater part, after being driven into the sky
+again and again, is at length locked fast in bossy drifts, or in the wombs of
+glaciers, some of it to remain silent and rigid for centuries before it is
+finally melted and sent singing down the mountainsides to the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet, notwithstanding the abundance of winter snow-dust in the mountains, and
+the frequency of high winds, and the length of time the dust remains loose and
+exposed to their action, the occurrence of well-formed banners is, for causes
+we shall hereafter note, comparatively rare. I have seen only one display of
+this kind that seemed in every way perfect. This was in the winter of 1873,
+when the snow-laden summits were swept by a wild &ldquo;norther.&rdquo; I
+happened at the time to be wintering in Yosemite Valley, that sublime Sierra
+temple where every day one may see the grandest sights. Yet even here the wild
+gala-day of the north wind seemed surpassingly glorious. I was awakened in the
+morning by the rocking of my cabin and the beating of pine-burs on the roof.
+Detached torrents and avalanches from the main wind-flood overhead were rushing
+wildly down the narrow side cañons, and over the precipitous walls, with loud
+resounding roar, rousing the pines to enthusiastic action, and making the whole
+valley vibrate as though it were an instrument being played.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But afar on the lofty exposed peaks of the range standing so high in the sky,
+the storm was expressing itself in still grander characters, which I was soon
+to see in all their glory. I had long been anxious to study some points in the
+structure of the ice-cone that is formed every winter at the foot of the upper
+Yosemite fall, but the blinding spray by which it is invested had hitherto
+prevented me from making a sufficiently near approach. This morning the entire
+body of the fall was torn into gauzy shreds, and blown horizontally along the
+face of the cliff, leaving the cone dry; and while making my way to the top of
+an overlooking ledge to seize so favorable an opportunity to examine the
+interior of the cone, the peaks of the Merced group came in sight over the
+shoulder of the South Dome, each waving a resplendent banner against the blue
+sky, as regular in form, and as firm in texture, as if woven of fine silk. So
+rare and splendid a phenomenon, of course, overbore all other considerations,
+and I at once let the ice-cone go, and began to force my way out of the valley
+to some dome or ridge sufficiently lofty to command a general view of the main
+summits, feeling assured that I should find them bannered still more
+gloriously; nor was I in the least disappointed. Indian Cañon, through which I
+climbed, was choked with snow that had been shot down in avalanches from the
+high cliffs on either side, rendering the ascent difficult; but inspired by the
+roaring storm, the tedious wallowing brought no fatigue, and in four hours I
+gained the top of a ridge above the valley, 8000 feet high. And there in bold
+relief, like a clear painting, appeared a most imposing scene. Innumerable
+peaks, black and sharp, rose grandly into the dark blue sky, their bases set in
+solid white, their sides streaked and splashed with snow, like ocean rocks with
+foam; and from every summit, all free and unconfused, was streaming a beautiful
+silky silvery banner, from half a mile to a mile in length, slender at the
+point of attachment, then widening gradually as it extended from the peak until
+it was about 1000 or 1500 feet in breadth, as near as I could estimate. The
+cluster of peaks called the &ldquo;Crown of the Sierra,&rdquo; at the head of
+the Merced and Tuolumne rivers,&mdash;Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Conness, Lyell,
+Maclure, Ritter, with their nameless compeers,&mdash;each had its own refulgent
+banner, waving with a clearly visible motion in the sunglow, and there was not
+a single cloud in the sky to mar their simple grandeur. Fancy yourself standing
+on this Yosemite ridge looking eastward. You notice a strange garish glitter in
+the air. The gale drives wildly overhead with a fierce, tempestuous roar, but
+its violence is not felt, for you are looking through a sheltered opening in
+the woods as through a window. There, in the immediate foreground of your
+picture, rises a majestic forest of Silver Fir blooming in eternal freshness,
+the foliage yellow-green, and the snow beneath the trees strewn with their
+beautiful plumes, plucked off by the wind. Beyond, and extending over all the
+middle ground, are somber swaths of pine, interrupted by huge swelling ridges
+and domes; and just beyond the dark forest you see the monarchs of the High
+Sierra waving their magnificent banners. They are twenty miles away, but you
+would not wish them nearer, for every feature is distinct, and the whole
+glorious show is seen in its right proportions. After this general view, mark
+how sharply the dark snowless ribs and buttresses and summits of the peaks are
+defined, excepting the portions veiled by the banners, and how delicately their
+sides are streaked with snow, where it has come to rest in narrow flutings and
+gorges. Mark, too, how grandly the banners wave as the wind is deflected
+against their sides, and how trimly each is attached to the very summit of its
+peak, like a streamer at a masthead; how smooth and silky they are in texture,
+and how finely their fading fringes are penciled on the azure sky. See how
+dense and opaque they are at the point of attachment, and how filmy and
+translucent toward the end, so that the peaks back of them are seen dimly, as
+though you were looking through ground glass. Yet again observe how some of the
+longest, belonging to the loftiest summits, stream perfectly free all the way
+across intervening notches and passes from peak to peak, while others overlap
+and partly hide each other. And consider how keenly every particle of this
+wondrous cloth of snow is flashing out jets of light. These are the main
+features of the beautiful and terrible picture as seen from the forest window;
+and it would still be surpassingly glorious were the fore- and middle-grounds
+obliterated altogether, leaving only the black peaks, the white banners, and
+the blue sky.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus08"></a>
+<img src="images/img08.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="KOLANA ROCK" />
+<p class="caption">KOLANA ROCK, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Glancing now in a general way at the formation of snow-banners, we find that
+the main causes of the wondrous beauty and perfection of those we have been
+contemplating were the favorable direction and great force of the wind, the
+abundance of snow-dust, and the peculiar conformation of the slopes of the
+peaks. It is essential not only that the wind should move with great velocity
+and steadiness to supply a sufficiently copious and continuous stream of
+snow-dust, but that it should come from the north. No perfect banner is ever
+hung on the Sierra peaks by a south wind. Had the gale that day blown from the
+south, leaving other conditions unchanged, only a dull, confused, fog-like
+drift would have been produced; for the snow, instead of being spouted up over
+the tops of the peaks in concentrated currents to be drawn out as streamers,
+would have been shed off around the sides, and piled down into the glacier
+wombs. The cause of the concentrated action of the north wind is found in the
+peculiar form of the north sides of the peaks, where the amphitheaters of the
+residual glaciers are. In general the south sides are convex and irregular,
+while the north sides are concave both in their vertical and horizontal
+sections; the wind in ascending these curves converges toward the summits,
+carrying the snow in concentrating currents with it, shooting it almost
+straight up into the air above the peaks, from which it is then carried away in
+a horizontal direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This difference in form between the north and south sides of the peaks was
+almost wholly produced by the difference in the kind and quantity of the
+glaciation to which they have been subjected, the north sides having been
+hollowed by residual shadow-glaciers of a form that never existed on the
+sun-beaten sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It appears, therefore, that shadows in great part determine not only the forms
+of lofty icy mountains, but also those of the snow-banners that the wild winds
+hang on them.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV<br/>
+A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA</h2>
+
+<p>
+Early one bright morning in the middle of Indian summer, while the glacier
+meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from the foot of Mount
+Lyell, on my way down to Yosemite Valley, to replenish my exhausted store of
+bread and tea. I had spent the past summer, as many preceding ones, exploring
+the glaciers that lie on the head waters of the San Joaquin, Tuolumne, Merced,
+and Owen&rsquo;s rivers; measuring and studying their movements, trends,
+crevasses, moraines, etc., and the part they had played during the period of
+their greater extension in the creation and development of the landscapes of
+this alpine wonderland. The time for this kind of work was nearly over for the
+year, and I began to look forward with delight to the approaching winter with
+its wondrous storms, when I would be warmly snow-bound in my Yosemite cabin
+with plenty of bread and books; but a tinge of regret came on when I considered
+that possibly I might not see this favorite region again until the next summer,
+excepting distant views from the heights about the Yosemite walls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To artists, few portions of the High Sierra are, strictly speaking,
+picturesque. The whole massive uplift of the range is one great picture, not
+clearly divisible into smaller ones; differing much in this respect from the
+older, and what may be called, riper mountains of the Coast Range. All the
+landscapes of the Sierra, as we have seen, were born again, remodeled from base
+to summit by the developing ice-floods of the last glacial winter. But all
+those new landscapes were not brought forth simultaneously; some of the
+highest, where the ice lingered longest, are tens of centuries younger than
+those of the warmer regions below them. In general, the younger the
+mountain-landscapes,&mdash;younger, I mean, with reference to the time of their
+emergence from the ice of the glacial period,&mdash;the less separable are they
+into artistic bits capable of being made into warm, sympathetic, lovable
+pictures with appreciable humanity in them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, however, on the head waters of the Tuolumne, is a group of wild peaks on
+which the geologist may say that the sun has but just begun to shine, which is
+yet in a high degree picturesque, and in its main features so regular and
+evenly balanced as almost to appear conventional&mdash;one somber cluster of
+snow-laden peaks with gray pine-fringed granite bosses braided around its base,
+the whole surging free into the sky from the head of a magnificent valley,
+whose lofty walls are beveled away on both sides so as to embrace it all
+without admitting anything not strictly belonging to it. The foreground was now
+aflame with autumn colors, brown and purple and gold, ripe in the mellow
+sunshine; contrasting brightly with the deep, cobalt blue of the sky, and the
+black and gray, and pure, spiritual white of the rocks and glaciers. Down
+through the midst, the young Tuolumne was seen pouring from its crystal
+fountains, now resting in glassy pools as if changing back again into ice, now
+leaping in white cascades as if turning to snow; gliding right and left between
+granite bosses, then sweeping on through the smooth, meadowy levels of the
+valley, swaying pensively from side to side with calm, stately gestures past
+dipping willows and sedges, and around groves of arrowy pine; and throughout
+its whole eventful course, whether flowing fast or slow, singing loud or low,
+ever filling the landscape with spiritual animation, and manifesting the
+grandeur of its sources in every movement and tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pursuing my lonely way down the valley, I turned again and again to gaze on the
+glorious picture, throwing up my arms to inclose it as in a frame. After long
+ages of growth in the darkness beneath the glaciers, through sunshine and
+storms, it seemed now to be ready and waiting for the elected artist, like
+yellow wheat for the reaper; and I could not help wishing that I might carry
+colors and brushes with me on my travels, and learn to paint. In the mean time
+I had to be content with photographs on my mind and sketches in my note-books.
+At length, after I had rounded a precipitous headland that puts out from the
+west wall of the valley, every peak vanished from sight, and I pushed rapidly
+along the frozen meadows, over the divide between the waters of the Merced and
+Tuolumne, and down through the forests that clothe the slopes of Cloud&rsquo;s
+Rest, arriving in Yosemite in due time&mdash;which, with me, is <i>any</i>
+time. And, strange to say, among the first people I met here were two artists
+who, with letters of introduction, were awaiting my return. They inquired
+whether in the course of my explorations in the adjacent mountains I had ever
+come upon a landscape suitable for a large painting; whereupon I began a
+description of the one that had so lately excited my admiration. Then, as I
+went on further and further into details, their faces began to glow, and I
+offered to guide them to it, while they declared that they would gladly follow,
+far or near, whithersoever I could spare the time to lead them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since storms might come breaking down through the fine weather at any time,
+burying the colors in snow, and cutting off the artists&rsquo; retreat, I
+advised getting ready at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I led them out of the valley by the Vernal and Nevada Falls, thence over the
+main dividing ridge to the Big Tuolumne Meadows, by the old Mono trail, and
+thence along the upper Tuolumne River to its head. This was my
+companions&rsquo; first excursion into the High Sierra, and as I was almost
+always alone in my mountaineering, the way that the fresh beauty was reflected
+in their faces made for me a novel and interesting study. They naturally were
+affected most of all by the colors&mdash;the intense azure of the sky, the
+purplish grays of the granite, the red and browns of dry meadows, and the
+translucent purple and crimson of huckleberry bogs; the flaming yellow of aspen
+groves, the silvery flashing of the streams, and the bright green and blue of
+the glacier lakes. But the general expression of the scenery&mdash;rocky and
+savage&mdash;seemed sadly disappointing; and as they threaded the forest from
+ridge to ridge, eagerly scanning the landscapes as they were unfolded, they
+said: &ldquo;All this is huge and sublime, but we see nothing as yet at all
+available for effective pictures. Art is long, and art is limited, you know;
+and here are foregrounds, middle-grounds, backgrounds, all alike; bare
+rock-waves, woods, groves, diminutive flecks of meadow, and strips of
+glittering water.&rdquo; &ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;only bide
+a wee, and I will show you something you will like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, toward the end of the second day, the Sierra Crown began to come
+into view, and when we had fairly rounded the projecting headland before
+mentioned, the whole picture stood revealed in the flush of the alpenglow.
+Their enthusiasm was excited beyond bounds, and the more impulsive of the two,
+a young Scotchman, dashed ahead, shouting and gesticulating and tossing his
+arms in the air like a madman. Here, at last, was a typical alpine landscape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After feasting awhile on the view, I proceeded to make camp in a sheltered
+grove a little way back from the meadow, where pine-boughs could be obtained
+for beds, and where there was plenty of dry wood for fires, while the artists
+ran here and there, along the river-bends and up the sides of the cañon,
+choosing foregrounds for sketches. After dark, when our tea was made and a
+rousing fire had been built, we began to make our plans. They decided to remain
+several days, at the least, while I concluded to make an excursion in the mean
+time to the untouched summit of Ritter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was now about the middle of October, the springtime of snow-flowers. The
+first winter-clouds had already bloomed, and the peaks were strewn with fresh
+crystals, without, however, affecting the climbing to any dangerous extent. And
+as the weather was still profoundly calm, and the distance to the foot of the
+mountain only a little more than a day, I felt that I was running no great risk
+of being storm-bound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mount Ritter is king of the mountains of the middle portion of the High Sierra,
+as Shasta of the north and Whitney of the south sections. Moreover, as far as I
+know, it had never been climbed. I had explored the adjacent wilderness summer
+after summer, but my studies thus far had never drawn me to the top of it. Its
+height above sea-level is about 13,300 feet, and it is fenced round by steeply
+inclined glaciers, and cañons of tremendous depth and ruggedness, which render
+it almost inaccessible. But difficulties of this kind only exhilarate the
+mountaineer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning, the artists went heartily to their work and I to mine. Former
+experiences had given good reason to know that passionate storms, invisible as
+yet, might be brooding in the calm sun-gold; therefore, before bidding
+farewell, I warned the artists not to be alarmed should I fail to appear before
+a week or ten days, and advised them, in case a snow-storm should set in, to
+keep up big fires and shelter themselves as best they could, and on no account
+to become frightened and attempt to seek their way back to Yosemite alone
+through the drifts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My general plan was simply this: to scale the cañon, wall, cross over to the
+eastern flank of the range, and then make my way southward to the northern
+spurs of Mount Ritter in compliance with the intervening topography; for to
+push on directly southward from camp through the innumerable peaks and
+pinnacles that adorn this portion of the axis of the range, however
+interesting, would take too much time, besides being extremely difficult and
+dangerous at this time of year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All my first day was pure pleasure; simply mountaineering indulgence, crossing
+the dry pathways of the ancient glaciers, tracing happy streams, and learning
+the habits of the birds and marmots in the groves and rocks. Before I had gone
+a mile from camp, I came to the foot of a white cascade that beats its way down
+a rugged gorge in the cañon wall, from a height of about nine hundred feet, and
+pours its throbbing waters into the Tuolumne. I was acquainted with its
+fountains, which, fortunately, lay in my course. What a fine traveling
+companion it proved to be, what songs it sang, and how passionately it told the
+mountain&rsquo;s own joy! Gladly I climbed along its dashing border, absorbing
+its divine music, and bathing from time to time in waftings of irised spray.
+Climbing higher, higher, now beauty came streaming on the sight: painted
+meadows, late-blooming gardens, peaks of rare architecture, lakes here and
+there, shining like silver, and glimpses of the forested middle region and the
+yellow lowlands far in the west. Beyond the range I saw the so-called Mono
+Desert, lying dreamily silent in thick purple light&mdash;a desert of heavy
+sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished granite. Here the waters
+divide, shouting in glorious enthusiasm, and falling eastward to vanish in the
+volcanic sands and dry sky of the Great Basin, or westward to the Great Valley
+of California, and thence through the Bay of San Francisco and the Golden Gate
+to the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Passing a little way down over the summit until I had reached an elevation of
+about 10,000 feet, I pushed on southward toward a group of savage peaks that
+stand guard about Ritter on the north and west, groping my way, and dealing
+instinctively with every obstacle as it presented itself. Here a huge gorge
+would be found cutting across my path, along the dizzy edge of which I
+scrambled until some less precipitous point was discovered where I might safely
+venture to the bottom and then, selecting some feasible portion of the opposite
+wall, reascend with the same slow caution. Massive, flat-topped spurs alternate
+with the gorges, plunging abruptly from the shoulders of the snowy peaks, and
+planting their feet in the warm desert. These were everywhere marked and
+adorned with characteristic sculptures of the ancient glaciers that swept over
+this entire region like one vast ice-wind, and the polished surfaces produced
+by the ponderous flood are still so perfectly preserved that in many places the
+sunlight reflected from them is about as trying to the eyes as sheets of snow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+God&rsquo;s glacial-mills grind slowly, but they have been kept in motion long
+enough in California to grind sufficient soil for a glorious abundance of life,
+though most of the grist has been carried to the lowlands, leaving these high
+regions comparatively lean and bare; while the post-glacial agents of erosion
+have not yet furnished sufficient available food over the general surface for
+more than a few tufts of the hardiest plants, chiefly carices and eriogonae.
+And it is interesting to learn in this connection that the sparseness and
+repressed character of the vegetation at this height is caused more by want of
+soil than by harshness of climate; for, here and there, in sheltered hollows
+(countersunk beneath the general surface) into which a few rods of well-ground
+moraine chips have been dumped, we find groves of spruce and pine thirty to
+forty feet high, trimmed around the edges with willow and huckleberry bushes,
+and oftentimes still further by an outer ring of tall grasses, bright with
+lupines, larkspurs, and showy columbines, suggesting a climate by no means
+repressingly severe. All the streams, too, and the pools at this elevation are
+furnished with little gardens wherever soil can be made to lie, which, though
+making scarce any show at a distance, constitute charming surprises to the
+appreciative observer. In these bits of leanness a few birds find grateful
+homes. Having no acquaintance with man, they fear no ill, and flock curiously
+about the stranger, almost allowing themselves to be taken in the hand. In so
+wild and so beautiful a region was spent my first day, every sight and sound
+inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his
+individuality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now came the solemn, silent evening. Long, blue, spiky shadows crept out across
+the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually
+deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh
+crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me one of the most impressive of
+all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light,
+the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood
+hushed and waiting like devout worshipers. Just before the alpenglow began to
+fade, two crimson clouds came streaming across the summit like wings of flame,
+rendering the sublime scene yet more impressive; then came darkness and the
+stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Icy Ritter was still miles away, but I could proceed no farther that night. I
+found a good campground on the rim of a glacier basin about 11,000 feet above
+the sea. A small lake nestles in the bottom of it, from which I got water for
+my tea, and a storm-beaten thicket near by furnished abundance of resiny
+fire-wood. Somber peaks, hacked and shattered, circled half-way around the
+horizon, wearing a savage aspect in the gloaming, and a waterfall chanted
+solemnly across the lake on its way down from the foot of a glacier. The fall
+and the lake and the glacier were almost equally bare; while the scraggy pines
+anchored in the rock-fissures were so dwarfed and shorn by storm-winds that you
+might walk over their tops. In tone and aspect the scene was one of the most
+desolate I ever beheld. But the darkest scriptures of the mountains are
+illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to make themselves felt
+when one is alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I made my bed in a nook of the pine-thicket, where the branches were pressed
+and crinkled overhead like a roof, and bent down around the sides. These are
+the best bedchambers the high mountains afford&mdash;snug as squirrel-nests,
+well ventilated, full of spicy odors, and with plenty of wind-played needles to
+sing one asleep. I little expected company, but, creeping in through a low
+side-door, I found five or six birds nestling among the tassels. The night-wind
+began to blow soon after dark; at first only a gentle breathing, but increasing
+toward midnight to a rough gale that fell upon my leafy roof in ragged surges
+like a cascade, bearing wild sounds from the crags overhead. The waterfall sang
+in chorus, filling the old ice-fountain with its solemn roar, and seeming to
+increase in power as the night advanced&mdash;fit voice for such a landscape. I
+had to creep out many times to the fire during the night, for it was biting
+cold and I had no blankets. Gladly I welcomed the morning star.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dawn in the dry, wavering air of the desert was glorious. Everything
+encouraged my undertaking and betokened success. There was no cloud in the sky,
+no storm-tone in the wind. Breakfast of bread and tea was soon made. I fastened
+a hard, durable crust to my belt by way of provision, in case I should be
+compelled to pass a night on the mountain-top; then, securing the remainder of
+my little stock against wolves and wood-rats, I set forth free and hopeful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this alone is
+worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The highest peaks
+burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the lower peaks and spires
+caught the glow, and long lances of light, streaming through many a notch and
+pass, fell thick on the frozen meadows. The majestic form of Ritter was full in
+sight, and I pushed rapidly on over rounded rock-bosses and pavements, my
+iron-shod shoes making a clanking sound, suddenly hushed now and then in rugs
+of bryanthus, and sedgy lake-margins soft as moss. Here, too, in this so-called
+&ldquo;land of desolation,&rdquo; I met cassiope, growing in fringes among the
+battered rocks. Her blossoms had faded long ago, but they were still clinging
+with happy memories to the evergreen sprays, and still so beautiful as to
+thrill every fiber of one&rsquo;s being. Winter and summer, you may hear her
+voice, the low, sweet melody of her purple bells. No evangel among all the
+mountain plants speaks Nature&rsquo;s love more plainly than cassiope. Where
+she dwells, the redemption of the coldest solitude is complete. The very rocks
+and glaciers seem to feel her presence, and become imbued with her own fountain
+sweetness. All things were warming and awakening. Frozen rills began to flow,
+the marmots came out of their nests in boulder-piles and climbed sunny rocks to
+bask, and the dun-headed sparrows were flitting about seeking their breakfasts.
+The lakes seen from every ridge-top were brilliantly rippled and spangled,
+shimmering like the thickets of the low Dwarf Pines. The rocks, too, seemed
+responsive to the vital heat&mdash;rock-crystals and snow-crystals thrilling
+alike. I strode on exhilarated, as if never more to feel fatigue, limbs moving
+of themselves, every sense unfolding like the thawing flowers, to take part in
+the new day harmony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All along my course thus far, excepting when down in the cañons, the landscapes
+were mostly open to me, and expansive, at least on one side. On the left were
+the purple plains of Mono, reposing dreamily and warm; on the right, the near
+peaks springing keenly into the thin sky with more and more impressive
+sublimity. But these larger views were at length lost. Rugged spurs, and
+moraines, and huge, projecting buttresses began to shut me in. Every feature
+became more rigidly alpine, without, however, producing any chilling effect;
+for going to the mountains is like going home. We always find that the
+strangest objects in these fountain wilds are in some degree familiar, and we
+look upon them with a vague sense of having seen them before.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus09"></a>
+<img src="images/img09.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="GENERAL GRANT TREE" />
+<p class="caption">GENERAL GRANT TREE, GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+On the southern shore of a frozen lake, I encountered an extensive field of
+hard, granular snow, up which I scampered in fine tone, intending to follow it
+to its head, and cross the rocky spur against which it leans, hoping thus to
+come direct upon the base of the main Ritter peak. The surface was pitted with
+oval hollows, made by stones and drifted pine-needles that had melted
+themselves into the mass by the radiation of absorbed sun-heat. These afforded
+good footholds, but the surface curved more and more steeply at the head, and
+the pits became shallower and less abundant, until I found myself in danger of
+being shed off like avalanching snow. I persisted, however, creeping on all
+fours, and shuffling up the smoothest places on my back, as I had often done on
+burnished granite, until, after slipping several times, I was compelled to
+retrace my course to the bottom, and make my way around the west end of the
+lake, and thence up to the summit of the divide between the head waters of Rush
+Creek and the northernmost tributaries of the San Joaquin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arriving on the summit of this dividing crest, one of the most exciting pieces
+of pure wilderness was disclosed that I ever discovered in all my
+mountaineering. There, immediately in front, loomed the majestic mass of Mount
+Ritter, with a glacier swooping down its face nearly to my feet, then curving
+westward and pouring its frozen flood into a dark blue lake, whose shores were
+bound with precipices of crystalline snow; while a deep chasm drawn between the
+divide and the glacier separated the massive picture from everything else. I
+could see only the one sublime mountain, the one glacier, the one lake; the
+whole veiled with one blue shadow&mdash;rock, ice, and water close together
+without a single leaf or sign of life. After gazing spellbound, I began
+instinctively to scrutinize every notch and gorge and weathered buttress of the
+mountain, with reference to making the ascent. The entire front above the
+glacier appeared as one tremendous precipice, slightly receding at the top, and
+bristling with spires and pinnacles set above one another in formidable array.
+Massive lichen-stained battlements stood forward here and there, hacked at the
+top with angular notches, and separated by frosty gullies and recesses that
+have been veiled in shadow ever since their creation; while to right and left,
+as far as I could see, were huge, crumbling buttresses, offering no hope to the
+climber. The head of the glacier sends up a few finger-like branches through
+narrow <i>couloirs</i>; but these seemed too steep and short to be available,
+especially as I had no ax with which to cut steps, and the numerous
+narrow-throated gullies down which stones and snow are avalanched seemed
+hopelessly steep, besides being interrupted by vertical cliffs; while the whole
+front was rendered still more terribly forbidding by the chill shadow and the
+gloomy blackness of the rocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Descending the divide in a hesitating mood, I picked my way across the yawning
+chasm at the foot, and climbed out upon the glacier. There were no meadows now
+to cheer with their brave colors, nor could I hear the dun-headed sparrows,
+whose cheery notes so often relieve the silence of our highest mountains. The
+only sounds were the gurgling of small rills down in the veins and crevasses of
+the glacier, and now and then the rattling report of falling stones, with the
+echoes they shot out into the crisp air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could not distinctly hope to reach the summit from this side, yet I moved on
+across the glacier as if driven by fate. Contending with myself, the season is
+too far spent, I said, and even should I be successful, I might be storm-bound
+on the mountain; and in the cloud-darkness, with the cliffs and crevasses
+covered with snow, how could I escape? No; I must wait till next summer. I
+would only approach the mountain now, and inspect it, creep about its flanks,
+learn what I could of its history, holding myself ready to flee on the approach
+of the first storm-cloud. But we little know until tried how much of the
+uncontrollable there is in us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and up
+dangerous heights, let the judgment forbid as it may.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I succeeded in gaining the foot of the cliff on the eastern extremity of the
+glacier, and there discovered the mouth of a narrow avalanche gully, through
+which I began to climb, intending to follow it as far as possible, and at least
+obtain some fine wild views for my pains. Its general course is oblique to the
+plane of the mountain-face, and the metamorphic slates of which the mountain is
+built are cut by cleavage planes in such a way that they weather off in angular
+blocks, giving rise to irregular steps that greatly facilitate climbing on the
+sheer places. I thus made my way into a wilderness of crumbling spires and
+battlements, built together in bewildering combinations, and glazed in many
+places with a thin coating of ice, which I had to hammer off with stones. The
+situation was becoming gradually more perilous; but, having passed several
+dangerous spots, I dared not think of descending; for, so steep was the entire
+ascent, one would inevitably fall to the glacier in case a single misstep were
+made. Knowing, therefore, the tried danger beneath, I became all the more
+anxious concerning the developments to be made above, and began to be conscious
+of a vague foreboding of what actually befell; not that I was given to fear,
+but rather because my instincts, usually so positive and true, seemed vitiated
+in some way, and were leading me astray. At length, after attaining an
+elevation of about 12,800 feet, I found myself at the foot of a sheer drop in
+the bed of the avalanche channel I was tracing, which seemed absolutely to bar
+further progress. It was only about forty-five or fifty feet high, and somewhat
+roughened by fissures and projections; but these seemed so slight and insecure,
+as footholds, that I tried hard to avoid the precipice altogether, by scaling
+the wall of the channel on either side. But, though less steep, the walls were
+smoother than the obstructing rock, and repeated efforts only showed that I
+must either go right ahead or turn back. The tried dangers beneath seemed even
+greater than that of the cliff in front; therefore, after scanning its face
+again and again, I began to scale it, picking my holds with intense caution.
+After gaining a point about halfway to the top, I was suddenly brought to a
+dead stop, with arms outspread, clinging close to the face of the rock, unable
+to move hand or foot either up or down. My doom appeared fixed. I <i>must</i>
+fall. There would be a moment of bewilderment, and then a lifeless rumble down
+the one general precipice to the glacier below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When this final danger flashed upon me, I became nerve-shaken for the first
+time since setting foot on the mountains, and my mind seemed to fill with a
+stifling smoke. But this terrible eclipse lasted only a moment, when life
+blazed forth again with preternatural clearness. I seemed suddenly to become
+possessed of a new sense. The other self, bygone experiences, Instinct, or
+Guardian Angel,&mdash;call it what you will,&mdash;came forward and assumed
+control. Then my trembling muscles became firm again, every rift and flaw in
+the rock was seen as through a microscope, and my limbs moved with a
+positiveness and precision with which I seemed to have nothing at all to do.
+Had I been borne aloft upon wings, my deliverance could not have been more
+complete.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Above this memorable spot, the face of the mountain is still more savagely
+hacked and torn. It is a maze of yawning chasms and gullies, in the angles of
+which rise beetling crags and piles of detached boulders that seem to have been
+gotten ready to be launched below. But the strange influx of strength I had
+received seemed inexhaustible. I found a way without effort, and soon stood
+upon the topmost crag in the blessed light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How truly glorious the landscape circled around this noble summit!&mdash;giant
+mountains, valleys innumerable, glaciers and meadows, rivers and lakes, with
+the wide blue sky bent tenderly over them all. But in my first hour of freedom
+from that terrible shadow, the sunlight in which I was laving seemed all in
+all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking southward along the axis of the range, the eye is first caught by a row
+of exceedingly sharp and slender spires, which rise openly to a height of about
+a thousand feet, above a series of short, residual glaciers that lean back
+against their bases; their fantastic sculpture and the unrelieved sharpness
+with which they spring out of the ice rendering them peculiarly wild and
+striking. These are &ldquo;The Minarets.&rdquo; Beyond them you behold a
+sublime wilderness of mountains, their snowy summits towering together in
+crowded abundance, peak beyond peak, swelling higher, higher as they sweep on
+southward, until the culminating point of the range is reached on Mount
+Whitney, near the head of the Kern River, at an elevation of nearly 14,700 feet
+above the level of the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Westward, the general flank of the range is seen flowing sublimely away from
+the sharp summits, in smooth undulations; a sea of huge gray granite waves
+dotted with lakes and meadows, and fluted with stupendous cañons that grow
+steadily deeper as they recede in the distance. Below this gray region lies the
+dark forest zone, broken here and there by upswelling ridges and domes; and yet
+beyond lies a yellow, hazy belt, marking the broad plain of the San Joaquin,
+bounded on its farther side by the blue mountains of the coast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Turning now to the northward, there in the immediate foreground is the glorious
+Sierra Crown, with Cathedral Peak, a temple of marvelous architecture, a few
+degrees to the left of it; the gray, massive form of Mammoth Mountain to the
+right; while Mounts Ord, Gibbs, Dana, Conness, Tower Peak, Castle Peak, Silver
+Mountain, and a host of noble companions, as yet nameless, make a sublime show
+along the axis of the range.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eastward, the whole region seems a land of desolation covered with beautiful
+light. The torrid volcanic basin of Mono, with its one bare lake fourteen miles
+long; Owen&rsquo;s Valley and the broad lava table-land at its head, dotted
+with craters, and the massive Inyo Range, rivaling even the Sierra in height;
+these are spread, map-like, beneath you, with countless ranges beyond, passing
+and overlapping one another and fading on the glowing horizon.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus10"></a>
+<img src="images/img10.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY" />
+<p class="caption">MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+At a distance of less than 3000 feet below the summit of Mount Ritter you may
+find tributaries of the San Joaquin and Owen&rsquo;s rivers, bursting forth
+from the ice and snow of the glaciers that load its flanks; while a little to
+the north of here are found the highest affluents of the Tuolumne and Merced.
+Thus, the fountains of four of the principal rivers of California are within a
+radius of four or five miles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lakes are seen gleaming in all sorts of places,&mdash;round, or oval, or
+square, like very mirrors; others narrow and sinuous, drawn close around the
+peaks like silver zones, the highest reflecting only rocks, snow, and the sky.
+But neither these nor the glaciers, nor the bits of brown meadow and moorland
+that occur here and there, are large enough to make any marked impression upon
+the mighty wilderness of mountains. The eye, rejoicing in its freedom, roves
+about the vast expanse, yet returns again and again to the fountain peaks.
+Perhaps some one of the multitude excites special attention, some gigantic
+castle with turret and battlement, or some Gothic cathedral more abundantly
+spired than Milan&rsquo;s. But, generally, when looking for the first time from
+an all-embracing standpoint like this, the inexperienced observer is oppressed
+by the incomprehensible grandeur, variety, and abundance of the mountains
+rising shoulder to shoulder beyond the reach of vision; and it is only after
+they have been studied one by one, long and lovingly, that their far-reaching
+harmonies become manifest. Then, penetrate the wilderness where you may, the
+main telling features, to which all the surrounding topography is subordinate,
+are quickly perceived, and the most complicated clusters of peaks stand
+revealed harmoniously correlated and fashioned like works of art&mdash;eloquent
+monuments of the ancient ice-rivers that brought them into relief from the
+general mass of the range. The cañons, too, some of them a mile deep, mazing
+wildly through the mighty host of mountains, however lawless and ungovernable
+at first sight they appear, are at length recognized as the necessary effects
+of causes which followed each other in harmonious sequence&mdash;Nature&rsquo;s
+poems carved on tables of stone&mdash;the simplest and most emphatic of her
+glacial compositions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Could we have been here to observe during the glacial period, we should have
+overlooked a wrinkled ocean of ice as continuous as that now covering the
+landscapes of Greenland; filling every valley and cañon with only the tops of
+the fountain peaks rising darkly above the rock-encumbered ice-waves like
+islets in a stormy sea&mdash;those islets the only hints of the glorious
+landscapes now smiling in the sun. Standing here in the deep, brooding silence
+all the wilderness seems motionless, as if the work of creation were done. But
+in the midst of this outer steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and
+change. Ever and anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These
+cliff-bound glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water
+and grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite shores
+and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young rivers is
+fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to the plains. Here are
+the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here more simply than elsewhere
+is the eternal flux of nature manifested. Ice changing to water, lakes to
+meadows, and mountains to plains. And while we thus contemplate Nature&rsquo;s
+methods of landscape creation, and, reading the records she has carved on the
+rocks, reconstruct, however imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also
+learn that as these we now behold have succeeded those of the pre-glacial age,
+so they in turn are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others yet
+unborn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in the midst of these fine lessons and landscapes, I had to remember that
+the sun was wheeling far to the west, while a new way down the mountain had to
+be discovered to some point on the timber line where I could have a fire; for I
+had not even burdened myself with a coat. I first scanned the western spurs,
+hoping some way might appear through which I might reach the northern glacier,
+and cross its snout; or pass around the lake into which it flows, and thus
+strike my morning track. This route was soon sufficiently unfolded to show
+that, if practicable at all, it would require so much time that reaching camp
+that night would be out of the question. I therefore scrambled back eastward,
+descending the southern slopes obliquely at the same time. Here the crags
+seemed less formidable, and the head of a glacier that flows northeast came in
+sight, which I determined to follow as far as possible, hoping thus to make my
+way to the foot of the peak on the east side, and thence across the intervening
+cañons and ridges to camp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The inclination of the glacier is quite moderate at the head, and, as the sun
+had softened the <i>névé</i>, I made safe and rapid progress, running and
+sliding, and keeping up a sharp outlook for crevasses. About half a mile from
+the head, there is an ice-cascade, where the glacier pours over a sharp
+declivity and is shattered into massive blocks separated by deep, blue
+fissures. To thread my way through the slippery mazes of this crevassed portion
+seemed impossible, and I endeavored to avoid it by climbing off to the shoulder
+of the mountain. But the slopes rapidly steepened and at length fell away in
+sheer precipices, compelling a return to the ice. Fortunately, the day had been
+warm enough to loosen the ice-crystals so as to admit of hollows being dug in
+the rotten portions of the blocks, thus enabling me to pick my way with far
+less difficulty than I had anticipated. Continuing down over the snout, and
+along the left lateral moraine, was only a confident saunter, showing that the
+ascent of the mountain by way of this glacier is easy, provided one is armed
+with an ax to cut steps here and there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lower end of the glacier was beautifully waved and barred by the
+outcropping edges of the bedded ice-layers which represent the annual
+snowfalls, and to some extent the irregularities of structure caused by the
+weathering of the walls of crevasses, and by separate snowfalls which have been
+followed by rain, hail, thawing and freezing, etc. Small rills were gliding and
+swirling over the melting surface with a smooth, oily appearance, in channels
+of pure ice&mdash;their quick, compliant movements contrasting most
+impressively with the rigid, invisible flow of the glacier itself, on whose
+back they all were riding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Night drew near before I reached the eastern base of the mountain, and my camp
+lay many a rugged mile to the north; but ultimate success was assured. It was
+now only a matter of endurance and ordinary mountain-craft. The sunset was, if
+possible, yet more beautiful than that of the day before. The Mono landscape
+seemed to be fairly saturated with warm, purple light. The peaks marshaled
+along the summit were in shadow, but through every notch and pass streamed
+vivid sun-fire, soothing and irradiating their rough, black angles, while
+companies of small, luminous clouds hovered above them like very angels of
+light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Darkness came on, but I found my way by the trends of the cañons and the peaks
+projected against the sky. All excitement died with the light, and then I was
+weary. But the joyful sound of the waterfall across the lake was heard at last,
+and soon the stars were seen reflected in the lake itself. Taking my bearings
+from these, I discovered the little pine thicket in which my nest was, and then
+I had a rest such as only a tired mountaineer may enjoy. After lying loose and
+lost for awhile, I made a sunrise fire, went down to the lake, dashed water on
+my head, and dipped a cupful for tea. The revival brought about by bread and
+tea was as complete as the exhaustion from excessive enjoyment and toil. Then I
+crept beneath the pine-tassels to bed. The wind was frosty and the fire burned
+low, but my sleep was none the less sound, and the evening constellations had
+swept far to the west before I awoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After thawing and resting in the morning sunshine, I sauntered home,&mdash;that
+is, back to the Tuolumne camp,&mdash;bearing away toward a cluster of peaks
+that hold the fountain snows of one of the north tributaries of Rush Creek.
+Here I discovered a group of beautiful glacier lakes, nestled together in a
+grand amphitheater. Toward evening, I crossed the divide separating the Mono
+waters from those of the Tuolumne, and entered the glacier basin that now holds
+the fountain snows of the stream that forms the upper Tuolumne cascades. This
+stream I traced down through its many dells and gorges, meadows and bogs,
+reaching the brink of the main Tuolumne at dusk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A loud whoop for the artists was answered again and again. Their camp-fire came
+in sight, and half an hour afterward I was with them. They seemed unreasonably
+glad to see me. I had been absent only three days; nevertheless, though the
+weather was fine, they had already been weighing chances as to whether I would
+ever return, and trying to decide whether they should wait longer or begin to
+seek their way back to the lowlands. Now their curious troubles were over. They
+packed their precious sketches, and next morning we set out homeward bound, and
+in two days entered the Yosemite Valley from the north by way of Indian Cañon.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V<br/>
+THE PASSES</h2>
+
+<p>
+The sustained grandeur of the High Sierra is strikingly illustrated by the
+great height of the passes. Between latitude 36° 20&#x2032; and 38° the lowest
+pass, gap, gorge, or notch of any kind cutting across the axis of the range, as
+far as I have discovered, exceeds 9000 feet in height above the level of the
+sea; while the average height of all that are in use, either by Indians or
+whites, is perhaps not less than 11,000 feet, and not one of these is a
+carriage-pass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farther north a carriage-road has been constructed through what is known as the
+Sonora Pass, on the head waters of the Stanislaus and Walker&rsquo;s rivers,
+the summit of which is about 10,000 feet above the sea. Substantial wagon-roads
+have also been built through the Carson and Johnson passes, near the head of
+Lake Tahoe, over which immense quantities of freight were hauled from
+California to the mining regions of Nevada, before the construction of the
+Central Pacific Railroad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still farther north, a considerable number of comparatively low passes occur,
+some of which are accessible to wheeled vehicles, and through these rugged
+defiles during the exciting years of the gold period long emigrant-trains with
+foot-sore cattle wearily toiled. After the toil-worn adventurers had escaped a
+thousand dangers and had crawled thousands of miles across the plains the snowy
+Sierra at last loomed in sight, the eastern wall of the land of gold. And as
+with shaded eyes they gazed through the tremulous haze of the desert, with what
+joy must they have descried the pass through which they were to enter the
+better land of their hopes and dreams!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Between the Sonora Pass and the southern extremity of the High Sierra, a
+distance of nearly 160 miles, there are only five passes through which trails
+conduct from one side of the range to the other. These are barely practicable
+for animals; a pass in these regions meaning simply any notch or cañon through
+which one may, by the exercise of unlimited patience, make out to lead a mule,
+or a sure-footed mustang; animals that can slide or jump as well as walk. Only
+three of the five passes may be said to be in use, viz.: the Kearsarge, Mono,
+and Virginia Creek; the tracks leading through the others being only obscure
+Indian trails, not graded in the least, and scarcely traceable by white men;
+for much of the way is over solid rock and earthquake avalanche taluses, where
+the unshod ponies of the Indians leave no appreciable sign. Only skilled
+mountaineers are able to detect the marks that serve to guide the Indians, such
+as slight abrasions of the looser rocks, the displacement of stones here and
+there, and bent bushes and weeds. A general knowledge of the topography is,
+then, the main guide, enabling one to determine where the trail ought to
+go&mdash;<i>must</i> go. One of these Indian trails crosses the range by a
+nameless pass between the head waters of the south and middle forks of the San
+Joaquin, the other between the north and middle forks of the same river, just
+to the south of &ldquo;The Minarets&rdquo;; this last being about 9000 feet
+high, is the lowest of the five. The Kearsarge is the highest, crossing the
+summit near the head of the south fork of King&rsquo;s River, about eight miles
+to the north of Mount Tyndall, through the midst of the most stupendous
+rock-scenery. The summit of this pass is over 12,000 feet above sea-level;
+nevertheless, it is one of the safest of the five, and is used every summer,
+from July to October or November, by hunters, prospectors, and stock-owners,
+and to some extent by enterprising pleasure-seekers also. For, besides the
+surpassing grandeur of the scenery about the summit, the trail, in ascending
+the western flank of the range, conducts through a grove of the giant Sequoias,
+and through the magnificent Yosemite Valley of the south fork of King&rsquo;s
+River. This is, perhaps, the highest traveled pass on the North American
+continent.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus11"></a>
+<img src="images/img11.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION BOUNDARY" />
+<p class="caption">MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION BOUNDARY.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Mono Pass lies to the east of Yosemite Valley, at the head of one of the
+tributaries of the south fork of the Tuolumne. This is the best known and most
+extensively traveled of all that exist in the High Sierra. A trail was made
+through it about the time of the Mono gold excitement, in the year 1858, by
+adventurous miners and prospectors&mdash;men who would build a trail down the
+throat of darkest Erebus on the way to gold. Though more than a thousand feet
+lower than the Kearsarge, it is scarcely less sublime in rock-scenery, while in
+snowy, falling water it far surpasses it. Being so favorably situated for the
+stream of Yosemite travel, the more adventurous tourists cross over through
+this glorious gateway to the volcanic region around Mono Lake. It has therefore
+gained a name and fame above every other pass in the range. According to the
+few barometrical observations made upon it, its highest point is 10,765 feet
+above the sea. The other pass of the five we have been considering is somewhat
+lower, and crosses the axis of the range a few miles to the north of the Mono
+Pass, at the head of the southernmost tributary of Walker&rsquo;s River. It is
+used chiefly by roaming bands of the Pah Ute Indians and
+&ldquo;sheepmen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, leaving wheels and animals out of the question, the free mountaineer with
+a sack of bread on his shoulders and an ax to cut steps in ice and frozen snow
+can make his way across the range almost everywhere, and at any time of year
+when the weather is calm. To him nearly every notch between the peaks is a
+pass, though much patient step-cutting is at times required up and down steeply
+inclined glaciers, with cautious climbing over precipices that at first sight
+would seem hopelessly inaccessible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In pursuing my studies, I have crossed from side to side of the range at
+intervals of a few miles all along the highest portion of the chain, with far
+less real danger than one would naturally count on. And what fine wildness was
+thus revealed&mdash;storms and avalanches, lakes and waterfalls, gardens and
+meadows, and interesting animals&mdash;only those will ever know who give the
+freest and most buoyant portion of their lives to climbing and seeing for
+themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To the timid traveler, fresh from the sedimentary levels of the lowlands, these
+highways, however picturesque and grand, seem terribly forbidding&mdash;cold,
+dead, gloomy gashes in the bones of the mountains, and of all Nature&rsquo;s
+ways the ones to be most cautiously avoided. Yet they are full of the finest
+and most telling examples of Nature&rsquo;s love; and though hard to travel,
+none are safer. For they lead through regions that lie far above the ordinary
+haunts of the devil, and of the pestilence that walks in darkness. True, there
+are innumerable places where the careless step will be the last step; and a
+rock falling from the cliffs may crush without warning like lightning from the
+sky; but what then! Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the
+lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine,
+places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few
+places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try
+the mountain-passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you
+free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the
+sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate
+they kill, they cure a thousand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the passes make their steepest ascents on the eastern flank. On this side
+the average rise is not far from a thousand feet to the mile, while on the west
+it is about two hundred feet. Another marked difference between the eastern and
+western portions of the passes is that the former begin at the very foot of the
+range, while the latter can hardly be said to begin lower than an elevation of
+from seven to ten thousand feet. Approaching the range from the gray levels of
+Mono and Owen&rsquo;s Valley on the east, the traveler sees before him the
+steep, short passes in full view, fenced in by rugged spurs that come plunging
+down from the shoulders of the peaks on either side, the courses of the more
+direct being disclosed from top to bottom without interruption. But from the
+west one sees nothing of the way he may be seeking until near the summit, after
+days have been spent in threading the forests growing on the main dividing
+ridges between the river cañons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is interesting to observe how surely the alp-crossing animals of every kind
+fall into the same trails. The more rugged and inaccessible the general
+character of the topography of any particular region, the more surely will the
+trails of white men, Indians, bears, wild sheep, etc., be found converging into
+the best passes. The Indians of the western slope venture cautiously over the
+passes in settled weather to attend dances, and obtain loads of pine-nuts and
+the larvae of a small fly that breeds in Mono and Owen&rsquo;s lakes, which,
+when dried, forms an important article of food; while the Pah Utes cross over
+from the east to hunt the deer and obtain supplies of acorns; and it is truly
+astonishing to see what immense loads the haggard old squaws make out to carry
+bare-footed through these rough passes, oftentimes for a distance of sixty or
+seventy miles. They are always accompanied by the men, who stride on,
+unburdened and erect, a little in advance, kindly stooping at difficult places
+to pile stepping-stones for their patient, pack-animal wives, just as they
+would prepare the way for their ponies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bears evince great sagacity as mountaineers, but although they are tireless and
+enterprising travelers they seldom cross the range. I have several times
+tracked them through the Mono Pass, but only in late years, after cattle and
+sheep had passed that way, when they doubtless were following to feed on the
+stragglers and on those that had been killed by falling over the rocks. Even
+the wild sheep, the best mountaineers of all, choose regular passes in making
+journeys across the summits. Deer seldom cross the range in either direction. I
+have never yet observed a single specimen of the mule-deer of the Great Basin
+west of the summit, and rarely one of the black-tailed species on the eastern
+slope, notwithstanding many of the latter ascend the range nearly to the summit
+every summer, to feed in the wild gardens and bring forth their young.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The glaciers are the pass-makers, and it is by them that the courses of all
+mountaineers are predestined. Without exception every pass in the Sierra was
+created by them without the slightest aid or predetermining guidance from any
+of the cataclysmic agents. I have seen elaborate statements of the amount of
+drilling and blasting accomplished in the construction of the railroad across
+the Sierra, above Donner Lake; but for every pound of rock moved in this way,
+the glaciers which descended east and west through this same pass, crushed and
+carried away more than a hundred tons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The so-called practicable road-passes are simply those portions of the range
+more degraded by glacial action than the adjacent portions, and degraded in
+such a way as to leave the summits rounded, instead of sharp; while the peaks,
+from the superior strength and hardness of their rocks, or from more favorable
+position, having suffered less degradation, are left towering above the passes
+as if they had been heaved into the sky by some force acting from beneath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scenery of all the passes, especially at the head, is of the wildest and
+grandest description,&mdash;lofty peaks massed together and laden around their
+bases with ice and snow; chains of glacier lakes; cascading streams in endless
+variety, with glorious views, westward over a sea of rocks and woods, and
+eastward over strange ashy plains, volcanoes, and the dry, dead-looking ranges
+of the Great Basin. Every pass, however, possesses treasures of beauty all its
+own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having thus in a general way indicated the height, leading features, and
+distribution of the principal passes, I will now endeavor to describe the Mono
+Pass in particular, which may, I think, be regarded as a fair example of the
+higher alpine passes in general.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The main portion of the Mono Pass is formed by Bloody Cañon, which begins at
+the summit of the range, and runs in a general east-northeasterly direction to
+the edge of the Mono Plain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first white men who forced a way through its somber depths were, as we have
+seen, eager gold-seekers. But the cañon was known and traveled as a pass by the
+Indians and mountain animals long before its discovery by white men, as is
+shown by the numerous tributary trails which come into it from every direction.
+Its name accords well with the character of the &ldquo;early times&rdquo; in
+California, and may perhaps have been suggested by the predominant color of the
+metamorphic slates in which it is in great part eroded; or more probably by
+blood-stains made by the unfortunate animals which were compelled to slip and
+shuffle awkwardly over its rough, cutting rocks. I have never known an animal,
+either mule or horse, to make its way through the cañon, either in going up or
+down, without losing more or less blood from wounds on the legs. Occasionally
+one is killed outright&mdash;falling headlong and rolling over precipices like
+a boulder. But such accidents are rarer than from the terrible appearance of
+the trail one would be led to expect; the more experienced when driven loose
+find their way over the dangerous places with a caution and sagacity that is
+truly wonderful. During the gold excitement it was at times a matter of
+considerable pecuniary importance to force a way through the cañon with
+pack-trains early in the spring while it was yet heavily blocked with snow; and
+then the mules with their loads had sometimes to be let down over the steepest
+drifts and avalanche beds by means of ropes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A good bridle-path leads from Yosemite through many a grove and meadow up to
+the head of the cañon, a distance of about thirty miles. Here the scenery
+undergoes a sudden and startling condensation. Mountains, red, gray, and black,
+rise close at hand on the right, whitened around their bases with banks of
+enduring snow; on the left swells the huge red mass of Mount Gibbs, while in
+front the eye wanders down the shadowy cañon, and out on the warm plain of
+Mono, where the lake is seen gleaming like a burnished metallic disk, with
+clusters of lofty volcanic cones to the south of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When at length we enter the mountain gateway, the somber rocks seem aware of
+our presence, and seem to come thronging closer about us. Happily the ouzel and
+the old familiar robin are here to sing us welcome, and azure daisies beam with
+trustfulness and sympathy, enabling us to feel something of Nature&rsquo;s love
+even here, beneath the gaze of her coldest rocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The effect of this expressive outspokenness on the part of the cañon-rocks is
+greatly enhanced by the quiet aspect of the alpine meadows through which we
+pass just before entering the narrow gateway. The forests in which they lie,
+and the mountain-tops rising beyond them, seem quiet and tranquil. We catch
+their restful spirit, yield to the soothing influences of the sunshine, and
+saunter dreamily on through flowers and bees, scarce touched by a definite
+thought; then suddenly we find ourselves in the shadowy cañon, closeted with
+Nature in one of her wildest strongholds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the first bewildering impression begins to wear off, we perceive that it
+is not altogether terrible; for besides the reassuring birds and flowers we
+discover a chain of shining lakelets hanging down from the very summit of the
+pass, and linked together by a silvery stream. The highest are set in bleak,
+rough bowls, scantily fringed with brown and yellow sedges. Winter storms blow
+snow through the cañon in blinding drifts, and avalanches shoot from the
+heights. Then are these sparkling tarns filled and buried, leaving not a hint
+of their existence. In June and July they begin to blink and thaw out like
+sleepy eyes, the carices thrust up their short brown spikes, the daisies bloom
+in turn, and the most profoundly buried of them all is at length warmed and
+summered as if winter were only a dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Red Lake is the lowest of the chain, and also the largest. It seems rather dull
+and forbidding at first sight, lying motionless in its deep, dark bed. The
+cañon wall rises sheer from the water&rsquo;s edge on the south, but on the
+opposite side there is sufficient space and sunshine for a sedgy daisy garden,
+the center of which is brilliantly lighted with lilies, castilleias, larkspurs,
+and columbines, sheltered from the wind by leafy willows, and forming a most
+joyful outburst of plant-life keenly emphasized by the chill baldness of the
+onlooking cliffs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After indulging here in a dozing, shimmering lake-rest, the happy stream sets
+forth again, warbling and trilling like an ouzel, ever delightfully confiding,
+no matter how dark the way; leaping, gliding, hither, thither, clear or
+foaming: manifesting the beauty of its wildness in every sound and gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of its most beautiful developments is the Diamond Cascade, situated a short
+distance below Red Lake. Here the tense, crystalline water is first dashed into
+coarse, granular spray mixed with dusty foam, and then divided into a diamond
+pattern by following the diagonal cleavage-joints that intersect the face of
+the precipice over which it pours. Viewed in front, it resembles a strip of
+embroidery of definite pattern, varying through the seasons with the
+temperature and the volume of water. Scarce a flower may be seen along its
+snowy border. A few bent pines look on from a distance, and small fringes of
+cassiope and rock-ferns are growing in fissures near the head, but these are so
+lowly and undemonstrative that only the attentive observer will be likely to
+notice them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the north wall of the cañon, a little below the Diamond Cascade, a
+glittering side stream makes its appearance, seeming to leap directly out of
+the sky. It first resembles a crinkled ribbon of silver hanging loosely down
+the wall, but grows wider as it descends, and dashes the dull rock with foam. A
+long rough talus curves up against this part of the cliff, overgrown with
+snow-pressed willows, in which the fall disappears with many an eager surge and
+swirl and plashing leap, finally beating its way down to its confluence with
+the main cañon stream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Below this point the climate is no longer arctic. Butterflies become larger and
+more abundant, grasses with imposing spread of panicle wave above your
+shoulders, and the summery drone of the bumblebee thickens the air. The Dwarf
+Pine, the tree-mountaineer that climbs highest and braves the coldest blasts,
+is found scattered in storm-beaten clumps from the summit of the pass about
+half-way down the cañon. Here it is succeeded by the hardy Two-leaved Pine,
+which is speedily joined by the taller Yellow and Mountain Pines. These, with
+the burly juniper, and shimmering aspen, rapidly grow larger as the sunshine
+becomes richer, forming groves that block the view; or they stand more apart
+here and there in picturesque groups, that make beautiful and obvious harmony
+with the rocks and with one another. Blooming underbrush becomes
+abundant,&mdash;azalea, spiraea, and the brier-rose weaving fringes for the
+streams, and shaggy rugs to relieve the stern, unflinching rock-bosses.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus12"></a>
+<img src="images/img12.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="RANCHERIA FALLS" />
+<p class="caption">RANCHERIA FALLS, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Through this delightful wilderness, Cañon Creek roves without any constraining
+channel, throbbing and wavering; now in sunshine, now in thoughtful shade;
+falling, swirling, flashing from side to side in weariless exuberance of
+energy. A glorious milky way of cascades is thus developed, of which Bower
+Cascade, though one of the smallest, is perhaps the most beautiful of them all.
+It is situated in the lower region of the pass, just where the sunshine begins
+to mellow between the cold and warm climates. Here the glad creek, grown strong
+with tribute gathered from many a snowy fountain on the heights, sings richer
+strains, and becomes more human and lovable at every step. Now you may by its
+side find the rose and homely yarrow, and small meadows full of bees and
+clover. At the head of a low-browed rock, luxuriant dogwood bushes and willows
+arch over from bank to bank, embowering the stream with their leafy branches;
+and drooping plumes, kept in motion by the current, fringe the brow of the
+cascade in front. From this leafy covert the stream leaps out into the light in
+a fluted curve thick sown with sparkling crystals, and falls into a pool filled
+with brown boulders, out of which it creeps gray with foam-bells and disappears
+in a tangle of verdure like that from which it came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hence, to the foot of the cañon, the metamorphic slates give place to granite,
+whose nobler sculpture calls forth expressions of corresponding beauty from the
+stream in passing over it,&mdash;bright trills of rapids, booming notes of
+falls, solemn hushes of smooth-gliding sheets, all chanting and blending in
+glorious harmony. When, at length, its impetuous alpine life is done, it slips
+through a meadow with scarce an audible whisper, and falls asleep in Moraine
+Lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This water-bed is one of the finest I ever saw. Evergreens wave soothingly
+about it, and the breath of flowers floats over it like incense. Here our
+blessed stream rests from its rocky wanderings, all its mountaineering
+done,&mdash;no more foaming rock-leaping, no more wild, exulting song. It falls
+into a smooth, glassy sleep, stirred only by the night-wind, which, coming down
+the cañon, makes it croon and mutter in ripples along its broidered shores.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaving the lake, it glides quietly through the rushes, destined never more to
+touch the living rock. Henceforth its path lies through ancient moraines and
+reaches of ashy sage-plain, which nowhere afford rocks suitable for the
+development of cascades or sheer falls. Yet this beauty of maturity, though
+less striking, is of a still higher order, enticing us lovingly on through
+gentian meadows and groves of rustling aspen to Lake Mono, where, spirit-like,
+our happy stream vanishes in vapor, and floats free again in the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bloody Cañon, like every other in the Sierra, was recently occupied by a
+glacier, which derived its fountain snows from the adjacent summits, and
+descended into Mono Lake, at a time when its waters stood at a much higher
+level than now. The principal characters in which the history of the ancient
+glaciers is preserved are displayed here in marvelous freshness and simplicity,
+furnishing the student with extraordinary advantages for the acquisition of
+knowledge of this sort. The most striking passages are polished and striated
+surfaces, which in many places reflect the rays of the sun like smooth water.
+The dam of Red Lake is an elegantly modeled rib of metamorphic slate, brought
+into relief because of its superior strength, and because of the greater
+intensity of the glacial erosion of the rock immediately above it, caused by a
+steeply inclined tributary glacier, which entered the main trunk with a heavy
+down-thrust at the head of the lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moraine Lake furnishes an equally interesting example of a basin formed wholly,
+or in part, by a terminal moraine dam curved across the path of a stream
+between two lateral moraines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Moraine Lake the cañon proper terminates, although apparently continued by
+the two lateral moraines of the vanished glacier. These moraines are about 300
+feet high, and extend unbrokenly from the sides of the cañon into the plain, a
+distance of about five miles, curving and tapering in beautiful lines. Their
+sunward sides are gardens, their shady sides are groves; the former devoted
+chiefly to eriogonae, compositae, and graminae; a square rod containing five or
+six profusely flowered eriogonums of several species, about the same number of
+bahia and linosyris, and a few grass tufts; each species being planted trimly
+apart, with bare gravel between, as if cultivated artificially.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My first visit to Bloody Cañon was made in the summer of 1869, under
+circumstances well calculated to heighten the impressions that are the peculiar
+offspring of mountains. I came from the blooming tangles of Florida, and waded
+out into the plant-gold of the great valley of California, when its flora was
+as yet untrodden. Never before had I beheld congregations of social flowers
+half so extensive or half so glorious. Golden composite covered all the ground
+from the Coast Range to the Sierra like a stratum of curdled sunshine, in which
+I reveled for weeks, watching the rising and setting of their innumerable suns;
+then I gave myself up to be borne forward on the crest of the summer wave that
+sweeps annually up the Sierra and spends itself on the snowy summits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the Big Tuolumne Meadows I remained more than a month, sketching,
+botanizing, and climbing among the surrounding mountains. The mountaineer with
+whom I then happened to be camping was one of those remarkable men one so
+frequently meets in California, the hard angles and bosses of whose characters
+have been brought into relief by the grinding excitements of the gold period,
+until they resemble glacial landscapes. But at this late day, my friend&rsquo;s
+activities had subsided, and his craving for rest caused him to become a gentle
+shepherd and literally to lie down with the lamb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Recognizing the unsatisfiable longings of my Scotch Highland instincts, he
+threw out some hints concerning Bloody Cañon, and advised me to explore it.
+&ldquo;I have never seen it myself,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for I never was so
+unfortunate as to pass that way. But I have heard many a strange story about
+it, and I warrant you will at least find it wild enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then of course I made haste to see it. Early next morning I made up a bundle of
+bread, tied my note-book to my belt, and strode away in the bracing air, full
+of eager, indefinite hope. The plushy lawns that lay in my path served to
+soothe my morning haste. The sod in many places was starred with daisies and
+blue gentians, over which I lingered. I traced the paths of the ancient
+glaciers over many a shining pavement, and marked the gaps in the upper forests
+that told the power of the winter avalanches. Climbing higher, I saw for the
+first time the gradual dwarfing of the pines in compliance with climate, and on
+the summit discovered creeping mats of the arctic willow overgrown with silky
+catkins, and patches of the dwarf vaccinium with its round flowers sprinkled in
+the grass like purple hail; while in every direction the landscape stretched
+sublimely away in fresh wildness&mdash;a manuscript written by the hand of
+Nature alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, as I entered the pass, the huge rocks began to close around in all
+their wild, mysterious impressiveness, when suddenly, as I was gazing eagerly
+about me, a drove of gray hairy beings came in sight, lumbering toward me with
+a kind of boneless, wallowing motion like bears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I never turn back, though often so inclined, and in this particular instance,
+amid such surroundings, everything seemed singularly unfavorable for the calm
+acceptance of so grim a company. Suppressing my fears, I soon discovered that
+although as hairy as bears and as crooked as summit pines, the strange
+creatures were sufficiently erect to belong to our own species. They proved to
+be nothing more formidable than Mono Indians dressed in the skins of
+sage-rabbits. Both the men and the women begged persistently for whisky and
+tobacco, and seemed so accustomed to denials that I found it impossible to
+convince them that I had none to give. Excepting the names of these two
+products of civilization, they seemed to understand not a word of English; but
+I afterward learned that they were on their way to Yosemite Valley to feast
+awhile on trout and procure a load of acorns to carry back through the pass to
+their huts on the shore of Mono Lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Occasionally a good countenance may be seen among the Mono Indians, but these,
+the first specimens I had seen, were mostly ugly, and some of them altogether
+hideous. The dirt on their faces was fairly stratified, and seemed so ancient
+and so undisturbed it might almost possess a geological significance. The older
+faces were, moreover, strangely blurred and divided into sections by furrows
+that looked like the cleavage-joints of rocks, suggesting exposure on the
+mountains in a castaway condition for ages. Somehow they seemed to have no
+right place in the landscape, and I was glad to see them fading out of sight
+down the pass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then came evening, and the somber cliffs were inspired with the ineffable
+beauty of the alpenglow. A solemn calm fell upon everything. All the lower
+portion of the cañon was in gloaming shadow, and I crept into a hollow near one
+of the upper lakelets to smooth the ground in a sheltered nook for a bed. When
+the short twilight faded, I kindled a sunny fire, made a cup of tea, and lay
+down to rest and look at the stars. Soon the night-wind began to flow and pour
+in torrents among the jagged peaks, mingling strange tones with those of the
+waterfalls sounding far below; and as I drifted toward sleep I began to
+experience an uncomfortable feeling of nearness to the furred Monos. Then the
+full moon looked down over the edge of the cañon wall, her countenance
+seemingly filled with intense concern, and apparently so near as to produce a
+startling effect as if she had entered my bedroom, forgetting all the world, to
+gaze on me alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The night was full of strange sounds, and I gladly welcomed the morning.
+Breakfast was soon done, and I set forth in the exhilarating freshness of the
+new day, rejoicing in the abundance of pure wildness so close about me. The
+stupendous rocks, hacked and scarred with centuries of storms, stood sharply
+out in the thin early light, while down in the bottom of the cañon grooved and
+polished bosses heaved and glistened like swelling sea-waves, telling a grand
+old story of the ancient glacier that poured its crushing floods above them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here for the first time I met the arctic daisies in all their perfection of
+purity and spirituality,&mdash;gentle mountaineers face to face with the stormy
+sky, kept safe and warm by a thousand miracles. I leaped lightly from rock to
+rock, glorying in the eternal freshness and sufficiency of Nature, and in the
+ineffable tenderness with which she nurtures her mountain darlings in the very
+fountains of storms. Fresh beauty appeared at every step, delicate rock-ferns,
+and groups of the fairest flowers. Now another lake came to view, now a
+waterfall. Never fell light in brighter spangles, never fell water in whiter
+foam. I seemed to float through the cañon enchanted, feeling nothing of its
+roughness, and was out in the Mono levels before I was aware.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking back from the shore of Moraine Lake, my morning ramble seemed all a
+dream. There curved Bloody Cañon, a mere glacial furrow 2000 feet deep, with
+smooth rocks projecting from the sides and braided together in the middle, like
+bulging, swelling muscles. Here the lilies were higher than my head, and the
+sunshine was warm enough for palms. Yet the snow around the arctic willows was
+plainly visible only four miles away, and between were narrow specimen zones of
+all the principal climates of the globe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the bank of a small brook that comes gurgling down the side of the left
+lateral moraine, I found a camp-fire still burning, which no doubt belonged to
+the gray Indians I had met on the summit, and I listened instinctively and
+moved cautiously forward, half expecting to see some of their grim faces
+peering out of the bushes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Passing on toward the open plain, I noticed three well-defined terminal
+moraines curved gracefully across the cañon stream, and joined by long splices
+to the two noble laterals. These mark the halting-places of the vanished
+glacier when it was retreating into its summit shadows on the breaking-up of
+the glacial winter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five miles below the foot of Moraine Lake, just where the lateral moraines lose
+themselves in the plain, there was a field of wild rye, growing in magnificent
+waving bunches six to eight feet high, bearing heads from six to twelve inches
+long. Rubbing out some of the grains, I found them about five eighths of an
+inch long, dark-colored, and sweet. Indian women were gathering it in baskets,
+bending down large handfuls, beating it out, and fanning it in the wind. They
+were quite picturesque, coming through the rye, as one caught glimpses of them
+here and there, in winding lanes and openings, with splendid tufts arching
+above their heads, while their incessant chat and laughter showed their
+heedless joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like the rye-field, I found the so-called desert of Mono blooming in a high
+state of natural cultivation with the wild rose, cherry, aster, and the
+delicate abronia; also innumerable gilias, phloxes, poppies, and
+bush-compositae. I observed their gestures and the various expressions of their
+corollas, inquiring how they could be so fresh and beautiful out in this
+volcanic desert. They told as happy a life as any plant-company I ever met, and
+seemed to enjoy even the hot sand and the wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the vegetation of the pass has been in great part destroyed, and the same
+may be said of all the more accessible passes throughout the range. Immense
+numbers of starving sheep and cattle have been driven through them into Nevada,
+trampling the wild gardens and meadows almost out of existence. The lofty walls
+are untouched by any foot, and the falls sing on unchanged; but the sight of
+crushed flowers and stripped, bitten bushes goes far toward destroying the
+charm of wildness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cañon should be seen in winter. A good, strong traveler, who knows the way
+and the weather, might easily make a safe excursion through it from Yosemite
+Valley on snow-shoes during some tranquil time, when the storms are hushed. The
+lakes and falls would be buried then; but so, also, would be the traces of
+destructive feet, while the views of the mountains in their winter garb, and
+the ride at lightning speed down the pass between the snowy walls, would be
+truly glorious.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus13"></a>
+<img src="images/img13.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CAÑON" />
+<p class="caption">VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CAÑON.</p>
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI<br/>
+THE GLACIER LAKES</h2>
+
+<p>
+Among the many unlooked-for treasures that are bound up and hidden away in the
+depths of Sierra solitudes, none more surely charm and surprise all kinds of
+travelers than the glacier lakes. The forests and the glaciers and the snowy
+fountains of the streams advertise their wealth in a more or less telling
+manner even in the distance, but nothing is seen of the lakes until we have
+climbed above them. All the upper branches of the rivers are fairly laden with
+lakes, like orchard trees with fruit. They lie embosomed in the deep woods,
+down in the grovy bottoms of cañons, high on bald tablelands, and around the
+feet of the icy peaks, mirroring back their wild beauty over and over again.
+Some conception of their lavish abundance may be made from the fact that, from
+one standpoint on the summit of Red Mountain, a day&rsquo;s journey to the east
+of Yosemite Valley, no fewer than forty-two are displayed within a radius of
+ten miles. The whole number in the Sierra can hardly be less than fifteen
+hundred, not counting the smaller pools and tarns, which are innumerable.
+Perhaps two thirds or more lie on the western flank of the range, and all are
+restricted to the alpine and subalpine regions. At the close of the last
+glacial period, the middle and foot-hill regions also abounded in lakes, all of
+which have long since vanished as completely as the magnificent ancient
+glaciers that brought them into existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though the eastern flank of the range is excessively steep, we find lakes
+pretty regularly distributed throughout even the most precipitous portions.
+They are mostly found in the upper branches of the cañons, and in the glacial
+amphitheaters around the peaks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Occasionally long, narrow specimens occur upon the steep sides of dividing
+ridges, their basins swung lengthwise like hammocks, and very rarely one is
+found lying so exactly on the summit of the range at the head of some pass that
+its waters are discharged down both flanks when the snow is melting fast. But,
+however situated, they soon cease to form surprises to the studious
+mountaineer; for, like all the love-work of Nature, they are harmoniously
+related to one another, and to all the other features of the mountains. It is
+easy, therefore, to find the bright lake-eyes in the roughest and most
+ungovernable-looking topography of any landscape countenance. Even in the lower
+regions, where they have been closed for many a century, their rocky orbits are
+still discernible, filled in with the detritus of flood and avalanche. A
+beautiful system of grouping in correspondence with the glacial fountains is
+soon perceived; also their extension in the direction of the trends of the
+ancient glaciers; and in general their dependence as to form, size, and
+position upon the character of the rocks in which their basins have been
+eroded, and the quantity and direction of application of the glacial force
+expended upon each basin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the upper cañons we usually find them in pretty regular succession, strung
+together like beads on the bright ribbons of their feeding-streams, which pour,
+white and gray with foam and spray, from one to the other, their perfect mirror
+stillness making impressive contrasts with the grand blare and glare of the
+connecting cataracts. In Lake Hollow, on the north side of the Hoffman spur,
+immediately above the great Tuolumne cañon, there are ten lovely lakelets lying
+near together in one general hollow, like eggs in a nest. Seen from above, in a
+general view, feathered with Hemlock Spruce, and fringed with sedge, they seem
+to me the most singularly beautiful and interestingly located lake-cluster I
+have ever yet discovered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lake Tahoe, 22 miles long by about 10 wide, and from 500 to over 1600 feet in
+depth, is the largest of all the Sierra lakes. It lies just beyond the northern
+limit of the higher portion of the range between the main axis and a spur that
+puts out on the east side from near the head of the Carson River. Its forested
+shores go curving in and out around many an emerald bay and pine-crowned
+promontory, and its waters are everywhere as keenly pure as any to be found
+among the highest mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Donner Lake, rendered memorable by the terrible fate of the Donner party, is
+about three miles long, and lies about ten miles to the north of Tahoe, at the
+head of one of the tributaries of the Truckee. A few miles farther north lies
+Lake Independence, about the same size as Donner. But far the greater number of
+the lakes lie much higher and are quite small, few of them exceeding a mile in
+length, most of them less than half a mile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Along the lower edge of the lake-belt, the smallest have disappeared by the
+filling-in of their basins, leaving only those of considerable size. But all
+along the upper freshly glaciated margin of the lake-bearing zone, every
+hollow, however small, lying within reach of any portion of the close network
+of streams, contains a bright, brimming pool; so that the landscape viewed from
+the mountain-tops seems to be sown broadcast with them. Many of the larger
+lakes are encircled with smaller ones like central gems girdled with sparkling
+brilliants. In general, however, there is no marked dividing line as to size.
+In order, therefore, to prevent confusion, I would state here that in giving
+numbers, I include none less than 500 yards in circumference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the basin of the Merced River, I counted 131, of which 111 are upon the
+tributaries that fall so grandly into Yosemite Valley. Pohono Creek, which
+forms the fall of that name, takes its rise in a beautiful lake, lying beneath
+the shadow of a lofty granite spur that puts out from Buena Vista peak. This is
+now the only lake left in the whole Pohono Basin. The Illilouette has sixteen,
+the Nevada no fewer than sixty-seven, the Tenaya eight, Hoffmann Creek five,
+and Yosemite Creek fourteen. There are but two other lake-bearing affluents of
+the Merced, viz., the South Fork with fifteen, and Cascade Creek with five,
+both of which unite with the main trunk below Yosemite.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus14"></a>
+<img src="images/img14.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS" />
+<p class="caption">LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Merced River, as a whole, is remarkably like an elm-tree, and it requires
+but little effort on the part of the imagination to picture it standing
+upright, with all its lakes hanging upon its spreading branches, the topmost
+eighty miles in height. Now add all the other lake-bearing rivers of the
+Sierra, each in its place, and you will have a truly glorious
+spectacle,&mdash;an avenue the length and width of the range; the long,
+slender, gray shafts of the main trunks, the milky way of arching branches, and
+the silvery lakes, all clearly defined and shining on the sky. How excitedly
+such an addition to the scenery would be gazed at! Yet these lakeful rivers are
+still more excitingly beautiful and impressive in their natural positions to
+those who have the eyes to see them as they lie imbedded in their meadows and
+forests and glacier-sculptured rocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When a mountain lake is born,&mdash;when, like a young eye, it first opens to
+the light,&mdash;it is an irregular, expressionless crescent, inclosed in banks
+of rock and ice,&mdash;bare, glaciated rock on the lower side, the rugged snout
+of a glacier on the upper. In this condition it remains for many a year, until
+at length, toward the end of some auspicious cluster of seasons, the glacier
+recedes beyond the upper margin of the basin, leaving it open from shore to
+shore for the first time, thousands of years after its conception beneath the
+glacier that excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in
+its pure depths; the winds ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun fills it with
+throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless
+shores,&mdash;sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at night its only
+flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier
+continues to recede, and numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself,
+bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, giving rise to margin-rings
+and plats of soil. To these fresh soil-beds come many a waiting plant. First, a
+hardy carex with arching leaves and a spike of brown flowers; then, as the
+seasons grow warmer, and the soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take
+their appointed places, and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies,
+dodecatheons, violets, honeyworts, and many a lowly moss. Shrubs also hasten in
+time to the new gardens,&mdash;kalmia with its glossy leaves and purple
+flowers, the arctic willow, making soft woven carpets, together with the heathy
+bryanthus and cassiope, the fairest and dearest of them all. Insects now enrich
+the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed by the ouzel, which
+is the first bird to visit a glacier lake, as the sedge is the first of plants.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the young lake grows in beauty, becoming more and more humanly lovable from
+century to century. Groves of aspen spring up, and hardy pines, and the Hemlock
+Spruce, until it is richly overshadowed and embowered. But while its shores are
+being enriched, the soil-beds creep out with incessant growth, contracting its
+area, while the lighter mud-particles deposited on the bottom cause it to grow
+constantly shallower, until at length the last remnant of the lake
+vanishes,&mdash;closed forever in ripe and natural old age. And now its
+feeding-stream goes winding on without halting through the new gardens and
+groves that have taken its place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The length of the life of any lake depends ordinarily upon the capacity of its
+basin, as compared with the carrying power of the streams that flow into it,
+the character of the rocks over which these streams flow, and the relative
+position of the lake toward other lakes. In a series whose basins lie in the
+same cañon, and are fed by one and the same main stream, the uppermost will, of
+course, vanish first unless some other lake-filling agent comes in to modify
+the result; because at first it receives nearly all of the sediments that the
+stream brings down, only the finest of the mud-particles being carried through
+the highest of the series to the next below. Then the next higher, and the next
+would be successively filled, and the lowest would be the last to vanish. But
+this simplicity as to duration is broken in upon in various ways, chiefly
+through the action of side-streams that enter the lower lakes direct. For,
+notwithstanding many of these side tributaries are quite short, and, during
+late summer, feeble, they all become powerful torrents in springtime when the
+snow is melting, and carry not only sand and pine-needles, but large trunks and
+boulders tons in weight, sweeping them down their steeply inclined channels and
+into the lake basins with astounding energy. Many of these side affluents also
+have the advantage of access to the main lateral moraines of the vanished
+glacier that occupied the cañon, and upon these they draw for lake-filling
+material, while the main trunk stream flows mostly over clean glacier
+pavements, where but little moraine matter is ever left for them to carry. Thus
+a small rapid stream with abundance of loose transportable material within its
+reach may fill up an extensive basin in a few centuries, while a large
+perennial trunk stream, flowing over clean, enduring pavements, though
+ordinarily a hundred times larger, may not fill a smaller basin in thousands of
+years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The comparative influence of great and small streams as lake-fillers is
+strikingly illustrated in Yosemite Valley, through which the Merced flows. The
+bottom of the valley is now composed of level meadow-lands and dry, sloping
+soil-beds planted with oak and pine, but it was once a lake stretching from
+wall to wall and nearly from one end of the valley to the other, forming one of
+the most beautiful cliff-bound sheets of water that ever existed in the Sierra.
+And though never perhaps seen by human eye, it was but yesterday, geologically
+speaking, since it disappeared, and the traces of its existence are still so
+fresh, it may easily be restored to the eye of imagination and viewed in all
+its grandeur, about as truly and vividly as if actually before us. Now we find
+that the detritus which fills this magnificent basin was not brought down from
+the distant mountains by the main streams that converge here to form the river,
+however powerful and available for the purpose at first sight they appear; but
+almost wholly by the small local tributaries, such as those of Indian Cañon,
+the Sentinel, and the Three Brothers, and by a few small residual glaciers
+which lingered in the shadows of the walls long after the main trunk glacier
+had receded beyond the head of the valley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had the glaciers that once covered the range been melted at once, leaving the
+entire surface bare from top to bottom simultaneously, then of course all the
+lakes would have come into existence at the same time, and the highest, other
+circumstances being equal, would, as we have seen, be the first to vanish. But
+because they melted gradually from the foot of the range upward, the lower
+lakes were the first to see the light and the first to be obliterated.
+Therefore, instead of finding the lakes of the present day at the foot of the
+range, we find them at the top. Most of the lower lakes vanished thousands of
+years before those now brightening the alpine landscapes were born. And in
+general, owing to the deliberation of the upward retreat of the glaciers, the
+lowest of the existing lakes are also the oldest, a gradual transition being
+apparent throughout the entire belt, from the older, forested, meadow-rimmed
+and contracted forms all the way up to those that are new born, lying bare and
+meadowless among the highest peaks.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus15"></a>
+<img src="images/img15.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="THE DEATH OF A LAKE" />
+<p class="caption">THE DEATH OF A LAKE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+A few small lakes unfortunately situated are extinguished suddenly by a single
+swoop of an avalanche, carrying down immense numbers of trees, together with
+the soil they were growing upon. Others are obliterated by land-slips,
+earthquake taluses, etc., but these lake-deaths compared with those resulting
+from the deliberate and incessant deposition of sediments, may be termed
+accidental. Their fate is like that of trees struck by lightning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lake-line is of course still rising, its present elevation being about 8000
+feet above sea-level; somewhat higher than this toward the southern extremity
+of the range, lower toward the northern, on account of the difference in time
+of the withdrawal of the glaciers, due to difference in climate. Specimens
+occur here and there considerably below this limit, in basins specially
+protected from inwashing detritus, or exceptional in size. These, however, are
+not sufficiently numerous to make any marked irregularity in the line. The
+highest I have yet found lies at an elevation of about 12,000 feet, in a
+glacier womb, at the foot of one of the highest of the summit peaks, a few
+miles to the north of Mount Hitter. The basins of perhaps twenty-five or thirty
+are still in process of formation beneath the few lingering glaciers, but by
+the time they are born, an equal or greater number will probably have died.
+Since the beginning of the close of the ice-period the whole number in the
+range has perhaps never been greater than at present.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A rough approximation to the average duration of these mountain lakes may be
+made from data already suggested, but I cannot stop here to present the subject
+in detail. I must also forego, in the mean time, the pleasure of a full
+discussion of the interesting question of lake-basin formation, for which fine,
+clear, demonstrative material abounds in these mountains. In addition to what
+has been already given on the subject, I will only make this one statement.
+Every lake in the Sierra is a glacier lake. Their basins were not merely
+remodeled and scoured out by this mighty agent, but in the first place were
+eroded from the solid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I must now make haste to give some nearer views of representative specimens
+lying at different elevations on the main lake-belt, confining myself to
+descriptions of the features most characteristic of each.
+</p>
+
+<h4>SHADOW LAKE</h4>
+
+<p>
+This is a fine specimen of the oldest and lowest of the existing lakes. It lies
+about eight miles above Yosemite Valley, on the main branch of the Merced, at
+an elevation of about 7350 feet above the sea; and is everywhere so securely
+cliff-bound that without artificial trails only wild animals can get down to
+its rocky shores from any direction. Its original length was about a mile and a
+half; now it is only half a mile in length by about a fourth of a mile in
+width, and over the lowest portion of the basin ninety-eight feet deep. Its
+crystal waters are clasped around on the north and south by majestic granite
+walls sculptured in true Yosemitic style into domes, gables, and battlemented
+headlands, which on the south come plunging down sheer into deep water, from a
+height of from 1500 to 2000 feet. The South Lyell glacier eroded this
+magnificent basin out of solid porphyritic granite while forcing its way
+westward from the summit fountains toward Yosemite, and the exposed rocks
+around the shores, and the projecting bosses of the walls, ground and burnished
+beneath the vast ice-flood, still glow with silvery radiance, notwithstanding
+the innumerable corroding storms that have fallen upon them. The general
+conformation of the basin, as well as the moraines laid along the top of the
+walls, and the grooves and scratches on the bottom and sides, indicate in the
+most unmistakable manner the direction pursued by this mighty ice-river, its
+great depth, and the tremendous energy it exerted in thrusting itself into and
+out of the basin; bearing down with superior pressure upon this portion of its
+channel, because of the greater declivity, consequently eroding it deeper than
+the other portions about it, and producing the lake-bowl as the necessary
+result.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With these magnificent ice-characters so vividly before us it is not easy to
+realize that the old glacier that made them vanished tens of centuries ago;
+for, excepting the vegetation that has sprung up, and the changes effected by
+an earthquake that hurled rock-avalanches from the weaker headlands, the basin
+as a whole presents the same appearance that it did when first brought to
+light. The lake itself, however, has undergone marked changes; one sees at a
+glance that it is growing old. More than two thirds of its original area is now
+dry land, covered with meadow-grasses and groves of pine and fir, and the level
+bed of alluvium stretching across from wall to wall at the head is evidently
+growing out all along its lakeward margin, and will at length close the lake
+forever.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus16"></a>
+<img src="images/img16.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SHADOW LAKE (MERCED LAKE), YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK" />
+<p class="caption">SHADOW LAKE (MERCED LAKE), YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Every lover of fine wildness would delight to saunter on a summer day through
+the flowery groves now occupying the filled-up portion of the basin. The
+curving shore is clearly traced by a ribbon of white sand upon which the
+ripples play; then comes a belt of broad-leafed sedges, interrupted here and
+there by impenetrable tangles of willows; beyond this there are groves of
+trembling aspen; then a dark, shadowy belt of Two-leaved Pine, with here and
+there a round carex meadow ensconced nest-like in its midst; and lastly, a
+narrow outer margin of majestic Silver Fir 200 feet high. The ground beneath
+the trees is covered with a luxuriant crop of grasses, chiefly triticum,
+bromus, and calamagrostis, with purple spikes and panicles arching to
+one&rsquo;s shoulders; while the open meadow patches glow throughout the summer
+with showy flowers,&mdash;heleniums, goldenrods, erigerons, lupines,
+castilleias, and lilies, and form favorite hiding and feeding-grounds for bears
+and deer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rugged south wall is feathered darkly along the top with an imposing array
+of spirey Silver Firs, while the rifted precipices all the way down to the
+water&rsquo;s edge are adorned with picturesque old junipers, their
+cinnamon-colored bark showing finely upon the neutral gray of the granite.
+These, with a few venturesome Dwarf Pines and Spruces, lean out over fissured
+ribs and tablets, or stand erect back in shadowy niches, in an indescribably
+wild and fearless manner. Moreover, the white-flowered Douglas spiraea and
+dwarf evergreen oak form graceful fringes along the narrower seams, wherever
+the slightest hold can be effected. Rock-ferns, too, are here, such as
+allosorus, pellaea, and cheilanthes, making handsome rosettes on the drier
+fissures; and the delicate maidenhair, cistoperis, and woodsia hide back in
+mossy grottoes, moistened by some trickling rill; and then the orange
+wall-flower holds up its showy panicles here and there in the sunshine, and
+bahia makes bosses of gold. But, notwithstanding all this plant beauty, the
+general impression in looking across the lake is of stern, unflinching
+rockiness; the ferns and flowers are scarcely seen, and not one fiftieth of the
+whole surface is screened with plant life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sunnier north wall is more varied in sculpture, but the general tone is the
+same. A few headlands, flat-topped and soil-covered, support clumps of cedar
+and pine; and up-curving tangles of chinquapin and live-oak, growing on rough
+earthquake taluses, girdle their bases. Small streams come cascading down
+between them, their foaming margins brightened with gay primulas, gilias, and
+mimuluses. And close along the shore on this side there is a strip of rocky
+meadow enameled with buttercups, daisies, and white violets, and the
+purple-topped grasses out on its beveled border dip their leaves into the
+water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lower edge of the basin is a dam-like swell of solid granite, heavily
+abraded by the old glacier, but scarce at all cut into as yet by the outflowing
+stream, though it has flowed on unceasingly since the lake came into existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as the stream is fairly over the lake-lip it breaks into cascades,
+never for a moment halting, and scarce abating one jot of its glad energy,
+until it reaches the next filled-up basin, a mile below. Then swirling and
+curving drowsily through meadow and grove, it breaks forth anew into gray
+rapids and falls, leaping and gliding in glorious exuberance of wild bound and
+dance down into another and yet another filled-up lake basin. Then, after a
+long rest in the levels of Little Yosemite, it makes its grandest display in
+the famous Nevada Fall. Out of the clouds of spray at the foot of the fall the
+battered, roaring river gropes its way, makes another mile of cascades and
+rapids, rests a moment in Emerald Pool, then plunges over the grand cliff of
+the Vernal Fall, and goes thundering and chafing down a boulder-choked gorge of
+tremendous depth and wildness into the tranquil reaches of the old Yosemite
+lake basin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The color-beauty about Shadow Lake during the Indian summer is much richer than
+one could hope to find in so young and so glacial a wilderness. Almost every
+leaf is tinted then, and the golden-rods are in bloom; but most of the color is
+given by the ripe grasses, willows, and aspens. At the foot of the lake you
+stand in a trembling aspen grove, every leaf painted like a butterfly, and away
+to right and left round the shores sweeps a curving ribbon of meadow, red and
+brown dotted with pale yellow, shading off here and there into hazy purple. The
+walls, too, are dashed with bits of bright color that gleam out on the neutral
+granite gray. But neither the walls, nor the margin meadow, nor yet the gay,
+fluttering grove in which you stand, nor the lake itself, flashing with
+spangles, can long hold your attention; for at the head of the lake there is a
+gorgeous mass of orange-yellow, belonging to the main aspen belt of the basin,
+which seems the very fountain whence all the color below it had flowed, and
+here your eye is filled and fixed. This glorious mass is about thirty feet
+high, and extends across the basin nearly from wall to wall. Rich bosses of
+willow flame in front of it, and from the base of these the brown meadow comes
+forward to the water&rsquo;s edge, the whole being relieved against the
+unyielding green of the coniferae, while thick sun-gold is poured over all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During these blessed color-days no cloud darkens the sky, the winds are gentle,
+and the landscape rests, hushed everywhere, and indescribably impressive. A few
+ducks are usually seen sailing on the lake, apparently more for pleasure than
+anything else, and the ouzels at the head of the rapids sing always; while
+robins, grosbeaks, and the Douglas squirrels are busy in the groves, making
+delightful company, and intensifying the feeling of grateful sequestration
+without ruffling the deep, hushed calm and peace.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus17"></a>
+<img src="images/img17.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY" />
+<p class="caption">VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+This autumnal mellowness usually lasts until the end of November. Then come
+days of quite another kind. The winter clouds grow, and bloom, and shed their
+starry crystals on every leaf and rock, and all the colors vanish like a
+sunset. The deer gather and hasten down their well-known trails, fearful of
+being snow-bound. Storm succeeds storm, heaping snow on the cliffs and meadows,
+and bending the slender pines to the ground in wide arches, one over the other,
+clustering and interlacing like lodged wheat. Avalanches rush and boom from the
+shelving heights, piling immense heaps upon the frozen lake, and all the summer
+glory is buried and lost. Yet in the midst of this hearty winter the sun shines
+warm at times, calling the Douglas squirrel to frisk in the snowy pines and
+seek out his hidden stores; and the weather is never so severe as to drive away
+the grouse and little nut-hatches and chickadees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Toward May, the lake begins to open. The hot sun sends down innumerable streams
+over the cliffs, streaking them round and round with foam. The snow slowly
+vanishes, and the meadows show tintings of green. Then spring comes on apace;
+flowers and flies enrich the air and the sod, and the deer come back to the
+upper groves like birds to an old nest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I first discovered this charming lake in the autumn of 1872, while on my way to
+the glaciers at the head of the river. It was rejoicing then in its gayest
+colors, untrodden, hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold. Year
+after year I walked its shores without discovering any other trace of humanity
+than the remains of an Indian camp-fire, and the thigh-bones of a deer that had
+been broken to get at the marrow. It lies out of the regular ways of Indians,
+who love to hunt in more accessible fields adjacent to trails. Their knowledge
+of deer-haunts had probably enticed them here some hunger-time when they wished
+to make sure of a feast; for hunting in this lake-hollow is like hunting in a
+fenced park. I had told the beauty of Shadow Lake only to a few friends,
+fearing it might come to be trampled and &ldquo;improved&rdquo; like Yosemite.
+On my last visit, as I was sauntering along the shore on the strip of sand
+between the water and sod, reading the tracks of the wild animals that live
+here, I was startled by a human track, which I at once saw belonged to some
+shepherd; for each step was turned out 35° or 40° from the general course
+pursued, and was also run over in an uncertain sprawling fashion at the heel,
+while a row of round dots on the right indicated the staff that shepherds
+carry. None but a shepherd could make such a track, and after tracing it a few
+minutes I began to fear that he might be seeking pasturage; for what else could
+he be seeking? Returning from the glaciers shortly afterward, nay worst fears
+were realized. A trail had been made down the mountain-side from the north, and
+all the gardens and meadows were destroyed by a horde of hoofed locusts, as if
+swept by a fire. The money-changers were in the temple.
+</p>
+
+<h4>ORANGE LAKE</h4>
+
+<p>
+Besides these larger cañon lakes, fed by the main cañon streams, there are many
+smaller ones lying aloft on the top of rock benches, entirely independent of
+the general drainage channels, and of course drawing their supplies from a very
+limited area. Notwithstanding they are mostly small and shallow, owing to their
+immunity from avalanche detritus and the inwashings of powerful streams, they
+often endure longer than others many times larger but less favorably situated.
+When very shallow they become dry toward the end of summer; but because their
+basins are ground out of seamless stone they suffer no loss save from
+evaporation alone; and the great depth of snow that falls, lasting into June,
+makes their dry season short in any case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Orange Lake is a fair illustration of this bench form. It lies in the middle of
+a beautiful glacial pavement near the lower margin of the lake-line, about a
+mile and a half to the northwest of Shadow Lake. It is only about 100 yards in
+circumference. Next the water there is a girdle of carices with wide
+overarching leaves, then in regular order a shaggy ruff of huckleberry bushes,
+a zone of willows with here and there a bush of the Mountain Ash, then a zone
+of aspens with a few pines around the outside. These zones are of course
+concentric, and together form a wall beyond which the naked ice-burnished
+granite stretches away in every direction, leaving it conspicuously relieved,
+like a bunch of palms in a desert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In autumn, when the colors are ripe, the whole circular grove, at a little
+distance, looks like a big handful of flowers set in a cup to be kept
+fresh&mdash;a tuft of goldenrods. Its feeding-streams are exceedingly
+beautiful, notwithstanding their inconstancy and extreme shallowness. They have
+no channel whatever, and consequently are left free to spread in thin sheets
+upon the shining granite and wander at will. In many places the current is less
+than a fourth of an inch deep, and flows with so little friction it is scarcely
+visible. Sometimes there is not a single foam-bell, or drifting pine-needle, or
+irregularity of any sort to manifest its motion. Yet when observed narrowly it
+is seen to form a web of gliding lacework exquisitely woven, giving beautiful
+reflections from its minute curving ripples and eddies, and differing from the
+water-laces of large cascades in being everywhere transparent. In spring, when
+the snow is melting, the lake-bowl is brimming full, and sends forth quite a
+large stream that slips glassily for 200 yards or so, until it comes to an
+almost vertical precipice 800 feet high, down which it plunges in a fine
+cataract; then it gathers its scattered waters and goes smoothly over folds of
+gently dipping granite to its confluence with the main cañon stream. During the
+greater portion of the year, however, not a single water sound will you hear
+either at head or foot of the lake, not oven the whispered lappings of
+ripple-waves along the shore; for the winds are fenced out. But the deep
+mountain silence is sweetened now and then by birds that stop here to rest and
+drink on their way across the cañon.
+</p>
+
+<h4>LAKE STARR KING</h4>
+
+<p>
+A beautiful variety of the bench-top lakes occurs just where the great lateral
+moraines of the main glaciers have been shoved forward in outswelling
+concentric rings by small residual tributary glaciers. Instead of being
+encompassed by a narrow ring of trees like Orange Lake, these lie embosomed in
+dense moraine woods, so dense that in seeking them you may pass them by again
+and again, although you may know nearly where they lie concealed.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus18"></a>
+<img src="images/img18.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="LAKE STARR KING" />
+<p class="caption">LAKE STARR KING.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Lake Starr King, lying to the north of the cone of that name, above the Little
+Yosemite Valley, is a fine specimen of this variety. The ouzels pass it by, and
+so do the ducks; they could hardly get into it if they would, without plumping
+straight down inside the circling trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet these isolated gems, lying like fallen fruit detached from the branches,
+are not altogether without inhabitants and joyous, animating visitors. Of
+course fishes cannot get into them, and this is generally true of nearly every
+glacier lake in the range, but they are all well stocked with happy frogs. How
+did the frogs get into them in the first place? Perhaps their sticky spawn was
+carried in on the feet of ducks or other birds, else their progenitors must
+have made some exciting excursions through the woods and up the sides of the
+cañons. Down in the still, pure depths of these hidden lakelets you may also
+find the larvae of innumerable insects and a great variety of beetles, while
+the air above them is thick with humming wings, through the midst of which
+fly-catchers are constantly darting. And in autumn, when the huckleberries are
+ripe, bands of robins and grosbeaks come to feast, forming altogether
+delightful little byworlds for the naturalist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pushing our way upward toward the axis of the range, we find lakes in greater
+and greater abundance, and more youthful in aspect. At an elevation of about
+9000 feet above sea-level they seem to have arrived at middle age,&mdash;that
+is, their basins seem to be about half filled with alluvium. Broad sheets of
+meadow-land are seen extending into them, imperfect and boggy in many places
+and more nearly level than those of the older lakes below them, and the
+vegetation of their shores is of course more alpine. Kalmia, lodum, and
+cassiope fringe the meadow rocks, while the luxuriant, waving groves, so
+characteristic of the lower lakes, are represented only by clumps of the Dwarf
+Pine and Hemlock Spruce. These, however, are oftentimes very picturesquely
+grouped on rocky headlands around the outer rim of the meadows, or with still
+more striking effect crown some rocky islet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreover, from causes that we cannot stop here to explain, the cliffs about
+these middle-aged lakes are seldom of the massive Yosemite type, but are more
+broken, and less sheer, and they usually stand back, leaving the shores
+comparatively free; while the few precipitous rocks that do come forward and
+plunge directly into deep water are seldom more than three or four hundred feet
+high.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have never yet met ducks in any of the lakes of this kind, but the ouzel is
+never wanting where the feeding-streams are perennial. Wild sheep and deer may
+occasionally be seen on the meadows, and very rarely a bear. One might camp on
+the rugged shores of these bright fountains for weeks, without meeting any
+animal larger than the marmots that burrow beneath glacier boulders along the
+edges of the meadows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The highest and youngest of all the lakes lie nestled in glacier wombs. At
+first sight, they seem pictures of pure bloodless desolation, miniature arctic
+seas, bound in perpetual ice and snow, and overshadowed by harsh, gloomy,
+crumbling precipices. Their waters are keen ultramarine blue in the deepest
+parts, lively grass-green toward the shore shallows and around the edges of the
+small bergs usually floating about in them. A few hardy sedges, frost-pinched
+every night, are occasionally found making soft sods along the sun-touched
+portions of their shores, and when their northern banks slope openly to the
+south, and are soil-covered, no matter how coarsely, they are sure to be
+brightened with flowers. One lake in particular now comes to mind which
+illustrates the floweriness of the sun-touched banks of these icy gems. Close
+up under the shadow of the Sierra Matterhorn, on the eastern slope of the
+range, lies one of the iciest of these glacier lakes at an elevation of about
+12,000 feet. A short, ragged-edged glacier crawls into it from the south, and
+on the opposite side it is embanked and dammed by a series of concentric
+terminal moraines, made by the glacier when it entirely filled the basin. Half
+a mile below lies a second lake, at a height of 11,500 feet, about as cold and
+as pure as a snow-crystal. The waters of the first come gurgling down into it
+over and through the moraine dam, while a second stream pours into it direct
+from a glacier that lies to the southeast. Sheer precipices of crystalline snow
+rise out of deep water on the south, keeping perpetual winter on that side, but
+there is a fine summery spot on the other, notwithstanding the lake is only
+about 300 yards wide. Here, on August 25, 1873, I found a charming company of
+flowers, not pinched, crouching dwarfs, scarce able to look up, but warm and
+juicy, standing erect in rich cheery color and bloom. On a narrow strip of
+shingle, close to the water&rsquo;s edge, there were a few tufts of carex gone
+to seed; and a little way back up the rocky bank at the foot of a crumbling
+wall so inclined as to absorb and radiate as well as reflect a considerable
+quantity of sun-heat, was the garden, containing a thrifty thicket of Cowania
+covered with large yellow flowers; several bushes of the alpine ribes with
+berries nearly ripe and wildly acid; a few handsome grasses belonging to two
+distinct species, and one goldenrod; a few hairy lupines and radiant spragueas,
+whose blue and rose-colored flowers were set off to fine advantage amid green
+carices; and along a narrow seam in the very warmest angle of the wall a
+perfectly gorgeous fringe of <i>Epilobium obcordatum</i> with flowers an inch
+wide, crowded together in lavish profusion, and colored as royal a purple as
+ever was worn by any high-bred plant of the tropics; and best of all, and
+greatest of all, a noble thistle in full bloom, standing erect, head and
+shoulders above his companions, and thrusting out his lances in sturdy vigor as
+if growing on a Scottish brae. All this brave warm bloom among the raw stones,
+right in the face of the onlooking glaciers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As far as I have been able to find out, these upper lakes are snow-buried in
+winter to a depth of about thirty-five or forty feet, and those most exposed to
+avalanches, to a depth of even a hundred feet or more. These last are, of
+course, nearly lost to the landscape. Some remain buried for years, when the
+snowfall is exceptionally great, and many open only on one side late in the
+season. The snow of the closed side is composed of coarse granules compacted
+and frozen into a firm, faintly stratified mass, like the <i>névé</i> of a
+glacier. The lapping waves of the open portion gradually undermine and cause it
+to break off in large masses like icebergs, which gives rise to a precipitous
+front like the discharging wall of a glacier entering the sea. The play of the
+lights among the crystal angles of these snow-cliffs, the pearly white of the
+outswelling bosses, the bergs drifting in front, aglow in the sun and edged
+with green water, and the deep blue disk of the lake itself extending to your
+feet,&mdash;this forms a picture that enriches all your afterlife, and is never
+forgotten. But however perfect the season and the day, the cold incompleteness
+of these young lakes is always keenly felt. We approach them with a kind of
+mean caution, and steal unconfidingly around their crystal shores, dashed and
+ill at ease, as if expecting to hear some forbidding voice. But the love-songs
+of the ouzels and the love-looks of the daisies gradually reassure us, and
+manifest the warm fountain humanity that pervades the coldest and most solitary
+of them all.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII<br/>
+THE GLACIER MEADOWS</h2>
+
+<p>
+After the lakes on the High Sierra come the glacier meadows. They are smooth,
+level, silky lawns, lying embedded in the upper forests, on the floors of the
+valleys, and along the broad backs of the main dividing ridges, at a height of
+about 8000 to 9500 feet above the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They are nearly as level as the lakes whose places they have taken, and present
+a dry, even surface free from rock-heaps, mossy bogginess, and the frowsy
+roughness of rank, coarse-leaved, weedy, and shrubby vegetation. The sod is
+close and fine, and so complete that you cannot see the ground; and at the same
+time so brightly enameled with flowers and butterflies that it may well be
+called a garden-meadow, or meadow-garden; for the plushy sod is in many places
+so crowded with gentians, daisies, ivesias, and various species of orthocarpus
+that the grass is scarcely noticeable, while in others the flowers are only
+pricked in here and there singly, or in small ornamental rosettes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most influential of the grasses composing the sod is a delicate
+calamagrostis with fine filiform leaves, and loose, airy panicles that seem to
+float above the flowery lawn like a purple mist. But, write as I may, I cannot
+give anything like an adequate idea of the exquisite beauty of these mountain
+carpets as they lie smoothly outspread in the savage wilderness. What words are
+fine enough to picture them I to what shall we liken them? The flowery levels
+of the prairies of the old West, the luxuriant savannahs of the South, and the
+finest of cultivated meadows are coarse in comparison. One may at first sight
+compare them with the carefully tended lawns of pleasure-grounds; for they are
+as free from weeds as they, and as smooth, but here the likeness ends; for
+these wild lawns, with all their exquisite fineness, have no trace of that
+painful, licked, snipped, repressed appearance that pleasure-ground lawns are
+apt to have even when viewed at a distance. And, not to mention the flowers
+with which they are brightened, their grasses are very much finer both in color
+and texture, and instead of lying flat and motionless, matted together like a
+dead green cloth, they respond to the touches of every breeze, rejoicing in
+pure wildness, blooming and fruiting in the vital light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Glacier meadows abound throughout all the alpine and subalpine regions of the
+Sierra in still greater numbers than the lakes. Probably from 2500 to 3000
+exist between latitude 36° 30&#x2032; and 39°, distributed, of course, like the
+lakes, in concordance with all the other glacial features of the landscape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the head waters of the rivers there are what are called &ldquo;Big
+Meadows,&rdquo; usually about from five to ten miles long. These occupy the
+basins of the ancient ice-seas, where many tributary glaciers came together to
+form the grand trunks. Most, however, are quite small, averaging perhaps but
+little more than three fourths of a mile in length.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the very finest of the thousands I have enjoyed lies hidden in an
+extensive forest of the Two-leaved Pine, on the edge of the basin of the
+ancient Tuolumne Mer de Glace, about eight miles to the west of Mount Dana.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Imagine yourself at the Tuolumne Soda Springs on the bank of the river, a
+day&rsquo;s journey above Yosemite Valley. You set off northward through a
+forest that stretches away indefinitely before you, seemingly unbroken by
+openings of any kind. As soon as you are fairly into the woods, the gray
+mountain-peaks, with their snowy gorges and hollows, are lost to view. The
+ground is littered with fallen trunks that lie crossed and recrossed like
+storm-lodged wheat; and besides this close forest of pines, the rich moraine
+soil supports a luxuriant growth of ribbon-leaved grasses&mdash;bromus,
+triticum, calamagrostis, agrostis, etc., which rear their handsome spikes and
+panicles above your waist. Making your way through the fertile
+wilderness,&mdash;finding lively bits of interest now and then in the squirrels
+and Clark crows, and perchance in a deer or bear,&mdash;after the lapse of an
+hour or two vertical bars of sunshine are seen ahead between the brown shafts
+of the pines, showing that you are approaching an open space, and then you
+suddenly emerge from the forest shadows upon a delightful purple lawn lying
+smooth and free in the light like a lake. This is a glacier meadow. It is about
+a mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile wide. The trees come pressing
+forward all around in close serried ranks, planting their feet exactly on its
+margin, and holding themselves erect, strict and orderly like soldiers on
+parade; thus bounding the meadow with exquisite precision, yet with free
+curving lines such as Nature alone can draw. With inexpressible delight you
+wade out into the grassy sun-lake, feeling yourself contained in one of
+Nature&rsquo;s most sacred chambers, withdrawn from the sterner influences of
+the mountains, secure from all intrusion, secure from yourself, free in the
+universal beauty. And notwithstanding the scene is so impressively spiritual,
+and you seem dissolved in it, yet everything about you is beating with warm,
+terrestrial, human love and life delightfully substantial and familiar. The
+resiny pines are types of health and steadfastness; the robins feeding on the
+sod belong to the same species you have known since childhood; and surely these
+daisies, larkspurs, and goldenrods are the very friend-flowers of the old home
+garden. Bees hum as in a harvest noon, butterflies waver above the flowers, and
+like them you lave in the vital sunshine, too richly and homogeneously
+joy-filled to be capable of partial thought. You are all eye, sifted through
+and through with light and beauty. Sauntering along the brook that meanders
+silently through the meadow from the east, special flowers call you back to
+discriminating consciousness. The sod comes curving down to the water&rsquo;s
+edge, forming bossy outswelling banks, and in some places overlapping
+countersunk boulders and forming bridges. Here you find mats of the curious
+dwarf willow scarce an inch high, yet sending up a multitude of gray silky
+catkins, illumined here and there with, the purple cups and bells of bryanthus
+and vaccinium.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Go where you may, you everywhere find the lawn divinely beautiful, as if Nature
+had fingered and adjusted every plant this very day. The floating grass
+panicles are scarcely felt in brushing through their midst, so flue are they,
+and none of the flowers have tall or rigid stalks. In the brightest places you
+find three species of gentians with different shades of blue, daisies pure as
+the sky, silky leaved ivesias with warm yellow flowers, several species of
+orthocarpus with blunt, bossy spikes, red and purple and yellow; the alpine
+goldenrod, pentstemon, and clover, fragrant and honeyful, with their colors
+massed and blended. Parting the grasses and looking more closely you may trace
+the branching of their shining stems, and note the marvelous beauty of their
+mist of flowers, the glumes and pales exquisitely penciled, the yellow dangling
+stamens, and feathery pistils. Beneath the lowest leaves you discover a fairy
+realm of mosses,&mdash;hypnum, dicranum, polytriclium, and many
+others,&mdash;their precious spore-cups poised daintily on polished shafts,
+curiously hooded, or open, showing the richly ornate peristomas worn like royal
+crowns. Creeping liverworts are here also in abundance, and several rare
+species of fungi, exceedingly small, and frail, and delicate, as if made only
+for beauty. Caterpillars, black beetles, and ants roam the wilds of this lower
+world, making their way through miniature groves and thickets like bears in a
+thick wood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And how rich, too, is the life of the sunny air! Every leaf and flower seems to
+have its winged representative overhead. Dragon-flies shoot in vigorous zigzags
+through the dancing swarms, and a rich profusion of butterflies&mdash;the
+leguminosae of insects&mdash;make a fine addition to the general show. Many of
+these last are comparatively small at this elevation, and as yet almost unknown
+to science; but every now and then a familiar vanessa or papilio comes sailing
+past. Humming-birds, too, are quite common here, and the robin is always found
+along the margin of the stream, or out in the shallowest portions of the sod,
+and sometimes the grouse and mountain quail, with their broods of precious
+fluffy chickens. Swallows skim the grassy lake from end to end, fly-catchers
+come and go in fitful flights from the tops of dead spars, while woodpeckers
+swing across from side to side in graceful festoon curves,&mdash;birds,
+insects, and flowers all in their own way telling a deep summer joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The influences of pure nature seem to be so little known as yet, that it is
+generally supposed that complete pleasure of this kind, permeating one&rsquo;s
+very flesh and bones, unfits the student for scientific pursuits in which cool
+judgment and observation are required. But the effect is just the opposite.
+Instead of producing a dissipated condition, the mind is fertilized and
+stimulated and developed like sun-fed plants. All that we have seen here
+enables us to see with surer vision the fountains among the summit-peaks to the
+east whence flowed the glaciers that ground soil for the surrounding forest;
+and down at the foot of the meadow the moraine which formed the dam which gave
+rise to the lake that occupied this basin before the meadow was made; and
+around the margin the stones that were shoved back and piled up into a rude
+wall by the expansion of the lake ice during long bygone winters; and along the
+sides of the streams the slight hollows of the meadow which mark those portions
+of the old lake that were the last to vanish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I would fain ask my readers to linger awhile in this fertile wilderness, to
+trace its history from its earliest glacial beginnings, and learn what we may
+of its wild inhabitants and visitors. How happy the birds are all summer and
+some of them all winter; how the pouched marmots drive tunnels under the snow,
+and how fine and brave a life the slandered coyote lives here, and the deer and
+bears! But, knowing well the difference between reading and seeing, I will only
+ask attention to some brief sketches of its varying aspects as they are
+presented throughout the more marked seasons of the year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The summer life we have been depicting lasts with but little abatement until
+October, when the night frosts begin to sting, bronzing the grasses, and
+ripening the leaves of the creeping heathworts along the banks of the stream to
+reddish purple and crimson; while the flowers disappear, all save the
+goldenrods and a few daisies, that continue to bloom on unscathed until the
+beginning of snowy winter. In still nights the grass panicles and every leaf
+and stalk are laden with frost crystals, through which the morning sunbeams
+sift in ravishing splendor, transforming each to a precious diamond radiating
+the colors of the rainbow. The brook shallows are plaited across and across
+with slender lances of ice, but both these and the grass crystals are melted
+before midday, and, notwithstanding the great elevation of the meadow, the
+afternoons are still warm enough to revive the chilled butterflies and call
+them out to enjoy the late-flowering goldenrods. The divine alpenglow flushes
+the surrounding forest every evening, followed by a crystal night with hosts of
+lily stars, whose size and brilliancy cannot be conceived by those who have
+never risen above the lowlands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus come and go the bright sun-days of autumn, not a cloud in the sky, week
+after week until near December. Then comes a sudden change. Clouds of a
+peculiar aspect with a slow, crawling gait gather and grow in the azure,
+throwing out satiny fringes, and becoming gradually darker until every
+lake-like rift and opening is closed and the whole bent firmament is obscured
+in equal structureless gloom. Then comes the snow, for the clouds are ripe, the
+meadows of the sky are in bloom, and shed their radiant blossoms like an
+orchard in the spring. Lightly, lightly they lodge in the brown grasses and in
+the tasseled needles of the pines, falling hour after hour, day after day,
+silently, lovingly,&mdash;all the winds hushed,&mdash;glancing and circling
+hither, thither, glinting against one another, rays interlocking in flakes as
+large as daisies; and then the dry grasses, and the trees, and the stones are
+all equally abloom again. Thunder-showers occur here during the summer months,
+and impressive it is to watch the coming of the big transparent drops, each a
+small world in itself,&mdash;one unbroken ocean without islands hurling free
+through the air like planets through space. But still more impressive to me is
+the coming of the snow-flowers,&mdash;falling stars, winter
+daisies,&mdash;giving bloom to all the ground alike. Raindrops blossom
+brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in
+full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The later snow-storms are oftentimes accompanied by winds that break up the
+crystals, when the temperature is low, into single petals and irregular dusty
+fragments; but there is comparatively little drifting on the meadow, so
+securely is it embosomed in the woods. From December to May, storm succeeds
+storm, until the snow is about fifteen or twenty feet deep, but the surface is
+always as smooth as the breast of a bird.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hushed now is the life that so late was beating warmly. Most of the birds have
+gone down below the snow-line, the plants sleep, and all the fly-wings are
+folded. Yet the sun beams gloriously many a cloudless day in midwinter, casting
+long lance shadows athwart the dazzling expanse. In June small flecks of the
+dead, decaying sod begin to appear, gradually widening and uniting with one
+another, covered with creeping rags of water during the day, and ice by night,
+looking as hopeless and unvital as crushed rocks just emerging from the
+darkness of the glacial period. Walk the meadow now! Scarce the memory of a
+flower will you find. The ground seems twice dead. Nevertheless, the annual
+resurrection is drawing near. The life-giving sun pours his floods, the last
+snow-wreath melts, myriads of growing points push eagerly through the steaming
+mold, the birds come back, new wings fill the air, and fervid summer life comes
+surging on, seemingly yet more glorious than before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is a perfect meadow, and under favorable circumstances exists without
+manifesting any marked changes for centuries. Nevertheless, soon or late it
+must inevitably grow old and vanish. During the calm Indian summer, scarce a
+sand-grain moves around its banks, but in flood-times and storm-times, soil is
+washed forward upon it and laid in successive sheets around its gently sloping
+rim, and is gradually extended to the center, making it dryer. Through a
+considerable period the meadow vegetation is not greatly affected thereby, for
+it gradually rises with the rising ground, keeping on the surface like
+water-plants rising on the swell of waves. But at length the elevation of the
+meadow-land goes on so far as to produce too dry a soil for the specific
+meadow-plants, when, of course, they have to give up their places to others
+fitted for the new conditions. The most characteristic of the newcomers at this
+elevation above the sea are principally sun-loving gilias, eriogonae, and
+compositae, and finally forest-trees. Henceforward the obscuring changes are so
+manifold that the original lake-meadow can be unveiled and seen only by the
+geologist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Generally speaking, glacier lakes vanish more slowly than the meadows that
+succeed them, because, unless very shallow, a greater quantity of material is
+required to fill up their basins and obliterate them than is required to render
+the surface of the meadow too high and dry for meadow vegetation. Furthermore,
+owing to the weathering to which the adjacent rocks are subjected, material of
+the finer sort, susceptible of transportation by rains and ordinary floods, is
+more abundant during the meadow period than during the lake period. Yet
+doubtless many a fine meadow favorably situated exists in almost prime beauty
+for thousands of years, the process of extinction being exceedingly slow, as we
+reckon time. This is especially the case with meadows circumstanced like the
+one we have described&mdash;embosomed in deep woods, with the ground rising
+gently away from it all around, the network of tree-roots in which all the
+ground is clasped preventing any rapid torrential washing. But, in exceptional
+cases, beautiful lawns formed with great deliberation are overwhelmed and
+obliterated at once by the action of land-slips, earthquake avalanches, or
+extraordinary floods, just as lakes are.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In those glacier meadows that take the places of shallow lakes which have been
+fed by feeble streams, glacier mud and fine vegetable humus enter largely into
+the composition of the soil; and on account of the shallowness of this soil,
+and the seamless, water-tight, undrained condition of the rock-basins, they are
+usually wet, and therefore occupied by tall grasses and sedges, whose coarse
+appearance offers a striking contrast to that of the delicate lawn-making kind
+described above. These shallow-soiled meadows are oftentimes still further
+roughened and diversified by partially buried moraines and swelling bosses of
+the bed-rock, which, with the trees and shrubs growing upon them, produce a
+striking effect as they stand in relief like islands in the grassy level, or
+sweep across in rugged curves from one forest wall to the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Throughout the upper meadow region, wherever water is sufficiently abundant and
+low in temperature, in basins secure from flood-washing, handsome bogs are
+formed with a deep growth of brown and yellow sphagnum picturesquely ruined
+with patches of kalmia and ledum which ripen masses of beautiful color in the
+autumn. Between these cool, spongy bogs and the dry, flowery meadows there are
+many interesting varieties which are graduated into one another by the varied
+conditions already alluded to, forming a series of delightful studies.
+</p>
+
+<h4>HANGING MEADOWS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Another, very well-marked and interesting kind of meadow, differing greatly
+both in origin and appearance from the lake-meadows, is found lying aslant upon
+moraine-covered hillsides trending in the direction of greatest declivity,
+waving up and down over rock heaps and ledges, like rich green ribbons
+brilliantly illumined with tall flowers. They occur both in the alpine and
+subalpine regions in considerable numbers, and never fail to make telling
+features in the landscape. They are often a mile or more in length, but never
+very wide&mdash;usually from thirty to fifty yards. When the mountain or cañon
+side on which, they lie dips at the required angle, and other conditions are at
+the same time favorable, they extend from above the timber line to the bottom
+of a cañon or lake basin, descending in fine, fluent lines like cascades,
+breaking here and there into a kind of spray on large boulders, or dividing and
+flowing around on either side of some projecting islet. Sometimes a noisy
+stream goes brawling down through them, and again, scarcely a drop of water is
+in sight. They owe their existence, however, to streams, whether visible or
+invisible, the wildest specimens being found where some perennial fountain, as
+a glacier or snowbank or moraine spring sends down its waters across a rough
+sheet of soil in a dissipated web of feeble, oozing rivulets. These conditions
+give rise to a meadowy vegetation, whose extending roots still more obstruct
+the free flow of the waters, and tend to dissipate them out over a yet wider
+area. Thus the moraine soil and the necessary moisture requisite for the better
+class of meadow plants are at times combined about as perfectly as if smoothly
+outspread on a level surface. Where the soil happens to be composed of the
+finer qualities of glacial detritus and the water is not in excess, the nearest
+approach is made by the vegetation to that of the lake-meadow. But where, as is
+more commonly the case, the soil is coarse and bouldery, the vegetation is
+correspondingly rank. Tall, wide-leaved grasses take their places along the
+sides, and rushes and nodding carices in the wetter portions, mingled with the
+most beautiful and imposing flowers,&mdash;orange lilies and larkspurs seven or
+eight feet high, lupines, senecios, aliums, painted-cups, many species of
+mimulus and pentstemon, the ample boat-leaved <i>veratrum alba</i>, and the
+magnificent alpine columbine, with spurs an inch and a half long. At an
+elevation of from seven to nine thousand feet showy flowers frequently form the
+bulk of the vegetation; then the hanging meadows become hanging gardens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In rare instances we find an alpine basin the bottom of which is a perfect
+meadow, and the sides nearly all the way round, rising in gentle curves, are
+covered with moraine soil, which, being saturated with melting snow from
+encircling fountains, gives rise to an almost continuous girdle of down-curving
+meadow vegetation that blends gracefully into the level meadow at the bottom,
+thus forming a grand, smooth, soft, meadow-lined mountain nest. It is in
+meadows of this sort that the mountain beaver (<i>Haplodon</i>) loves to make
+his home, excavating snug chambers beneath the sod, digging canals, turning the
+underground waters from channel to channel to suit his convenience, and feeding
+the vegetation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another kind of meadow or bog occurs on densely timbered hillsides where small
+perennial streams have been dammed at short intervals by fallen trees. Still
+another kind is found hanging down smooth, flat precipices, while corresponding
+leaning meadows rise to meet them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are also three kinds of small pot-hole meadows one of which is found
+along the banks of the main streams, another on the summits of rocky ridges,
+and the third on glacier pavements, all of them interesting in origin and
+brimful of plant beauty.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br/>
+THE FORESTS</h2>
+
+<p>
+The coniferous forests of the Sierra are the grandest and most beautiful in the
+world, and grow in a delightful climate on the most interesting and accessible
+of mountain-ranges, yet strange to say they are not well known. More than sixty
+years ago David Douglas, an enthusiastic botanist and tree lover, wandered
+alone through fine sections of the Sugar Pine and Silver Fir woods wild with
+delight. A few years later, other botanists made short journeys from the coast
+into the lower woods. Then came the wonderful multitude of miners into the
+foot-hill zone, mostly blind with gold-dust, soon followed by
+&ldquo;sheepmen,&rdquo; who, with wool over their eyes, chased their flocks
+through all the forest belts from one end of the range to the other. Then the
+Yosemite Valley was discovered, and thousands of admiring tourists passed
+through sections of the lower and middle zones on their way to that wonderful
+park, and gained fine glimpses of the Sugar Pines and Silver Firs along the
+edges of dusty trails and roads. But few indeed, strong and free with eyes
+undimmed with care, have gone far enough and lived long enough with the trees
+to gain anything like a loving conception of their grandeur and significance as
+manifested in the harmonies of their distribution and varying aspects
+throughout the seasons, as they stand arrayed in their winter garb rejoicing in
+storms, putting forth their fresh leaves in the spring while steaming with
+resiny fragrance, receiving the thunder-showers of summer, or reposing
+heavy-laden with ripe cones in the rich sungold of autumn. For knowledge of
+this kind one must dwell with the trees and grow with them, without any
+reference to time in the almanac sense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The distribution of the general forest in belts is readily perceived. These, as
+we have seen, extend in regular order from one extremity of the range to the
+other; and however dense and somber they may appear in general views, neither
+on the rocky heights nor down in the leafiest hollows will you find anything to
+remind you of the dank, malarial selvas of the Amazon and Orinoco, with, their
+&ldquo;boundless contiguity of shade,&rdquo; the monotonous uniformity of the
+Deodar forests of the Himalaya, the Black Forest of Europe, or the dense dark
+woods of Douglas Spruce where rolls the Oregon. The giant pines, and firs, and
+Sequoias hold their arms open to the sunlight, rising above one another on the
+mountain benches, marshaled in glorious array, giving forth the utmost
+expression of grandeur and beauty with inexhaustible variety and harmony.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus19"></a>
+<img src="images/img19.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST." />
+<p class="caption">VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The inviting openness of the Sierra woods is one of their most distinguishing
+characteristics. The trees of all the species stand more or less apart in
+groves, or in small, irregular groups, enabling one to find a way nearly
+everywhere, along sunny colonnades and through openings that have a smooth,
+park-like surface, strewn with brown needles and burs. Now you cross a wild
+garden, now a meadow, now a ferny, willowy stream; and ever and anon you emerge
+from all the groves and flowers upon some granite pavement or high, bare ridge
+commanding superb views above the waving sea of evergreens far and near.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One would experience but little difficulty in riding on horseback through the
+successive belts all the way up to the storm-beaten fringes of the icy peaks.
+The deep cañons, however, that extend from the axis of the range, cut the belts
+more or less completely into sections, and prevent the mounted traveler from
+tracing them lengthwise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This simple arrangement in zones and sections brings the forest, as a whole,
+within the comprehension of every observer. The different species are ever
+found occupying the same relative positions to one another, as controlled by
+soil, climate, and the comparative vigor of each species in taking and holding
+the ground; and so appreciable are these relations, one need never be at a loss
+in determining, within a few hundred feet, the elevation above sea-level by the
+trees alone; for, notwithstanding some of the species range upward for several
+thousand feet, and all pass one another more or less, yet even those possessing
+the greatest vertical range are available in this connection, in as much as
+they take on new forms corresponding with the variations in altitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Crossing the treeless plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin from the west
+and reaching the Sierra foot-hills, you enter the lower fringe of the forest,
+composed of small oaks and pines, growing so far apart that not one twentieth
+of the surface of the ground is in shade at clear noonday. After advancing
+fifteen or twenty miles, and making an ascent of from two to three thousand
+feet, you reach the lower margin of the main pine belt, composed of the
+gigantic Sugar Pine, Yellow Pine, Incense Cedar, and Sequoia. Next you come to
+the magnificent Silver Fir belt, and lastly to the upper pine belt, which
+sweeps up the rocky acclivities of the summit peaks in a dwarfed, wavering
+fringe to a height of from ten to twelve thousand feet.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus20"></a>
+<img src="images/img20.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA" />
+<p class="caption">EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+This general order of distribution, with reference to climate dependent on
+elevation, is perceived at once, but there are other harmonies, as far-reaching
+in this connection, that become manifest only after patient observation and
+study. Perhaps the most interesting of these is the arrangement of the forests
+in long, curving bands, braided together into lace-like patterns, and outspread
+in charming variety. The key to this beautiful harmony is the ancient glaciers;
+where they flowed the trees followed, tracing their wavering courses along
+cañons, over ridges, and over high, rolling plateaus. The Cedars of Lebanon,
+says Hooker, are growing upon one of the moraines of an ancient glacier. All
+the forests of the Sierra are growing upon moraines. But moraines vanish like
+the glaciers that make them. Every storm that falls upon them wastes them,
+cutting gaps, disintegrating boulders, and carrying away their decaying
+material into new formations, until at length they are no longer recognizable
+by any save students, who trace their transitional forms down from the fresh
+moraines still in process of formation, through those that are more and more
+ancient, and more and more obscured by vegetation and all kinds of post-glacial
+weathering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had the ice-sheet that once covered all the range been melted simultaneously
+from the foot-hills to the summits, the flanks would, of course, have been left
+almost bare of soil, and these noble forests would be wanting. Many groves and
+thickets would undoubtedly have grown up on lake and avalanche beds, and many a
+fair flower and shrub would have found food and a dwelling-place in weathered
+nooks and crevices, but the Sierra as a whole would have been a bare, rocky
+desert.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus21"></a>
+<img src="images/img21.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST." />
+<p class="caption">VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+It appears, therefore, that the Sierra forests in general indicate the extent
+and positions of the ancient moraines as well as they do lines of climate. For
+forests, properly speaking, cannot exist without soil; and, since the moraines
+have been deposited upon the solid rock, and only upon elected places, leaving
+a considerable portion of the old glacial surface bare, we find luxuriant
+forests of pine and fir abruptly terminated by scored and polished pavements on
+which not even a moss is growing, though soil alone is required to fit them for
+the growth of trees 200 feet in height.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+THE NUT PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus Sabiniana</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+The Nut Pine, the first conifer met in ascending the range from the west, grows
+only on the torrid foothills, seeming to delight in the most ardent sun-heat,
+like a palm; springing up here and there singly, or in scattered groups of five
+or six, among scrubby White Oaks and thickets of ceanothus and manzanita; its
+extreme upper limit being about 4000 feet above the sea, its lower about from
+500 to 800 feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This tree is remarkable for its airy, widespread, tropical appearance, which
+suggests a region of palms, rather than cool, resiny pine woods. No one would
+take it at first sight to be a conifer of any kind, it is so loose in habit and
+so widely branched, and its foliage is so thin and gray. Full-grown specimens
+are from forty to fifty feet in height, and from two to three feet in diameter.
+The trunk usually divides into three or four main branches, about fifteen and
+twenty feet from the ground, which, after bearing away from one another, shoot
+straight up and form separate summits; while the crooked subordinate branches
+aspire, and radiate, and droop in ornamental sprays. The slender, grayish-green
+needles are from eight to twelve inches long, loosely tasseled, and inclined to
+droop in handsome curves, contrasting with the stiff, dark-colored trunk and
+branches in a very striking manner. No other tree of my acquaintance, so
+substantial in body, is in its foliage so thin and so pervious to the light.
+The sunbeams sift through even the leafiest trees with scarcely any
+interruption, and the weary, heated traveler finds but little protection in
+their shade.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus22"></a>
+<img src="images/img22.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="THE NUT PINE" />
+<p class="caption">THE NUT PINE (<i>Pinus Sabiniana</i>)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The generous crop of nutritious nuts which the Nut Pine yields makes it a
+favorite with Indians, bears, and squirrels. The cones are most beautiful,
+measuring from five to eight inches in length, and not much less in thickness,
+rich chocolate-brown in color, and protected by strong, down-curving hooks
+which terminate the scales. Nevertheless, the little Douglas squirrel can open
+them. Indians gathering the ripe nuts make a striking picture. The men climb
+the trees like bears and beat off the cones with sticks, or recklessly cut off
+the more fruitful branches with hatchets, while the squaws gather the big,
+generous cones, and roast them until the scales open sufficiently to allow the
+hard-shelled seeds to be beaten out. Then, in the cool evenings, men, women,
+and children, with their capacity for dirt greatly increased by the soft resin
+with which they are all bedraggled, form circles around camp-fires, on the bank
+of the nearest stream, and lie in easy independence cracking nuts and laughing
+and chattering, as heedless of the future as the squirrels.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+<i>Pinus tuberculata</i>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This curious little pine is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000 feet,
+growing in close, willowy groves. It is exceedingly slender and graceful in
+habit, although trees that chance to stand alone outside the groves sweep forth
+long, curved branches, producing a striking contrast to the ordinary grove
+form. The foliage is of the same peculiar gray-green color as that of the Nut
+Pine, and is worn about as loosely, so that the body of the tree is scarcely
+obscured by it.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus23"></a>
+<img src="images/img23.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="THE GROVE FORM. THE ISOLATED FORM (PINUS TUBERCULATA)" />
+<p class="caption">THE GROVE FORM. THE ISOLATED FORM (PINUS TUBERCULATA).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+At the age of seven or eight years it begins to bear cones, not on branches,
+but on the main axis, and, as they never fall off, the trunk is soon
+picturesquely dotted with them. The branches also become fruitful after they
+attain sufficient size. The average size of the older trees is about thirty or
+forty feet in height, and twelve to fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are
+about four inches long, exceedingly hard, and covered with a sort of silicious
+varnish and gum, rendering them impervious to moisture, evidently with a view
+to the careful preservation of the seeds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No other conifer in the range is so closely restricted to special localities.
+It is usually found apart, standing deep in chaparral on sunny hill-and
+cañon-sides where there is but little depth of soil, and, where found at all,
+it is quite plentiful; but the ordinary traveler, following carriage-roads and
+trails, may ascend the range many times without meeting it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While exploring the lower portion of the Merced Cañon I found a lonely miner
+seeking his fortune in a quartz vein on a wild mountain-side planted with this
+singular tree. He told me that he called it the Hickory Pine, because of the
+whiteness and toughness of the wood. It is so little known, however, that it
+can hardly be said to have a common name. Most mountaineers refer to it as
+&ldquo;that queer little pine-tree covered all over with burs.&rdquo; In my
+studies of this species I found a very interesting and significant group of
+facts, whose relations will be seen almost as soon as stated:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+1st. All the trees in the groves I examined, however unequal in size, are of
+the same age.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+2d. Those groves are all planted on dry hillsides covered with chaparral, and
+therefore are liable to be swept by fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+3d. There are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves, but there
+is always a fine, hopeful crop springing up on the ground once occupied by any
+grove that has been destroyed by the burning of the chaparral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+4th. The cones never fall off and never discharge their seeds until the tree or
+branch to which they belong dies.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus24"></a>
+<img src="images/img24.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN CHARACTER OF WOODS." />
+<p class="caption">LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN CHARACTER OF WOODS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+A full discussion of the bearing of these facts upon one another would perhaps
+be out of place here, but I may at least call attention to the admirable
+adaptation of the tree to the fire-swept regions where alone it is found. After
+a grove has been destroyed, the ground is at once sown lavishly with all the
+seeds ripened during its whole life, which seem to have been carefully held in
+store with reference to such a calamity. Then a young grove immediately springs
+up, giving beauty for ashes.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+SUGAR PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus Lambertiana</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This is the noblest pine yet discovered, surpassing all others not merely in
+size but also in kingly beauty and majesty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It towers sublimely from every ridge and cañon of the range, at an elevation of
+from three to seven thousand feet above the sea, attaining most perfect
+development at a height of about 5000 feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Full-grown specimens are commonly about 220 feet high, and from six to eight
+feet in diameter near the ground, though some grand old patriarch is
+occasionally met that has enjoyed five or six centuries of storms, and attained
+a thickness of ten or even twelve feet, living on undecayed, sweet and fresh in
+every fiber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In southern Oregon, where it was first discovered by David Douglas, on the head
+waters of the Umpqua, it attains still grander dimensions, one specimen having
+been measured that was 245 feet high, and over eighteen feet in diameter three
+feet from the ground. The discoverer was the Douglas for whom the noble Douglas
+Spruce is named, and many other plants which will keep his memory sweet and
+fresh as long as trees and flowers are loved. His first visit to the Pacific
+Coast was made in the year 1825. The Oregon Indians watched him with curiosity
+as he wandered in the woods collecting specimens, and, unlike the fur-gathering
+strangers they had hitherto known, caring nothing about trade. And when at
+length they came to know him better, and saw that from year to year the growing
+things of the woods and prairies were his only objects of pursuit, they called
+him &ldquo;The Man of Grass,&rdquo; a title of which he was proud. During his
+first summer on the waters of the Columbia he made Fort Vancouver his
+headquarters, making excursions from this Hudson Bay post in every direction.
+On one of his long trips he saw in an Indian&rsquo;s pouch some of the seeds of
+a new species of pine which he learned were obtained from a very large tree far
+to the southward of the Columbia. At the end of the next summer, returning to
+Fort Vancouver after the setting in of the winter rains, bearing in mind the
+big pine he had heard of, he set out on an excursion up the Willamette Valley
+in search of it; and how he fared, and what dangers and hardships he endured,
+are best told in his own journal, from which I quote as follows:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+<i>October</i> 26, 1826. Weather dull. Cold and cloudy. When my friends in
+England are made acquainted with my travels I fear they will think I have told
+them nothing but my miseries…. I quitted my camp early in the morning to survey
+the neighboring country, leaving my guide to take charge of the horses until my
+return in the evening. About an hour&rsquo;s walk from the camp I met an
+Indian, who on perceiving me instantly strung his bow, placed on his left arm a
+sleeve of raccoon skin and stood on the defensive. Being quite sure that
+conduct was prompted by fear and not by hostile intentions, the poor fellow
+having probably never seen such a being as myself before, I laid my gun at my
+feet on the ground and waved my hand for him to come to me, which he did slowly
+and with great caution. I then made him place his bow and quiver of arrows
+beside my gun, and striking a light gave him a smoke out of my own pipe and a
+present of a few beads. With my pencil I made a rough sketch of the cone and
+pine tree which I wanted to obtain, and drew his attention to it, when he
+instantly pointed with his hand to the hills fifteen or twenty miles distant
+towards the south; and when I expressed my intention of going thither,
+cheerfully set out to accompany me. At midday I reached my long-wished-for
+pines, and lost no time in examining them and endeavoring to collect specimens
+and seeds. New and strange things seldom fail to make strong impressions, and
+are therefore frequently over-rated; so that, lest I should never see my
+friends in England to inform them verbally of this most beautiful and immensely
+grand tree, I shall here state the dimensions of the largest I could find among
+several that had been blown down by the wind. At 3 feet from the ground its
+circumference is 57 feet 9 inches; at 134 feet, 17 feet 5 inches; the extreme
+length 245 feet…. As it was impossible either to climb the tree or hew it down,
+I endeavored to knock off the cones by firing at them with ball, when the
+report of my gun brought eight Indians, all of them painted with red earth,
+armed with bows, arrows, bone-tipped spears, and flint-knives. They appeared
+anything but friendly. I explained to them what I wanted, and they seemed
+satisfied and sat down to smoke; but presently I saw one of them string his
+bow, and another sharpen his flint knife with a pair of wooden pincers and
+suspend it off the wrist of his right hand. Further testimony of their
+intentions was unnecessary. To save myself by flight was impossible, so without
+hesitation I stepped back about five paces, cocked my gun, drew one of the
+pistols out of my belt, and holding it in my left hand and the gun in my right,
+showed myself determined to fight for my life. As much as possible I endeavored
+to preserve my coolness, and thus we stood looking at one another without
+making any movement or uttering a word for perhaps ten minutes, when one at
+last, who seemed to be the leader, gave a sign that they wished for some
+tobacco; this I signified that they should have if they fetched a quantity of
+cones. They went off immediately in search of them, and no sooner were they all
+out of sight than I picked up my three cones and some twigs of the trees and
+made the quickest possible retreat, hurrying back to the camp, which I reached
+before dusk…. I now write lying on the grass with my gun cocked beside me, and
+penning these lines by the light of my Columbian candle, namely, an ignited
+piece of rosin-wood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This grand pine discovered under such, exciting circumstances Douglas named in
+honor of his friend Dr. Lambert of London.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trunk is a smooth, round, delicately tapered shaft, mostly without limbs,
+and colored rich purplish-brown, usually enlivened with tufts of yellow lichen.
+At the top of this magnificent bole, long, curving branches sweep gracefully
+outward and downward, sometimes forming a palm-like crown, but far more nobly
+impressive than any palm crown I ever beheld. The needles are about three
+inches long, finely tempered and arranged in rather close tassels at the ends
+of slender branchlets that clothe the long, outsweeping limbs. How well they
+sing in the wind, and how strikingly harmonious an effect is made by the
+immense cylindrical cones that depend loosely from the ends of the main
+branches! No one knows what Nature can do in the way of pine-burs until he has
+seen those of the Sugar Pine. They are commonly from fifteen to eighteen inches
+long, and three in diameter; green, shaded with dark purple on their sunward
+sides. They are ripe in September and October. Then the flat scales open and
+the seeds take wing, but the empty cones become still more beautiful and
+effective, for their diameter is nearly doubled by the spreading of the scales,
+and their color changes to a warm yellowish-brown; while they remain swinging
+on the tree all the following winter and summer, and continue effectively
+beautiful even on the ground many years after they fall. The wood is
+deliciously fragrant, and fine in grain and texture; it is of a rich
+cream-yellow, as if formed of condensed sunbeams. <i>Retinospora obtusa,
+Siebold</i>, the glory of Eastern forests, is called &ldquo;Fu-si-no-ki&rdquo;
+(tree of the sun) by the Japanese; the Sugar Pine is the sun-tree of the
+Sierra. Unfortunately it is greatly prized by the lumbermen, and in accessible
+places is always the first tree in the woods to feel their steel. But the
+regular lumbermen, with their saw-mills, have been, less generally destructive
+thus far than the shingle-makers. The wood splits freely, and there is a
+constant demand for the shingles. And because an ax, and saw, and frow are all
+the capital required for the business, many of that drifting, unsteady class of
+men so large in California engage in it for a few months in the year. When
+prospectors, hunters, ranch hands, etc., touch their &ldquo;bottom
+dollar&rdquo; and find themselves out of employment, they say, &ldquo;Well, I
+can at least go to the Sugar Pines and make shingles.&rdquo; A few posts are
+set in the ground, and a single length cut from the first tree felled produces
+boards enough for the walls and roof of a cabin; all the rest the lumberman
+makes is for sale, and he is speedily independent. No gardener or haymaker is
+more sweetly perfumed than these rough mountaineers while engaged in this
+business, but the havoc they make is most deplorable.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:20%;">
+<a name="illus25"></a>
+<img src="images/img25.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE" />
+<p class="caption">SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The sugar, from which the common name is derived, is to my taste the best of
+sweets&mdash;better than maple sugar. It exudes from the heart-wood, where
+wounds have been made, either by forest fires, or the ax, in the shape of
+irregular, crisp, candy-like kernels, which are crowded together in masses of
+considerable size, like clusters of resin-beads. When fresh, it is perfectly
+white and delicious, but, because most of the wounds on which it is found have
+been made by fire, the exuding sap is stained on the charred surface, and the
+hardened sugar becomes brown. Indians are fond of it, but on account of its
+laxative properties only small quantities may be eaten. Bears, so fond of sweet
+things in general, seem never to taste it; at least I have failed to find any
+trace of their teeth in this connection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No lover of trees will ever forget his first meeting with the Sugar Pine, nor
+will he afterward need a poet to call him to &ldquo;listen what the pine-tree
+saith.&rdquo; In most pine-trees there is a sameness of expression, which, to
+most people, is apt to become monotonous; for the typical spiry form, however
+beautiful, affords but little scope for appreciable individual character. The
+Sugar Pine is as free from conventionalities of form and motion as any oak. No
+two are alike, even to the most inattentive observer; and, notwithstanding they
+are ever tossing out their immense arms in what might seem most extravagant
+gestures, there is a majesty and repose about them that precludes all
+possibility of the grotesque, or even picturesque, in their general expression.
+They are the priests of pines, and seem ever to be addressing the surrounding
+forest. The Yellow Pine is found growing with them on warm hillsides, and the
+White Silver Fir on cool northern slopes; but, noble as these are, the Sugar
+Pine is easily king, and spreads his arms above them in blessing while they
+rock and wave in sign of recognition. The main branches are sometimes found to
+be forty feet in length, yet persistently simple, seldom dividing at all,
+excepting near the end; but anything like a bare cable appearance is prevented
+by the small, tasseled branchlets that extend all around them; and when these
+superb limbs sweep out symmetrically on all sides, a crown sixty or seventy
+feet wide is formed, which, gracefully poised on the summit of the noble shaft,
+and filled with sunshine, is one of the most glorious forest objects
+conceivable. Commonly, however, there is a great preponderance of limbs toward
+the east, away from the direction of the prevailing winds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No other pine seems to me so unfamiliar and self-contained. In approaching it,
+we feel as if in the presence of a superior being, and begin to walk with a
+light step, holding our breath. Then, perchance, while we gaze awe-stricken,
+along comes a merry squirrel, chattering and laughing, to break the spell,
+running up the trunk with no ceremony, and gnawing off the cones as if they
+were made only for him; while the carpenter-woodpecker hammers away at the
+bark, drilling holes in which to store his winter supply of acorns.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus26"></a>
+<img src="images/img26.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES" />
+<p class="caption">YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Although so wild and unconventional when full-grown, the Sugar Pine is a
+remarkably proper tree in youth. The old is the most original and independent
+in appearance of all the Sierra evergreens; the young is the most
+regular,&mdash;a strict follower of coniferous fashions,&mdash;slim, erect,
+with leafy, supple branches kept exactly in place, each tapering in outline and
+terminating in a spiry point. The successive transitional forms presented
+between the cautious neatness of youth and bold freedom of maturity offer a
+delightful study. At the age of fifty or sixty years, the shy, fashionable form
+begins to be broken up. Specialized branches push out in the most unthought-of
+places, and bend with the great cones, at once marking individual character,
+and this being constantly augmented from year to year by the varying action of
+the sunlight, winds, snow-storms, etc., the individuality of the tree is never
+again lost in the general forest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most constant companion of this species is the Yellow Pine, and a worthy
+companion it is.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus27"></a>
+<img src="images/img27.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE." />
+<p class="caption">FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, Sequoia, and the White Silver Fir are also more
+or less associated with it; but on many deep-soiled mountain-sides, at an
+elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, it forms the bulk of the forest,
+filling every swell and hollow and down-plunging ravine. The majestic crowns,
+approaching each other in bold curves, make a glorious canopy through which the
+tempered sunbeams pour, silvering the needles, and gilding the massive boles,
+and flowery, park-like ground, into a scene of enchantment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the most sunny slopes the white-flowered fragrant chamoebatia is spread like
+a carpet, brightened during early summer with the crimson Sarcodes, the wild
+rose, and innumerable violets and gilias. Not even in the shadiest nooks will
+you find any rank, untidy weeds or unwholesome darkness. On the north sides of
+ridges the boles are more slender, and the ground is mostly occupied by an
+underbrush of hazel, ceanothus, and flowering dogwood, but never so densely as
+to prevent the traveler from sauntering where he will; while the crowning
+branches are never impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and never so
+interblended as to lose their individuality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+View the forest from beneath or from some commanding ridge-top; each tree
+presents a study in itself, and proclaims the surpassing grandeur of the
+species.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+YELLOW, OR SILVER PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus ponderosa</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+The Silver, or Yellow, Pine, as it is commonly called, ranks second among the
+pines of the Sierra as a lumber tree, and almost rivals the Sugar Pine in
+stature and nobleness of port. Because of its superior powers of enduring
+variations of climate and soil, it has a more extensive range than any other
+conifer growing on the Sierra. On the western slope it is first met at an
+elevation of about 2000 feet, and extends nearly to the upper limit of the
+timber line. Thence, crossing the range by the lowest passes, it descends to
+the eastern base, and pushes out for a considerable distance into the hot
+volcanic plains, growing bravely upon well-watered moraines, gravelly lake
+basins, arctic ridges, and torrid lava-beds; planting itself upon the lips of
+craters, flourishing vigorously even there, and tossing ripe cones among the
+ashes and cinders of Nature&rsquo;s hearths.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The average size of full-grown trees on the western slope, where it is
+associated with the Sugar Pine, is a little less than 200 feet in height and
+from five to six feet in diameter, though specimens may easily be found that
+are considerably larger. I measured one, growing at an elevation of 4000 feet
+in the valley of the Merced, that is a few inches over eight feet in diameter,
+and 220 feet high.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Where there is plenty of free sunshine and other conditions are favorable, it
+presents a striking contrast in form to the Sugar Pine, being a symmetrical
+spire, formed of a straight round trunk, clad with innumerable branches that
+are divided over and over again. About one half of the trunk is commonly
+branchless, but where it grows at all close, three fourths or more become
+naked; the tree presenting then a more slender and elegant shaft than any other
+tree in the woods. The bark is mostly arranged in massive plates, some of them
+measuring four or five feet in length by eighteen inches in width, with a
+thickness of three or four inches, forming a quite marked and distinguishing
+feature. The needles are of a fine, warm, yellow-green color, six to eight
+inches long, firm and elastic, and crowded in handsome, radiant tassels on the
+upturning ends of the branches. The cones are about three or four inches long,
+and two and a half wide, growing in close, sessile clusters among the leaves.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:30%;">
+<a name="illus28"></a>
+<img src="images/img28.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="PINUS PONDEROSA" />
+<p class="caption">PINUS PONDEROSA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The species attains its noblest form in filled-up lake basins, especially in
+those of the older yosemites, and so prominent a part does it form of their
+groves that it may well be called the Yosemite Pine. Ripe specimens favorably
+situated are almost always 200 feet or more in height, and the branches clothe
+the trunk nearly to the ground, as seen in the illustration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Jeffrey variety attains its finest development in the northern portion of
+the range, in the wide basins of the McCloud and Pitt rivers, where it forms
+magnificent forests scarcely invaded by any other tree. It differs from the
+ordinary form in size, being only about half as tall, and in its redder and
+more closely furrowed bark, grayish-green foliage, less divided branches, and
+larger cones; but intermediate forms come in which make a clear separation
+impossible, although some botanists regard it as a distinct species. It is this
+variety that climbs storm-swept ridges, and wanders out among the volcanoes of
+the Great Basin. Whether exposed to extremes of heat or cold, it is dwarfed
+like every other tree, and becomes all knots and angles, wholly unlike the
+majestic forms we have been sketching. Old specimens, bearing cones about as
+big as pineapples, may sometimes be found clinging to rifted rocks at an
+elevation of seven or eight thousand feet, whose highest branches scarce reach
+above one&rsquo;s shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:20%;">
+<a name="illus29"></a>
+<img src="images/img29.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH. (THE FORM GROWING IN YOSEMITE VALLEY.)" />
+<p class="caption">SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH. (THE FORM GROWING IN YOSEMITE VALLEY.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+I have oftentimes feasted on the beauty of these noble trees when they were
+towering in all their winter grandeur, laden with snow&mdash;one mass of bloom;
+in summer, too, when the brown, staminate clusters hang thick among the
+shimmering needles, and the big purple burs are ripening in the mellow light;
+but it is during cloudless wind-storms that these colossal pines are most
+impressively beautiful. Then they bow like willows, their leaves streaming
+forward all in one direction, and, when the sun shines upon them at the
+required angle, entire groves glow as if every leaf were burnished silver. The
+fall of tropic light on the royal crown of a palm is a truly glorious
+spectacle, the fervid sun-flood breaking upon the glossy leaves in long
+lance-rays, like mountain water among boulders. But to me there is something
+more impressive in the fall of light upon these Silver Pines. It seems beaten
+to the finest dust, and is shed off in myriads of minute sparkles that seem to
+come from the very heart of the trees, as if, like rain falling upon fertile
+soil, it had been absorbed, to reappear in flowers of light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This species also gives forth the finest music to the wind. After listening to
+it in all kinds of winds, night and day, season after season, I think I could
+approximate to my position on the mountains by this pine-music alone. If you
+would catch the tones of separate needles, climb a tree. They are well
+tempered, and give forth no uncertain sound, each standing out, with no
+interference excepting during heavy gales; then you may detect the click of one
+needle upon another, readily distinguishable from their free, wing-like hum.
+Some idea of their temper may be drawn from the fact that, notwithstanding they
+are so long, the vibrations that give rise to the peculiar shimmering of the
+light are made at the rate of about two hundred and fifty per minute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When a Sugar Pine and one of this species equal in size are observed together,
+the latter is seen to be far more simple in manners, more lithely graceful, and
+its beauty is of a kind more easily appreciated; but then, it is, on the other
+hand, much less dignified and original in demeanor. The Silver Pine seems eager
+to shoot aloft. Even while it is drowsing in autumn sun-gold, you may still
+detect a skyward aspiration. But the Sugar Pine seems too unconsciously noble,
+and too complete in every way, to leave room for even a heavenward care.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+DOUGLAS SPRUCE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pseudotsuga Douglasii</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This tree is the king of the spruces, as the Sugar Pine is king of pines. It is
+by far the most majestic spruce I ever beheld in any forest, and one of the
+largest and longest lived of the giants that flourish throughout the main pine
+belt, often attaining a height of nearly 200 feet, and a diameter of six or
+seven. Where the growth is not too close, the strong, spreading branches come
+more than halfway down the trunk, and these are hung with innumerable slender,
+swaying sprays, that are handsomely feathered with the short leaves which
+radiate at right angles all around them. This vigorous spruce is ever
+beautiful, welcoming the mountain winds and the snow as well as the mellow
+summer light, and maintaining its youthful freshness undiminished from century
+to century through a thousand storms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It makes its finest appearance in the months of June and July. The rich brown
+buds with which its sprays are tipped swell and break about this time,
+revealing the young leaves, which at first are bright yellow, making the tree
+appear as if covered with gay blossoms; while the pendulous bracted cones with
+their shell-like scales are a constant adornment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young trees are mostly gathered into beautiful family groups, each sapling
+exquisitely symmetrical. The primary branches are whorled regularly around the
+axis, generally in fives, while each is draped with long, feathery sprays, that
+descend in curves as free and as finely drawn as those of falling water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Oregon and Washington it grows in dense forests, growing tall and mast-like
+to a height of 300 feet, and is greatly prized as a lumber tree. But in the
+Sierra it is scattered among other trees, or forms small groves, seldom
+ascending higher than 5500 feet, and never making what would be called a
+forest. It is not particular in its choice of soil&mdash;wet or dry, smooth or
+rocky, it makes out to live well on them all. Two of the largest specimens I
+have measured are in Yosemite Valley, one of which is more than eight feet in
+diameter, and is growing upon the terminal moraine of the residual glacier that
+occupied the South Fork Canon; the other is nearly as large, growing upon
+angular blocks of granite that have been shaken from the precipitous front of
+the Liberty Cap near the Nevada Fall. No other tree seems so capable of
+adapting itself to earthquake taluses, and many of these rough boulder-slopes
+are occupied by it almost exclusively, especially in yosemite gorges moistened
+by the spray of waterfalls.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+INCENSE CEDAR<br/>
+<small>(<i>Libocedrus decurrens</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+The Incense Cedar is another of the giants quite generally distributed
+throughout this portion of the forest, without exclusively occupying any
+considerable area, or even making extensive groves. It ascends to about 5000
+feet on the warmer hillsides, and reaches the climate most congenial to it at
+about from 3000 to 4000 feet, growing vigorously at this elevation on all kinds
+of soil, and in particular it is capable of enduring more moisture about its
+roots than any of its companions, excepting only the Sequoia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The largest specimens are about 150 feet high, and seven feet in diameter. The
+bark is brown, of a singularly rich tone very attractive to artists, and the
+foliage is tinted with a warmer yellow than that of any other evergreen in the
+woods. Casting your eye over the general forest from some ridge-top, the color
+alone of its spiry summits is sufficient to identify it in any company.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus30"></a>
+<img src="images/img30.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME." />
+<p class="caption">INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In youth, say up to the age of seventy or eighty years, no other tree forms so
+strictly tapered a cone from top to bottom. The branches swoop outward and
+downward in bold curves, excepting the younger ones near the top, which aspire,
+while the lowest droop to the ground, and all spread out in flat, ferny plumes,
+beautifully fronded, and imbricated upon one another. As it becomes older, it
+grows strikingly irregular and picturesque. Large special branches put out at
+right angles from the trunk, form big, stubborn elbows, and then shoot up
+parallel with the axis. Very old trees are usually dead at the top, the main
+axis protruding above ample masses of green plumes, gray and lichen-covered,
+and drilled full of acorn holes by the woodpeckers. The plumes are exceedingly
+beautiful; no waving fern-frond in shady dell is more unreservedly beautiful in
+form and texture, or half so inspiring in color and spicy fragrance. In its
+prime, the whole tree is thatched with them, so that they shed off rain and
+snow like a roof, making fine mansions for storm-bound birds and mountaineers.
+But if you would see the <i>Libocedrus</i> in all its glory, you must go to the
+woods in winter. Then it is laden with myriads of four-sided staminate cones
+about the size of wheat grains,&mdash;winter wheat,&mdash;producing a golden
+tinge, and forming a noble illustration of Nature&rsquo;s immortal vigor and
+virility. The fertile cones are about three fourths of an inch long, borne on
+the outside of the plumy branchlets, where they serve to enrich still more the
+surpassing beauty of this grand winter-blooming goldenrod.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+WHITE SILVER FIR<br/>
+<small>(<i>Abies concolor</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus31"></a>
+<img src="images/img31.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS. TWO SEQUOIAS IN THE FOREGROUND ON THE LEFT" />
+<p class="caption">FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS. TWO SEQUOIAS IN THE FOREGROUND ON THE LEFT.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+We come now to the most regularly planted of all the main forest belts,
+composed almost exclusively of two noble firs&mdash;<i>A. concolor</i> and
+<i>A. magnifica</i>. It extends with no marked interruption for 450 miles, at
+an elevation of from 5000 to nearly 9000 feet above the sea. In its youth <i>A.
+concolor</i> is a charmingly symmetrical tree with branches regularly whorled
+in level collars around its whitish-gray axis, which terminates in a strong,
+hopeful shoot. The leaves are in two horizontal rows, along branchlets that
+commonly are less than eight years old, forming handsome plumes, pinnated like
+the fronds of ferns. The cones are grayish-green when ripe, cylindrical, about
+from three to four inches long by one and a half to two inches wide, and stand
+upright on the upper branches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Full-grown trees, favorably situated as to soil and exposure, are about 200
+feet high, and five or six feet in diameter near the ground, though larger
+specimens are by no means rare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As old age creeps on, the bark becomes rougher and grayer, the branches lose
+their exact regularity, many are snow-bent or broken off, and the main axis
+often becomes double or otherwise irregular from accidents to the terminal bud
+or shoot; but throughout all the vicissitudes of its life on the mountains,
+come what may, the noble grandeur of the species is patent to every eye.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR, OR RED FIR<br/>
+<small>(<i>Abies magnifica</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This is the most charmingly symmetrical of all the giants of the Sierra woods,
+far surpassing its companion species in this respect, and easily distinguished
+from it by the purplish-red bark, which is also more closely furrowed than that
+of the white, and by its larger cones, more regularly whorled and fronded
+branches, and by its leaves, which are shorter, and grow all around the
+branchlets and point upward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In size, these two Silver Firs are about equal, the <i>magnifica</i> perhaps a
+little the taller. Specimens from 200 to 250 feet high are not rare on
+well-ground moraine soil, at an elevation of from 7500 to 8500 feet above
+sea-level. The largest that I measured stands back three miles from the brink
+of the north wall of Yosemite Valley. Fifteen years ago it was 240 feet high,
+with a diameter of a little more than five feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Happy the man with the freedom and the love to climb one of these superb trees
+in full flower and fruit. How admirable the forest-work of Nature is then seen
+to be, as one makes his way up through the midst of the broad, fronded
+branches, all arranged in exquisite order around the trunk, like the whorled
+leaves of lilies, and each branch and branchlet about as strictly pinnate as
+the most symmetrical fern-frond. The staminate cones are seen growing straight
+downward from the under side of the young branches in lavish profusion, making
+fine purple clusters amid the grayish-green foliage. On the topmost branches
+the fertile cones are set firmly on end like small casks. They are about six
+inches long, three wide, covered with a fine gray down, and streaked with
+crystal balsam that seems to have been poured upon each cone from above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both the Silver Firs live 250 years or more when the conditions about them are
+at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may often be seen, heavily
+storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising generation, with a
+protecting grove of saplings pressing close around his feet, each dressed with
+such loving care that not a leaf seems wanting. Other companies are made up of
+trees near the prime of life, exquisitely harmonized to one another in form and
+gesture, as if Nature had culled them one by one with nice discrimination from
+all the rest of the woods.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus32"></a>
+<img src="images/img32.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR" />
+<p class="caption">VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+It is from this tree, called Red Fir by the lumberman, that mountaineers always
+cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate as to be within its limits.
+Two rows of the plushy branches overlapping along the middle, and a crescent of
+smaller plumes mixed with ferns and flowers for a pillow, form the very best
+bed imaginable. The essences of the pressed leaves seem to fill every pore of
+one&rsquo;s body, the sounds of falling water make a soothing hush, while the
+spaces between the grand spires afford noble openings through which to gaze
+dreamily into the starry sky. Even in the matter of sensuous ease, any
+combination of cloth, steel springs, and feathers seems vulgar in comparison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fir woods are delightful sauntering-grounds at any time of year, but most
+so in autumn. Then the noble trees are hushed in the hazy light, and drip with
+balsam; the cones are ripe, and the seeds, with their ample purple wings,
+mottle the air like flocks of butterflies; while deer feeding in the flowery
+openings between the groves, and birds and squirrels in the branches, make a
+pleasant stir which enriches the deep, brooding calm of the wilderness, and
+gives a peculiar impressiveness to every tree. No wonder the enthusiastic
+Douglas went wild with joy when he first discovered this species. Even in the
+Sierra, where so many noble evergreens challenge admiration, we linger among
+these colossal firs with fresh love, and extol their beauty again and again, as
+if no other in the world could henceforth claim our regard.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus33"></a>
+<img src="images/img33.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA GLACIERS" />
+<p class="caption">SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA GLACIERS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+It is in these woods the great granite domes rise that are so striking and
+characteristic a feature of the Sierra. And here too we find the best of the
+garden meadows. They lie level on the tops of the dividing ridges, or sloping
+on the sides of them, embedded in the magnificent forest. Some of these meadows
+are in great part occupied by <i>Veratrumalba</i>, which here grows rank and
+tall, with boat-shaped leaves thirteen inches long and twelve inches wide,
+ribbed like those of cypripedium. Columbine grows on the drier margins with
+tall larkspurs and lupines waist-deep in grasses and sedges; several species of
+castilleia also make a bright show in beds of blue and white violets and
+daisies. But the glory of these forest meadows is a lily&mdash;<i>L.
+parvum</i>. The flowers are orange-colored and quite small, the smallest I ever
+saw of the true lilies; but it is showy nevertheless, for it is seven to eight
+feet high and waves magnificent racemes of ten to twenty flowers or more over
+one&rsquo;s head, while it stands out in the open ground with just enough of
+grass and other plants about it to make a fringe for its feet and show it off
+to best advantage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A dry spot a little way back from the margin of a Silver Fir lily garden makes
+a glorious campground, especially where the slope is toward the east and opens
+a view of the distant peaks along the summit of the range. The tall lilies are
+brought forward in all their glory by the light of your blazing camp-fire,
+relieved against the outer darkness, and the nearest of the trees with their
+whorled branches tower above you like larger lilies, and the sky seen through
+the garden opening seems one vast meadow of white lily stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning everything is joyous and bright, the delicious purple of the
+dawn changes softly to daffodil yellow and white; while the sunbeams pouring
+through the passes between the peaks give a margin of gold to each of them.
+Then the spires of the firs in the hollows of the middle region catch the glow,
+and your camp grove is filled with light. The birds begin to stir, seeking
+sunny branches on the edge of the meadow for sun-baths after the cold night,
+and looking for their breakfasts, every one of them as fresh as a lily and as
+charmingly arrayed. Innumerable insects begin to dance, the deer withdraw from
+the open glades and ridge-tops to their leafy hiding-places in the chaparral,
+the flowers open and straighten their petals as the dew vanishes, every pulse
+beats high, every life-cell rejoices, the very rocks seem to tingle with life,
+and God is felt brooding over everything great and small.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+BIG TREE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Sequoia gigantea</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+Between the heavy pine and Silver Fir belts we find the Big Tree, the king of
+all the conifers in the world, &ldquo;the noblest of a noble race.&rdquo; It
+extends in a widely interrupted belt from a small grove on the middle fork of
+the American River to the head of Deer Creek, a distance of about 260 miles,
+the northern limit being near the thirty-ninth parallel, the southern a little
+below the thirty-sixth, and the elevation of the belt above the sea varies from
+about 5000 to 8000 feet. From the American River grove to the forest on
+King&rsquo;s River the species occurs only in small isolated groups so sparsely
+distributed along the belt that three of the gaps in it are from forty to sixty
+miles wide. But from King&rsquo;s River southward the Sequoia is not restricted
+to mere groves, but extends across the broad rugged basins of the Kaweah and
+Tule rivers in noble forests, a distance of nearly seventy miles, the
+continuity of this part of the belt being broken only by deep cañons. The
+Fresno, the largest of the northern groves, occupies an area of three or four
+square miles, a short distance to the southward of the famous Mariposa Grove.
+Along the beveled rim of the cañon of the south fork of King&rsquo;s River
+there is a majestic forest of Sequoia about six miles long by two wide. This is
+the northernmost assemblage of Big Trees that may fairly be called a forest.
+Descending the precipitous divide between the King&rsquo;s River and Kaweah you
+enter the grand forests that form the main continuous portion of the belt.
+Advancing southward the giants become more and more irrepressibly exuberant,
+heaving their massive crowns into the sky from every ridge and slope, and
+waving onward in graceful compliance with the complicated topography of the
+region. The finest of the Kaweah section of the belt is on the broad ridge
+between Marble Creek and the middle fork, and extends from the granite
+headlands overlooking the hot plains to within a few miles of the cool glacial
+fountains of the summit peaks. The extreme upper limit of the belt is reached
+between the middle and south forks of the Kaweah at an elevation of 8400 feet.
+But the finest block of Big Tree forest in the entire belt is on the north fork
+of Tule River. In the northern groves there are comparatively few young trees
+or saplings. But here for every old, storm-stricken giant there are many in all
+the glory of prime vigor, and for each of these a crowd of eager, hopeful young
+trees and saplings growing heartily on moraines, rocky ledges, along
+watercourses, and in the moist alluvium of meadows, seemingly in hot pursuit of
+eternal life.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus34"></a>
+<img src="images/img34.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SEQUOIA GIGANTEA&mdash;VIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK" />
+<p class="caption">SEQUOIA GIGANTEA&mdash;VIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+But though the area occupied by the species increases so much from north to
+south there is no marked increase in the size of the trees. A height of 275
+feet and a diameter near the ground of about 20 feet is perhaps about the
+average size of full-grown trees favorably situated; specimens 25 feet in
+diameter are not very rare, and a few are nearly 300 feet high. In the
+Calaveras Grove there are four trees over 300 feet in height, the tallest of
+which by careful measurement is 325 feet. The largest I have yet met in the
+course of my explorations is a majestic old scarred monument in the
+King&rsquo;s River forest. It is 35 feet 8 inches in diameter inside the bark
+four feet from the ground. Under the most favorable conditions these giants
+probably live 5000 years or more, though few of even the larger trees are more
+than half as old. I never saw a Big Tree that had died a natural death; barring
+accidents they seem to be immortal, being exempt from all the diseases that
+afflict and kill other trees. Unless destroyed by man, they live on
+indefinitely until burned, smashed by lightning, or cast down by storms, or by
+the giving way of the ground on which they stand. The age of one that was
+felled in the Calaveras Grove, for the sake of having its stump for a
+dancing-floor, was about 1300 years, and its diameter, measured across the
+stump, 24 feet inside the bark. Another that was cut down in the King&rsquo;s
+River forest was about the same size, but nearly a thousand years older (2200
+years), though not a very old-looking tree. It was felled to procure a section
+for exhibition, and thus an opportunity was given to count its annual rings of
+growth. The colossal scarred monument in the King&rsquo;s River forest
+mentioned above is burned half through, and I spent a day in making an estimate
+of its age, clearing away the charred surface with an ax and carefully counting
+the annual rings with the aid of a pocket-lens. The wood-rings in the section I
+laid bare were so involved and contorted in some places that I was not able to
+determine its age exactly, but I counted over 4000 rings, which showed that
+this tree was in its prime, swaying in the Sierra winds, when Christ walked the
+earth. No other tree in the world, as far as I know, has looked down on so many
+centuries as the Sequoia, or opens such impressive and suggestive views into
+history.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So exquisitely harmonious and finely balanced are even the very mightiest of
+these monarchs of the woods in all their proportions and circumstances there
+never is anything overgrown or monstrous-looking about them. On coming in sight
+of them for the first time, you are likely to say, &ldquo;Oh, see what
+beautiful, noble-looking trees are towering there among the firs and
+pines!&rdquo;&mdash;their grandeur being in the mean time in great part
+invisible, but to the living eye it will be manifested sooner or later,
+stealing slowly on the senses, like the grandeur of Niagara, or the lofty
+Yosemite domes. Their great size is hidden from the inexperienced observer as
+long as they are seen at a distance in one harmonious view. When, however, you
+approach them and walk round them, you begin to wonder at their colossal size
+and seek a measuring-rod. These giants bulge considerably at the base, but not
+more than is required for beauty and safety; and the only reason that this
+bulging seems in some cases excessive is that only a comparatively small
+section of the shaft is seen at once in near views. One that I measured in the
+King&rsquo;s River forest was 25 feet in diameter at the ground, and 10 feet in
+diameter 200 feet above the ground, showing that the taper of the trunk as a
+whole is charmingly fine. And when you stand back far enough to see the massive
+columns from the swelling instep to the lofty summit dissolving in a dome of
+verdure, you rejoice in the unrivaled display of combined grandeur and beauty.
+About a hundred feet or more of the trunk is usually branchless, but its
+massive simplicity is relieved by the bark furrows, which instead of making an
+irregular network run evenly parallel, like the fluting of an architectural
+column, and to some extent by tufts of slender sprays that wave lightly in the
+winds and cast flecks of shade, seeming to have been pinned on here and there
+for the sake of beauty only. The young trees have slender simple branches down
+to the ground, put on with strict regularity, sharply aspiring at the top,
+horizontal about half-way down, and drooping in handsome curves at the base. By
+the time the sapling is five or six hundred years old this spiry, feathery,
+juvenile habit merges into the firm, rounded dome form of middle age, which in
+turn takes on the eccentric picturesqueness of old age. No other tree in the
+Sierra forest has foliage so densely massed or presents outlines so firmly
+drawn and so steadily subordinate to a special type. A knotty
+ungovernable-looking branch five to eight feet thick may be seen pushing out
+abruptly from the smooth trunk, as if sure to throw the regular curve into
+confusion, but as soon as the general outline is reached it stops short and
+dissolves in spreading bosses of law-abiding sprays, just as if every tree were
+growing beneath some huge, invisible bell-glass, against whose sides every
+branch was being pressed and molded, yet somehow indulging in so many small
+departures from the regular form that there is still an appearance of freedom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The foliage of the saplings is dark bluish-green in color, while the older
+trees ripen to a warm brownish-yellow tint like Libocedrus. The bark is rich
+cinnamon-brown, purplish in young trees and in shady portions of the old, while
+the ground is covered with brown leaves and burs forming color-masses of
+extraordinary richness, not to mention the flowers and underbrush that rejoice
+about them in their seasons. Walk the Sequoia woods at any time of year and you
+will say they are the most beautiful and majestic on earth. Beautiful and
+impressive contrasts meet you everywhere: the colors of tree and flower, rock
+and sky, light and shade, strength and frailty, endurance and evanescence,
+tangles of supple hazel-bushes, tree-pillars about as rigid as granite domes,
+roses and violets, the smallest of their kind, blooming around the feet of the
+giants, and rugs of the lowly chamaebatia where the sunbeams fall. Then in
+winter the trees themselves break forth in bloom, myriads of small four-sided
+staminate cones crowd the ends of the slender sprays, coloring the whole tree,
+and when ripe dusting the air and the ground with golden pollen. The fertile
+cones are bright grass-green, measuring about two inches in length by one and a
+half in thickness, and are made up of about forty firm rhomboidal scales
+densely packed, with from five to eight seeds at the base of each. A single
+cone, therefore, contains from two to three hundred seeds, which are about a
+fourth of an inch long by three sixteenths wide, including a thin, flat margin
+that makes them go glancing and wavering in their fall like a boy&rsquo;s kite.
+The fruitfulness of Sequoia may be illustrated by two specimen branches one and
+a half and two inches in diameter on which I counted 480 cones. No other Sierra
+conifer produces nearly so many seeds. Millions are ripened annually by a
+single tree, and in a fruitful year the product of one of the northern groves
+would be enough to plant all the mountain-ranges of the world. Nature takes
+care, however, that not one seed in a million shall germinate at all, and of
+those that do perhaps not one in ten thousand is suffered to live through the
+many vicissitudes of storm, drought, fire, and snow-crushing that beset their
+youth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Douglas squirrel is the happy harvester of most of the Sequoia cones. Out
+of every hundred perhaps ninety fall to his share, and unless cut off by his
+ivory sickle they shake out their seeds and remain on the tree for many years.
+Watching the squirrels at their harvest work in the Indian summer is one of the
+most delightful diversions imaginable. The woods are calm and the ripe colors
+are blazing in all their glory; the cone-laden trees stand motionless in the
+warm, hazy air, and you may see the crimson-crested woodcock, the prince of
+Sierra woodpeckers, drilling some dead limb or fallen trunk with his bill, and
+ever and anon filling the glens with his happy cackle. The humming-bird, too,
+dwells in these noble woods, and may oftentimes be seen glancing among the
+flowers or resting wing-weary on some leafless twig; here also are the familiar
+robin of the orchards, and the brown and grizzly bears so obviously fitted for
+these majestic solitudes; and the Douglas squirrel, making more hilarious,
+exuberant, vital stir than all the bears, birds, and humming wings together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as any accident happens to the crown of these Sequoias, such as being
+stricken off by lightning or broken by storms, then the branches beneath the
+wound, no matter how situated, seem to be excited like a colony of bees that
+have lost their queen, and become anxious to repair the damage. Limbs that have
+grown outward for centuries at right angles to the trunk begin to turn upward
+to assist in making a new crown, each speedily assuming the special form of
+true summits. Even in the case of mere stumps, burned half through, some mere
+ornamental tuft will try to go aloft and do its best as a leader in forming a
+new head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Groups of two or three of these grand trees are often found standing close
+together, the seeds from which they sprang having probably grown on ground
+cleared for their reception by the fall of a large tree of a former generation.
+These patches of fresh, mellow soil beside the upturned roots of the fallen
+giant may be from forty to sixty feet wide, and they are speedily occupied by
+seedlings. Out of these seedling-thickets perhaps two or three may become
+trees, forming those close groups called &ldquo;three graces,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;loving couples,&rdquo; etc. For even supposing that the trees should
+stand twenty or thirty feet apart while young, by the time they are full-grown
+their trunks will touch and crowd against each other and even appear as one in
+some cases.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is generally believed that this grand Sequoia was once far more widely
+distributed over the Sierra; but after long and careful study I have come to
+the conclusion that it never was, at least since the close of the glacial
+period, because a diligent search along the margins of the groves, and in the
+gaps between, fails to reveal a single trace of its previous existence beyond
+its present bounds. Notwithstanding, I feel confident that if every Sequoia in
+the range were to die to-day, numerous monuments of their existence would
+remain, of so imperishable a nature as to be available for the student more
+than ten thousand years hence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the first place we might notice that no species of coniferous tree in the
+range keeps its individuals so well together as Sequoia; a mile is perhaps the
+greatest distance of any straggler from the main body, and all of those
+stragglers that have come under my observation are young, instead of old
+monumental trees, relics of a more extended growth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again, Sequoia trunks frequently endure for centuries after they fall. I have a
+specimen block, cut from a fallen trunk, which is hardly distinguishable from
+specimens cut from living trees, although the old trunk-fragment from which it
+was derived has lain in the damp forest more than 380 years, probably thrice as
+long. The time measure in the case is simply this: when the ponderous trunk to
+which the old vestige belonged fell, it sunk itself into the ground, thus
+making a long, straight ditch, and in the middle of this ditch a Silver Fir is
+growing that is now four feet in diameter and 380 years old, as determined by
+cutting it half through and counting the rings, thus demonstrating that the
+remnant of the trunk that made the ditch has lain on the ground <i>more</i>
+than 380 years. For it is evident that to find the whole time, we must add to
+the 380 years the time that the vanished portion of the trunk lay in the ditch
+before being burned out of the way, plus the time that passed before the seed
+from which the monumental fir sprang fell into the prepared soil and took root.
+Now, because Sequoia trunks are never wholly consumed in one forest fire, and
+those fires recur only at considerable intervals, and because Sequoia ditches
+after being cleared are often left unplanted for centuries, it becomes evident
+that the trunk remnant in question may probably have lain a thousand years or
+more. And this instance is by no means a rare one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been once covered with
+Sequoia every tree may have fallen, and every trunk may have been burned or
+buried, leaving not a remnant, many of the ditches made by the fall of the
+ponderous trunks, and the bowls made by their upturning roots, would remain
+patent for thousands of years after the last vestige of the trunks that made
+them had vanished. Much of this ditch-writing would no doubt be quickly effaced
+by the flood-action of overflowing streams and rain-washing; but no
+inconsiderable portion would remain enduringly engraved on ridge-tops beyond
+such destructive action; for, where all the conditions are favorable, it is
+almost imperishable. <i>Now these historic ditches and root bowls occur in all
+the present Sequoia groves and forests, but as far as I have observed, not the
+faintest vestige of one presents itself outside of them</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We therefore conclude that the area covered by Sequoia has not been diminished
+during the last eight or ten thousand years, and probably not at all in
+post-glacial times.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Is the species verging to extinction? What are its relations to climate,
+soil, and associated trees?</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the phenomena bearing on these questions also throw light, as we shall
+endeavor to show, upon the peculiar distribution of the species, and sustain
+the conclusion already arrived at on the question of extension.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are few young trees or saplings
+growing up around the failing old ones to perpetuate the race, and in as much
+as those aged Sequoias, so nearly childless, are the only ones commonly known,
+the species, to most observers, seems doomed to speedy extinction, as being
+nothing more than an expiring remnant, vanquished in the so-called struggle for
+life by pines and firs that have driven it into its last strongholds in moist
+glens where climate is exceptionally favorable. But the language of the
+majestic continuous forests of the south creates a very different impression.
+No tree of all the forest is more enduringly established in concordance with
+climate and soil. It grows heartily everywhere&mdash;on moraines, rocky ledges,
+along watercourses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows, with a
+multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the aged, seemingly
+abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. For every old
+storm-stricken tree, there is one or more in all the glory of prime; and for
+each of these many young trees and crowds of exuberant saplings. So that if all
+the trees of any section of the main Sequoia forest were ranged together
+according to age, a very promising curve would be presented, all the way up
+from last year&rsquo;s seedlings to giants, and with the young and middle-aged
+portion of the curve many times longer than the old portion. Even as far north
+as the Fresno, I counted 536 saplings and seedlings growing promisingly upon a
+piece of rough avalanche soil not exceeding two acres in area. This soil bed is
+about seven years old, and has been seeded almost simultaneously by pines,
+firs, Libocedrus, and Sequoia, presenting a simple and instructive illustration
+of the struggle for life among the rival species; and it was interesting to
+note that the conditions thus far affecting them have enabled the young
+Sequoias to gain a marked advantage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In every instance like the above I have observed that the seedling Sequoia is
+capable of growing on both drier and wetter soil than its rivals, but requires
+more sunshine than they; the latter fact being clearly shown wherever a Sugar
+Pine or fir is growing in close contact with a Sequoia of about equal age and
+size, and equally exposed to the sun; the branches of the latter in such cases
+are always less leafy. Toward the south, however, where the Sequoia becomes
+<i>more</i> exuberant and numerous, the rival trees become <i>less</i> so; and
+where they mix with Sequoias, they mostly grow up beneath them, like slender
+grasses among stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of sandy flood-soil I counted
+ninety-four Sequoias, from one to twelve feet high, on a patch, of ground once
+occupied by four large Sugar Pines which lay crumbling beneath them,&mdash;an
+instance of conditions which have enabled Sequoias to crowd out the pines.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus35"></a>
+<img src="images/img35.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAÑON&mdash;YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK" />
+<p class="caption">MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAÑON&mdash;YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+I also noted eighty-six vigorous saplings upon a piece of fresh ground prepared
+for their reception by fire. Thus fire, the great destroyer of Sequoia, also
+furnishes bare virgin ground, one of the conditions essential for its growth
+from the seed. Fresh ground is, however, furnished in sufficient quantities for
+the constant renewal of the forests without fire, viz., by the fall of old
+trees. The soil is thus upturned and mellowed, and many trees are planted for
+every one that falls. Land-slips and floods also give rise to bare virgin
+ground; and a tree now and then owes its existence to a burrowing wolf or
+squirrel, but the most regular supply of fresh soil is furnished by the fall of
+aged trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The climatic changes in progress in the Sierra, bearing on the tenure of tree
+life, are entirely misapprehended, especially as to the time and the means
+employed by Nature in effecting them. It is constantly asserted in a vague way
+that the Sierra was vastly wetter than now, and that the increasing drought
+will of itself extinguish Sequoia, leaving its ground to other trees supposed
+capable of nourishing in a drier climate. But that Sequoia can and does grow on
+as dry ground as any of its present rivals, is manifest in a thousand places.
+&ldquo;Why, then,&rdquo; it will be asked, &ldquo;are Sequoias always found in
+greatest abundance in well-watered places where streams are exceptionally
+abundant?&rdquo; Simply because a growth of Sequoias creates those streams. The
+thirsty mountaineer knows well that in every Sequoia grove he will find running
+water, but it is a mistake to suppose that the water is the cause of the grove
+being there; on the contrary, the grove is the cause of the water being there.
+Drain off the water and the trees will remain, but cut off the trees, and the
+streams will vanish. Never was cause more completely mistaken for effect than
+in the case of these related phenomena of Sequoia woods and perennial streams,
+and I confess that at first I shared in the blunder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When attention is called to the method of Sequoia stream-making, it will be
+apprehended at once. The roots of this immense tree fill the ground, forming a
+thick sponge that absorbs and holds back the rains and melting snows, only
+allowing them to ooze and flow gently. Indeed, every fallen leaf and rootlet,
+as well as long clasping root, and prostrate trunk, may be regarded as a dam
+hoarding the bounty of storm-clouds, and dispensing it as blessings all through
+the summer, instead of allowing it to go headlong in short-lived floods.
+Evaporation is also checked by the dense foliage to a greater extent than by
+any other Sierra tree, and the air is entangled in masses and broad sheets that
+are quickly saturated; while thirsty winds are not allowed to go sponging and
+licking along the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So great is the retention of water in many places in the main belt, that bogs
+and meadows are created by the killing of the trees. A single trunk falling
+across a stream in the woods forms a dam 200 feet long, and from ten to thirty
+feet high, giving rise to a pond which kills the trees within its reach. These
+dead trees fall in turn, thus making a clearing, while sediments gradually
+accumulate changing the pond into a bog, or meadow, for a growth of carices and
+sphagnum. In some instances a series of small bogs or meadows rise above one
+another on a hillside, which are gradually merged into one another, forming
+sloping bogs, or meadows, which make striking features of Sequoia woods, and
+since all the trees that have fallen into them have been preserved, they
+contain records of the generations that have passed since they began to form.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since, then, it is a fact that thousands of Sequoias are growing thriftily on
+what is termed dry ground, and even clinging like mountain pines to rifts in
+granite precipices; and since it has also been shown that the extra moisture
+found in connection with the denser growths is an effect of their presence,
+instead of a cause of their presence, then the notions as to the former
+extension of the species and its near approach to extinction, based upon its
+supposed dependence on greater moisture, are seen to be erroneous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The decrease in the rain- and snow-fall since the close of the glacial period
+in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed. The highest post-glacial
+watermarks are well preserved in all the upper river channels, and they are not
+greatly higher than the spring floodmarks of the present; showing conclusively
+that no extraordinary decrease has taken place in the volume of the upper
+tributaries of post-glacial Sierra streams since they came into existence. But
+in the mean time, eliminating all this complicated question of climatic change,
+the plain fact remains that <i>the present rain- and snow-fall is abundantly
+sufficient for the luxuriant growth of Sequoia forests</i>. Indeed, all my
+observations tend to show that in a prolonged drought the Sugar Pines and firs
+would perish before the Sequoia, not alone because of the greater longevity of
+individual trees, but because the species can endure more drought, and make the
+most of whatever moisture falls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again, if the restriction and irregular distribution of the species be
+interpreted as a result of the desiccation of the range, then instead of
+increasing as it does in individuals toward the south where the rainfall is
+less, it should diminish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If, then, the peculiar distribution of Sequoia has not been governed by
+superior conditions of soil as to fertility or moisture, by what has it been
+governed?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the course of my studies I observed that the northern groves, the only ones
+I was at first acquainted with, were located on just those portions of the
+general forest soil-belt that were first laid bare toward the close of the
+glacial period when the ice-sheet began to break up into individual glaciers.
+And while searching the wide basin of the San Joaquin, and trying to account
+for the absence of Sequoia where every condition seemed favorable for its
+growth, it occured to me that this remarkable gap in the Sequoia belt is
+located exactly in the basin of the vast ancient <i>mer de glace</i> of the San
+Joaquin and King&rsquo;s River basins, which poured its frozen floods to the
+plain, fed by the snows that fell on more than fifty miles of the summit. I
+then perceived that the next great gap in the belt to the northward, forty
+miles wide, extending between the Calaveras and Tuolumne groves, occurs in the
+basin of the great ancient <i>mer de glace</i> of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus
+basins, and that the smaller gap between the Merced and Mariposa groves occurs
+in the basin of the smaller glacier of the Merced. <i>The wider the ancient
+glacier, the wider the corresponding gap in the Sequoia belt</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, pursuing my investigations across the basins of the Kaweah and Tule, I
+discovered that the Sequoia belt attained its greatest development just where,
+owing to the topographical peculiarities of the region, the ground had been
+most perfectly protected from the main ice-rivers that continued to pour past
+from the summit fountains long after the smaller local glaciers had been
+melted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Taking now a general view of the belt, beginning at the south, we see that the
+majestic ancient glaciers were shed off right and left down the valleys of Kern
+and King&rsquo;s rivers by the lofty protective spurs outspread embracingly
+above the warm Sequoia-filled basins of the Kaweah and Tule. Then, next
+northward, occurs the wide Sequoia-less channel, or basin, of the ancient San
+Joaquin and King&rsquo;s River <i>mer de glace</i>; then the warm, protected
+spots of Fresno and Mariposa groves; then the Sequoia-less channel of the
+ancient Merced glacier; next the warm, sheltered ground of the Merced and
+Tuolumne groves; then the Sequoia-less channel of the grand ancient <i>mer de
+glace</i> of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus; then the warm old ground of the
+Calaveras and Stanislaus groves. It appears, therefore, that just where, at a
+certain period in the history of the Sierra, the glaciers were not, there the
+Sequoia is, and just where the glaciers were, there the Sequoia is not.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus36"></a>
+<img src="images/img36.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAÑON" />
+<p class="caption">VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+What the other conditions may have been that enabled Sequoia to establish
+itself upon these oldest and warmest portions of the main glacial soil-belt, I
+cannot say. I might venture to state, however, in this connection, that since
+the Sequoia forests present a more and more ancient aspect as they extend
+southward, I am inclined to think that the species was distributed from the
+south, while the Sugar Pine, its great rival in the northern groves, seems to
+have come around the head of the Sacramento valley and down the Sierra from the
+north; consequently, when the Sierra soil-beds were first thrown open to
+preemption on the melting of the ice-sheet, the Sequoia may have established
+itself along the available portions of the south half of the range prior to the
+arrival of the Sugar Pine, while the Sugar Pine took possession of the north
+half prior to the arrival of Sequoia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But however much uncertainty may attach to this branch of the question, there
+are no obscuring shadows upon the grand general relationship we have pointed
+out between the present distribution of Sequoia and the ancient glaciers of the
+Sierra. And when we bear in mind that all the present forests of the Sierra are
+young, growing on moraine soil recently deposited, and that the flank of the
+range itself, with all its landscapes, is new-born, recently sculptured, and
+brought to the light of day from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial winter,
+then a thousand lawless mysteries disappear, and broad harmonies take their
+places.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial history of
+this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was more widely
+distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial epoch; that its
+present forests are scarcely past prime, if, indeed, they have reached prime;
+that the post-glacial day of the species is probably not half done; yet, when
+from a wider outlook the vast antiquity of the genus is considered, and its
+ancient richness in species and individuals; comparing our Sierra Giant and
+<i>Sequoia sempervirens</i> of the Coast Range, the only other living species
+of Sequoia, with the twelve fossil species already discovered and described by
+Heer and Lesquereux, some of which seem to have flourished over vast areas in
+the Arctic regions and in Europe and our own territories, during tertiary and
+cretaceous times,&mdash;then indeed it becomes plain that our two surviving
+species, restricted to narrow belts within the limits of California, are mere
+remnants of the genus, both as to species and individuals, and that they
+probably are verging to extinction. But the verge of a period beginning in
+cretaceous times may have a breadth of tens of thousands of years, not to
+mention the possible existence of conditions calculated to multiply and
+reëxtend both species and individuals. This, however, is a branch of the
+question into which I do not now purpose to enter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In studying the fate of our forest king, we have thus far considered the action
+of purely natural causes only; but, unfortunately, <i>man</i> is in the woods,
+and waste and pure destruction are making rapid headway. If the importance of
+forests were at all understood, even from an economic standpoint, their
+preservation would call forth the most watchful attention of government. Only
+of late years by means of forest reservations has the simplest groundwork for
+available legislation been laid, while in many of the finest groves every
+species of destruction is still moving on with accelerated speed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the course of my explorations I found no fewer than five mills located on or
+near the lower edge of the Sequoia belt, all of which were cutting considerable
+quantities of Big Tree lumber. Most of the Fresno group are doomed to feed the
+mills recently erected near them, and a company of lumbermen are now cutting
+the magnificent forest on King&rsquo;s River. In these milling operations waste
+far exceeds use, for after the choice young manageable trees on any given spot
+have been felled, the woods are fired to clear the ground of limbs and refuse
+with reference to further operations, and, of course, most of the seedlings and
+saplings are destroyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These mill ravages, however, are small as compared with the comprehensive
+destruction caused by &ldquo;sheepmen.&rdquo; Incredible numbers of sheep are
+driven to the mountain pastures every summer, and their course is ever marked
+by desolation. Every wild garden is trodden down, the shrubs are stripped of
+leaves as if devoured by locusts, and the woods are burned. Running fires are
+set everywhere, with a view to clearing the ground of prostrate trunks, to
+facilitate the movements of the flocks and improve the pastures. The entire
+forest belt is thus swept and devastated from one extremity of the range to the
+other, and, with the exception of the resinous <i>Pinus contorta</i>, Sequoia
+suffers most of all. Indians burn off the underbrush in certain localities to
+facilitate deer-hunting, mountaineers and lumbermen carelessly allow their
+camp-fires to run; but the fires of the sheepmen, or <i>muttoneers</i>, form
+more than ninety per cent. of all destructive fires that range the Sierra
+forests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It appears, therefore, that notwithstanding our forest king might live on
+gloriously in Nature&rsquo;s keeping, it is rapidly vanishing before the fire
+and steel of man; and unless protective measures be speedily invented and
+applied, in a few decades, at the farthest, all that will be left of <i>Sequoia
+gigantea</i> will be a few hacked and scarred monuments.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+TWO-LEAVED, OR TAMARACK, PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus contorta</i>, var.<i>Marrayana</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This species forms the bulk of the alpine forests, extending along the range,
+above the fir zone, up to a height of from 8000 to 9500 feet above the sea,
+growing in beautiful order upon moraines that are scarcely changed as yet by
+post-glacial weathering. Compared with the giants of the lower zones, this is a
+small tree, seldom attaining a height of a hundred feet. The largest specimen I
+ever measured was ninety feet in height, and a little over six in diameter four
+feet from the ground. The average height of mature trees throughout the entire
+belt is probably not far from fifty or sixty feet, with a diameter of two feet.
+It is a well-proportioned, rather handsome little pine, with grayish-brown
+bark, and crooked, much-divided branches, which cover the greater portion of
+the trunk, not so densely, however, as to prevent its being seen. The lower
+limbs curve downward, gradually take a horizontal position about half-way up
+the trunk, then aspire more and more toward the summit, thus forming a sharp,
+conical top. The foliage is short and rigid, two leaves in a fascicle, arranged
+in comparatively long, cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough, up-curving
+branchlets. The cones are about two inches long, growing in stiff clusters
+among the needles, without making any striking effect, except while very young,
+when they are of a vivid crimson color, and the whole tree appears to be dotted
+with brilliant flowers. The sterile cones are still more showy, on account of
+their great abundance, often giving a reddish-yellow tinge to the whole mass of
+the foliage, and filling the air with pollen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No other pine on the range is so regularly planted as this one. Moraine forests
+sweep along the sides of the high, rocky valleys for miles without
+interruption; still, strictly speaking, they are not dense, for flecks of
+sunshine and flowers find their way into the darkest places, where the trees
+grow tallest and thickest. Tall, nutritious grasses are specially abundant
+beneath them, growing over all the ground, in sunshine and shade, over
+extensive areas like a farmer&rsquo;s crop, and serving as pasture for the
+multitude of sheep that are driven from the arid plains every summer as soon as
+the snow is melted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Two-leaved Pine, more than any other, is subject to destruction by fire.
+The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled with resin, as though it had been
+showered down upon it like rain, so that even the green trees catch fire
+readily, and during strong winds whole forests are destroyed, the flames
+leaping from tree to tree, forming one continuous belt of roaring fire that
+goes surging and racing onward above the bending woods, like the grass-fires of
+a prairie. During the calm, dry season of Indian summer, the fire creeps
+quietly along the ground, feeding on the dry needles and burs; then, arriving
+at the foot of a tree, the resiny bark is ignited, and the heated air ascends
+in a powerful current, increasing in velocity, and dragging the flames swiftly
+upward; then the leaves catch fire, and an immense column of flame, beautifully
+spired on the edges, and tinted a rose-purple hue, rushes aloft thirty or forty
+feet above the top of the tree, forming a grand spectacle, especially on a dark
+night. It lasts, however, only a few seconds, vanishing with magical rapidity,
+to be succeeded by others along the fire-line at irregular intervals for weeks
+at a time&mdash;tree after tree flashing and darkening, leaving the trunks and
+branches hardly scarred. The heat, however, is sufficient to kill the trees,
+and in a few years the bark shrivels and falls off. Belts miles in extent are
+thus killed and left standing with the branches on, peeled and rigid, appearing
+gray in the distance, like misty clouds. Later the branches drop off, leaving a
+forest of bleached spars. At length the roots decay, and the forlorn trunks are
+blown down during some storm, and piled one upon another encumbering the ground
+until they are consumed by the next fire, and leave it ready for a fresh crop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The endurance of the species is shown by its wandering occasionally out over
+the lava plains with the Yellow Pine, and climbing moraineless mountain-sides
+with the Dwarf Pine, clinging to any chance support in rifts and crevices of
+storm-beaten rocks&mdash;always, however, showing the effects of such hardships
+in every feature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Down in sheltered lake hollows, on beds of rich alluvium, it varies so far from
+the common form as frequently to be taken for a distinct species. Here it grows
+in dense sods, like grasses, from forty to eighty feet high, bending all
+together to the breeze and whirling in eddying gusts more lithely than any
+other tree in the woods. I have frequently found specimens fifty feet high less
+than five inches in diameter. Being thus slender, and at the same time well
+clad with leafy boughs, it is oftentimes bent to the ground when laden with
+soft snow, forming beautiful arches in endless variety, some of which last
+until the melting of the snow in spring.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+MOUNTAIN PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus monticola</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+The Mountain Pine is king of the alpine woods, brave, hardy, and long-lived,
+towering grandly above its companions, and becoming stronger and more imposing
+just where other species begin to crouch and disappear. At its best it is
+usually about ninety feet high and five or six in diameter, though a specimen
+is often met considerably larger than this. The trunk is as massive and as
+suggestive of enduring strength as that of an oak. About two thirds of the
+trunk is commonly free of limbs, but close, fringy tufts of sprays occur all
+the way down, like those which adorn the colossal shafts of Sequoia. The bark
+is deep reddish-brown upon trees that occupy exposed situations near its upper
+limit, and furrowed rather deeply, the main furrows running nearly parallel
+with each other, and connected by conspicuous cross furrows, which, with one
+exception, are, as far as I have noticed, peculiar to this species.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cones are from four to eight inches long, slender, cylindrical, and
+somewhat curved, resembling those of the common White Pine of the Atlantic
+coast. They grow in clusters of about from three to six or seven, becoming
+pendulous as they increase in weight, chiefly by the bending of the branches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This species is nearly related to the Sugar Pine, and, though not half so tall,
+it constantly suggests its noble relative in the way that it extends its long
+arms and in general habit. The Mountain Pine is first met on the upper margin
+of the fir zone, growing singly in a subdued, inconspicuous form, in what
+appear as chance situations, without making much impression on the general
+forest. Continuing up through the Two-leaved Pines in the same scattered
+growth, it begins to show its character, and at an elevation of about 10,000
+feet attains its noblest development near the middle of the range, tossing its
+tough arms in the frosty air, welcoming storms and feeding on them, and
+reaching the grand old age of 1000 years.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR<br/>
+<small>(<i>Juniperus occidentalis</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus37"></a>
+<img src="images/img37.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR" />
+<p class="caption">JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Juniper is preëminently a rock tree, occupying the baldest domes and
+pavements, where there is scarcely a handful of soil, at a height of from 7000
+to 9500 feet. In such situations the trunk is frequently over eight feet in
+diameter, and not much more in height. The top is almost always dead in old
+trees, and great stubborn limbs push out horizontally that are mostly broken
+and bare at the ends, but densely covered and embedded here and there with
+bossy mounds of gray foliage. Some are mere weathered stumps, as broad as long,
+decorated with a few leafy sprays, reminding one of the crumbling towers of
+some ancient castle scantily draped with ivy. Only upon the head waters of the
+Carson have I found this species established on good moraine soil. Here it
+flourishes with the Silver and Two-leaved Pines, in great beauty and
+luxuriance, attaining a height of from forty to sixty feet, and manifesting but
+little of that rocky angularity so characteristic a feature throughout the
+greater portion, of its range. Two of the largest, growing at the head of Hope
+Valley, measured twenty-nine feet three inches and twenty-five feet six inches
+in circumference, respectively, four feet from the ground. The bark is of a
+bright cinnamon color, and, in thrifty trees, beautifully braided and
+reticulated, flaking off in thin, lustrous ribbons that are sometimes used by
+Indians for tent-matting. Its fine color and odd picturesqueness always catch
+an artist&rsquo;s eye, but to me the Juniper seems a singularly dull and
+taciturn tree, never speaking to one&rsquo;s heart. I have spent many a day and
+night in its company, in all kinds of weather, and have ever found it silent,
+cold, and rigid, like a column of ice. Its broad stumpiness, of course,
+precludes all possibility of waving, or even shaking; but it is not this rocky
+steadfastness that constitutes its silence. In calm, sun-days the Sugar Pine
+preaches the grandeur of the mountains like an apostle without moving a leaf.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus38"></a>
+<img src="images/img38.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS" />
+<p class="caption">STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+On level rocks it dies standing, and wastes insensibly out of existence like
+granite, the wind exerting about as little control over it alive or dead as it
+does over a glacier boulder. Some are undoubtedly over 2000 years old. All the
+trees of the alpine woods suffer, more or less, from avalanches, the Two-leaved
+Pine most of all. Gaps two or three hundred yards wide, extending from the
+upper limit of the tree-line to the bottoms of valleys and lake basins, are of
+common occurrence in all the upper forests, resembling the clearings of
+settlers in the old backwoods. Scarcely a tree is spared, even the soil is
+scraped away, while the thousands of uprooted pines and spruces are piled upon
+one another heads downward, and tucked snugly in along the sides of the
+clearing in two windrows, like lateral moraines. The pines lie with branches
+wilted and drooping like weeds. Not so the burly junipers. After braving in
+silence the storms of perhaps a dozen or twenty centuries, they seem in this,
+their last calamity, to become somewhat communicative, making sign of a very
+unwilling acceptance of their fate, holding themselves well up from the ground
+on knees and elbows, seemingly ill at ease, and anxious, like stubborn
+wrestlers, to rise again.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+HEMLOCK SPRUCE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Tsuga Pattoniana</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+The Hemlock Spruce is the most singularly beautiful of all the California
+coniferae. So slender is its axis at the top, that it bends over and droops
+like the stalk of a nodding lily. The branches droop also, and divide into
+innumerable slender, waving sprays, which are arranged in a varied, eloquent
+harmony that is wholly indescribable. Its cones are purple, and hang free, in
+the form of little tassels two inches long from all the sprays from top to
+bottom. Though exquisitely delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best
+where the snow lies deepest, far up in the region of storms, at an elevation of
+from 9000 to 9500 feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it is capable of growing
+considerably higher, say 10,500 feet. The tallest specimens, growing in
+sheltered hollows somewhat beneath the heaviest wind-currents, are from eighty
+to a hundred feet high, and from two to four feet in diameter. The very largest
+specimen I ever found was nineteen feet seven inches in circumference four feet
+from the ground, growing on the edge of Lake Hollow, at an elevation of 9250
+feet above the level of the sea. At the age of twenty or thirty years it
+becomes fruitful, and hangs out its beautiful purple cones at the ends of the
+slender sprays, where they swing free in the breeze, and contrast delightfully
+with the cool green foliage. They are translucent when young, and their beauty
+is delicious. After they are fully ripe, they spread their shell-like scales
+and allow the brown-winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while the empty
+cones remain to beautify the tree until the coming of a fresh crop.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus39"></a>
+<img src="images/img39.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH" />
+<p class="caption">STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH.</p>
+</div>
+<p>
+The staminate cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in bright
+clusters, yellow, and rose, and crimson. Those of the Hemlock Spruce are the
+most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue flowers, each on a
+slender stem.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Under all conditions, sheltered or storm-beaten, well-fed or ill-fed, this tree
+is singularly graceful in habit. Even at its highest limit upon exposed
+ridge-tops, though compelled to crouch in dense thickets, huddled close
+together, as if for mutual protection, it still manages to throw out its sprays
+in irrepressible loveliness; while on well-ground moraine soil it develops a
+perfectly tropical luxuriance of foliage and fruit, and is the very loveliest
+tree in the forest; poised in thin white sunshine, clad with branches from head
+to foot, yet not in the faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in
+unassuming majesty, drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of
+its race, loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven and
+joyously receptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like sensitive
+tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it. No other of our alpine
+conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches yield to the
+mountains&rsquo; gentlest breath; yet is it strong to meet the wildest onsets
+of the gale,&mdash;strong not in resistance, but compliance, bowing,
+snow-laden, to the ground, gracefully accepting burial month after month in the
+darkness beneath the heavy mantle of winter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the first soft snow begins to fall, the flakes lodge in the leaves,
+weighing down the branches against the trunk. Then the axis bends yet lower and
+lower, until the slender top touches the ground, thus forming a fine ornamental
+arch. The snow still falls lavishly, and the whole tree is at length buried, to
+sleep and rest in its beautiful grave as though dead. Entire groves of young
+trees, from ten to forty feet high, are thus buried every winter like slender
+grasses. But, like the violets and daisies which the heaviest snows crush not,
+they are safe. It is as though this were only Nature&rsquo;s method of putting
+her darlings to sleep instead of leaving them exposed to the biting storms of
+winter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus warmly wrapped they await the summer resurrection. The snow becomes soft
+in the sunshine, and freezes at night, making the mass hard and compact, like
+ice, so that during the months of April and May you can ride a horse over the
+prostrate groves without catching sight of a single leaf. At length the
+down-pouring sunshine sets them free. First the elastic tops of the arches
+begin to appear, then one branch after another, each springing loose with a
+gentle rustling sound, and at length the whole tree, with the assistance of the
+winds, gradually unbends and rises and settles back into its place in the warm
+air, as dry and feathery and fresh as young ferns just out of the coil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of the finest groves I have yet found are on the southern slopes of
+Lassen&rsquo;s Butte. There are also many charming companies on the head waters
+of the Tuolumne, Merced, and San Joaquin, and, in general, the species is so
+far from being rare that you can scarcely fail to find groves of considerable
+extent in crossing the range, choose what pass you may. The Mountain Pine grows
+beside it, and more frequently the two-leaved species; but there are many
+beautiful groups, numbering 1000 individuals, or more, without a single
+intruder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wish I had space to write more of the surpassing beauty of this favorite
+spruce. Every tree-lover is sure to regard it with special admiration;
+apathetic mountaineers, even, seeking only game or gold, stop to gaze on first
+meeting it, and mutter to themselves: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a mighty pretty
+tree,&rdquo; some of them adding, &ldquo;d&mdash;&mdash;d pretty!&rdquo; In
+autumn, when its cones are ripe, the little striped tamias, and the Douglas
+squirrel, and the Clark crow make a happy stir in its groves. The deer love to
+lie down beneath its spreading branches; bright streams from the snow that is
+always near ripple through its groves, and bryanthus spreads precious carpets
+in its shade. But the best words only hint its charms. Come to the mountains
+and see.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+DWARF PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus albicaulis</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This species forms the extreme edge of the timber line throughout nearly the
+whole extent of the range on both flanks. It is first met growing in company
+with <i>Pinus contorta</i>, var. <i>Murrayana</i>, on the upper margin of the
+belt, as an erect tree from fifteen to thirty feet high and from one to two
+feet in thickness; thence it goes straggling up the flanks of the summit peaks,
+upon moraines or crumbling ledges, wherever it can obtain a foothold, to an
+elevation of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, where it dwarfs to a mass of crumpled,
+prostrate branches, covered with slender, upright shoots, each tipped with a
+short, close-packed tassel of leaves. The bark is smooth and purplish, in some
+places almost white. The fertile cones grow in rigid clusters upon the upper
+branches, dark chocolate in color while young, and bear beautiful pearly seeds
+about the size of peas, most of which are eaten by two species of tamias and
+the notable Clark crow. The staminate cones occur in clusters, about an inch
+wide, down among the leaves, and, as they are colored bright rose-purple, they
+give rise to a lively, flowery appearance little looked for in such a tree.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus40"></a>
+<img src="images/img40.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES" />
+<p class="caption">GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Pines are commonly regarded as sky-loving trees that must necessarily aspire or
+die. This species forms a marked exception, creeping lowly, in compliance with
+the most rigorous demands of climate, yet enduring bravely to a more advanced
+age than many of its lofty relatives in the sun-lands below. Seen from a
+distance, it would never be taken for a tree of any kind. Yonder, for example,
+is Cathedral Peak, some three miles away, with a scattered growth of this pine
+creeping like mosses over the roof and around the beveled edges of the north
+gable, nowhere giving any hint of an ascending axis. When approached quite near
+it still appears matted and heathy, and is so low that one experiences no great
+difficulty in walking over the top of it. Yet it is seldom absolutely
+prostrate, at its lowest usually attaining a height of three or four feet, with
+a main trunk, and branches outspread and intertangled above it, as if in
+ascending they had been checked by a ceiling, against which they had grown and
+been compelled to spread horizontally. The winter snow is indeed such a
+ceiling, lasting half the year; while the pressed, shorn surface is made yet
+smoother by violent winds, armed with cutting sand-grains, that beat down any
+shoot that offers to rise much above the general level, and carve the dead
+trunks and branches in beautiful patterns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During stormy nights I have often camped snugly beneath the interlacing arches
+of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for centuries, make
+fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers, such as deer and wild
+sheep, who paw out oval hollows and lie beneath the larger trees in safe and
+comfortable concealment.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus41"></a>
+<img src="images/img41.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="A DWARF PINE" />
+<p class="caption">A DWARF PINE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The longevity of this lowly dwarf is far greater than would be guessed. Here,
+for example, is a specimen, growing at an elevation of 10,700 feet, which seems
+as though it might be plucked up by the roots, for it is only three and a half
+inches in diameter, and its topmost tassel is hardly three feet above the
+ground. Cutting it half through and counting the annual rings with the aid of a
+lens, we find its age to be no less than 255 years. Here is another telling
+specimen about the same height, 426 years old, whose trunk is only six inches
+in diameter; and one of its supple branchlets, hardly an eighth of an inch in
+diameter inside the bark, is seventy-five years old, and so filled with oily
+balsam, and so well seasoned by storms, that we may tie it in knots like a
+whip-cord.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+WHITE PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus flexilis</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This species is widely distributed throughout the Rocky Mountains, and over all
+the higher of the many ranges of the Great Basin, between the Wahsatch
+Mountains and the Sierra, where it is known as White Pine. In the Sierra it is
+sparsely scattered along the eastern flank, from Bloody Cañon southward nearly
+to the extremity of the range, opposite the village of Lone Pine, nowhere
+forming any appreciable portion of the general forest. From its peculiar
+position, in loose, straggling parties, it seems to have been derived from the
+Basin ranges to the eastward, where it is abundant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a larger tree than the Dwarf Pine. At an elevation of about 9000 feet
+above the sea, it often attains a height of forty or fifty feet, and a diameter
+of from three to five feet. The cones open freely when ripe, and are twice as
+large as those of the <i>albicaulis</i>, and the foliage and branches are more
+open, having a tendency to sweep out in free, wild curves, like those of the
+Mountain Pine, to which it is closely allied. It is seldom found lower than
+9000 feet above sea-level, but from this elevation it pushes upward over the
+roughest ledges to the extreme limit of tree-growth, where, in its dwarfed,
+storm-crushed condition, it is more like the white-barked species.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Throughout Utah and Nevada it is one of the principal timber-trees, great
+quantities being cut every year for the mines. The famous White Pine Mining
+District, White Pine City, and the White Pine Mountains have derived their
+names from it.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+NEEDLE PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus aristata</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This species is restricted in the Sierra to the southern portion of the range,
+about the head waters of Kings and Kern rivers, where it forms extensive
+forests, and in some places accompanies the Dwarf Pine to the extreme limit of
+tree-growth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is first met at an elevation of between 9000 and 10,000 feet, and runs up to
+11,000 without seeming to suffer greatly from the climate or the leanness of
+the soil. It is a much finer tree than the Dwarf Pine. Instead of growing in
+clumps and low, heathy mats, it manages in some way to maintain an erect
+position, and usually stands single. Wherever the young trees are at all
+sheltered, they grow up straight and arrowy, with delicately tapered bole, and
+ascending branches terminated with glossy, bottle-brush tassels. At middle age,
+certain limbs are specialized and pushed far out for the bearing of cones,
+after the manner of the Sugar Pine; and in old age these branches droop and
+cast about in every direction, giving rise to very picturesque effects. The
+trunk becomes deep brown and rough, like that of the Mountain Pine, while the
+young cones are of a strange, dull, blackish-blue color, clustered on the upper
+branches. When ripe they are from three to four inches long, yellowish brown,
+resembling in every way those of the Mountain Pine. Excepting the Sugar Pine,
+no tree on the mountains is so capable of individual expression, while in grace
+of form and movement it constantly reminds one of the Hemlock Spruce.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus42"></a>
+<img src="images/img42.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES" />
+<p class="caption">OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The largest specimen I measured was a little over five feet in diameter and
+ninety feet in height, but this is more than twice the ordinary size.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This species is common throughout the Rocky Mountains and most of the short
+ranges of the Great Basin, where it is called the Fox-tail Pine, from its long
+dense leaf-tassels. On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and Golden Gate ranges it is
+quite abundant. About a foot or eighteen inches of the ends of the branches is
+densely packed with stiff outstanding needles which radiate like an electric
+fox or squirrel&rsquo;s tail. The needles have a glossy polish, and the
+sunshine sifting through them makes them burn with silvery luster, while their
+number and elastic temper tell delightfully in the winds. This tree is here
+still more original and picturesque than in the Sierra, far surpassing not only
+its companion conifers in this respect, but also the most noted of the lowland
+oaks. Some stand firmly erect, feathered with radiant tassels down to the
+ground, forming slender tapering towers of shining verdure; others, with two or
+three specialized branches pushed out at right angles to the trunk and densely
+clad with tasseled sprays, take the form of beautiful ornamental crosses. Again
+in the same woods you find trees that are made up of several boles united near
+the ground, spreading at the sides in a plane parallel to the axis of the
+mountain, with the elegant tassels hung in charming order between them, making
+a harp held against the main wind lines where they are most effective in
+playing the grand storm harmonies. And besides these there are many variable
+arching forms, alone or in groups, with innumerable tassels drooping beneath
+the arches or radiant above them, and many lowly giants of no particular form
+that have braved the storms of a thousand years. But whether old or young,
+sheltered or exposed to the wildest gales, this tree is ever found
+irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque, and offers a richer and more
+varied series of forms to the artist than any other conifer I know of.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+NUT PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus monophylla</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+The Nut Pine covers or rather dots the eastern flank of the Sierra, to which it
+is mostly restricted, in grayish, bush-like patches, from the margin of the
+sage-plains to an elevation of from 7000 to 8000 feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A more contentedly fruitful and unaspiring conifer could not be conceived. All
+the species we have been sketching make departures more or less distant from
+the typical spire form, but none goes so far as this. Without any apparent
+exigency of climate or soil, it remains near the ground, throwing out crooked,
+divergent branches like an orchard apple-tree, and seldom pushes a single shoot
+higher than fifteen or twenty feet above the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The average thickness of the trunk is, perhaps, about ten or twelve inches. The
+leaves are mostly undivided, like round awls, instead of being separated, like
+those of other pines, into twos and threes and fives. The cones are green while
+growing, and are usually found over all the tree, forming quite a marked
+feature as seen against the bluish-gray foliage. They are quite small, only
+about two inches in length, and give no promise of edible nuts; but when we
+come to open them, we find that about half the entire bulk of the cone is made
+up of sweet, nutritious seeds, the kernels of which are nearly as large as
+those of hazel-nuts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is undoubtedly the most important food-tree on the Sierra, and furnishes
+the Mono, Carson, and Walker River Indians with more and better nuts than all
+the other species taken together. It is the Indians&rsquo; own tree, and many a
+white man have they killed for cutting it down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In its development Nature seems to have aimed at the formation of as great a
+fruit-bearing surface as possible. Being so low and accessible, the cones are
+readily beaten off with poles, and the nuts procured by roasting them until the
+scales open. In bountiful seasons a single Indian will gather thirty or forty
+bushels of them&mdash;a fine squirrelish employment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of all the conifers along the eastern base of the Sierra, and on all the many
+mountain groups and short ranges of the Great Basin, this foodful little pine
+is the commonest tree, and the most important. Nearly every mountain is planted
+with it to a height of from 8000 to 9000 feet above the sea. Some are covered
+from base to summit by this one species, with only a sparse growth of juniper
+on the lower slopes to break the continuity of its curious woods, which, though
+dark-looking at a distance, are almost shadeless, and have none of the damp,
+leafy glens and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods. Tens of
+thousands of acres occur in continuous belts. Indeed, viewed comprehensively
+the entire Basin seems to be pretty evenly divided into level plains dotted
+with sage-bushes and mountain-chains covered with Nut Pines. No slope is too
+rough, none too dry, for these bountiful orchards of the red man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It furnishes
+charcoal and timber for the mines, and, with the juniper, supplies the ranches
+with fuel and rough fencing. In fruitful seasons the nut crop is perhaps
+greater than the California wheat crop, which exerts so much influence
+throughout the food markets of the world. When, the crop is ripe, the Indians
+make ready the long beating-poles; bags, baskets, mats, and sacks are
+collected; the women out at service among the settlers, washing or drudging,
+assemble at the family huts; the men leave their ranch work; old and young, all
+are mounted on ponies and start in great glee to the nut-lands, forming
+curiously picturesque cavalcades; flaming scarfs and calico skirts stream
+loosely over the knotty ponies, two squaws usually astride of each, with baby
+midgets bandaged in baskets slung on their backs or balanced on the saddle-bow;
+while nut-baskets and water-jars project from each side, and the long
+beating-poles make angles in every direction. Arriving at some well-known
+central point where grass and water are found, the squaws with baskets, the men
+with poles ascend the ridges to the laden trees, followed by the children. Then
+the beating begins right merrily, the burs fly in every direction, rolling down
+the slopes, lodging here and there against rocks and sage-bushes, chased and
+gathered by the women and children with fine natural gladness. Smoke-columns
+speedily mark the joyful scene of their labors as the roasting-fires are
+kindled, and, at night, assembled in gay circles garrulous as jays, they begin
+the first nut feast of the season.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nuts are about half an inch long and a quarter of an inch in diameter,
+pointed at the top, round at the base, light brown in general color, and, like
+many other pine seeds, handsomely dotted with purple, like birds&rsquo; eggs.
+The shells are thin and may be crushed between the thumb and finger. The
+kernels are white, becoming brown by roasting, and are sweet to every palate,
+being eaten by birds, squirrels, dogs, horses, and men. Perhaps less than one
+bushel in a thousand of the whole crop is ever gathered. Still, besides
+supplying their own wants, in times of plenty the Indians bring large
+quantities to market; then they are eaten around nearly every fireside in the
+State, and are even fed to horses occasionally instead of barley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of other trees growing on the Sierra, but forming a very small part of the
+general forest, we may briefly notice the following:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Chamoecyparis Lawsoniana</i> is a magnificent tree in the coast ranges, but
+small in the Sierra. It is found only well to the northward along the banks of
+cool streams on the upper Sacramento toward Mount Shasta. Only a few trees of
+this species, as far as I have seen, have as yet gained a place in the Sierra
+woods. It has evidently been derived from the coast range by way of the tangle
+of connecting mountains at the head of the Sacramento Valley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In shady dells and on cool stream banks of the northern Sierra we also find the
+Yew (<i>Taxus brevifolia</i>).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The interesting Nutmeg Tree (<i>Torreya Californica</i>) is sparsely
+distributed along the western flank of the range at an elevation of about 4000
+feet, mostly in gulches and cañons. It is a small, prickly leaved, glossy
+evergreen, like a conifer, from twenty to fifty feet high, and one to two feet
+in diameter. The fruit resembles a green-gage plum, and contains one seed,
+about the size of an acorn, and like a nutmeg, hence the common name. The wood
+is fine-grained and of a beautiful, creamy yellow color like box, sweet-scented
+when dry, though the green leaves emit a disagreeable odor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Betula occidentalis</i>, the only birch, is a small, slender tree restricted
+to the eastern flank of the range along stream-sides below the pine-belt,
+especially in Owen&rsquo;s Valley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alder, Maple, and Nuttall&rsquo;s Flowering Dogwood make beautiful bowers over
+swift, cool streams at an elevation of from 3000 to 5000 feet, mixed more or
+less with willows and cottonwood; and above these in lake basins the aspen
+forms fine ornamental groves, and lets its light shine gloriously in the autumn
+months.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Chestnut Oak (<i>Quercus densiflora</i>) seems to have come from the coast
+range around the head of the Sacramento Valley, like the <i>Chamaecyparis</i>,
+but as it extends southward along the lower edge of the main pine-belt it grows
+smaller until it finally dwarfs to a mere chaparral bush. In the coast
+mountains it is a fine, tall, rather slender tree, about from sixty to
+seventy-five feet high, growing with the grand <i>Sequoia sempervirens</i>, or
+Redwood. But unfortunately it is too good to live, and is now being rapidly
+destroyed for tan-bark.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus43"></a>
+<img src="images/img43.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="PATE VALLEY, SHOWING THE OAKS. TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK." />
+<p class="caption">PATE VALLEY, SHOWING THE OAKS. TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Besides the common Douglas Oak and the grand <i>Quercus Wislizeni</i> of the
+foot-hills, and several small ones that make dense growths of chaparral, there
+are two mountain-oaks that grow with the pines up to an elevation of about 5000
+feet above the sea, and greatly enhance the beauty of the yosemite parks. These
+are the Mountain Live Oak and the Kellogg Oak, named in honor of the admirable
+botanical pioneer of California. Kellogg&rsquo;s Oak (<i>Quercus Kelloggii</i>)
+is a firm, bright, beautiful tree, reaching a height of sixty feet, four to
+seven feet in diameter, with wide-spreading branches, and growing at an
+elevation of from 3000 to 5000 feet in sunny valleys and flats among the
+evergreens, and higher in a dwarfed state. In the cliff-bound parks about 4000
+feet above the sea it is so abundant and effective it might fairly be called
+the Yosemite Oak. The leaves make beautiful masses of purple in the spring, and
+yellow in ripe autumn; while its acorns are eagerly gathered by Indians,
+squirrels, and woodpeckers. The Mountain Live Oak (<i>Q. Chrysolepis</i>) is a
+tough, rugged mountaineer of a tree, growing bravely and attaining noble
+dimensions on the roughest earthquake taluses in deep cañons and yosemite
+valleys. The trunk is usually short, dividing near the ground into great,
+wide-spreading limbs, and these again into a multitude of slender sprays, many
+of them cord-like and drooping to the ground, like those of the Great White Oak
+of the lowlands (<i>Q. lobata</i>). The top of the tree where there is plenty
+of space is broad and bossy, with a dense covering of shining leaves, making
+delightful canopies, the complicated system of gray, interlacing, arching
+branches as seen from beneath being exceedingly rich and picturesque. No other
+tree that I know dwarfs so regularly and completely as this under changes of
+climate due to changes in elevation. At the foot of a cañon 4000 feet above the
+sea you may find magnificent specimens of this oak fifty feet high, with
+craggy, bulging trunks, five to seven feet in diameter, and at the head of the
+cañon, 2500 feet higher, a dense, soft, low, shrubby growth of the same
+species, while all the way up the cañon between these extremes of size and
+habit a perfect gradation may be traced. The largest I have seen was fifty feet
+high, eight feet in diameter, and about seventy-five feet in spread. The trunk
+was all knots and buttresses, gray like granite, and about as angular and
+irregular as the boulders on which it was growing&mdash;a type of steadfast,
+unwedgeable strength.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX<br/>
+THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL<br/>
+<small>(<i>Sciurus Douglasii</i>)</small></h2>
+
+<p>
+The Douglas Squirrel is by far the most interesting and influential of the
+California sciuridae, surpassing every other species in force of character,
+numbers, and extent of range, and in the amount of influence he brings to bear
+upon the health and distribution of the vast forests he inhabits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Go where you will throughout the noble woods of the Sierra Nevada, among the
+giant pines and spruces of the lower zones, up through the towering Silver Firs
+to the storm-bent thickets of the summit peaks, you everywhere find this little
+squirrel the master-existence. Though only a few inches long, so intense is his
+fiery vigor and restlessness, he stirs every grove with wild life, and makes
+himself more important than even the huge bears that shuffle through the
+tangled underbrush beneath him. Every wind is fretted by his voice, almost
+every bole and branch feels the sting of his sharp feet. How much the growth of
+the trees is stimulated by this means it is not easy to learn, but his action
+in manipulating their seeds is more appreciable. Nature has made him master
+forester and committed most of her coniferous crops to his paws. Probably over
+fifty per cent. of all the cones ripened on the Sierra are cut off and handled
+by the Douglas alone, and of those of the Big Trees perhaps ninety per cent.
+pass through his hands: the greater portion is of course stored away for food
+to last during the winter and spring, but some of them are tucked separately
+into loosely covered holes, where some of the seeds germinate and become trees.
+But the Sierra is only one of the many provinces over which he holds sway, for
+his dominion extends over all the Redwood Belt of the Coast Mountains, and far
+northward throughout the majestic forests of Oregon, Washington, and British
+Columbia. I make haste to mention these facts, to show upon how substantial a
+foundation the importance I ascribe to him rests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Douglas is closely allied to the Red Squirrel or Chickaree of the eastern
+woods. Ours may be a lineal descendant of this species, distributed westward to
+the Pacific by way of the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains, and thence
+southward along our forested ranges. This view is suggested by the fact that
+our species becomes redder and more Chickaree-like in general, the farther it
+is traced back along the course indicated above. But whatever their
+relationship, and the evolutionary forces that have acted upon them, the
+Douglas is now the larger and more beautiful animal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the nose to the root of the tail he measures about eight inches; and his
+tail, which he so effectively uses in interpreting his feelings, is about six
+inches in length. He wears dark bluish-gray over the back and half-way down the
+sides, bright buff on the belly, with a stripe of dark gray, nearly black,
+separating the upper and under colors; this dividing stripe, however, is not
+very sharply defined. He has long black whiskers, which gives him a rather
+fierce look when observed closely, strong claws, sharp as fish-hooks, and the
+brightest of bright eyes, full of telling speculation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A King&rsquo;s River Indian told me that they call him
+&ldquo;Pillillooeet,&rdquo; which, rapidly pronounced with the first syllable
+heavily accented, is not unlike the lusty exclamation he utters on his way up a
+tree when excited. Most mountaineers in California call him the Pine Squirrel;
+and when I asked an old trapper whether he knew our little forester, he replied
+with brightening countenance: &ldquo;Oh, yes, of course I know him; everybody
+knows him. When I&rsquo;m huntin&rsquo; in the woods, I often find out where
+the deer are by his barkin&rsquo; at &rsquo;em. I call &rsquo;em
+Lightnin&rsquo; Squirrels, because they&rsquo;re so mighty quick and
+peert.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the true squirrels are more or less birdlike in speech and movements; but
+the Douglas is preëminently so, possessing, as he does, every attribute
+peculiarly squirrelish enthusiastically concentrated. He is the squirrel of
+squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his favorite evergreens crisp and
+glossy and undiseased as a sunbeam. Give him wings and he would outfly any bird
+in the woods. His big gray cousin is a looser animal, seemingly light enough to
+float on the wind; yet when leaping from limb to limb, or out of one tree-top
+to another, he sometimes halts to gather strength, as if making efforts
+concerning the upshot of which he does not always feel exactly confident. But
+the Douglas, with his denser body, leaps and glides in hidden strength,
+seemingly as independent of common muscles as a mountain stream. He threads the
+tasseled branches of the pines, stirring their needles like a rustling breeze;
+now shooting across openings in arrowy lines; now launching in curves, glinting
+deftly from side to side in sudden zigzags, and swirling in giddy loops and
+spirals around the knotty trunks; getting into what seem to be the most
+impossible situations without sense of danger; now on his haunches, now on his
+head; yet ever graceful, and punctuating his most irrepressible outbursts of
+energy with little dots and dashes of perfect repose. He is, without exception,
+the wildest animal I ever saw,&mdash;a fiery, sputtering little bolt of life,
+luxuriating in quick oxygen and the woods&rsquo; best juices. One can hardly
+think of such a creature being dependent, like the rest of us, on climate and
+food. But, after all, it requires no long acquaintance to learn he is human,
+for he works for a living. His busiest time is in the Indian summer. Then he
+gathers burs and hazel-nuts like a plodding farmer, working continuously every
+day for hours; saying not a word; cutting off the ripe cones at the top of his
+speed, as if employed by the job, and examining every branch in regular order,
+as if careful that not one should escape him; then, descending, he stores them
+away beneath logs and stumps, in anticipation of the pinching hunger days of
+winter. He seems himself a kind of coniferous fruit,&mdash;both fruit and
+flower. The resiny essences of the pines pervade every pore of his body, and
+eating his flesh is like chewing gum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One never tires of this bright chip of nature,&mdash;this brave little voice
+crying in the wilderness,&mdash;of observing his many works and ways, and
+listening to his curious language. His musical, piny gossip is as savory to the
+ear as balsam to the palate; and, though he has not exactly the gift of song,
+some of his notes are as sweet as those of a linnet&mdash;almost flute-like in
+softness, while others prick and tingle like thistles. He is the mocking-bird
+of squirrels, pouring forth mixed chatter and song like a perennial fountain;
+barking like a dog, screaming like a hawk, chirping like a blackbird or a
+sparrow; while in bluff, audacious noisiness he is a very jay.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:30%;">
+<a name="illus44"></a>
+<img src="images/img44.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
+ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE WHEN SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR" />
+<p class="caption">TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE WHEN
+SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In descending the trunk of a tree with the intention of alighting on the
+ground, he preserves a cautious silence, mindful, perhaps, of foxes and
+wildcats; but while rocking safely at home in the pine-tops there is no end to
+his capers and noise; and woe to the gray squirrel or chipmunk that ventures to
+set foot on his favorite tree! No matter how slyly they trace the furrows of
+the bark, they are speedily discovered, and kicked down-stairs with comic
+vehemence, while a torrent of angry notes comes rushing from his whiskered lips
+that sounds remarkably like swearing. He will even attempt at times to drive
+away dogs and men, especially if he has had no previous knowledge of them.
+Seeing a man for the first time, he approaches nearer and nearer, until within
+a few feet; then, with an angry outburst, he makes a sudden rush, all teeth and
+eyes, as if about to eat you up. But, finding that the big, forked animal
+doesn&rsquo;t scare, he prudently beats a retreat, and sets himself up to
+reconnoiter on some overhanging branch, scrutinizing every movement you make
+with ludicrous solemnity. Gathering courage, he ventures down the trunk again,
+churring and chirping, and jerking nervously up and down in curious loops,
+eyeing you all the time, as if snowing off and demanding your admiration.
+Finally, growing calmer, he settles down in a comfortable posture on some
+horizontal branch commanding a good view, and beats time with his tail to a
+steady &ldquo;Chee-up! chee-up!&rdquo; or, when somewhat less excited,
+&ldquo;Pee-ah!&rdquo; with the first syllable keenly accented, and the second
+drawn out like the scream of a hawk,&mdash;repeating this slowly and more
+emphatically at first, then gradually faster, until a rate of about 150 words a
+minute is reached; usually sitting all the time on his haunches, with paws
+resting on his breast, which pulses visibly with each word. It is remarkable,
+too, that, though articulating distinctly, he keeps his mouth shut most of the
+time, and speaks through his nose. I have occasionally observed him even eating
+Sequoia seeds and nibbling a troublesome flea, without ceasing or in any way
+confusing his &ldquo;Pee-ah! pee-ah!&rdquo; for a single moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While ascending trees all his claws come into play, but in descending the
+weight of his body is sustained chiefly by those of the hind feet; still in
+neither case do his movements suggest effort, though if you are near enough you
+may see the bulging strength of his short, bear-like arms, and note his sinewy
+fists clinched in the bark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether going up or down, he carries his tail extended at full length in line
+with his body, unless it be required for gestures. But while running along
+horizontal limbs or fallen trunks, it is frequently folded forward over the
+back, with the airy tip daintily upcurled. In cool weather it keeps him warm.
+Then, after he has finished his meal, you may see him crouched close on some
+level limb with his tail-robe neatly spread and reaching forward to his ears,
+the electric, outstanding hairs quivering in the breeze like pine-needles. But
+in wet or very cold weather he stays in his nest, and while curled up there his
+comforter is long enough to come forward around his nose. It is seldom so cold,
+however, as to prevent his going out to his stores when hungry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once as I lay storm-bound on the upper edge of the timber line on Mount Shasta,
+the thermometer nearly at zero and the sky thick with driving snow, a Douglas
+came bravely out several times from one of the lower hollows of a Dwarf Pine
+near my camp, faced the wind without seeming to feel it much, frisked lightly
+about over the mealy snow, and dug his way down to some hidden seeds with
+wonderful precision, as if to his eyes the thick snow-covering were glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No other of the Sierra animals of my acquaintance is better fed, not even the
+deer, amid abundance of sweet herbs and shrubs, or the mountain sheep, or
+omnivorous bears. His food consists of grass-seeds, berries, hazel-nuts,
+chinquapins, and the nuts and seeds of all the coniferous trees without
+exception,&mdash;Pine, Fir, Spruce, Libocedrus, Juniper, and Sequoia,&mdash;he
+is fond of them all, and they all agree with him, green or ripe. No cone is too
+large for him to manage, none so small as to be beneath his notice. The smaller
+ones, such as those of the Hemlock, and the Douglas Spruce, and the Two-leaved
+Pine, he cuts off and eats on a branch of the tree, without allowing them to
+fall; beginning at the bottom of the cone and cutting away the scales to expose
+the seeds; not gnawing by guess, like a bear, but turning them round and round
+in regular order, in compliance with their spiral arrangement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When thus employed, his location in the tree is betrayed by a dribble of
+scales, shells, and seed-wings, and, every few minutes, by the fall of the
+stripped axis of the cone. Then of course he is ready for another, and if you
+are watching you may catch a glimpse of him as he glides silently out to the
+end of a branch and see him examining the cone-clusters until he finds one to
+his mind; then, leaning over, pull back the springy needles out of his way,
+grasp the cone with his paws to prevent its falling, snip it off in an
+incredibly short time, seize it with jaws grotesquely stretched, and return to
+his chosen seat near the trunk. But the immense size of the cones of the Sugar
+Pine&mdash;from fifteen to twenty inches in length&mdash;and those of the
+Jeffrey variety of the Yellow Pine compel him to adopt a quite different
+method. He cuts them off without attempting to hold them, then goes down and
+drags them from where they have chanced to fall up to the bare, swelling ground
+around the instep of the tree, where he demolishes them in the same methodical
+way, beginning at the bottom and following the scale-spirals to the top.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:30%;">
+<a name="illus45"></a>
+<img src="images/img45.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE. (NAT. SIZE.)" />
+<p class="caption">SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE. (NAT. SIZE.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+From a single Sugar Pine cone he gets from two to four hundred seeds about half
+the size of a hazel-nut, so that in a few minutes he can procure enough to last
+a week. He seems, however, to prefer those of the two Silver First above all
+others; perhaps because they are most easily obtained, as the scales drop off
+when ripe without needing to be cut. Both species are filled with an
+exceedingly pungent, aromatic oil, which spices all his flesh, and is of itself
+sufficient to account for his lightning energy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You may easily know this little workman by his chips. On sunny hillsides around
+the principal trees they lie in big piles,&mdash;bushels and basketfuls of
+them, all fresh and clean, making the most beautiful kitchen-middens
+imaginable. The brown and yellow scales and nut-shells are as abundant and as
+delicately penciled and tinted as the shells along the sea-shore; while the
+beautiful red and purple seed-wings mingled with them would lead one to fancy
+that innumerable butterflies had there met their fate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He feasts on all the species long before they are ripe, but is wise enough to
+wait until they are matured before he gathers them into his barns. This is in
+October and November, which with him are the two busiest months of the year.
+All kinds of burs, big and little, are now cut off and showered down alike, and
+the ground is speedily covered with them. A constant thudding and bumping is
+kept up; some of the larger cones chancing to fall on old logs make the forest
+reëcho with the sound. Other nut-eaters less industrious know well what is
+going on, and hasten to carry away the cones as they fall. But however busy the
+harvester may be, he is not slow to descry the pilferers below, and instantly
+leaves his work to drive them away. The little striped tamias is a thorn in his
+flesh, stealing persistently, punish him as he may. The large Gray Squirrel
+gives trouble also, although the Douglas has been accused of stealing from him.
+Generally, however, just the opposite is the case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The excellence of the Sierra evergreens is well known to nurserymen throughout
+the world, consequently there is considerable demand for the seeds. The greater
+portion of the supply has hitherto been procured by chopping down the trees in
+the more accessible sections of the forest alongside of bridle-paths that cross
+the range. Sequoia seeds at first brought from twenty to thirty dollars per
+pound, and therefore were eagerly sought after. Some of the smaller fruitful
+trees were cut down in the groves not protected by government, especially those
+of Fresno and King&rsquo;s River. Most of the Sequoias, however, are of so
+gigantic a size that the seedsmen have to look for the greater portion of their
+supplies to the Douglas, who soon learns he is no match for these freebooters.
+He is wise enough, however, to cease working the instant he perceives them, and
+never fails to embrace every opportunity to recover his burs whenever they
+happen to be stored in any place accessible to him, and the busy seedsman often
+finds on returning to camp that the little Douglas has exhaustively spoiled the
+spoiler. I know one seed-gatherer who, whenever he robs the squirrels, scatters
+wheat or barley beneath the trees as conscience-money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The want of appreciable life remarked by so many travelers in the Sierra
+forests is never felt at this time of year. Banish all the humming insects and
+the birds and quadrupeds, leaving only Sir Douglas, and the most solitary of
+our so-called solitudes would still throb with ardent life. But if you should
+go impatiently even into the most populous of the groves on purpose to meet
+him, and walk about looking up among the branches, you would see very little of
+him. But lie down at the foot of one of the trees and straightway he will come.
+For, in the midst of the ordinary forest sounds, the falling of burs, piping of
+quails, the screaming of the Clark Crow, and the rustling of deer and bears
+among the chaparral, he is quick to detect your strange footsteps, and will
+hasten to make a good, close inspection of you as soon as you are still. First,
+you may hear him sounding a few notes of curious inquiry, but more likely the
+first intimation of his approach will be the prickly sounds of his feet as he
+descends the tree overhead, just before he makes his savage onrush to frighten
+you and proclaim your presence to every squirrel and bird in the neighborhood.
+If you remain perfectly motionless, he will come nearer and nearer, and
+probably set your flesh a-tingle by frisking across your body. Once, while I
+was seated at the foot of a Hemlock Spruce in one of the most inaccessible of
+the San Joaquin yosemites engaged in sketching, a reckless fellow came up
+behind me, passed under my bended arm, and jumped on my paper. And one warm
+afternoon, while an old friend of mine was reading out in the shade of his
+cabin, one of his Douglas neighbors jumped from the gable upon his head, and
+then with admirable assurance ran down over his shoulder and on to the book he
+held in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our Douglas enjoys a large social circle; for, besides his numerous relatives,
+<i>Sciurus fossor, Tamias quadrivitatus, T. Townsendii, Spermophilus Beccheyi,
+S. Douglasii</i>, he maintains intimate relations with the nut-eating birds,
+particularly the Clark Crow (<i>Picicorvus columbianus</i>) and the numerous
+woodpeckers and jays. The two spermophiles are astonishingly abundant in the
+lowlands and lower foot-hills, but more and more sparingly distributed up
+through the Douglas domains,&mdash;seldom venturing higher than six or seven
+thousand feet above the level of the sea. The gray sciurus ranges but little
+higher than this. The little striped tamias alone is associated with him
+everywhere. In the lower and middle zones, where they all meet, they are
+tolerably harmonious&mdash;a happy family, though very amusing skirmishes may
+occasionally be witnessed. Wherever the ancient glaciers have spread forest
+soil there you find our wee hero, most abundant where depth of soil and genial
+climate have given rise to a corresponding luxuriance in the trees, but
+following every kind of growth up the curving moraines to the highest glacial
+fountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though I cannot of course expect all my readers to sympathize fully in my
+admiration of this little animal, few, I hope, will think this sketch of his
+life too long. I cannot begin to tell here how much he has cheered my lonely
+wanderings during all the years I have been pursuing my studies in these
+glorious wilds; or how much unmistakable humanity I have found in him. Take
+this for example: One calm, creamy Indian summer morning, when the nuts were
+ripe, I was camped in the upper pine-woods of the south fork of the San
+Joaquin, where the squirrels seemed to be about as plentiful as the ripe burs.
+They were taking an early breakfast before going to their regular harvest-work.
+While I was busy with my own breakfast I heard the thudding fall of two or
+three heavy cones from a Yellow Pine near me. I stole noiselessly forward
+within about twenty feet of the base of it to observe. In a few moments down
+came the Douglas. The breakfast-burs he had cut off had rolled on the gently
+sloping ground into a clump of ceanothus bushes, but he seemed to know exactly
+where they were, for he found them at once, apparently without searching for
+them. They were more than twice as heavy as himself, but after turning them
+into the right position for getting a good hold with his long sickle-teeth he
+managed to drag them up to the foot of the tree from which he had cut them,
+moving backward. Then seating himself comfortably, he held them on end, bottom
+up, and demolished them at his ease. A good deal of nibbling had to be done
+before he got anything to eat, because the lower scales are barren, but when he
+had patiently worked his way up to the fertile ones he found two sweet nuts at
+the base of each, shaped like trimmed hams, and spotted purple like
+birds&rsquo; eggs. And notwithstanding these cones were dripping with soft
+balsam, and covered with prickles, and so strongly put together that a boy
+would be puzzled to cut them open with a jack-knife, he accomplished his meal
+with easy dignity and cleanliness, making less effort apparently than a man
+would in eating soft cookery from a plate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Breakfast done, I whistled a tune for him before he went to work, curious to
+see how he would be affected by it. He had not seen me all this while; but the
+instant I began to whistle he darted up the tree nearest to him, and came out
+on a small dead limb opposite me, and composed himself to listen. I sang and
+whistled more than a dozen airs, and as the music changed his eyes sparkled,
+and he turned his head quickly from side to side, but made no other response.
+Other squirrels, hearing the strange sounds, came around on all sides, also
+chipmunks and birds. One of the birds, a handsome, speckle-breasted thrush,
+seemed even more interested than the squirrels. After listening for awhile on
+one of the lower dead sprays of a pine, he came swooping forward within a few
+feet of my face, and remained fluttering in the air for half a minute or so,
+sustaining himself with whirring wing-beats, like a humming-bird in front of a
+flower, while I could look into his eyes and see his innocent wonder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time my performance must have lasted nearly half an hour. I sang or
+whistled &ldquo;Bonnie Boon,&rdquo; &ldquo;Lass o&rsquo; Gowrie,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;O&rsquo;er the Water to Charlie,&rdquo; &ldquo;Bonnie Woods o&rsquo;
+Cragie Lee,&rdquo; etc., all of which seemed to be listened to with bright
+interest, my first Douglas sitting patiently through it all, with his telling
+eyes fixed upon me until I ventured to give the &ldquo;Old Hundredth,&rdquo;
+when he screamed his Indian name, Pillillooeet, turned tail, and darted with
+ludicrous haste up the tree out of sight, his voice and actions in the case
+leaving a somewhat profane impression, as if he had said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be
+hanged if you get me to hear anything so solemn and unpiny.&rdquo; This acted
+as a signal for the general dispersal of the whole hairy tribe, though the
+birds seemed willing to wait further developments, music being naturally more
+in their line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What there can be in that grand old church-tune that is so offensive to birds
+and squirrels I can&rsquo;t imagine. A year or two after this High Sierra
+concert, I was sitting one fine day on a hill in the Coast Range where the
+common Ground Squirrels were abundant. They were very shy on account of being
+hunted so much; but after I had been silent and motionless for half an hour or
+so they began to venture out of their holes and to feed on the seeds of the
+grasses and thistles around me as if I were no more to be feared than a
+tree-stump. Then it occurred to me that this was a good opportunity to find out
+whether they also disliked &ldquo;Old Hundredth.&rdquo; Therefore I began to
+whistle as nearly as I could remember the same familiar airs that had pleased
+the mountaineers of the Sierra. They at once stopped eating, stood erect, and
+listened patiently until I came to &ldquo;Old Hundredth,&rdquo; when with
+ludicrous haste every one of them rushed to their holes and bolted in, their
+feet twinkling in the air for a moment as they vanished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No one who makes the acquaintance of our forester will fail to admire him; but
+he is far too self-reliant and warlike ever to be taken for a darling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How long the life of a Douglas Squirrel may be, I don&rsquo;t know. The young
+seem to sprout from knot-holes, perfect from the first, and as enduring as
+their own trees. It is difficult, indeed, to realize that so condensed a piece
+of sun-fire should ever become dim or die at all. He is seldom killed by
+hunters, for he is too small to encourage much of their attention, and when
+pursued in settled regions becomes excessively shy, and keeps close in the
+furrows of the highest trunks, many of which are of the same color as himself.
+Indian boys, however, lie in wait with unbounded patience to shoot them with
+arrows. In the lower and middle zones a few fall a prey to rattlesnakes.
+Occasionally he is pursued by hawks and wildcats, etc. But, upon the whole, he
+dwells safely in the deep bosom of the woods, the most highly favored of all
+his happy tribe. May his tribe increase!
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus46"></a>
+<img src="images/img46.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="TRYING THE BOW" />
+<p class="caption">TRYING THE BOW.</p>
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X<br/>
+A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS</h2>
+
+<p>
+The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are measured and
+bestowed with love on the forests to develop their strength and beauty. However
+restricted the scope of other forest influences, that of the winds is
+universal. The snow bends and trims the upper forests every winter, the
+lightning strikes a single tree here and there, while avalanches mow down
+thousands at a swoop as a gardener trims out a bed of flowers. But the winds go
+to every tree, fingering every leaf and branch and furrowed bole; not one is
+forgotten; the Mountain Pine towering with outstretched arms on the rugged
+buttresses of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring tenant of the
+dells; they seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in
+lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as
+required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing
+through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean; the winds
+blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable beauty and harmony
+as the sure result.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus47"></a>
+<img src="images/img47.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="A WIND-STORM IN THE
+CALIFORNIA FORESTS. (AFTER A SKETCH BY THE AUTHOR.)" />
+<p class="caption">A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS. (AFTER A SKETCH BY THE AUTHOR.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+After one has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses before a
+mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a crash that shakes
+the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the lowest thickset trees, could
+ever have found a period sufficiently stormless to establish themselves; or,
+once established, that they should not, sooner or later, have been blown down.
+But when the storm is over, and we behold the same forests tranquil again,
+towering fresh and unscathed in erect majesty, and consider what centuries of
+storms have fallen upon them since they were first planted,&mdash;hail, to
+break the tender seedlings; lightning, to scorch and shatter; snow, winds, and
+avalanches, to crush and overwhelm,&mdash;while the manifest result of all this
+wild storm-culture is the glorious perfection we behold; then faith in
+Nature&rsquo;s forestry is established, and we cease to deplore the violence of
+her most destructive gales, or of any other storm-implement whatsoever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never blown down, so long as
+they continue in sound health. These are the Juniper and the Dwarf Pine of the
+summit peaks. Their stiff, crooked roots grip the storm-beaten ledges like
+eagles&rsquo; claws, while their lithe, cord-like branches bend round
+compliantly, offering but slight holds for winds, however violent. The other
+alpine conifers&mdash;the Needle Pine, Mountain Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and
+Hemlock Spruce&mdash;are never thinned out by this agent to any destructive
+extent, on account of their admirable toughness and the closeness of their
+growth. In general the same is true of the giants of the lower zones. The
+kingly Sugar Pine, towering aloft to a height of more than 200 feet, offers a
+fine mark to storm-winds; but it is not densely foliaged, and its long,
+horizontal arms swing round compliantly in the blast, like tresses of green,
+fluent algae in a brook; while the Silver Firs in most places keep their ranks
+well together in united strength. The Yellow or Silver Pine is more frequently
+overturned than any other tree on the Sierra, because its leaves and branches
+form a larger mass in proportion to its height, while in many places it is
+planted sparsely, leaving open lanes through which storms may enter with full
+force. Furthermore, because it is distributed along the lower portion of the
+range, which was the first to be left bare on the breaking up of the ice-sheet
+at the close of the glacial winter, the soil it is growing upon has been longer
+exposed to post-glacial weathering, and consequently is in a more crumbling,
+decayed condition than the fresher soils farther up the range, and therefore
+offers a less secure anchorage for the roots.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While exploring the forest zones of Mount Shasta, I discovered the path of a
+hurricane strewn with thousands of pines of this species. Great and small had
+been uprooted or wrenched off by sheer force, making a clean gap, like that
+made by a snow avalanche. But hurricanes capable of doing this class of work
+are rare in the Sierra, and when we have explored the forests from one
+extremity of the range to the other, we are compelled to believe that they are
+the most beautiful on the face of the earth, however we may regard the agents
+that have made them so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is always something deeply exciting, not only in the sounds of winds in
+the woods, which exert more or less influence over every mind, but in their
+varied waterlike flow as manifested by the movements of the trees, especially
+those of the conifers. By no other trees are they rendered so extensively and
+impressively visible, not even by the lordly tropic palms or tree-ferns
+responsive to the gentlest breeze. The waving of a forest of the giant Sequoias
+is indescribably impressive and sublime, but the pines seem to me the best
+interpreters of winds. They are mighty waving goldenrods, ever in tune, singing
+and writing wind-music all their long century lives. Little, however, of this
+noble tree-waving and tree-music will you see or hear in the strictly alpine
+portion of the forests. The burly Juniper, whose girth sometimes more than
+equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it grows. The
+slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine stream out in wavering ripples, but
+the tallest and slenderest are far too unyielding to wave even in the heaviest
+gales. They only shake in quick, short vibrations. The Hemlock Spruce, however,
+and the Mountain Pine, and some of the tallest thickets of the Two-leaved
+species bow in storms with considerable scope and gracefulness. But it is only
+in the lower and middle zones that the meeting of winds and woods is to be seen
+in all its grandeur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the most beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever enjoyed in the Sierra
+occurred in December, 1874, when I happened to be exploring one of the
+tributary valleys of the Yuba River. The sky and the ground and the trees had
+been thoroughly rain-washed and were dry again. The day was intensely pure, one
+of those incomparable bits of California winter, warm and balmy and full of
+white sparkling sunshine, redolent of all the purest influences of the spring,
+and at the same time enlivened with one of the most bracing wind-storms
+conceivable. Instead of camping out, as I usually do, I then chanced to be
+stopping at the house of a friend. But when the storm began to sound, I lost no
+time in pushing out into the woods to enjoy it. For on such occasions Nature
+has always something rare to show us, and the danger to life and limb is hardly
+greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was still early morning when I found myself fairly adrift. Delicious
+sunshine came pouring over the hills, lighting the tops of the pines, and
+setting free a steam of summery fragrance that contrasted strangely with the
+wild tones of the storm. The air was mottled with pine-tassels and bright green
+plumes, that went flashing past in the sunlight like birds pursued. But there
+was not the slightest dustiness, nothing less pure than leaves, and ripe
+pollen, and flecks of withered bracken and moss. I heard trees falling for
+hours at the rate of one every two or three minutes; some uprooted, partly on
+account of the loose, water-soaked condition of the ground; others broken
+straight across, where some weakness caused by fire had determined the spot.
+The gestures of the various trees made a delightful study. Young Sugar Pines,
+light and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the ground; while
+the grand old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been tried in a hundred
+storms, waved solemnly above them, their long, arching branches streaming
+fluently on the gale, and every needle thrilling and ringing and shedding off
+keen lances of light like a diamond. The Douglas Spruces, with long sprays
+drawn out in level tresses, and needles massed in a gray, shimmering glow,
+presented a most striking appearance as they stood in bold relief along the
+hilltops. The madroños in the dells, with their red bark and large glossy
+leaves tilted every way, reflected the sunshine in throbbing spangles like
+those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a glacier lake. But the
+Silver Pines were now the most impressively beautiful of all. Colossal spires
+200 feet in height waved like supple golden-rods chanting and bowing low as if
+in worship, while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled
+into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such
+that the most steadfast monarch of them all rocked down to its roots with a
+motion plainly perceptible when one leaned against it. Nature was holding high
+festival, and every fiber of the most rigid giants thrilled with glad
+excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I drifted on through the midst of this passionate music and motion, across many
+a glen, from ridge to ridge; often halting in the lee of a rock for shelter, or
+to gaze and listen. Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest
+pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones of individual
+trees,&mdash;Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak,&mdash;and even the
+infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet. Each was
+expressing itself in its own way,&mdash;singing its own song, and making its
+own peculiar gestures,&mdash;manifesting a richness of variety to be found in
+no other forest I have yet seen. The coniferous woods of Canada, and the
+Carolinas, and Florida, are made up of trees that resemble one another about as
+nearly as blades of grass, and grow close together in much the same way.
+Coniferous trees, in general, seldom possess individual character, such as is
+manifest among Oaks and Elms. But the California forests are made up of a
+greater number of distinct species than any other in the world. And in them we
+find, not only a marked differentiation into special groups, but also a marked
+individuality in almost every tree, giving rise to storm effects indescribably
+glorious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through copses of hazel and
+ceanothus, I gained the summit of the highest ridge in the neighborhood; and
+then it occurred to me that it would be a fine thing to climb one of the trees
+to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear close to the Aeolian music of its
+topmost needles. But under the circumstances the choice of a tree was a serious
+matter. One whose instep was not very strong seemed in danger of being blown
+down, or of being struck by others in case they should fall; another was
+branchless to a considerable height above the ground, and at the same time too
+large to be grasped with arms and legs in climbing; while others were not
+favorably situated for clear views. After cautiously casting about, I made
+choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that were growing close
+together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed likely to fall unless all
+the rest fell with it. Though comparatively young, they were about 100 feet
+high, and their lithe, brushy tops were rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy.
+Being accustomed to climb trees in making botanical studies, I experienced no
+difficulty in reaching the top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so
+noble an exhilaration of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in
+the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and
+round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves,
+while I clung with muscles firm braced, like a bobolink on a reed.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus48"></a>
+<img src="images/img48.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="YELLOW PINE AND LIBOCEDRUS" />
+<p class="caption">YELLOW PINE AND LIBOCEDRUS<br/>
+The two inside trees are Libocedrus, the two outside trees, Yellow Pine.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In its widest sweeps my tree-top described an arc of from twenty to thirty
+degrees, but I felt sure of its elastic temper, having seen others of the same
+species still more severely tried&mdash;bent almost to the ground indeed, in
+heavy snows&mdash;without breaking a fiber. I was therefore safe, and free to
+take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the excited forest from my superb
+outlook. The view from here must be extremely beautiful in any weather. Now my
+eye roved over the piny hills and dales as over fields of waving grain, and
+felt the light running in ripples and broad swelling undulations across the
+valleys from ridge to ridge, as the shining foliage was stirred by
+corresponding waves of air. Oftentimes these waves of reflected light would
+break up suddenly into a kind of beaten foam, and again, after chasing one
+another in regular order, they would seem to bend forward in concentric curves,
+and disappear on some hillside, like sea-waves on a shelving shore. The
+quantity of light reflected from the bent needles was so great as to make whole
+groves appear as if covered with snow, while the black shadows beneath the
+trees greatly enhanced the effect of the silvery splendor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Excepting only the shadows there was nothing somber in all this wild sea of
+pines. On the contrary, notwithstanding this was the winter season, the colors
+were remarkably beautiful. The shafts of the pine and libocedrus were brown and
+purple, and most of the foliage was well tinged with yellow; the laurel groves,
+with the pale undersides of their leaves turned upward, made masses of gray;
+and then there was many a dash of chocolate color from clumps of manzanita, and
+jet of vivid crimson from the bark of the madroños, while the ground on the
+hillsides, appearing here and there through openings between the groves,
+displayed masses of pale purple and brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with this wild exuberance of
+light and motion. The profound bass of the naked branches and boles booming
+like waterfalls; the quick, tense vibrations of the pine-needles, now rising to
+a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a silky murmur; the rustling of laurel
+groves in the dells, and the keen metallic click of leaf on leaf&mdash;all this
+was heard in easy analysis when the attention was calmly bent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The varied gestures of the multitude were seen to fine advantage, so that one
+could recognize the different species at a distance of several miles by this
+means alone, as well as by their forms and colors, and the way they reflected
+the light. All seemed strong and comfortable, as if really enjoying the storm,
+while responding to its most enthusiastic greetings. We hear much nowadays
+concerning the universal struggle for existence, but no struggle in the common
+meaning of the word was manifest here; no recognition of danger by any tree; no
+deprecation; but rather an invincible gladness as remote from exultation as
+from fear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the music
+by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was streaming
+past. The fragrance of the woods was less marked than that produced during warm
+rain, when so many balsamic buds and leaves are steeped like tea; but, from the
+chafing of resiny branches against each other, and the incessant attrition of
+myriads of needles, the gale was spiced to a very tonic degree. And besides the
+fragrance from these local sources there were traces of scents brought from
+afar. For this wind came first from the sea, rubbing against its fresh, briny
+waves, then distilled through the redwoods, threading rich ferny gulches, and
+spreading itself in broad undulating currents over many a flower-enameled ridge
+of the coast mountains, then across the golden plains, up the purple
+foot-hills, and into these piny woods with the varied incense gathered by the
+way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we may be
+able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents alone.
+Mariners detect the flowery perfume of land-winds far at sea, and sea-winds
+carry the fragrance of dulse and tangle far inland, where it is quickly
+recognized, though mingled with the scents of a thousand land-flowers. As an
+illustration of this, I may tell here that I breathed sea-air on the Firth of
+Forth, in Scotland, while a boy; then was taken to Wisconsin, where I remained
+nineteen years; then, without in all this time having breathed one breath of
+the sea, I walked quietly, alone, from the middle of the Mississippi Valley to
+the Gulf of Mexico, on a botanical excursion, and while in Florida, far from
+the coast, my attention wholly bent on the splendid tropical vegetation about
+me, I suddenly recognized a sea-breeze, as it came sifting through the
+palmettos and blooming vine-tangles, which at once awakened and set free a
+thousand dormant associations, and made me a boy again in Scotland, as if all
+the intervening years had been annihilated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear them in mind; but few
+care to look at the winds, though far more beautiful and sublime, and though
+they become at times about as visible as flowing water. When the north winds in
+winter are making upward sweeps over the curving summits of the High Sierra,
+the fact is sometimes published with flying snow-banners a mile long. Those
+portions of the winds thus embodied can scarce be wholly invisible, even to the
+darkest imagination. And when we look around over an agitated forest, we may
+see something of the wind that stirs it, by its effects upon the trees. Yonder
+it descends in a rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the bending pines
+from hill to hill. Nearer, we see detached plumes and leaves, now speeding by
+on level currents, now whirling in eddies, or, escaping over the edges of the
+whirls, soaring aloft on grand, upswelling domes of air, or tossing on
+flame-like crests. Smooth, deep currents, cascades, falls, and swirling eddies,
+sing around every tree and leaf, and over all the varied topography of the
+region with telling changes of form, like mountain rivers conforming to the
+features of their channels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After tracing the Sierra streams from their fountains to the plains, marking
+where they bloom white in falls, glide in crystal plumes, surge gray and
+foam-filled in boulder-choked gorges, and slip through the woods in long,
+tranquil reaches&mdash;after thus learning their language and forms in detail,
+we may at length hear them chanting all together in one grand anthem, and
+comprehend them all in clear inner vision, covering the range like lace. But
+even this spectacle is far less sublime and not a whit more substantial than
+what we may behold of these storm-streams of air in the mountain woods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to
+me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers,
+in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true;
+but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than
+tree-wavings&mdash;many of them not so much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through the
+calming woods. The storm-tones died away, and, turning toward the east, I
+beheld the countless hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil, towering above
+one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout audience. The setting sun
+filled them with amber light, and seemed to say, while they listened, &ldquo;My
+peace I give unto you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I gazed on the impressive scene, all the so-called ruin of the storm was
+forgotten, and never before did these noble woods appear so fresh, so joyous,
+so immortal.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI<br/>
+THE RIVER FLOODS</h2>
+
+<p>
+The Sierra rivers are flooded every spring by the melting of the snow as
+regularly as the famous old Nile. They begin to rise in May, and in June
+high-water mark is reached. But because the melting does not go on rapidly over
+all the fountains, high and low, simultaneously, and the melted snow is not
+reinforced at this time of year by rain, the spring floods are seldom very
+violent or destructive. The thousand falls, however, and the cascades in the
+cañons are then in full bloom, and sing songs from one end of the range to the
+other. Of course the snow on the lower tributaries of the rivers is first
+melted, then that on the higher fountains most exposed to sunshine, and about a
+month later the cooler, shadowy fountains send down their treasures, thus
+allowing the main trunk streams nearly six weeks to get their waters hurried
+through the foot-hills and across the lowlands to the sea. Therefore very
+violent spring floods are avoided, and will be as long as the shading,
+restraining forests last. The rivers of the north half of the range are still
+less subject to sudden floods, because their upper fountains in great part lie
+protected from the changes of the weather beneath thick folds of lava, just as
+many of the rivers of Alaska lie beneath folds of ice, coming to the light
+farther down the range in large springs, while those of the high Sierra lie on
+the surface of solid granite, exposed to every change of temperature. More than
+ninety per cent. of the water derived from the snow and ice of Mount Shasta is
+at once absorbed and drained away beneath the porous lava folds of the
+mountain, where mumbling and groping in the dark they at length find larger
+fissures and tunnel-like caves from which they emerge, filtered and cool, in
+the form of large springs, some of them so large they give birth to rivers that
+set out on their journeys beneath the sun without any visible intermediate
+period of childhood. Thus the Shasta River issues from a large lake-like spring
+in Shasta Valley, and about two thirds of the volume of the McCloud River
+gushes forth suddenly from the face of a lava bluff in a roaring spring
+seventy-five yards wide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These spring rivers of the north are of course shorter than those of the south
+whose tributaries extend up to the tops of the mountains. Fall River, an
+important tributary of the Pitt or Upper Sacramento, is only about ten miles
+long, and is all falls, cascades, and springs from its head to its confluence
+with the Pitt. Bountiful springs, charmingly embowered, issue from the rocks at
+one end of it, a snowy fall a hundred and eighty feet high thunders at the
+other, and a rush of crystal rapids sing and dance between. Of course such
+streams are but little affected by the weather. Sheltered from evaporation
+their flow is nearly as full in the autumn as in the time of general spring
+floods. While those of the high Sierra diminish to less than the hundredth part
+of their springtime prime, shallowing in autumn to a series of silent pools
+among the rocks and hollows of their channels, connected by feeble, creeping
+threads of water, like the sluggish sentences of a tired writer, connected by a
+drizzle of &ldquo;ands&rdquo; and &ldquo;buts.&rdquo; Strange to say, the
+greatest floods occur in winter, when one would suppose all the wild waters
+would be muffled and chained in frost and snow. The same long, all-day storms
+of the so-called Rainy Season in California, that give rain to the lowlands,
+give dry frosty snow to the mountains. But at rare intervals warm rains and
+warm winds invade the mountains and push back the snow line from 2000 feet to
+8000, or even higher, and then come the big floods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was usually driven down out of the High Sierra about the end of November, but
+the winter of 1874 and 1875 was so warm and calm that I was tempted to seek
+general views of the geology and topography of the basin of Feather River in
+January. And I had just completed a hasty survey of the region, and made my way
+down to winter quarters, when one of the grandest flood-storms that I ever saw
+broke on the mountains. I was then in the edge of the main forest belt at a
+small foot-hill town called Knoxville, on the divide between the waters of the
+Feather and Yuba rivers. The cause of this notable flood was simply a sudden
+and copious fall of warm wind and rain on the basins of these rivers at a time
+when they contained a considerable quantity of snow. The rain was so heavy and
+long-sustained that it was, of itself, sufficient to make a good wild flood,
+while the snow which the warm wind and rain melted on the upper and middle
+regions of the basins was sufficient to make another flood equal to that of the
+rain. Now these two distinct harvests of flood waters were gathered
+simultaneously and poured out on the plain in one magnificent avalanche. The
+basins of the Yuba and Feather, like many others of the Sierra, are admirably
+adapted to the growth of floods of this kind. Their many tributaries radiate
+far and wide, comprehending extensive areas, and the tributaries are steeply
+inclined, while the trunks are comparatively level. While the flood-storm was
+in progress the thermometer at Knoxville ranged between 44° and 50°; and when
+warm wind and warm rain fall simultaneously on snow contained in basins like
+these, both the rain and that portion of the snow which the rain and wind melt
+are at first sponged up and held back until the combined mass becomes sludge,
+which at length, suddenly dissolving, slips and descends all together to the
+trunk channel; and since the deeper the stream the faster it flows, the flooded
+portion of the current above overtakes the slower foot-hill portion below it,
+and all sweeping forward together with a high, overcurling front, debouches on
+the open plain with a violence and suddenness that at first seem wholly
+unaccountable. The destructiveness of the lower portion of this particular
+flood was somewhat augmented by mining gravel in the river channels, and by
+levees which gave way after having at first restrained and held back the
+accumulating waters. These exaggerating conditions did not, however, greatly
+influence the general result, the main effect having been caused by the rare
+combination of flood factors indicated above. It is a pity that but few people
+meet and enjoy storms so noble as this in their homes in the mountains, for,
+spending themselves in the open levels of the plains, they are likely to be
+remembered more by the bridges and houses they carry away than by their beauty
+or the thousand blessings they bring to the fields and gardens of Nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the morning of the flood, January 19th, all the Feather and Yuba landscapes
+were covered with running water, muddy torrents filled every gulch and ravine,
+and the sky was thick with rain. The pines had long been sleeping in sunshine;
+they were now awake, roaring and waving with the beating storm, and the winds
+sweeping along the curves of hill and dale, streaming through the woods,
+surging and gurgling on the tops of rocky ridges, made the wildest of wild
+storm melody.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was easy to see that only a small part of the rain reached the ground in the
+form of drops. Most of it was thrashed into dusty spray like that into which
+small waterfalls are divided when they dash on shelving rocks. Never have I
+seen water coming from the sky in denser or more passionate streams. The wind
+chased the spray forward in choking drifts, and compelled me again and again to
+seek shelter in the dell copses and back of large trees to rest and catch my
+breath. Wherever I went, on ridges or in hollows, enthusiastic water still
+flashed and gurgled about my ankles, recalling a wild winter flood in Yosemite
+when a hundred waterfalls came booming and chanting together and filled the
+grand valley with a sea-like roar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After drifting an hour or two in the lower woods, I set out for the summit of a
+hill 900 feet high, with a view to getting as near the heart of the storm as
+possible. In order to reach it I had to cross Dry Creek, a tributary of the
+Yuba that goes crawling along the base of the hill on the northwest. It was now
+a booming river as large as the Tuolumne at ordinary stages, its current brown
+with mining-mud washed down from many a &ldquo;claim,&rdquo; and mottled with
+sluice-boxes, fence-rails, and logs that had long lain above its reach. A slim
+foot-bridge stretched across it, now scarcely above the swollen current. Here I
+was glad to linger, gazing and listening, while the storm was in its richest
+mood&mdash;the gray rain-flood above, the brown river-flood beneath. The
+language of the river was scarcely less enchanting than that of the wind and
+rain; the sublime overboom of the main bouncing, exulting current, the swash
+and gurgle of the eddies, the keen dash and clash of heavy waves breaking
+against rocks, and the smooth, downy hush of shallow currents feeling their way
+through the willow thickets of the margin. And amid all this varied throng of
+sounds I heard the smothered bumping and rumbling of boulders on the bottom as
+they were shoving and rolling forward against one another in a wild rush, after
+having lain still for probably 100 years or more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The glad creek rose high above its banks and wandered from its channel out over
+many a briery sand-flat and meadow. Alders and willows waist-deep were bearing
+up against the current with nervous trembling gestures, as if afraid of being
+carried away, while supple branches bending confidingly, dipped lightly and
+rose again, as if stroking the wild waters in play. Leaving the bridge and
+passing on through the storm-thrashed woods, all the ground seemed to be
+moving. Pine-tassels, flakes of bark, soil, leaves, and broken branches were
+being swept forward, and many a rock-fragment, weathered from exposed ledges,
+was now receiving its first rounding and polishing in the wild streams of the
+storm. On they rushed through every gulch and hollow, leaping, gliding, working
+with a will, and rejoicing like living creatures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor was the flood confined to the ground. Every tree had a water system of its
+own spreading far and wide like miniature Amazons and Mississippis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Toward midday, cloud, wind, and rain reached their highest development. The
+storm was in full bloom, and formed, from my commanding outlook on the hilltop,
+one of the most glorious views I ever beheld. As far as the eye could reach,
+above, beneath, around, wind-driven rain filled the air like one vast
+waterfall. Detached clouds swept imposingly up the valley, as if they were
+endowed with independent motion and had special work to do in replenishing the
+mountain wells, now rising above the pine-tops, now descending into their
+midst, fondling their arrowy spires and soothing every branch and leaf with
+gentleness in the midst of all the savage sound and motion. Others keeping near
+the ground glided behind separate groves, and brought them forward into relief
+with admirable distinctness; or, passing in front, eclipsed whole groves in
+succession, pine after pine melting in their gray fringes and bursting forth
+again seemingly clearer than before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The forms of storms are in great part measured, and controlled by the
+topography of the regions where they rise and over which they pass. When,
+therefore, we attempt to study them from the valleys, or from gaps and openings
+of the forest, we are confounded by a multitude of separate and apparently
+antagonistic impressions. The bottom of the storm is broken up into innumerable
+waves and currents that surge against the hillsides like sea-waves against a
+shore, and these, reacting on the nether surface of the storm, erode immense
+cavernous hollows and cañons, and sweep forward the resulting detritus in long
+trains, like the moraines of glaciers. But, as we ascend, these partial,
+confusing effects disappear and the phenomena are beheld united and harmonious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The longer I gazed into the storm, the more plainly visible it became. The
+drifting cloud detritus gave it a kind of visible body, which explained many
+perplexing phenomena, and published its movements in plain terms, while the
+texture of the falling mass of rain rounded it out and rendered it more
+complete. Because raindrops differ in size they fall at different velocities
+and overtake and clash against one another, producing mist and spray. They
+also, of course, yield unequal compliance to the force of the wind, which gives
+rise to a still greater degree of interference, and passionate gusts sweep off
+clouds of spray from the groves like that torn from wave-tops in a gale. All
+these factors of irregularity in density, color, and texture of the general
+rain mass tend to make it the more appreciable and telling. It is then seen as
+one grand flood rushing over bank and brae, bending the pines like weeds,
+curving this way and that, whirling in huge eddies in hollows and dells, while
+the main current pours grandly over all, like ocean currents over the
+landscapes that lie hidden at the bottom of the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I watched the gestures of the pines while the storm was at its height, and it
+was easy to see that they were not distressed. Several large Sugar Pines stood
+near the thicket in which I was sheltered, bowing solemnly and tossing their
+long arms as if interpreting the very words of the storm while accepting its
+wildest onsets with passionate exhilaration. The lions were feeding. Those who
+have observed sunflowers feasting on sunshine during the golden days of Indian
+summer know that none of their gestures express thankfulness. Their celestial
+food is too heartily given, too heartily taken to leave room for thanks. The
+pines were evidently accepting the benefactions of the storm in the same
+whole-souled manner; and when I looked down among the budding hazels, and still
+lower to the young violets and fern-tufts on the rocks, I noticed the same
+divine methods of giving and taking, and the same exquisite adaptations of what
+seems an outbreak of violent and uncontrollable force to the purposes of
+beautiful and delicate life. Calms like sleep come upon landscapes, just as
+they do on people and trees, and storms awaken them in the same way. In the dry
+midsummer of the lower portion of the range the withered hills and valleys seem
+to lie as empty and expressionless as dead shells on a shore. Even the highest
+mountains may be found occasionally dull and uncommunicative as if in some way
+they had lost countenance and shrunk to less than half their real stature. But
+when the lightnings crash and echo in the cañons, and the clouds come down
+wreathing and crowning their bald snowy heads, every feature beams with
+expression and they rise again in all their imposing majesty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Storms are fine speakers, and tell all they know, but their voices of
+lightning, torrent, and rushing wind are much less numerous than the nameless
+still, small voices too low for human ears; and because we are poor listeners
+we fail to catch much that is fairly within reach. Our best rains are heard
+mostly on roofs, and winds in chimneys; and when by choice or compulsion we are
+pushed into the heart of a storm, the confusion made by cumbersome equipments
+and nervous haste and mean fear, prevent our hearing any other than the loudest
+expressions. Yet we may draw enjoyment from storm sounds that are beyond
+hearing, and storm movements we cannot see. The sublime whirl of planets around
+their suns is as silent as raindrops oozing in the dark among the roots of
+plants. In this great storm, as in every other, there were tones and gestures
+inexpressibly gentle manifested in the midst of what is called violence and
+fury, but easily recognized by all who look and listen for them. The rain
+brought out the colors of the woods with delightful freshness, the rich brown
+of the bark of the trees and the fallen burs and leaves and dead ferns; the
+grays of rocks and lichens; the light purple of swelling buds, and the warm
+yellow greens of the libocedrus and mosses. The air was steaming with
+delightful fragrance, not rising and wafting past in separate masses, but
+diffused through all the atmosphere. Pine woods are always fragrant, but most
+so in spring when the young tassels are opening and in warm weather when the
+various gums and balsams are softened by the sun. The wind was now chafing
+their innumerable needles and the warm rain was steeping them. Monardella grows
+here in large beds in the openings, and there is plenty of laurel in dells and
+manzanita on the hillsides, and the rosy, fragrant chamoebatia carpets the
+ground almost everywhere. These, with the gums and balsams of the woods, form
+the main local fragrance-fountains of the storm. The ascending clouds of aroma
+wind-rolled and rain-washed became pure like light and traveled with the wind
+as part of it. Toward the middle of the afternoon the main flood cloud lifted
+along its western border revealing a beautiful section of the Sacramento Valley
+some twenty or thirty miles away, brilliantly sun-lighted and glistering with
+rain-sheets as if paved with silver. Soon afterward a jagged bluff-like cloud
+with a sheer face appeared over the valley of the Yuba, dark-colored and
+roughened with numerous furrows like some huge lava-table. The blue Coast Range
+was seen stretching along the sky like a beveled wall, and the somber, craggy
+Marysville Buttes rose impressively out of the flooded plain like islands out
+of the sea. Then the rain began to abate and I sauntered down through the
+dripping bushes reveling in the universal vigor and freshness that inspired all
+the life about me. How clean and unworn and immortal the woods seemed to
+be!&mdash;the lofty cedars in full bloom laden with golden pollen and their
+washed plumes shining; the pines rocking gently and settling back into rest,
+and the evening sunbeams spangling on the broad leaves of the madroños, their
+tracery of yellow boughs relieved against dusky thickets of Chestnut Oak;
+liverworts, lycopodiums, ferns were exulting in glorious revival, and every
+moss that had ever lived seemed to be coming crowding back from the dead to
+clothe each trunk and stone in living green. The steaming ground seemed fairly
+to throb and tingle with life; smilax, fritillaria, saxifrage, and young
+violets were pushing up as if already conscious of the summer glory, and
+innumerable green and yellow buds were peeping and smiling everywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the birds and squirrels, not a wing or tail of them was to be seen while
+the storm was blowing. Squirrels dislike wet weather more than cats do;
+therefore they were at home rocking in their dry nests. The birds were hiding
+in the dells out of the wind, some of the strongest of them pecking at acorns
+and manzanita berries, but most were perched on low twigs, their breast
+feathers puffed out and keeping one another company through the hard time as
+best they could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I arrived at the village about sundown, the good people bestirred
+themselves, pitying my bedraggled condition as if I were some benumbed castaway
+snatched from the sea, while I, in turn, warm with excitement and reeking like
+the ground, pitied them for being dry and defrauded of all the glory that
+Nature had spread round about them that day.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII<br/>
+SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS</h2>
+
+<p>
+The weather of spring and summer in the middle region of the Sierra is usually
+well flecked with rains and light dustings of snow, most of which are far too
+obviously joyful and life-giving to be regarded as storms; and in the
+picturesque beauty and clearness of outlines of their clouds they offer
+striking contrasts to those boundless, all-embracing cloud-mantles of the
+storms of winter. The smallest and most perfectly individualized specimens
+present a richly modeled cumulous cloud rising above the dark woods, about 11
+A.M., swelling with a visible motion straight up into the calm, sunny sky to a
+height of 12,000 to 14,000 feet above the sea, its white, pearly bosses
+relieved by gray and pale purple shadows in the hollows, and showing outlines
+as keenly defined as those of the glacier-polished domes. In less than an hour
+it attains full development and stands poised in the blazing sunshine like some
+colossal mountain, as beautiful in form and finish as if it were to become a
+permanent addition to the landscape. Presently a thunderbolt crashes through
+the crisp air, ringing like steel on steel, sharp and clear, its startling
+detonation breaking into a spray of echoes against the cliffs and cañon walls.
+Then down comes a cataract of rain. The big drops sift through the
+pine-needles, plash and patter on the granite pavements, and pour down the
+sides of ridges and domes in a network of gray, bubbling rills. In a few
+minutes the cloud withers to a mesh of dim filaments and disappears, leaving
+the sky perfectly clear and bright, every dust-particle wiped and washed out of
+it. Everything is refreshed and invigorated, a steam of fragrance rises, and
+the storm is finished&mdash;one cloud, one lightning-stroke, and one dash of
+rain. This is the Sierra mid-summer thunder-storm reduced to its lowest terms.
+But some of them attain much larger proportions, and assume a grandeur and
+energy of expression hardly surpassed by those bred in the depths of winter,
+producing those sudden floods called &ldquo;cloud-bursts,&rdquo; which are
+local, and to a considerable extent periodical, for they appear nearly every
+day about the same time for weeks, usually about eleven o&rsquo;clock, and
+lasting from five minutes to an hour or two. One soon becomes so accustomed to
+see them that the noon sky seems empty and abandoned without them, as if Nature
+were forgetting something. When the glorious pearl and alabaster clouds of
+these noonday storms are being built I never give attention to anything else.
+No mountain or mountain-range, however divinely clothed with light, has a more
+enduring charm than those fleeting mountains of the sky&mdash;floating
+fountains bearing water for every well, the angels of the streams and lakes;
+brooding in the deep azure, or sweeping softly along the ground over ridge and
+dome, over meadow, over forest, over garden and grove; lingering with cooling
+shadows, refreshing every flower, and soothing rugged rock-brows with a
+gentleness of touch and gesture wholly divine.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus49"></a>
+<img src="images/img49.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="BRIDAL VEIL FALLS,
+YOSEMITE VALLEY" />
+<p class="caption">BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The most beautiful and imposing of the summer storms rise just above the upper
+edge of the Silver Fir zone, and all are so beautiful that it is not easy to
+choose any one for particular description. The one that I remember best fell on
+the mountains near Yosemite Valley, July 19, 1869, while I was encamped in the
+Silver Fir woods. A range of bossy cumuli took possession of the sky, huge
+domes and peaks rising one beyond another with deep cañons between them,
+bending this way and that in long curves and reaches, interrupted here and
+there with white upboiling masses that looked like the spray of waterfalls.
+Zigzag lances of lightning followed each other in quick succession, and the
+thunder was so gloriously loud and massive it seemed as if surely an entire
+mountain was being shattered at every stroke. Only the trees were touched,
+however, so far as I could see,&mdash;a few firs 200 feet high, perhaps, and
+five to six feet in diameter, were split into long rails and slivers from top
+to bottom and scattered to all points of the compass. Then came the rain in a
+hearty flood, covering the ground and making it shine with a continuous sheet
+of water that, like a transparent film or skin, fitted closely down over all
+the rugged anatomy of the landscape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not long, geologically speaking, since the first raindrop fell on the
+present landscapes of the Sierra; and in the few tens of thousands of years of
+stormy cultivation they have been blest with, how beautiful they have become!
+The first rains fell on raw, crumbling moraines and rocks without a plant. Now
+scarcely a drop can fail to find a beautiful mark: on the tops of the peaks, on
+the smooth glacier pavements, on the curves of the domes, on moraines full of
+crystals, on the thousand forms of yosemitic sculpture with their tender beauty
+of balmy, flowery vegetation, laving, plashing, glinting, pattering; some
+falling softly on meadows, creeping out of sight, seeking and finding every
+thirsty rootlet, some through the spires of the woods, sifting in dust through
+the needles, and whispering good cheer to each of them; some falling with blunt
+tapping sounds, drumming on the broad leaves of veratrum, cypripedium,
+saxifrage; some falling straight into fragrant corollas, kissing the lips of
+lilies, glinting on the sides of crystals, on shining grains of gold; some
+falling into the fountains of snow to swell their well-saved stores; some into
+the lakes and rivers, patting the smooth glassy levels, making dimples and
+bells and spray, washing the mountain windows, washing the wandering winds;
+some plashing into the heart of snowy falls and cascades as if eager to join in
+the dance and the song and beat the foam yet finer. Good work and happy work
+for the merry mountain raindrops, each one of them a brave fall in itself,
+rushing from the cliffs and hollows of the clouds into the cliffs and hollows
+of the mountains; away from the thunder of the sky into the thunder of the
+roaring rivers. And how far they have to go, and how many cups to
+fill&mdash;cassiope-cups, holding half a drop, and lake basins between the
+hills, each replenished with equal care&mdash;every drop God&rsquo;s messenger
+sent on its way with glorious pomp and display of power&mdash;silvery new-born
+stars with lake and river, mountain and valley&mdash;all that the landscape
+holds&mdash;reflected in their crystal depths.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII<br/>
+THE WATER-OUZEL</h2>
+
+<p>
+The waterfalls of the Sierra are frequented by only one bird,&mdash;the Ouzel
+or Water Thrush (<i>Cinclus Mexicanus</i>, SW.). He is a singularly joyous and
+lovable little fellow, about the size of a robin, clad in a plain waterproof
+suit of bluish gray, with a tinge of chocolate on the head and shoulders. In
+form he is about as smoothly plump and compact as a pebble that has been
+whirled in a pot-hole, the flowing contour of his body being interrupted only
+by his strong feet and bill, the crisp wing-tips, and the up-slanted wren-like
+tail. Among all the countless waterfalls I have met in the course of ten
+years&rsquo; exploration in the Sierra, whether among the icy peaks, or warm
+foot-hills, or in the profound yosemitic cañons of the middle region, not one
+was found without its Ouzel. No cañon is too cold for this little bird, none
+too lonely, provided it be rich in falling water. Find a fall, or cascade, or
+rushing rapid, anywhere upon a clear stream, and there you will surely find its
+complementary Ouzel, flitting about in the spray, diving in foaming eddies,
+whirling like a leaf among beaten foam-bells; ever vigorous and enthusiastic,
+yet self-contained, and neither seeking nor shunning your company.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus50"></a>
+<img src="images/img50.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING" />
+<p class="caption">WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+If disturbed while dipping about in the margin shallows, he either sets off
+with a rapid whir to some other feeding-ground up or down the stream, or
+alights on some half-submerged rock or snag out in the current, and immediately
+begins to nod and courtesy like a wren, turning his head from side to side with
+many other odd dainty movements that never fail to fix the attention of the
+observer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He is the mountain streams&rsquo; own darling, the humming-bird of blooming
+waters, loving rocky ripple-slopes and sheets of foam as a bee loves flowers,
+as a lark loves sunshine and meadows. Among all the mountain birds, none has
+cheered me so much in my lonely wanderings,&mdash;none so unfailingly. For both
+in winter and summer he sings, sweetly, cheerily, independent alike of sunshine
+and of love, requiring no other inspiration than the stream on which he dwells.
+While water sings, so must he, in heat or cold, calm or storm, ever attuning
+his voice in sure accord; low in the drought of summer and the drought of
+winter, but never silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the golden days of Indian summer, after most of the snow has been
+melted, and the mountain streams have become feeble,&mdash;a succession of
+silent pools, linked together by shallow, transparent currents and strips of
+silvery lacework,&mdash;then the song of the Ouzel is at its lowest ebb. But as
+soon as the winter clouds have bloomed, and the mountain treasuries are once
+more replenished with snow, the voices of the streams and ouzels increase in
+strength and richness until the flood season of early summer. Then the torrents
+chant their noblest anthems, and then is the flood-time of our songster&rsquo;s
+melody. As for weather, dark days and sun days are the same to him. The voices
+of most song-birds, however joyous, suffer a long winter eclipse; but the Ouzel
+sings on through all the seasons and every kind of storm. Indeed no storm can
+be more violent than those of the waterfalls in the midst of which he delights
+to dwell. However dark and boisterous the weather, snowing, blowing, or cloudy,
+all the same he sings, and with never a note of sadness. No need of spring
+sunshine to thaw <i>his</i> song, for it never freezes. Never shall you hear
+anything wintry from <i>his</i> warm breast; no pinched cheeping, no wavering
+notes between sorrow and joy; his mellow, fluty voice is ever tuned to
+downright gladness, as free from dejection as cock-crowing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is pitiful to see wee frost-pinched sparrows on cold mornings in the
+mountain groves shaking the snow from their feathers, and hopping about as if
+anxious to be cheery, then hastening back to their hidings out of the wind,
+puffing out their breast-feathers over their toes, and subsiding among the
+leaves, cold and breakfastless, while the snow continues to fall, and there is
+no sign of clearing. But the Ouzel never calls forth a single touch of pity;
+not because he is strong to endure, but rather because he seems to live a
+charmed life beyond the reach of every influence that makes endurance
+necessary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One wild winter morning, when Yosemite Valley was swept its length from west to
+east by a cordial snow-storm, I sallied forth to see what I might learn and
+enjoy. A sort of gray, gloaming-like darkness filled the valley, the huge walls
+were out of sight, all ordinary sounds were smothered, and even the loudest
+booming of the falls was at times buried beneath the roar of the heavy-laden
+blast. The loose snow was already over five feet deep on the meadows, making
+extended walks impossible without the aid of snow-shoes. I found no great
+difficulty, however, in making my way to a certain ripple on the river where
+one of my ouzels lived. He was at home, busily gleaning his breakfast among the
+pebbles of a shallow portion of the margin, apparently unaware of anything
+extraordinary in the weather. Presently he flew out to a stone against which
+the icy current was beating, and turning his back to the wind, sang as
+delightfully as a lark in springtime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After spending an hour or two with my favorite, I made my way across the
+valley, boring and wallowing through the drifts, to learn as definitely as
+possible how the other birds were spending their time. The Yosemite birds are
+easily found during the winter because all of them excepting the Ouzel are
+restricted to the sunny north side of the valley, the south side being
+constantly eclipsed by the great frosty shadow of the wall. And because the
+Indian Cañon groves, from their peculiar exposure, are the warmest, the birds
+congregate there, more especially in severe weather.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I found most of the robins cowering on the lee side of the larger branches
+where the snow could not fall upon them, while two or three of the more
+enterprising were making desperate efforts to reach the mistletoe berries by
+clinging nervously to the under side of the snow-crowned masses, back downward,
+like woodpeckers. Every now and then they would dislodge some of the loose
+fringes of the snow-crown, which would come sifting down on them and send them
+screaming back to camp, where they would subside among their companions with a
+shiver, muttering in low, querulous chatter like hungry children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of the sparrows were busy at the feet of the larger trees gleaning seeds
+and benumbed insects, joined now and then by a robin weary of his unsuccessful
+attempts upon the snow-covered berries. The brave woodpeckers were clinging to
+the snowless sides of the larger boles and overarching branches of the camp
+trees, making short nights from side to side of the grove, pecking now and then
+at the acorns they had stored in the bark, and chattering aimlessly as if
+unable to keep still, yet evidently putting in the time in a very dull way,
+like storm-bound travelers at a country tavern. The hardy nut-hatches were
+threading the open furrows of the trunks in their usual industrious manner, and
+uttering their quaint notes, evidently less distressed than their neighbors.
+The Steller jays were of course making more noisy stir than all the other birds
+combined; ever coming and going with loud bluster, screaming as if each had a
+lump of melting sludge in his throat, and taking good care to improve the
+favorable opportunity afforded by the storm to steal from the acorn stores of
+the woodpeckers. I also noticed one solitary gray eagle braving the storm on
+the top of a tall pine-stump just outside the main grove. He was standing bolt
+upright with his back to the wind, a tuft of snow piled on his square
+shoulders, a monument of passive endurance. Thus every snow-bound bird seemed
+more or less uncomfortable if not in positive distress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The storm was reflected in every gesture, and not one cheerful note, not to say
+song, came from a single bill; their cowering, joyless endurance offering a
+striking contrast to the spontaneous, irrepressible gladness of the Ouzel, who
+could no more help exhaling sweet song than a rose sweet fragrance. He
+<i>must</i> sing though the heavens fall. I remember noticing the distress of a
+pair of robins during the violent earthquake of the year 1872, when the pines
+of the Valley, with strange movements, flapped and waved their branches, and
+beetling rock-brows came thundering down to the meadows in tremendous
+avalanches. It did not occur to me in the midst of the excitement of other
+observations to look for the ouzels, but I doubt not they were singing straight
+on through it all, regarding the terrible rock-thunder as fearlessly as they do
+the booming of the waterfalls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What may be regarded as the separate songs of the Ouzel are exceedingly
+difficult of description, because they are so variable and at the same time so
+confluent. Though I have been acquainted with my favorite ten years, and during
+most of this time have heard him sing nearly every day, I still detect notes
+and strains that seem new to me. Nearly all of his music is sweet and tender,
+lapsing from his round breast like water over the smooth lip of a pool, then
+breaking farther on into a sparkling foam of melodious notes, which, glow with
+subdued enthusiasm, yet without expressing much of the strong, gushing ecstasy
+of the bobolink or skylark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The more striking strains are perfect arabesques of melody, composed of a few
+full, round, mellow notes, embroidered with delicate trills which fade and melt
+in long slender cadences. In a general way his music is that of the streams
+refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of the falls are in it, the
+trills of rapids, the gurgling of margin eddies, the low whispering of level
+reaches, and the sweet tinkle of separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses
+and falling into tranquil pools.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Ouzel never sings in chorus with other birds, nor with his kind, but only
+with the streams. And like flowers that bloom beneath the surface of the
+ground, some of our favorite&rsquo;s best song-blossoms never rise above the
+surface of the heavier music of the water. I have often observed him singing in
+the midst of beaten spray, his music completely buried beneath the
+water&rsquo;s roar; yet I knew he was surely singing by his gestures and the
+movements of his bill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His food, as far as I have noticed, consists of all kinds of water insects,
+which in summer are chiefly procured along shallow margins. Here he wades about
+ducking his head under water and deftly turning over pebbles and fallen leaves
+with his bill, seldom choosing to go into deep water where he has to use his
+wings in diving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seems to be especially fond of the larvae; of mosquitos, found in abundance
+attached to the bottom of smooth rock channels where the current is shallow.
+When feeding in such places he wades up-stream, and often while his head is
+under water the swift current is deflected upward along the glossy curves of
+his neck and shoulders, in the form of a clear, crystalline shell, which fairly
+incloses him like a bell-glass, the shell being broken and re-formed as he
+lifts and dips his head; while ever and anon he sidles out to where the too
+powerful current carries him off his feet; then he dexterously rises on the
+wing and goes gleaning again in shallower places.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But during the winter, when the stream-banks are embossed in snow, and the
+streams themselves are chilled nearly to the freezing-point, so that the snow
+falling into them in stormy weather is not wholly dissolved, but forms a thin,
+blue sludge, thus rendering the current opaque&mdash;then he seeks the deeper
+portions of the main rivers, where he may dive to clear water beneath the
+sludge. Or he repairs to some open lake or mill-pond, at the bottom of which he
+feeds in safety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When thus compelled to betake himself to a lake, he does not plunge into it at
+once like a duck, but always alights in the first place upon some rock or
+fallen pine along the shore. Then flying out thirty or forty yards, more or
+less, according to the character of the bottom, he alights with a dainty glint
+on the surface, swims about, looks down, finally makes up his mind, and
+disappears with a sharp stroke of his wings. After feeding for two or three
+minutes he suddenly reappears, showers the water from his wings with one
+vigorous shake, and rises abruptly into the air as if pushed up from beneath,
+comes back to his perch, sings a few minutes, and goes out to dive again; thus
+coming and going, singing and diving at the same place for hours.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus51"></a>
+<img src="images/img51.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL" />
+<p class="caption">ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Ouzel is usually found singly; rarely in pairs, excepting during the
+breeding season, and <i>very</i> rarely in threes or fours. I once observed
+three thus spending a winter morning in company, upon a small glacier lake, on
+the Upper Merced, about 7500 feet above the level of the sea. A storm had
+occurred during the night, but the morning sun shone unclouded, and the shadowy
+lake, gleaming darkly in its setting of fresh snow, lay smooth and motionless
+as a mirror. My camp chanced to be within a few feet of the water&rsquo;s edge,
+opposite a fallen pine, some of the branches of which leaned out over the lake.
+Here my three dearly welcome visitors took up their station, and at once began
+to embroider the frosty air with their delicious melody, doubly delightful to
+me that particular morning, as I had been somewhat apprehensive of danger in
+breaking my way down through the snow-choked cañons to the lowlands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The portion of the lake bottom selected for a feeding-ground lies at a depth of
+fifteen or twenty feet below the surface, and is covered with a short growth of
+algae and other aquatic plants,&mdash;facts I had previously determined while
+sailing over it on a raft. After alighting on the glassy surface, they
+occasionally indulged in a little play, chasing one another round about in
+small circles; then all three would suddenly dive together, and then come
+ashore and sing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Ouzel seldom swims more than a few yards on the surface, for, not being
+web-footed, he makes rather slow progress, but by means of his strong, crisp
+wings he swims, or rather flies, with celerity under the surface, often to
+considerable distances. But it is in withstanding the force of heavy rapids
+that his strength of wing in this respect is most strikingly manifested. The
+following may be regarded as a fair illustration of his power of sub-aquatic
+flight. One stormy morning in winter when the Merced River was blue and green
+with unmelted snow, I observed one of my ouzels perched on a snag out in the
+midst of a swift-rushing rapid, singing cheerily, as if everything was just to
+his mind; and while I stood on the bank admiring him, he suddenly plunged into
+the sludgy current, leaving his song abruptly broken off. After feeding a
+minute or two at the bottom, and when one would suppose that he must inevitably
+be swept far down-stream, he emerged just where he went down, alighted on the
+same snag, showered the water-beads from his feathers, and continued his
+unfinished song, seemingly in tranquil ease as if it had suffered no
+interruption.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:40%;">
+<a name="illus52"></a>
+<img src="images/img52.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT" />
+<p class="caption">OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Ouzel alone of all birds dares to enter a white torrent. And though
+strictly terrestrial in structure, no other is so inseparably related to water,
+not even the duck, or the bold ocean albatross, or the stormy-petrel. For ducks
+go ashore as soon as they finish feeding in undisturbed places, and very often
+make long flights over land from lake to lake or field to field. The same is
+true of most other aquatic birds. But the Ouzel, born on the brink of a stream,
+or on a snag or boulder in the midst of it, seldom leaves it for a single
+moment. For, notwithstanding he is often on the wing, he never flies overland,
+but whirs with, rapid, quail-like beat above the stream, tracing all its
+windings. Even when the stream is quite small, say from five to ten feet wide,
+he seldom shortens his flight by crossing a bend, however abrupt it may be; and
+even when disturbed by meeting some one on the bank, he prefers to fly over
+one&rsquo;s head, to dodging out over the ground. When, therefore, his flight
+along a crooked stream is viewed endwise, it appears most strikingly
+wavered&mdash;a description on the air of every curve with lightning-like
+rapidity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The vertical curves and angles of the most precipitous torrents he traces with
+the same rigid fidelity, swooping down the inclines of cascades, dropping sheer
+over dizzy falls amid the spray, and ascending with the same fearlessness and
+ease, seldom seeking to lessen the steepness of the acclivity by beginning to
+ascend before reaching the base of the fall. No matter though it may be several
+hundred feet in height he holds straight on, as if about to dash headlong into
+the throng of booming rockets, then darts abruptly upward, and, after alighting
+at the top of the precipice to rest a moment, proceeds to feed and sing. His
+flight is solid and impetuous, without any intermission of
+wing-beats,&mdash;one homogeneous buzz like that of a laden bee on its way
+home. And while thus buzzing freely from fall to fall, he is frequently heard
+giving utterance to a long outdrawn train of unmodulated notes, in no way
+connected with his song, but corresponding closely with his flight in sustained
+vigor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Were the flights of all the ouzels in the Sierra traced on a chart, they would
+indicate the direction of the flow of the entire system of ancient glaciers,
+from about the period of the breaking up of the ice-sheet until near the close
+of the glacial winter; because the streams which the ouzels so rigidly follow
+are, with the unimportant exceptions of a few side tributaries, all flowing in
+channels eroded for them out of the solid flank of the range by the vanished
+glaciers,&mdash;the streams tracing the ancient glaciers, the ouzels tracing
+the streams. Nor do we find so complete compliance to glacial conditions in the
+life of any other mountain bird, or animal of any kind. Bears frequently accept
+the pathways laid down by glaciers as the easiest to travel; but they often
+leave them and cross over from cañon to cañon. So also, most of the birds trace
+the moraines to some extent, because the forests are growing on them. But they
+wander far, crossing the cañons from grove to grove, and draw exceedingly
+angular and complicated courses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Ouzel&rsquo;s nest is one of the most extraordinary pieces of bird
+architecture I ever saw, odd and novel in design, perfectly fresh and
+beautiful, and in every way worthy of the genius of the little builder. It is
+about a foot in diameter, round and bossy in outline, with a neatly arched
+opening near the bottom, somewhat like an old-fashioned brick oven, or
+Hottentot&rsquo;s hut. It is built almost exclusively of green and yellow
+mosses, chiefly the beautiful fronded hypnum that covers the rocks and old
+drift-logs in the vicinity of waterfalls. These are deftly interwoven, and
+felted together into a charming little hut; and so situated that many of the
+outer mosses continue to flourish as if they had not been plucked. A few fine,
+silky-stemmed grasses are occasionally found interwoven with the mosses, but,
+with the exception of a thin layer lining the floor, their presence seems
+accidental, as they are of a species found growing with the mosses and are
+probably plucked with them. The site chosen for this curious mansion is usually
+some little rock-shelf within reach of the lighter particles of the spray of a
+waterfall, so that its walls are kept green and growing, at least during the
+time of high water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No harsh lines are presented by any portion of the nest as seen in place, but
+when removed from its shelf, the back and bottom, and sometimes a portion of
+the top, is found quite sharply angular, because it is made to conform to the
+surface of the rock upon which and against which it is built, the little
+architect always taking advantage of slight crevices and protuberances that may
+chance to offer, to render his structure stable by means of a kind of gripping
+and dovetailing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In choosing a building-spot, concealment does not seem to be taken into
+consideration; yet notwithstanding the nest is large and guilelessly exposed to
+view, it is far from being easily detected, chiefly because it swells forward
+like any other bulging moss-cushion growing naturally in such situations. This
+is more especially the case where the nest is kept fresh by being well
+sprinkled. Sometimes these romantic little huts have their beauty enhanced by
+rock-ferns and grasses that spring up around the mossy walls, or in front of
+the door-sill, dripping with crystal beads.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Furthermore, at certain hours of the day, when the sunshine is poured down at
+the required angle, the whole mass of the spray enveloping the fairy
+establishment is brilliantly irised; and it is through so glorious a rainbow
+atmosphere as this that some of our blessed ouzels obtain their first peep at
+the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ouzels seem so completely part and parcel of the streams they inhabit, they
+scarce suggest any other origin than the streams themselves; and one might
+almost be pardoned in fancying they come direct from the living waters, like
+flowers from the ground. At least, from whatever cause, it never occurred to me
+to look for their nests until more than a year after I had made the
+acquaintance of the birds themselves, although I found one the very day on
+which I began the search. In making my way from Yosemite to the glaciers at the
+heads of the Merced and Tuolumne rivers, I camped in a particularly wild and
+romantic portion of the Nevada cañon where in previous excursions I had never
+failed to enjoy the company of my favorites, who were attracted here, no doubt,
+by the safe nesting-places in the shelving rocks, and by the abundance of food
+and falling water. The river, for miles above and below, consists of a
+succession of small falls from ten to sixty feet in height, connected by flat,
+plume-like cascades that go flashing from fall to fall, free and almost
+channelless, over waving folds of glacier-polished granite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the south side of one of the falls, that portion of the precipice which is
+bathed by the spray presents a series of little shelves and tablets caused by
+the development of planes of cleavage in the granite, and by the consequent
+fall of masses through the action of the water. &ldquo;Now here,&rdquo; said I,
+&ldquo;of all places, is the most charming spot for an Ouzel&rsquo;s
+nest.&rdquo; Then carefully scanning the fretted face of the precipice through
+the spray, I at length noticed a yellowish moss-cushion, growing on the edge of
+a level tablet within five or six feet of the outer folds of the fall. But
+apart from the fact of its being situated where one acquainted with the lives
+of ouzels would fancy an Ouzel&rsquo;s nest ought to be, there was nothing in
+its appearance visible at first sight, to distinguish it from other bosses of
+rock-moss similarly situated with reference to perennial spray; and it was not
+until I had scrutinized it again and again, and had removed my shoes and
+stockings and crept along the face of the rock within eight or ten feet of it,
+that I could decide certainly whether it was a nest or a natural growth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these moss huts three or four eggs are laid, white like foam-bubbles; and
+well may the little birds hatched from them sing water songs, for they hear
+them all their lives, and even before they are born.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have often observed the young just out of the nest making their odd gestures,
+and seeming in every way as much at home as their experienced parents, like
+young bees on their first excursions to the flower fields. No amount of
+familiarity with people and their ways seems to change them in the least. To
+all appearance their behavior is just the same on seeing a man for the first
+time, as when they have seen him frequently.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus53"></a>
+<img src="images/img53.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="THE OUZEL AT HOME" />
+<p class="caption">THE OUZEL AT HOME.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+On the lower reaches of the rivers where mills are built, they sing on through
+the din of the machinery, and all the noisy confusion of dogs, cattle, and
+workmen. On one occasion, while a wood-chopper was at work on the river-bank, I
+observed one cheerily singing within reach of the flying chips. Nor does any
+kind of unwonted disturbance put him in bad humor, or frighten him out of calm
+self-possession. In passing through a narrow gorge, I once drove one ahead of
+me from rapid to rapid, disturbing him four times in quick succession where he
+could not very well fly past me on account of the narrowness of the channel.
+Most birds under similar circumstances fancy themselves pursued, and become
+suspiciously uneasy; but, instead of growing nervous about it, he made his
+usual dippings, and sang one of his most tranquil strains. When observed within
+a few yards their eyes are seen to express remarkable gentleness and
+intelligence; but they seldom allow so near a view unless one wears clothing of
+about the same color as the rocks and trees, and knows how to sit still. On one
+occasion, while rambling along the shore of a mountain lake, where the birds,
+at least those born that season, had never seen a man, I sat down to rest on a
+large stone close to the water&rsquo;s edge, upon which it seemed the ouzels
+and sandpipers were in the habit of alighting when they came to feed on that
+part of the shore, and some of the other birds also, when they came down to
+wash or drink. In a few minutes, along came a whirring Ouzel and alighted on
+the stone beside me, within reach of my hand. Then suddenly observing me, he
+stooped nervously as if about to fly on the instant, but as I remained as
+motionless as the stone, he gained confidence, and looked me steadily in the
+face for about a minute, then flew quietly to the outlet and began to sing.
+Next came a sandpiper and gazed at me with much the same guileless expression
+of eye as the Ouzel. Lastly, down with a swoop came a Steller&rsquo;s jay out
+of a fir-tree, probably with the intention of moistening his noisy throat. But
+instead of sitting confidingly as my other visitors had done, he rushed off at
+once, nearly tumbling heels over head into the lake in his suspicious
+confusion, and with loud screams roused the neighborhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Love for song-birds, with their sweet human voices, appears to be more common
+and unfailing than love for flowers. Every one loves flowers to some extent, at
+least in life&rsquo;s fresh morning, attracted by them as instinctively as
+humming-birds and bees. Even the young Digger Indians have sufficient love for
+the brightest of those found growing on the mountains to gather them and braid
+them, as decorations for the hair. And I was glad to discover, through the few
+Indians that could be induced to talk on the subject, that they have names for
+the wild rose and the lily, and other conspicuous flowers, whether available as
+food or otherwise. Most men, however, whether savage or civilized, become
+apathetic toward all plants that have no other apparent use than the use of
+beauty. But fortunately one&rsquo;s first instinctive love of song-birds is
+never wholly obliterated, no matter what the influences upon our lives may be.
+I have often been delighted to see a pure, spiritual glow come into the
+countenances of hard business-men and old miners, when a song-bird chanced to
+alight near them. Nevertheless, the little mouthful of meat that swells out the
+breasts of some song-birds is too often the cause of their death. Larks and
+robins in particular are brought to market in hundreds. But fortunately the
+Ouzel has no enemy so eager to eat his little body as to follow him into the
+mountain solitudes. I never knew him to be chased even by hawks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An acquaintance of mine, a sort of foot-hill mountaineer, had a pet cat, a
+great, dozy, overgrown creature, about as broad-shouldered as a lynx. During
+the winter, while the snow lay deep, the mountaineer sat in his lonely cabin
+among the pines smoking his pipe and wearing the dull time away. Tom was his
+sole companion, sharing his bed, and sitting beside him on a stool with much
+the same drowsy expression of eye as his master. The good-natured bachelor was
+content with his hard fare of soda-bread and bacon, but Tom, the only creature
+in the world acknowledging dependence on him, must needs be provided with fresh
+meat. Accordingly he bestirred himself to contrive squirrel-traps, and waded
+the snowy woods with his gun, making sad havoc among the few winter birds,
+sparing neither robin, sparrow, nor tiny nuthatch, and the pleasure of seeing
+Tom eat and grow fat was his great reward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One cold afternoon, while hunting along the river-bank, he noticed a
+plain-feathered little bird skipping about in the shallows, and immediately
+raised his gun. But just then the confiding songster began to sing, and after
+listening to his summery melody the charmed hunter turned away, saying,
+&ldquo;Bless your little heart, I can&rsquo;t shoot you, not even for
+Tom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus54"></a>
+<img src="images/img54.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND
+AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CAÑON" />
+<p class="caption">YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CAÑON.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Even so far north as icy Alaska, I have found my glad singer. When I was
+exploring the glaciers between Mount Fairweather and the Stikeen River, one
+cold day in November, after trying in vain to force a way through the
+innumerable icebergs of Sum Dum Bay to the great glaciers at the head of it, I
+was weary and baffled and sat resting in my canoe convinced at last that I
+would have to leave this part of my work for another year. Then I began to plan
+my escape to open water before the young ice which was beginning to form should
+shut me in. While I thus lingered drifting with the bergs, in the midst of
+these gloomy forebodings and all the terrible glacial desolation and grandeur,
+I suddenly heard the well-known whir of an Ouzel&rsquo;s wings, and, looking
+up, saw my little comforter coming straight across the ice from the shore. In a
+second or two he was with me, flying three times round my head with a happy
+salute, as if saying, &ldquo;Cheer up, old friend; you see I&rsquo;m here, and
+all&rsquo;s well.&rdquo; Then he flew back to the shore, alighted on the
+topmost jag of a stranded iceberg, and began to nod and bow as though he were
+on one of his favorite boulders in the midst of a sunny Sierra cascade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The species is distributed all along the mountain-ranges of the Pacific Coast
+from Alaska to Mexico, and east to the Rocky Mountains. Nevertheless, it is as
+yet comparatively little known. Audubon and Wilson did not meet it. Swainson
+was, I believe, the first naturalist to describe a specimen from Mexico.
+Specimens were shortly afterward procured by Drummond near the sources of the
+Athabasca River, between the fifty-fourth and fifty-sixth parallels; and it has
+been collected by nearly all of the numerous exploring expeditions undertaken
+of late through our Western States and Territories; for it never fails to
+engage the attention of naturalists in a very particular manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such, then, is our little cinclus, beloved of every one who is so fortunate as
+to know him. Tracing on strong wing every curve of the most precipitous
+torrents from one extremity of the Sierra to the other; not fearing to follow
+them through their darkest gorges and coldest snow-tunnels; acquainted with
+every waterfall, echoing their divine music; and throughout the whole of their
+beautiful lives interpreting all that we in our unbelief call terrible in the
+utterances of torrents and storms, as only varied expressions of God&rsquo;s
+eternal love.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV<br/>
+THE WILD SHEEP<br/>
+<small>(<i>Ovis montana</i>)</small></h2>
+
+<p>
+The wild sheep ranks highest among the animal mountaineers of the Sierra.
+Possessed of keen sight and scent, and strong limbs, he dwells secure amid the
+loftiest summits, leaping unscathed from crag to crag, up and down the fronts
+of giddy precipices, crossing foaming torrents and slopes of frozen snow,
+exposed to the wildest storms, yet maintaining a brave, warm life, and
+developing from generation to generation in perfect strength and beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nearly all the lofty mountain-chains of the globe are inhabited by wild sheep,
+most of which, on account of the remote and all but inaccessible regions where
+they dwell, are imperfectly known as yet. They are classified by different
+naturalists under from five to ten distinct species or varieties, the best
+known being the burrhel of the Himalaya (<i>Ovis burrhel</i>, Blyth); the
+argali, the large wild sheep of central and northeastern Asia (<i>O. ammon</i>,
+Linn., or <i>Caprovis argali</i>); the Corsican mouflon (<i>O. musimon</i>,
+Pal.); the aoudad of the mountains of northern Africa (<i>Ammotragus
+tragelaphus</i>); and the Rocky Mountain bighorn (<i>O. montana</i>, Cuv.). To
+this last-named species belongs the wild sheep of the Sierra. Its range,
+according to the late Professor Baird of the Smithsonian Institution, extends
+&ldquo;from the region of the upper Missouri and Yellowstone to the Rocky
+Mountains and the high grounds adjacent to them on the eastern slope, and as
+far south as the Rio Grande. Westward it extends to the coast ranges of
+Washington, Oregon, and California, and follows the highlands some distance
+into Mexico.&rdquo;<a href="#linknote-1"
+name="linknoteref-1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> Throughout the vast region bounded on
+the east by the Wahsatch Mountains and on the west by the Sierra there are more
+than a hundred subordinate ranges and mountain groups, trending north and
+south, range beyond range, with summits rising from eight to twelve thousand
+feet above the level of the sea, probably all of which, according to my own
+observations, is, or has been, inhabited by this species.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Compared with the argali, which, considering its size and the vast extent of
+its range, is probably the most important of all the wild sheep, our species is
+about the same size, but the horns are less twisted and less divergent. The
+more important characteristics are, however, essentially the same, some of the
+best naturalists maintaining that the two are only varied forms of one species.
+In accordance with this view, Cuvier conjectures that since central Asia seems
+to be the region where the sheep first appeared, and from which it has been
+distributed, the argali may have been distributed over this continent from Asia
+by crossing Bering Strait on ice. This conjecture is not so ill founded as at
+first sight would appear; for the Strait is only about fifty miles wide, is
+interrupted by three islands, and is jammed with ice nearly every winter.
+Furthermore the argali is abundant on the mountains adjacent to the Strait at
+East Cape, where it is well known to the Tschuckchi hunters and where I have
+seen many of their horns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On account of the extreme variability of the sheep under culture, it is
+generally supposed that the innumerable domestic breeds have all been derived
+from the few wild species; but the whole question is involved in obscurity.
+According to Darwin, sheep have been domesticated from a very ancient period,
+the remains of a small breed, differing from any now known, having been found
+in the famous Swiss lake-dwellings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Compared with the best-known domestic breeds, we find that our wild species is
+much larger, and, instead of an all-wool garment, wears a thick over-coat of
+hair like that of the deer, and an under-covering of fine wool. The hair,
+though rather coarse, is comfortably soft and spongy, and lies smooth, as if
+carefully tended with comb and brush. The predominant color during most of the
+year is brownish-gray, varying to bluish-gray in the autumn; the belly and a
+large, conspicuous patch on the buttocks are white; and the tail, which is very
+short, like that of a deer, is black, with a yellowish border. The wool is
+white, and grows in beautiful spirals down out of sight among the shining hair,
+like delicate climbing vines among stalks of corn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The horns of the male are of immense size, measuring in their greater diameter
+from five to six and a half inches, and from two and a half to three feet in
+length around the curve. They are yellowish-white in color, and ridged
+transversely, like those of the domestic ram. Their cross-section near the base
+is somewhat triangular in outline, and flattened toward the tip. Rising boldly
+from the top of the head, they curve gently backward and outward, then forward
+and outward, until about three fourths of a circle is described, and until the
+flattened, blunt tips are about two feet or two and a half feet apart. Those of
+the female are flattened throughout their entire length, are less curved than
+those of the male, and much smaller, measuring less than a foot along the
+curve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A ram and ewe that I obtained near the Modoc lava-beds, to the northeast of
+Mount Shasta, measured as follows:
+</p>
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-left: 3em; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;">
+
+<tr>
+<td></td><td><i>Ram.</i></td><td></td><td><i>Ewe.</i></td><td></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td></td><td><i>ft.</i></td><td><i>in.</i></td><td><i>ft.</i></td><td><i>in.</i></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Height at shoulders</td><td>3</td><td>6</td><td>3</td><td>0</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Girth around shoulders</td><td>3</td><td>11</td><td>3</td><td>3¾</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Length from nose to root of tail</td><td>5</td><td>10¼</td><td>4</td><td>3½</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Length of ears</td><td>0</td><td>4¾</td><td>0</td><td>5</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Length of tail</td><td>0</td><td>4½</td><td>0</td><td>4½</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Length of horns around curve</td><td>2</td><td>9</td><td>0</td><td>11½</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Distance across from tip to tip of horns</td><td>2</td><td>5½</td><td></td><td></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Circumference of horns at base</td><td>1</td><td>4</td><td>0</td><td>6</td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<p>
+The measurements of a male obtained in the Rocky Mountains by Audubon vary but
+little as compared with the above. The weight of his specimen was 344 pounds,<a
+href="#linknote-2" name="linknoteref-2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> which is, perhaps,
+about an average for full-grown males. The females are about a third lighter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides these differences in size, color, hair, etc., as noted above, we may
+observe that the domestic sheep, in a general way, is expressionless, like a
+dull bundle of something only half alive, while the wild is as elegant and
+graceful as a deer, every movement manifesting admirable strength and
+character. The tame is timid; the wild is bold. The tame is always more or less
+ruffled and dirty; while the wild is as smooth and clean as the flowers of his
+mountain pastures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The earliest mention that I have been able to find of the wild sheep in America
+is by Father Picolo, a Catholic missionary at Monterey, in the year 1797, who,
+after describing it, oddly enough, as &ldquo;a kind of deer with a sheep-like
+head, and about as large as a calf one or two years old,&rdquo; naturally
+hurries on to remark: &ldquo;I have eaten of these beasts; their flesh is very
+tender and delicious.&rdquo; Mackenzie, in his northern travels, heard the
+species spoken of by the Indians as &ldquo;white buffaloes.&rdquo; And Lewis
+and Clark tell us that, in a time of great scarcity on the head waters of the
+Missouri, they saw plenty of wild sheep, but they were &ldquo;too shy to be
+shot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few of the more energetic of the Pah Ute Indians hunt the wild sheep every
+season among the more accessible sections of the High Sierra, in the
+neighborhood of passes, where, from having been pursued, they have become
+extremely wary; but in the rugged wilderness of peaks and cañons, where the
+foaming tributaries of the San Joaquin and King&rsquo;s rivers take their rise,
+they fear no hunter save the wolf, and are more guileless and approachable than
+their tame kindred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While engaged in the work of exploring high regions where they delight to roam
+I have been greatly interested in studying their habits. In the months of
+November and December, and probably during a considerable portion of midwinter,
+they all flock together, male and female, old and young. I once found a
+complete band of this kind numbering upward of fifty, which, on being alarmed,
+went bounding away across a jagged lava-bed at admirable speed, led by a
+majestic old ram, with the lambs safe in the middle of the flock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spring and summer, the full-grown rams form separate bands of from three to
+twenty, and are usually found feeding along the edges of glacier meadows, or
+resting among the castle-like crags of the high summits; and whether quietly
+feeding, or scaling the wild cliffs, their noble forms and the power and beauty
+of their movements never fail to strike the beholder with lively admiration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their resting-places seem to be chosen with reference to sunshine and a wide
+outlook, and most of all to safety. Their feeding-grounds are among the most
+beautiful of the wild gardens, bright with daisies and gentians and mats of
+purple bryanthus, lying hidden away on rocky headlands and cañon sides, where
+sunshine is abundant, or down in the shady glacier valleys, along the banks of
+the streams and lakes, where the plushy sod is greenest. Here they feast all
+summer, the happy wanderers, perhaps relishing the beauty as well as the taste
+of the lovely flora on which they feed.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus55"></a>
+<img src="images/img55.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA" />
+<p class="caption">SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+When the winter storms set in, loading their highland pastures with snow, then,
+like the birds, they gather and go to lower climates, usually descending the
+eastern flank of the range to the rough, volcanic table-lands and treeless
+ranges of the Great Basin adjacent to the Sierra. They never make haste,
+however, and seem to have no dread of storms, many of the strongest only going
+down leisurely to bare, wind-swept ridges, to feed on bushes and dry
+bunch-grass, and then returning up into the snow. Once I was snow-bound on
+Mount Shasta for three days, a little below the timber line. It was a dark and
+stormy time, well calculated to test the skill and endurance of mountaineers.
+The snow-laden gale drove on night and day in hissing, blinding floods, and
+when at length it began to abate, I found that a small band of wild sheep had
+weathered the storm in the lee of a clump of Dwarf Pines a few yards above my
+storm-nest, where the snow was eight or ten feet deep. I was warm back of a
+rock, with blankets, bread, and fire. My brave companions lay in the snow,
+without food, and with only the partial shelter of the short trees, yet they
+made no sign of suffering or faint-heartedness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the months of May and June, the wild sheep bring forth their young in
+solitary and almost inaccessible crags, far above the nesting-rocks of the
+eagle. I have frequently come upon the beds of the ewes and lambs at an
+elevation of from 12,000 to 13,000 feet above sea-level. These beds are simply
+oval-shaped hollows, pawed out among loose, disintegrating rock-chips and sand,
+upon some sunny spot commanding a good outlook, and partially sheltered from
+the winds that sweep those lofty peaks almost without intermission. Such is the
+cradle of the little mountaineer, aloft in the very sky; rocked in storms,
+curtained in clouds, sleeping in thin, icy air; but, wrapped in his hairy coat,
+and nourished by a strong, warm mother, defended from the talons of the eagle
+and the teeth of the sly coyote, the bonny lamb grows apace. He soon learns to
+nibble the tufted rock-grasses and leaves of the white spirsea; his horns begin
+to shoot, and before summer is done he is strong and agile, and goes forth with
+the flock, watched by the same divine love that tends the more helpless human
+lamb in its cradle by the fireside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing is more commonly remarked by noisy, dusty trail-travelers in the Sierra
+than the want of animal life&mdash;no song-birds, no deer, no squirrels, no
+game of any kind, they say. But if such could only go away quietly into the
+wilderness, sauntering afoot and alone with natural deliberation, they would
+soon learn that these mountain mansions are not without inhabitants, many of
+whom, confiding and gentle, would not try to shun their acquaintance.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus56"></a>
+<img src="images/img56.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM (DOMESTIC)" />
+<p class="caption">HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM (DOMESTIC).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In the fall of 1873 I was tracing the South Fork of the San Joaquin up its wild
+cañon to its farthest glacier fountains. It was the season of alpine Indian
+summer. The sun beamed lovingly; the squirrels were nutting in the pine-trees,
+butterflies hovered about the last of the goldenrods, the willow and maple
+thickets were yellow, the meadows brown, and the whole sunny, mellow landscape
+glowed like a countenance in the deepest and sweetest repose. On my way over
+the glacier-polished rocks along the river, I came to an expanded portion of
+the cañon, about two miles long and half a mile wide, which formed a level park
+inclosed with picturesque granite walls like those of Yosemite Valley. Down
+through the middle of it poured the beautiful river shining and spangling in
+the golden light, yellow groves on its banks, and strips of brown meadow; while
+the whole park was astir with wild life, some of which even the noisiest and
+least observing of travelers must have seen had they been with me. Deer, with
+their supple, well-grown fawns, bounded from thicket to thicket as I advanced;
+grouse kept rising from the brown grass with a great whirring of wings, and,
+alighting on the lower branches of the pines and poplars, allowed a near
+approach, as if curious to see me. Farther on, a broad-shouldered wildcat
+showed himself, coming out of a grove, and crossing the river on a flood-jamb
+of logs, halting for a moment to look back. The bird-like tamias frisked about
+my feet everywhere among the pine-needles and seedy grass-tufts; cranes waded
+the shallows of the river-bends, the kingfisher rattled from perch to perch,
+and the blessed ouzel sang amid the spray of every cascade. Where may lonely
+wanderer find a more interesting family of mountain-dwellers, earth-born
+companions and fellow-mortals? It was afternoon when I joined them, and the
+glorious landscape began to fade in the gloaming before I awoke from their
+enchantment. Then I sought a camp-ground on the river-bank, made a cupful of
+tea, and lay down to sleep on a smooth place among the yellow leaves of an
+aspen grove. Next day I discovered yet grander landscapes and grander life.
+Following the river over huge, swelling rock-bosses through a majestic cañon,
+and past innumerable cascades, the scenery in general became gradually wilder
+and more alpine. The Sugar Pine and Silver Firs gave place to the hardier Cedar
+and Hemlock Spruce. The cañon walls became more rugged and bare, and gentians
+and arctic daisies became more abundant in the gardens and strips of meadow
+along the streams. Toward the middle of the afternoon I came to another valley,
+strikingly wild and original in all its features, and perhaps never before
+touched by human foot. As regards area of level bottom-land, it is one of the
+very smallest of the Yosemite type, but its walls are sublime, rising to a
+height of from 2000 to 4000 feet above the river. At the head of the valley the
+main cañon forks, as is found to be the case in all yosemites. The formation of
+this one is due chiefly to the action of two great glaciers, whose fountains
+lay to the eastward, on the flanks of Mounts Humphrey and Emerson and a cluster
+of nameless peaks farther south.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus57"></a>
+<img src="images/img57.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP" />
+<p class="caption">HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The gray, boulder-chafed river was singing loudly through the valley, but above
+its massy roar I heard the booming of a waterfall, which drew me eagerly on;
+and just as I emerged from the tangled groves and brier-thickets at the head of
+the valley, the main fork of the river came in sight, falling fresh from its
+glacier fountains in a snowy cascade, between granite walls 2000 feet high. The
+steep incline down which the glad waters thundered seemed to bar all farther
+progress. It was not long, however, before I discovered a crooked seam in the
+rock, by which I was enabled to climb to the edge of a terrace that crosses the
+cañon, and divides the cataract nearly in the middle. Here I sat down to take
+breath and make some entries in my note-book, taking advantage, at the same
+time, of my elevated position above the trees to gaze back over the valley into
+the heart of the noble landscape, little knowing the while what neighbors were
+near.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After spending a few minutes in this way, I chanced to look across the fall,
+and there stood three sheep quietly observing me. Never did the sudden
+appearance of a mountain, or fall, or human friend more forcibly seize and
+rivet my attention. Anxiety to observe accurately held me perfectly still.
+Eagerly I marked the flowing undulations of their firm, braided muscles, their
+strong legs, ears, eyes, heads, their graceful rounded necks, the color of
+their hair, and the bold, upsweeping curves of their noble horns. When they
+moved I watched every gesture, while they, in no wise disconcerted either by my
+attention or by the tumultuous roar of the water, advanced deliberately
+alongside the rapids, between the two divisions of the cataract, turning now
+and then to look at me. Presently they came to a steep, ice-burnished
+acclivity, which they ascended by a succession of quick, short, stiff-legged
+leaps, reaching the top without a struggle. This was the most startling feat of
+mountaineering I had ever witnessed, and, considering only the mechanics of the
+thing, my astonishment could hardly have been greater had they displayed wings
+and taken to flight. &ldquo;Surefooted&rdquo; mules on such ground would have
+fallen and rolled like loosened boulders. Many a time, where the slopes are far
+lower, I have been compelled to take off my shoes and stockings, tie them to my
+belt, and creep barefooted, with the utmost caution. No wonder then, that I
+watched the progress of these animal mountaineers with keen sympathy, and
+exulted in the boundless sufficiency of wild nature displayed in their
+invention, construction, and keeping. A few minutes later I caught sight of a
+dozen more in one band, near the foot of the upper fall. They were standing on
+the same side of the river with me, only twenty-five or thirty yards away,
+looking as unworn and perfect as if created on the spot. It appeared by their
+tracks, which I had seen in the Little Yosemite, and by their present position,
+that when I came up the cañon they were all feeding together down in the
+valley, and in their haste to reach high ground, where they could look about
+them to ascertain the nature of the strange disturbance, they were divided,
+three ascending on one side the river, the rest on the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The main band, headed by an experienced chief, now began to cross the wild
+rapids between the two divisions of the cascade. This was another exciting
+feat; for, among all the varied experiences of mountaineers, the crossing of
+boisterous, rock-dashed torrents is found to be one of the most trying to the
+nerves. Yet these fine fellows walked fearlessly to the brink, and jumped from
+boulder to boulder, holding themselves in easy poise above the whirling,
+confusing current, as if they were doing nothing extraordinary.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus58"></a>
+<img src="images/img58.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="CROSSING A CAÑON STREAM" />
+<p class="caption">CROSSING A CAÑON STREAM.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In the immediate foreground of this rare picture there was a fold of
+ice-burnished granite, traversed by a few bold lines in which rock-ferns and
+tufts of bryanthus were growing, the gray cañon walls on the sides, nobly
+sculptured and adorned with brown cedars and pines; lofty peaks in the
+distance, and in the middle ground the snowy fall, the voice and soul of the
+landscape; fringing bushes beating time to its thunder-tones, the brave sheep
+in front of it, their gray forms slightly obscured in the spray, yet standing
+out in good, heavy relief against the close white water, with their huge horns
+rising like the upturned roots of dead pine-trees, while the evening sunbeams
+streaming up the cañon colored all the picture a rosy purple and made it
+glorious. After crossing the river, the dauntless climbers, led by their chief,
+at once began to scale the cañon wall, turning now right, now left, in long,
+single file, keeping well apart out of one another&rsquo;s way, and leaping in
+regular succession from crag to crag, now ascending slippery dome-curves, now
+walking leisurely along the edges of precipices, stopping at times to gaze down
+at me from some flat-topped rock, with heads held aslant, as if curious to
+learn what I thought about it, or whether I was likely to follow them. After
+reaching the top of the wall, which, at this place, is somewhere between 1500
+and 2000 feet high, they were still visible against the sky as they lingered,
+looking down in groups of twos or threes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Throughout the entire ascent they did not make a single awkward step, or an
+unsuccessful effort of any kind. I have frequently seen tame sheep in mountains
+jump upon a sloping rock-surface, hold on tremulously a few seconds, and fall
+back baffled and irresolute. But in the most trying situations, where the
+slightest want or inaccuracy would have been fatal, these always seemed to move
+in comfortable reliance on their strength and skill, the limits of which they
+never appeared to know. Moreover, each one of the flock, while following the
+guidance of the most experienced, yet climbed with intelligent independence as
+a perfect individual, capable of separate existence whenever it should wish or
+be compelled to withdraw from the little clan. The domestic sheep, on the
+contrary, is only a fraction of an animal, a whole flock being required to form
+an individual, just as numerous flowerets are required to make one complete
+sunflower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those shepherds who, in summer, drive their flocks to the mountain pastures,
+and, while watching them night and day, have seen them frightened by bears and
+storms, and scattered like wind-driven chaff, will, in some measure, be able to
+appreciate the self-reliance and strength and noble individuality of
+Nature&rsquo;s sheep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like the Alp-climbing ibex of Europe, our mountaineer is said to plunge
+headlong down the faces of sheer precipices, and alight on his big horns. I
+know only two hunters who claim to have actually witnessed this feat; I never
+was so fortunate. They describe the act as a diving head-foremost. The horns
+are so large at the base that they cover the upper portion of the head down
+nearly to a level with the eyes, and the skull is exceedingly strong. I struck
+an old, bleached specimen on Mount Ritter a dozen blows with my ice-ax without
+breaking it. Such skulls would not fracture very readily by the wildest
+rock-diving, but other bones could hardly be expected to hold together in such
+a performance; and the mechanical difficulties in the way of controlling their
+movements, after striking upon an irregular surface, are, in themselves,
+sufficient to show this boulder-like method of progression to be impossible,
+even in the absence of all other evidence on the subject; moreover, the ewes
+follow wherever the rams may lead, although their horns are mere spikes. I have
+found many pairs of the horns of the old rams considerably battered, doubtless
+a result of fighting. I was particularly interested in the question, after
+witnessing the performances of this San Joaquin band upon the glaciated rocks
+at the foot of the falls; and as soon as I procured specimens and examined
+their feet, all the mystery disappeared. The secret, considered in connection
+with exceptionally strong muscles, is simply this: the wide posterior portion
+of the bottom of the foot, instead of wearing down and becoming flat and hard,
+like the feet of tame sheep and horses, bulges out in a soft, rubber-like pad
+or cushion, which not only grips and holds well on smooth rocks, but fits into
+small cavities, and down upon or against slight protuberances. Even the hardest
+portions of the edge of the hoof are comparatively soft and elastic;
+furthermore, the toes admit of an extraordinary amount of both lateral and
+vertical movement, allowing the foot to accommodate itself still more perfectly
+to the irregularities of rock surfaces, while at the same time increasing the
+gripping power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the base of Sheep Rock, one of the winter strongholds of the Shasta flocks,
+there lives a stock-raiser who has had the advantage of observing the movements
+of wild sheep every winter; and, in the course of a conversation with him on
+the subject of their diving habits, he pointed to the front of a lava headland
+about 150 feet high, which is only eight or ten degrees out of the
+perpendicular. &ldquo;There,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I followed a band of them
+fellows to the back of that rock yonder, and expected to capture them all, for
+I thought I had a dead thing on them. I got behind them on a narrow bench that
+runs along the face of the wall near the top and comes to an end where they
+couldn&rsquo;t get away without falling and being killed; but they jumped off,
+and landed all right, as if that were the regular thing with them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;jumped 150 feet perpendicular! Did you see
+them do it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t see them going down, for I
+was behind them; but I saw them go off over the brink, and then I went below
+and found their tracks where they struck on the loose rubbish at the bottom.
+They just <i>sailed right off</i>, and landed on their feet right side up. That
+is the kind of animal <i>they</i> is&mdash;beats anything else that goes on
+four legs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:30%;">
+<a name="illus59"></a>
+<img src="images/img59.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE" />
+<p class="caption">WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+On another occasion, a flock that was pursued by hunters retreated to another
+portion of this same cliff where it is still higher, and, on being followed,
+they were seen jumping down in perfect order, one behind another, by two men
+who happened to be chopping where they had a fair view of them and could watch
+their progress from top to bottom of the precipice. Both ewes and rams made the
+frightful descent without evincing any extraordinary concern, hugging the rock
+closely, and controlling the velocity of their half falling, half leaping
+movements by striking at short intervals and holding back with their cushioned,
+rubber feet upon small ledges and roughened inclines until near the bottom,
+when they &ldquo;sailed off&rdquo; into the free air and alighted on their
+feet, but with their bodies so nearly in a vertical position that they appeared
+to be diving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It appears, therefore, that the methods of this wild mountaineering become
+clearly comprehensible as soon as we make ourselves acquainted with the rocks,
+and the kind of feet and muscles brought to bear upon them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Modoc and Pah Ute Indians are, or rather have been, the most successful
+hunters of the wild sheep in the regions that have come under my own
+observation. I have seen large numbers of heads and horns in the caves of Mount
+Shasta and the Modoc lava-beds, where the Indians had been feasting in stormy
+weather; also in the cañons of the Sierra opposite Owen&rsquo;s Valley; while
+the heavy obsidian arrow-heads found on some of the highest peaks show that
+this warfare has long been going on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the more accessible ranges that stretch across the desert regions of western
+Utah and Nevada, considerable numbers of Indians used to hunt in company like
+packs of wolves, and being perfectly acquainted with the topography of their
+hunting-grounds, and with the habits and instincts of the game, they were
+pretty successful. On the tops of nearly every one of the Nevada mountains that
+I have visited, I found small, nest-like inclosures built of stones, in which,
+as I afterward learned, one or more Indians would lie in wait while their
+companions scoured the ridges below, knowing that the alarmed sheep would
+surely run to the summit, and when they could be made to approach with the wind
+they were shot at short range.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus60"></a>
+<img src="images/img60.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP" />
+<p class="caption">INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Still larger bands of Indians used to make extensive hunts upon some dominant
+mountain much frequented by the sheep, such as Mount Grant on the Wassuck Range
+to the west of Walker Lake. On some particular spot, favorably situated with
+reference to the well-known trails of the sheep, they built a high-walled
+corral, with long guiding wings diverging from the gateway; and into this
+inclosure they sometimes succeeded in driving the noble game. Great numbers of
+Indians were of course required, more, indeed, than they could usually muster,
+counting in squaws, children, and all; they were compelled, therefore, to build
+rows of dummy hunters out of stones, along the ridge-tops which they wished to
+prevent the sheep from crossing. And, without discrediting the sagacity of the
+game, these dummies were found effective; for, with a few live Indians moving
+about excitedly among them, they could hardly be distinguished at a little
+distance from men, by any one not in the secret. The whole ridge-top then
+seemed to be alive with hunters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The only animal that may fairly be regarded as a companion or rival of the
+sheep is the so-called Rocky Mountain goat (<i>Aplocerus montana</i>, Rich.),
+which, as its name indicates, is more antelope than goat. He, too, is a brave
+and hardy climber, fearlessly crossing the wildest summits, and braving the
+severest storms, but he is shaggy, short-legged, and much less dignified in
+demeanor than the sheep. His jet-black horns are only about five or six inches
+in length, and the long, white hair with which he is covered obscures the
+expression of his limbs. I have never yet seen a single specimen in the Sierra,
+though possibly a few flocks may have lived on Mount Shasta a comparatively
+short time ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ranges of these two mountaineers are pretty distinct, and they see but
+little of each other; the sheep being restricted mostly to the dry, inland
+mountains; the goat or chamois to the wet, snowy glacier-laden mountains of the
+northwest coast of the continent in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and
+Alaska. Probably more than 200 dwell on the icy, volcanic cone of Mount
+Rainier; and while I was exploring the glaciers of Alaska I saw flocks of these
+admirable mountaineers nearly every day, and often followed their trails
+through the mazes of bewildering crevasses, in which they are excellent guides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three species of deer are found in California,&mdash;the black-tailed,
+white-tailed, and mule deer. The first mentioned (<i>Cervus Columbianus</i>) is
+by far the most abundant, and occasionally meets the sheep during the summer on
+high glacier meadows, and along the edge of the timber line; but being a forest
+animal, seeking shelter and rearing its young in dense thickets, it seldom
+visits the wild sheep in its higher homes. The antelope, though not a
+mountaineer, is occasionally met in winter by the sheep while feeding along the
+edges of the sage-plains and bare volcanic hills to the east of the Sierra. So
+also is the mule deer, which is almost restricted in its range to this eastern
+region. The white-tailed species belongs to the coast ranges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps no wild animal in the world is without enemies, but highlanders, as a
+class, have fewer than lowlanders. The wily panther, slipping and crouching
+among long grass and bushes, pounces upon the antelope and deer, but seldom
+crosses the bald, craggy thresholds of the sheep. Neither can the bears be
+regarded as enemies; for, though they seek to vary their every-day diet of nuts
+and berries by an occasional meal of mutton, they prefer to hunt tame and
+helpless flocks. Eagles and coyotes, no doubt, capture an unprotected lamb at
+times, or some unfortunate beset in deep, soft snow, but these cases are little
+more than accidents. So, also, a few perish in long-continued snow-storms,
+though, in all my mountaineering, I have not found more than five or six that
+seemed to have met their fate in this way. A little band of three were
+discovered snow-bound in Bloody Canon a few years ago, and were killed with an
+ax by mountaineers, who chanced to be crossing the range in winter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Man is the most dangerous enemy of all, but even from him our brave
+mountain-dweller has little to fear in the remote solitudes of the High Sierra.
+The golden plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin were lately thronged with
+bands of elk and antelope, but, being fertile and accessible, they were
+required for human pastures. So, also, are many of the feeding-grounds of the
+deer&mdash;hill, valley, forest, and meadow&mdash;but it will be long before
+man will care to take the highland castles of the sheep. And when we consider
+here how rapidly entire species of noble animals, such as the elk, moose, and
+buffalo, are being pushed to the very verge of extinction, all lovers of
+wildness will rejoice with me in the rocky security of <i>Ovis montana</i>, the
+bravest of all the Sierra mountaineers.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="linknote-1" id="linknote-1"></a> <a href="#linknoteref-1">[1]</a> 
+Pacific Railroad Survey, Vol. VIII, page 678.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="linknote-2" id="linknote-2"></a> <a href="#linknoteref-2">[2]</a> 
+Audubon and Bachman&rsquo;s &ldquo;Quadrupeds of North America.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV<br/>
+IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS</h2>
+
+<p>
+Murphy&rsquo;s camp is a curious old mining-town in Calaveras County, at an
+elevation of 2400 feet above the sea, situated like a nest in the center of a
+rough, gravelly region, rich in gold. Granites, slates, lavas, limestone, iron
+ores, quartz veins, auriferous gravels, remnants of dead fire-rivers and dead
+water-rivers are developed here side by side within a radius of a few miles,
+and placed invitingly open before the student like a book, while the people and
+the region beyond the camp furnish mines of study of never-failing interest and
+variety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I discovered this curious place, I was tracing the channels of the ancient
+pre-glacial rivers, instructive sections of which have been laid bare here and
+in the adjacent regions by the miners. Rivers, according to the poets,
+&ldquo;go on forever&rdquo;; but those of the Sierra are young as yet and have
+scarcely learned the way down to the sea; while at least one generation of them
+have died and vanished together with most of the basins they drained. All that
+remains of them to tell their history is a series of interrupted fragments of
+channels, mostly choked with gravel, and buried beneath broad, thick sheets of
+lava. These are known as the &ldquo;Dead Rivers of California,&rdquo; and the
+gravel deposited in them is comprehensively called the &ldquo;Blue Lead.&rdquo;
+In some places the channels of the present rivers trend in the same direction,
+or nearly so, as those of the ancient rivers; but, in general, there is little
+correspondence between them, the entire drainage having been changed, or,
+rather, made new. Many of the hills of the ancient landscapes have become
+hollows, and the old hollows have become hills. Therefore the fragmentary
+channels, with their loads of auriferous gravel, occur in all kinds of
+unthought-of places, trending obliquely, or even at right angles to the present
+drainage, across the tops of lofty ridges or far beneath them, presenting
+impressive illustrations of the magnitude of the changes accomplished since
+those ancient streams were annihilated. The last volcanic period preceding the
+regeneration of the Sierra landscapes seems to have come on over all the range
+almost simultaneously, like the glacial period, notwithstanding lavas of
+different age occur together in many places, indicating numerous periods of
+activity in the Sierra fire-fountains. The most important of the ancient
+river-channels in this region is a section that extends from the south side of
+the town beneath Coyote Creek and the ridge beyond it to the Cañon of the
+Stanislaus; but on account of its depth below the general surface of the
+present valleys the rich gold gravels it is known to contain cannot be easily
+worked on a large scale. Their extraordinary richness may be inferred from the
+fact that many claims were profitably worked in them by sinking shafts to a
+depth of 200 feet or more, and hoisting the dirt by a windlass. Should the dip
+of this ancient channel be such as to make the Stanislaus Cañon available as a
+dump, then the grand deposit might be worked by the hydraulic method, and
+although a long, expensive tunnel would be required, the scheme might still
+prove profitable, for there is &ldquo;millions in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The importance of these ancient gravels as gold fountains is well known to
+miners. Even the superficial placers of the present streams have derived much
+of their gold from them. According to all accounts, the Murphy placers have
+been very rich&mdash;&ldquo;terrific rich,&rdquo; as they say here. The hills
+have been cut and scalped, and every gorge and gulch and valley torn to pieces
+and disemboweled, expressing a fierce and desperate energy hard to understand.
+Still, any kind of effort-making is better than inaction, and there is
+something sublime in seeing men working in dead earnest at anything, pursuing
+an object with glacier-like energy and persistence. Many a brave fellow has
+recorded a most eventful chapter of life on these Calaveras rocks. But most of
+the pioneer miners are sleeping now, their wild day done, while the few
+survivors linger languidly in the washed-out gulches or sleepy village like
+harried bees around the ruins of their hive. &ldquo;We have no industry left
+<i>now</i>,&rdquo; they told me, &ldquo;and no men; everybody and everything
+hereabouts has gone to decay. We are only bummers&mdash;out of the game, a thin
+scatterin&rsquo; of poor, dilapidated cusses, compared with what we used to be
+in the grand old gold-days. We were giants then, and you can look around here
+and see our tracks.&rdquo; But although these lingering pioneers are perhaps
+more exhausted than the mines, and about as dead as the dead rivers, they are
+yet a rare and interesting set of men, with much gold mixed with the rough,
+rocky gravel of their characters; and they manifest a breeding and intelligence
+little looked for in such surroundings as theirs. As the heavy, long-continued
+grinding of the glaciers brought out the features of the Sierra, so the intense
+experiences of the gold period have brought out the features of these old
+miners, forming a richness and variety of character little known as yet. The
+sketches of Bret Harte, Hayes, and Miller have not exhausted this field by any
+means. It is interesting to note the extremes possible in one and the same
+character: harshness and gentleness, manliness and childishness, apathy and
+fierce endeavor. Men who, twenty years ago, would not cease their shoveling to
+save their lives, now play in the streets with children. Their long,
+Micawber-like waiting after the exhaustion of the placers has brought on an
+exaggerated form of dotage. I heard a group of brawny pioneers in the street
+eagerly discussing the quantity of tail required for a boy&rsquo;s kite; and
+one graybeard undertook the sport of flying it, volunteering the information
+that he was a boy, &ldquo;always was a boy, and d&mdash;n a man who was not a
+boy inside, however ancient outside!&rdquo; Mines, morals, politics, the
+immortality of the soul, etc., were discussed beneath shade-trees and in
+saloons, the time for each being governed apparently by the temperature.
+Contact with Nature, and the habits of observation acquired in gold-seeking,
+had made them all, to some extent, collectors, and, like wood-rats, they had
+gathered all kinds of odd specimens into their cabins, and now required me to
+examine them. They were themselves the oddest and most interesting specimens.
+One of them offered to show me around the old diggings, giving me fair warning
+before setting out that I might not like him, &ldquo;because,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;people say I&rsquo;m eccentric. I notice everything, and gather beetles
+and snakes and anything that&rsquo;s queer; and so some don&rsquo;t like me,
+and call me eccentric. I&rsquo;m always trying to find out things. Now,
+there&rsquo;s a weed; the Indians eat it for greens. What do you call those
+long-bodied flies with big heads?&rdquo; &ldquo;Dragon-flies,&rdquo; I
+suggested. &ldquo;Well, their jaws work sidewise, instead of up and down, and
+grasshoppers&rsquo; jaws work the same way, and therefore I think they are the
+same species. I always notice everything like that, and just because I do, they
+say I&rsquo;m eccentric,&rdquo; etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Anxious that I should miss none of the wonders of their old gold-field, the
+good people had much to say about the marvelous beauty of Cave City Cave, and
+advised me to explore it. This I was very glad to do, and finding a guide who
+knew the way to the mouth of it, I set out from Murphy the next morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most beautiful and extensive of the mountain caves of California occur in a
+belt of metamorphic limestone that is pretty generally developed along the
+western flank of the Sierra from the McCloud River on the north to the Kaweah
+on the south, a distance of over 400 miles, at an elevation of from 2000 to
+7000 feet above the sea. Besides this regular belt of caves, the California
+landscapes are diversified by long imposing ranks of sea-caves, rugged and
+variable in architecture, carved in the coast headlands and precipices by
+centuries of wave-dashing; and innumerable lava-caves, great and small,
+originating in the unequal flowing and hardening of the lava sheets in which
+they occur, fine illustrations of which are presented in the famous Modoc Lava
+Beds, and around the base of icy Shasta. In this comprehensive glance we may
+also notice the shallow wind-worn caves in stratified sandstones along the
+margins of the plains; and the cave-like recesses in the Sierra slates and
+granites, where bears and other mountaineers find shelter during the fall of
+sudden storms. In general, however, the grand massive uplift of the Sierra, as
+far as it has been laid-bare to observation, is about as solid and caveless as
+a boulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fresh beauty opens one&rsquo;s eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very
+abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents
+its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make
+short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral,
+or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like
+worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of
+what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun
+sees on our return to common every-day beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our way from Murphy&rsquo;s to the cave lay across a series of picturesque,
+moory ridges in the chaparral region between the brown foot-hills and the
+forests, a flowery stretch of rolling hill-waves breaking here and there into a
+kind of rocky foam on the higher summits, and sinking into delightful bosky
+hollows embowered with vines. The day was a fine specimen of California summer,
+pure sunshine, unshaded most of the time by a single cloud. As the sun rose
+higher, the heated air began to flow in tremulous waves from every southern
+slope. The sea-breeze that usually comes up the foot-hills at this season, with
+cooling on its wings, was scarcely perceptible. The birds were assembled
+beneath leafy shade, or made short, languid flights in search of food, all save
+the majestic buzzard; with broad wings outspread he sailed the warm air
+unwearily from ridge to ridge, seeming to enjoy the fervid sunshine like a
+butterfly. Squirrels, too, whose spicy ardor no heat or cold may abate, were
+nutting among the pines, and the innumerable hosts of the insect kingdom were
+throbbing and wavering unwearied as sunbeams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This brushy, berry-bearing region used to be a deer and bear pasture, but since
+the disturbances of the gold period these fine animals have almost wholly
+disappeared. Here, also, once roamed the mastodon and elephant, whose bones are
+found entombed in the river gravels and beneath thick folds of lava. Toward
+noon, as we were riding slowly over bank and brae, basking in the unfeverish
+sun-heat, we witnessed the upheaval of a new mountain-range, a Sierra of clouds
+abounding in landscapes as truly sublime and beautiful&mdash;if only we have a
+mind to think so and eyes to see&mdash;as the more ancient rocky Sierra beneath
+it, with its forests and waterfalls; reminding us that, as there is a lower
+world of caves, so, also, there is an upper world of clouds. Huge, bossy cumuli
+developed with astonishing rapidity from mere buds, swelling with visible
+motion into colossal mountains, and piling higher, higher, in long massive
+ranges, peak beyond peak, dome over dome, with many a picturesque valley and
+shadowy cave between; while the dark firs and pines of the upper benches of the
+Sierra were projected against their pearl bosses with exquisite clearness of
+outline. These cloud mountains vanished in the azure as quickly as they were
+developed, leaving no detritus; but they were not a whit less real or
+interesting on this account. The more enduring hills over which we rode were
+vanishing as surely as they, only not so fast, a difference which is great or
+small according to the standpoint from which it is contemplated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the bottom of every dell we found little homesteads embosomed in wild brush
+and vines wherever the recession of the hills left patches of arable ground.
+These secluded flats are settled mostly by Italians and Germans, who plant a
+few vegetables and grape-vines at odd times, while their main business is
+mining and prospecting. In spite of all the natural beauty of these dell
+cabins, they can hardly be called homes. They are only a better kind of camp,
+gladly abandoned whenever the hoped-for gold harvest has been gathered. There
+is an air of profound unrest and melancholy about the best of them. Their
+beauty is thrust upon them by exuberant Nature, apart from which they are only
+a few logs and boards rudely jointed and without either ceiling or floor, a
+rough fireplace with corresponding cooking utensils, a shelf-bed, and stool.
+The ground about them is strewn with battered prospecting-pans, picks,
+sluice-boxes, and quartz specimens from many a ledge, indicating the trend of
+their owners&rsquo; hard lives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ride from Murphy&rsquo;s to the cave is scarcely two hours long, but we
+lingered among quartz-ledges and banks of dead river gravel until long after
+noon. At length emerging from a narrow-throated gorge, a small house came in
+sight set in a thicket of fig-trees at the base of a limestone hill.
+&ldquo;That,&rdquo; said my guide, pointing to the house, &ldquo;is Cave City,
+and the cave is in that gray hill.&rdquo; Arriving at the one house of this
+one-house city, we were boisterously welcomed by three drunken men who had come
+to town to hold a spree. The mistress of the house tried to keep order, and in
+reply to our inquiries told us that the cave guide was then in the cave with a
+party of ladies. &ldquo;And must we wait until he returns?&rdquo; we asked. No,
+that was unnecessary; we might take candles and go into the cave alone,
+provided we shouted from time to time so as to be found by the guide, and were
+careful not to fall over the rocks or into the dark pools. Accordingly taking a
+trail from the house, we were led around the base of the hill to the mouth of
+the cave, a small inconspicuous archway, mossy around the edges and shaped like
+the door of a water-ouzel&rsquo;s nest, with no appreciable hint or
+advertisement of the grandeur of the many crystal chambers within. Lighting our
+candles, which seemed to have no illuminating power in the thick darkness, we
+groped our way onward as best we could along narrow lanes and alleys, from
+chamber to chamber, around rustic columns and heaps of fallen rocks, stopping
+to rest now and then in particularly beautiful places&mdash;fairy alcoves
+furnished with admirable variety of shelves and tables, and round bossy stools
+covered with sparkling crystals. Some of the corridors were muddy, and in
+plodding along these we seemed to be in the streets of some prairie village in
+spring-time. Then we would come to handsome marble stairways conducting right
+and left into upper chambers ranged above one another three or four stories
+high, floors, ceilings, and walls lavishly decorated with innumerable
+crystalline forms. After thus wandering exploringly, and alone for a mile or
+so, fairly enchanted, a murmur of voices and a gleam of light betrayed the
+approach of the guide and his party, from whom, when they came up, we received
+a most hearty and natural stare, as we stood half concealed in a side recess
+among stalagmites. I ventured to ask the dripping, crouching company how they
+had enjoyed their saunter, anxious to learn how the strange sunless scenery of
+the underworld had impressed them. &ldquo;Ah, it&rsquo;s nice! It&rsquo;s
+splendid!&rdquo; they all replied and echoed. &ldquo;The Bridal Chamber back
+here is just glorious! This morning we came down from the Calaveras Big Tree
+Grove, and the trees are nothing to it.&rdquo; After making this curious
+comparison they hastened sunward, the guide promising to join us shortly on the
+bank of a deep pool, where we were to wait for him. This is a charming little
+lakelet of unknown depth, never yet stirred by a breeze, and its eternal calm
+excites the imagination even more profoundly than the silvery lakes of the
+glaciers rimmed with meadows and snow and reflecting sublime mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our guide, a jolly, rollicking Italian, led us into the heart of the hill, up
+and down, right and left, from chamber to chamber more and more magnificent,
+all a-glitter like a glacier cave with icicle-like stalactites and stalagmites
+combined in forms of indescribable beauty. We were shown one large room that
+was occasionally used as a dancing-hall; another that was used as a chapel,
+with natural pulpit and crosses and pews, sermons in every stone, where a
+priest had said mass. Mass-saying is not so generally developed in connection
+with natural wonders as dancing. One of the first conceits excited by the giant
+Sequoias was to cut one of them down and dance on its stump. We have also seen
+dancing in the spray of Niagara; dancing in the famous Bower Cave above
+Coulterville; and nowhere have I seen so much dancing as in Yosemite. A dance
+on the inaccessible South Dome would likely follow the making of an easy way to
+the top of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was delightful to witness here the infinite deliberation of Nature, and the
+simplicity of her methods in the production of such mighty results, such
+perfect repose combined with restless enthusiastic energy. Though cold and
+bloodless as a landscape of polar ice, building was going on in the dark with
+incessant activity. The archways and ceilings were everywhere hung with
+down-growing crystals, like inverted groves of leafless saplings, some of them
+large, others delicately attenuated, each tipped with a single drop of water,
+like the terminal bud of a pine-tree. The only appreciable sounds were the
+dripping and tinkling of water failing into pools or faintly plashing on the
+crystal floors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In some places the crystal decorations are arranged in graceful flowing folds
+deeply plicated like stiff silken drapery. In others straight lines of the
+ordinary stalactite forms are combined with reference to size and tone in a
+regularly graduated system like the strings of a harp with musical tones
+corresponding thereto; and on these stone harps we played by striking the
+crystal strings with a stick. The delicious liquid tones they gave forth seemed
+perfectly divine as they sweetly whispered and wavered through the majestic
+halls and died away in faintest cadence,&mdash;the music of fairy-land. Here we
+lingered and reveled, rejoicing to find so much music in stony silence, so much
+splendor in darkness, so many mansions in the depths of the mountains,
+buildings ever in process of construction, yet ever finished, developing from
+perfection to perfection, profusion without overabundance; every particle
+visible or invisible in glorious motion, marching to the music of the spheres
+in a region regarded as the abode of eternal stillness and death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The outer chambers of mountain caves are frequently selected as homes by wild
+beasts. In the Sierra, however, they seem to prefer homes and hiding-places in
+chaparral and beneath shelving precipices, as I have never seen their tracks in
+any of the caves. This is the more remarkable because notwithstanding the
+darkness and oozing water there is nothing uncomfortably cellar-like or
+sepulchral about them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we emerged into the bright landscapes of the sun everything looked
+brighter, and we felt our faith in Nature&rsquo;s beauty strengthened, and saw
+more clearly that beauty is universal and immortal, above, beneath, on land and
+sea, mountain and plain, in heat and cold, light and darkness.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI<br/>
+THE BEE-PASTURES</h2>
+
+<p>
+When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its entire
+length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy Sierra to the
+ocean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin
+wilderness&mdash;through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers,
+along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain, park
+and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the
+mountains&mdash;throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber
+line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish, abundance. Here they grew more or less
+apart in special sheets and patches of no great size, there in broad, flowing
+folds hundreds of miles in length&mdash;zones of polleny forests, zones of
+flowery chaparral, stream-tangles of rubus and wild rose, sheets of golden
+composite, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of bryanthus and clover, and so
+on, certain species blooming somewhere all the year round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But of late years plows and sheep have made sad havoc in these glorious
+pastures, destroying tens of thousands of the flowery acres like a fire, and
+banishing many species of the best honey-plants to rocky cliffs and
+fence-corners, while, on the other hand, cultivation thus far has given no
+adequate compensation, at least in kind; only acres of alfalfa for miles of the
+richest wild pasture, ornamental roses and honeysuckles around cottage doors
+for cascades of wild roses in the dells, and small, square orchards and
+orange-groves for broad mountain-belts of chaparral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March, April, and
+May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that,
+in walking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than 400 miles,
+your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step. Mints, gilias,
+nemophilas, castilleias, and innumerable compositae were so crowded together
+that, had ninety-nine per cent. of them been taken away, the plain would still
+have seemed to any but Californians extravagantly flowery. The radiant,
+honeyful corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another,
+glowed in the living light like a sunset sky&mdash;one sheet of purple and
+gold, with the bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it from the
+north, the San Joaquin from the south, and their many tributaries sweeping in
+at right angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into sections fringed
+with trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Along the rivers there is a strip of bottom-land, countersunk beneath the
+general level, and wider toward the foot-hills, where magnificent oaks, from
+three to eight feet in diameter, cast grateful masses of shade over the open,
+prairie-like levels. And close along the water&rsquo;s edge there was a fine
+jungle of tropical luxuriance, composed of wild-rose and bramble bushes and a
+great variety of climbing vines, wreathing and interlacing the branches and
+trunks of willows and alders, and swinging across from summit to summit in
+heavy festoons. Here the wild bees reveled in fresh bloom long after the
+flowers of the drier plain had withered and gone to seed. And in midsummer,
+when the &ldquo;blackberries&rdquo; were ripe, the Indians came from the
+mountains to feast&mdash;men, women, and babies in long, noisy trains, often
+joined by the farmers of the neighborhood, who gathered this wild fruit with
+commendable appreciation of its superior flavor, while their home orchards were
+full of ripe peaches, apricots, nectarines, and figs, and their vineyards were
+laden with grapes. But, though these luxuriant, shaggy river-beds were thus
+distinct from the smooth, treeless plain, they made no heavy dividing lines in
+general views. The whole appeared as one continuous sheet of bloom bounded only
+by the mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I first saw this central garden, the most extensive and regular of all the
+bee-pastures of the State, it seemed all one sheet of plant gold, hazy and
+vanishing in the distance, distinct as a new map along the foot-hills at my
+feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Descending the eastern slopes of the Coast Range through beds of gilias and
+lupines, and around many a breezy hillock and bush-crowned headland, I at
+length waded out into the midst of it. All the ground was covered, not with
+grass and green leaves, but with radiant corollas, about ankle-deep next the
+foot-hills, knee-deep or more five or six miles out. Here were bahia, madia,
+madaria, burrielia, chrysopsis, corethrogyne, grindelia, etc., growing in close
+social congregations of various shades of yellow, blending finely with the
+purples of clarkia, orthocarpus, and oenothera, whose delicate petals were
+drinking the vital sunbeams without giving back any sparkling glow.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus61"></a>
+<img src="images/img61.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA" />
+<p class="caption">A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Because so long a period of extreme drought succeeds the rainy season, most of
+the vegetation is composed of annuals, which spring up simultaneously, and
+bloom together at about the same height above the ground, the general surface
+being but slightly ruffled by the taller phacelias, pentstemons, and groups of
+<i>Salvia carduacea</i>, the king of the mints.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sauntering in any direction, hundreds of these happy sun-plants brushed against
+my feet at every step, and closed over them as if I were wading in liquid gold.
+The air was sweet with fragrance, the larks sang their blessed songs, rising on
+the wing as I advanced, then sinking out of sight in the polleny sod, while
+myriads of wild bees stirred the lower air with their monotonous
+hum&mdash;monotonous, yet forever fresh and sweet as every-day sunshine. Hares
+and spermophiles showed themselves in considerable numbers in shallow places,
+and small bands of antelopes were almost constantly in sight, gazing curiously
+from some slight elevation, and then bounding swiftly away with unrivaled grace
+of motion. Yet I could discover no crushed flowers to mark their track, nor,
+indeed, any destructive action of any wild foot or tooth whatever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The great yellow days circled by uncounted, while I drifted toward the north,
+observing the countless forms of life thronging about me, lying down almost
+anywhere on the approach of night. And what glorious botanical beds I had!
+Oftentimes on awaking I would find several new species leaning over me and
+looking me full in the face, so that my studies would begin before rising.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About the first of May I turned eastward, crossing the San Joaquin River
+between the mouths of the Tuolumne and Merced, and by the time I had reached
+the Sierra foot-hills most of the vegetation had gone to seed and become as dry
+as hay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the seasons of the great plain are warm or temperate, and bee-flowers are
+never wholly wanting; but the grand springtime&mdash;the annual
+resurrection&mdash;is governed by the rains, which usually set in about the
+middle of November or the beginning of December. Then the seeds, that for six
+months have lain on the ground dry and fresh as if they had been gathered into
+barns, at once unfold their treasured life. The general brown and purple of the
+ground, and the dead vegetation of the preceding year, give place to the green
+of mosses and liverworts and myriads of young leaves. Then one species after
+another comes into flower, gradually overspreading the green with yellow and
+purple, which lasts until May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The &ldquo;rainy season&rdquo; is by no means a gloomy, soggy period of
+constant cloudiness and rain. Perhaps nowhere else in North America, perhaps in
+the world, are the months of December, January, February, and March so full of
+bland, plant-building sunshine. Referring to my notes of the winter and spring
+of 1868-69, every day of which I spent out of doors, on that section of the
+plain lying between the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, I find that the first rain
+of the season fell on December 18th. January had only six rainy days&mdash;that
+is, days on which rain fell; February three, March five, April three, and May
+three, completing the so-called rainy season, which was about an average one.
+The ordinary rain-storm of this region is seldom very cold or violent. The
+winds, which in settled weather come from the northwest, veer round into the
+opposite direction, the sky fills gradually and evenly with one general cloud,
+from which, the rain falls steadily, often for days in succession, at a
+temperature of about 45° or 50°.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More than seventy-five per cent. of all the rain of this season came from the
+northwest, down the coast over southeastern Alaska, British Columbia,
+Washington, and Oregon, though the local winds of these circular storms blow
+from the southeast. One magnificent local storm from the northwest fell on
+March 21. A massive, round-browed cloud came swelling and thundering over the
+flowery plain in most imposing majesty, its bossy front burning white and
+purple in the full blaze of the sun, while warm rain poured from its ample
+fountains like a cataract, beating down flowers and bees, and flooding the dry
+watercourses as suddenly as those of Nevada are flooded by the so-called
+&ldquo;cloudbursts.&rdquo; But in less than half an hour not a trace of the
+heavy, mountain-like cloud-structure was left in the sky, and the bees were on
+the wing, as if nothing more gratefully refreshing could have been sent them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By the end of January four species of plants were in flower, and five or six
+mosses had already adjusted their hoods and were in the prime of life; but the
+flowers were not sufficiently numerous as yet to affect greatly the general
+green of the young leaves. Violets made their appearance in the first week of
+February, and toward the end of this month the warmer portions of the plain
+were already golden with myriads of the flowers of rayed composite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the full springtime. The sunshine grew warmer and richer, new plants
+bloomed every day; the air became more tuneful with humming wings, and sweeter
+with the fragrance of the opening flowers. Ants and ground squirrels were
+getting ready for their summer work, rubbing their benumbed limbs, and sunning
+themselves on the husk-piles before their doors, and spiders were busy mending
+their old webs, or weaving new ones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In March, the vegetation was more than doubled in depth and color; claytonia,
+calandrinia, a large white gilia, and two nemophilas were in bloom, together
+with a host of yellow composite, tall enough now to bend in the wind and show
+wavering ripples of shade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In April, plant-life, as a whole, reached its greatest height, and the plain,
+over all its varied surface, was mantled with a close, furred plush of purple
+and golden corollas. By the end of this month, most of the species had ripened
+their seeds, but undecayed, still seemed to be in bloom from the numerous
+corolla-like involucres and whorls of chaffy scales of the composite. In May,
+the bees found in flower only a few deep-set liliaceous plants and eriogonums.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+June, July, August, and September is the season of rest and sleep,&mdash;a
+winter of dry heat,&mdash;followed in October by a second outburst of bloom at
+the very driest time of the year. Then, after the shrunken mass of leaves and
+stalks of the dead vegetation crinkle and turn to dust beneath the foot, as if
+it had been baked in an oven, <i>Hemizonia virgata</i>, a slender, unobtrusive
+little plant, from six inches to three feet high, suddenly makes its appearance
+in patches miles in extent, like a resurrection of the bloom of April. I have
+counted upward of 3000 flowers, five eighths of an inch in diameter, on a
+single plant. Both its leaves and stems are so slender as to be nearly
+invisible, at a distance of a few yards, amid so showy a multitude of flowers.
+The ray and disk flowers are both yellow, the stamens purple, and the texture
+of the rays is rich and velvety, like the petals of garden pansies. The
+prevailing wind turns all the heads round to the southeast, so that in facing
+northwestward we have the flowers looking us in the face. In my estimation,
+this little plant, the last born of the brilliant host of compositae that
+glorify the plain, is the most interesting of all. It remains in flower until
+November, uniting with two or three species of wiry eriogonums, which continue
+the floral chain around December to the spring flowers of January. Thus,
+although the main bloom and honey season is only about three months long, the
+floral circle, however thin around some of the hot, rainless months, is never
+completely broken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How long the various species of wild bees have lived in this honey-garden,
+nobody knows; probably ever since the main body of the present flora gained
+possession of the land, toward the close of the glacial period. The first brown
+honey-bees brought to California are said to have arrived in San Francisco in
+March, 1853. A bee-keeper by the name of Shelton purchased a lot, consisting of
+twelve swarms, from some one at Aspinwall, who had brought them from New York.
+When landed at San Francisco, all the hives contained live bees, but they
+finally dwindled to one hive, which was taken to San José. The little
+immigrants flourished and multiplied in the bountiful pastures of the Santa
+Clara Valley, sending off three swarms the first season. The owner was killed
+shortly afterward, and in settling up his estate, two of the swarms were sold
+at auction for $105 and $110 respectively. Other importations were made, from
+time to time, by way of the Isthmus, and, though great pains were taken to
+insure success, about one half usually died on the way. Four swarms were
+brought safely across the plains in 1859, the hives being placed in the rear
+end of a wagon, which was stopped in the afternoon to allow the bees to fly and
+feed in the floweriest places that were within reach until dark, when the hives
+were closed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In 1855, two years after the time of the first arrivals from New York, a single
+swarm was brought over from San José, and let fly in the Great Central Plain.
+Bee-culture, however, has never gained much attention here, notwithstanding the
+extraordinary abundance of honey-bloom, and the high price of honey during the
+early years. A few hives are found here and there among settlers who chanced to
+have learned something about the business before coming to the State. But
+sheep, cattle, grain, and fruit raising are the chief industries, as they
+require less skill and care, while the profits thus far have been greater. In
+1856 honey sold here at from one and a half to two dollars per pound. Twelve
+years later the price had fallen to twelve and a half cents. In 1868 I sat down
+to dinner with a band of ravenous sheep-shearers at a ranch on the San Joaquin,
+where fifteen or twenty hives were kept, and our host advised us not to spare
+the large pan of honey he had placed on the table, as it was the cheapest
+article he had to offer. In all my walks, however, I have never come upon a
+regular bee-ranch in the Central Valley like those so common and so skilfully
+managed in the southern counties of the State. The few pounds of honey and wax
+produced are consumed at home, and are scarcely taken into account among the
+coarser products of the farm. The swarms that escape from their careless owners
+have a weary, perplexing time of it in seeking suitable homes. Most of them
+make their way to the foot-hills of the mountains, or to the trees that line
+the banks of the rivers, where some hollow log or trunk may be found. A friend
+of mine, while out hunting on the San Joaquin, came upon an old coon trap,
+hidden among some tall grass, near the edge of the river, upon which he sat
+down to rest. Shortly afterward his attention was attracted to a crowd of angry
+bees that were flying excitedly about his head, when he discovered that he was
+sitting upon their hive, which was found to contain more than 200 pounds of
+honey. Out in the broad, swampy delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers,
+the little wanderers have been known to build their combs in a bunch of rushes,
+or stiff, wiry grass, only slightly protected from the weather, and in danger
+every spring of being carried away by floods. They have the advantage, however,
+of a vast extent of fresh pasture, accessible only to themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The present condition of the Grand Central Garden is very different from that
+we have sketched. About twenty years ago, when the gold placers had been pretty
+thoroughly exhausted, the attention of fortune-seekers&mdash;not
+home-seekers&mdash;was, in great part, turned away from the mines to the
+fertile plains, and many began experiments in a kind of restless, wild
+agriculture. A load of lumber would be hauled to some spot on the free
+wilderness, where water could be easily found, and a rude box-cabin built. Then
+a gang-plow was procured, and a dozen mustang ponies, worth ten or fifteen
+dollars apiece, and with these hundreds of acres were stirred as easily as if
+the land had been under cultivation for years, tough, perennial roots being
+almost wholly absent. Thus a ranch was established, and from these bare wooden
+huts, as centers of desolation, the wild flora vanished in ever-widening
+circles. But the arch destroyers are the shepherds, with their flocks of hoofed
+locusts, sweeping over the ground like a fire, and trampling down every rod
+that escapes the plow as completely as if the whole plain were a cottage
+garden-plot without a fence. But notwithstanding these destroyers, a thousand
+swarms of bees may be pastured here for every one now gathering honey. The
+greater portion is still covered every season with a repressed growth of
+bee-flowers, for most of the species are annuals, and many of them are not
+relished by sheep or cattle, while the rapidity of their growth enables them to
+develop and mature their seeds before any foot has time to crush them. The
+ground is, therefore, kept sweet, and the race is perpetuated, though only as a
+suggestive shadow of the magnificence of its wildness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The time will undoubtedly come when the entire area of this noble valley will
+be tilled like a garden, when the fertilizing waters of the mountains, now
+flowing to the sea, will be distributed to every acre, giving rise to
+prosperous towns, wealth, arts, etc. Then, I suppose, there will be few left,
+even among botanists, to deplore the vanished primeval flora. In the mean time,
+the pure waste going on&mdash;the wanton destruction of the innocents&mdash;is
+a sad sight to see, and the sun may well be pitied in being compelled to look
+on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bee-pastures of the Coast Ranges last longer and are more varied than those
+of the great plain, on account of differences of soil and climate, moisture,
+and shade, etc. Some of the mountains are upward of 4000 feet in height, and
+small streams, springs, oozy bogs, etc., occur in great abundance and variety
+in the wooded regions, while open parks, flooded with sunshine, and hill-girt
+valleys lying at different elevations, each with its own peculiar climate and
+exposure, possess the required conditions for the development of species and
+families of plants widely varied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next the plain there is, first, a series of smooth hills, planted with a rich
+and showy vegetation that differs but little from that of the plain
+itself&mdash;as if the edge of the plain had been lifted and bent into flowing
+folds, with all its flowers in place, only toned down a little as to their
+luxuriance, and a few new species introduced, such as the hill lupines, mints,
+and gilias. The colors show finely when thus held to view on the slopes;
+patches of red, purple, blue, yellow, and white, blending around the edges, the
+whole appearing at a little distance like a map colored in sections.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Above this lies the park and chaparral region, with oaks, mostly evergreen,
+planted wide apart, and blooming shrubs from three to ten feet high; manzanita
+and ceanothus of several species, mixed with rhamnus, cercis, pickeringia,
+cherry, amelanchier, and adenostoma, in shaggy, interlocking thickets, and many
+species of hosackia, clover, monardella, castilleia, etc., in the openings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The main ranges send out spurs somewhat parallel to their axes, inclosing level
+valleys, many of them quite extensive, and containing a great profusion of
+sun-loving bee-flowers in their wild state; but these are, in great part,
+already lost to the bees by cultivation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nearer the coast are the giant forests of the redwoods, extending from near the
+Oregon line to Santa Cruz. Beneath the cool, deep shade of these majestic trees
+the ground is occupied by ferns, chiefly woodwardia and aspidiums, with only a
+few flowering plants&mdash;oxalis, trientalis, erythronium, fritillaria,
+smilax, and other shade-lovers. But all along the redwood belt there are sunny
+openings on hill-slopes looking to the south, where the giant trees stand back,
+and give the ground to the small sunflowers and the bees. Around the lofty
+redwood walls of these little bee-acres there is usually a fringe of Chestnut
+Oak, Laurel, and Madroño, the last of which is a surpassingly beautiful tree,
+and a great favorite with the bees. The trunks of the largest specimens are
+seven or eight feet thick, and about fifty feet high; the bark red and
+chocolate colored, the leaves plain, large, and glossy, like those of
+<i>Magnolia grandiflora</i>, while the flowers are yellowish-white, and
+urn-shaped, in well-proportioned panicles, from five to ten inches long. When
+in full bloom, a single tree seems to be visited at times by a whole hive of
+bees at once, and the deep hum of such a multitude makes the listener guess
+that more than the ordinary work of honey-winning must be going on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How perfectly enchanting and care-obliterating are these withdrawn gardens of
+the woods&mdash;long vistas opening to the sea&mdash;sunshine sifting and
+pouring upon the flowery ground in a tremulous, shifting mosaic, as the
+light-ways in the leafy wall open and close with the swaying
+breeze&mdash;shining leaves and flowers, birds and bees, mingling together in
+springtime harmony, and soothing fragrance exhaling from a thousand thousand
+fountains! In these balmy, dissolving days, when the deep heart-beats of Nature
+are felt thrilling rocks and trees and everything alike, common business and
+friends are happily forgotten, and even the natural honey-work of bees, and the
+care of birds for their young, and mothers for their children, seem slightly
+out of place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To the northward, in Humboldt and the adjacent counties, whole hillsides are
+covered with rhododendron, making a glorious melody of bee-bloom in the spring.
+And the Western azalea, hardly less flowery, grows in massy thickets three to
+eight feet high around the edges of groves and woods as far south as San Luis
+Obispo, usually accompanied by manzanita; while the valleys, with their varying
+moisture and shade, yield a rich variety of the smaller honey-flowers, such as
+mentha, lycopus, micromeria, audibertia, trichostema, and other mints; with
+vaccinium, wild strawberry, geranium, calais, and goldenrod; and in the cool
+glens along the stream-banks, where the shade of trees is not too deep,
+spiraea, dog-wood, heteromeles, and calycanthus, and many species of rubus form
+interlacing tangles, some portion of which continues in bloom for months.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though the coast region was the first to be invaded and settled by white men,
+it has suffered less from a bee point of view than either of the other main
+divisions, chiefly, no doubt, because of the unevenness of the surface, and
+because it is owned and protected instead of lying exposed to the flocks of the
+wandering &ldquo;sheepmen.&rdquo; These remarks apply more particularly to the
+north half of the coast. Farther south there is less moisture, less forest
+shade, and the honey flora is less varied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Sierra region is the largest of the three main divisions of the bee-lands
+of the State, and the most regularly varied in its subdivisions, owing to their
+gradual rise from the level of the Central Plain to the alpine summits. The
+foot-hill region is about as dry and sunful, from the end of May until the
+setting in of the winter rains, as the plain. There are no shady forests, no
+damp glens, at all like those lying at the same elevations in the Coast
+Mountains. The social compositae of the plain, with a few added species, form
+the bulk of the herbaceous portion of the vegetation up to a height of 1500
+feet or more, shaded lightly here and there with oaks and Sabine Pines, and
+interrupted by patches of ceanothus and buckeye. Above this, and just below the
+forest region, there is a dark, heath-like belt of chaparral, composed almost
+exclusively of <i>Adenostoma fasciculata</i>, a bush belonging to the rose
+family, from five to eight feet high, with small, round leaves in fascicles,
+and bearing a multitude of small white flowers in panicles on the ends of the
+upper branches. Where it occurs at all, it usually covers all the ground with a
+close, impenetrable growth, scarcely broken for miles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up through the forest region, to a height of about 9000 feet above sea-level,
+there are ragged patches of manzanita, and five or six species of ceanothus,
+called deer-brush or California lilac. These are the most important of all the
+honey-bearing bushes of the Sierra. <i>Chamaebatia foliolosa</i>, a little
+shrub about a foot high, with flowers like the strawberry, makes handsome
+carpets beneath the pines, and seems to be a favorite with the bees; while
+pines themselves furnish unlimited quantities of pollen and honey-dew. The
+product of a single tree, ripening its pollen at the right time of year, would
+be sufficient for the wants of a whole hive. Along the streams there is a rich
+growth of lilies, larkspurs, pedicularis, castilleias, and clover. The alpine
+region contains the flowery glacier meadows, and countless small gardens in all
+sorts of places full of potentilla of several species, spraguea, ivesia,
+epilobium, and goldenrod, with beds of bryanthus and the charming cassiope
+covered with sweet bells. Even the tops of the mountains are blessed with
+flowers,&mdash;dwarf phlox, polemonium, ribes, hulsea, etc. I have seen wild
+bees and butterflies feeding at a height of 13,000 feet above the sea. Many,
+however, that go up these dangerous heights never come down again. Some,
+undoubtedly, perish in storms, and I have found thousands lying dead or
+benumbed on the surface of the glaciers, to which they had perhaps been
+attracted by the white glare, taking them for beds of bloom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From swarms that escaped their owners in the lowlands, the honey-bee is now
+generally distributed throughout the whole length of the Sierra, up to an
+elevation of 8000 feet above sea-level. At this height they flourish without
+care, though the snow every winter is deep. Even higher than this several
+bee-trees have been cut which contained over 200 pounds of honey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The destructive action of sheep has not been so general on the mountain
+pastures as on those of the great plain, but in many places it has been more
+complete, owing to the more friable character of the soil, and its sloping
+position. The slant digging and down-raking action of hoofs on the steeper
+slopes of moraines has uprooted and buried many of the tender plants from year
+to year, without allowing them time to mature their seeds. The shrubs, too, are
+badly bitten, especially the various species of ceanothus. Fortunately, neither
+sheep nor cattle care to feed on the manzanita, spiraea, or adenostoma; and
+these fine honey-bushes are too stiff and tall, or grow in places too rough and
+inaccessible, to be trodden under foot. Also the cañon walls and gorges, which
+form so considerable a part of the area of the range, while inaccessible to
+domestic sheep, are well fringed with honey-shrubs, and contain thousands of
+lovely bee-gardens, lying hid in narrow side-cañons and recesses fenced with
+avalanche taluses, and on the top of flat, projecting headlands, where only
+bees would think to look for them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, on the other hand, a great portion of the woody plants that escape the
+feet and teeth of the sheep are destroyed by the shepherds by means of running
+fires, which are set everywhere during the dry autumn for the purpose of
+burning off the old fallen trunks and underbrush, with a view to improving the
+pastures, and making more open ways for the flocks. These destructive
+sheep-fires sweep through nearly the entire forest belt of the range, from one
+extremity to the other, consuming not only the underbrush, but the young trees
+and seedlings on which the permanence of the forests depends; thus setting in
+motion a long train of evils which will certainly reach far beyond bees and
+beekeepers.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus62"></a>
+<img src="images/img62.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="WILD BEE GARDEN" />
+<p class="caption">WILD BEE GARDEN.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The plow has not yet invaded the forest region to any appreciable extent,
+neither has it accomplished much in the foot-hills. Thousands of bee-ranches
+might be established along the margin of the plain, and up to a height of 4000
+feet, wherever water could be obtained. The climate at this elevation admits of
+the making of permanent homes, and by moving the hives to higher pastures as
+the lower pass out of bloom, the annual yield of honey would be nearly doubled.
+The foot-hill pastures, as we have seen, fail about the end of May, those of
+the chaparral belt and lower forests are in full bloom in June, those of the
+upper and alpine region in July, August, and September. In Scotland, after the
+best of the Lowland bloom is past, the bees are carried in carts to the
+Highlands, and set free on the heather hills. In France, too, and in Poland,
+they are carried from pasture to pasture among orchards and fields in the same
+way, and along the rivers in barges to collect the honey of the delightful
+vegetation of the banks. In Egypt they are taken far up the Nile, and floated
+slowly home again, gathering the honey-harvest of the various fields on the
+way, timing their movements in accord with the seasons. Were similar methods
+pursued in California the productive season would last nearly all the year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The average elevation of the north half of the Sierra is, as we have seen,
+considerably less than that of the south half, and small streams, with the bank
+and meadow gardens dependent upon them, are less abundant. Around the head
+waters of the Yuba, Feather, and Pitt rivers, the extensive tablelands of lava
+are sparsely planted with pines, through which the sunshine reaches the ground
+with little interruption. Here flourishes a scattered, tufted growth of golden
+applopappus, linosyris, bahia, wyetheia, arnica, artemisia, and similar plants;
+with manzanita, cherry, plum, and thorn in ragged patches on the cooler
+hill-slopes. At the extremities of the Great Central Plain, the Sierra and
+Coast Ranges curve around and lock together in a labyrinth of mountains and
+valleys, throughout which their floras are mingled, making at the north, with
+its temperate climate and copious rainfall, a perfect paradise for bees,
+though, strange to say, scarcely a single regular bee-ranch has yet been
+established in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of all the upper flower fields of the Sierra, Shasta is the most honeyful, and
+may yet surpass in fame the celebrated honey hills of Hybla and hearthy
+Hymettus. Regarding this noble mountain from a bee point of view, encircled by
+its many climates, and sweeping aloft from the torrid plain into the frosty
+azure, we find the first 5000 feet from the summit generally snow-clad, and
+therefore about as honeyless as the sea. The base of this arctic region is
+girdled by a belt of crumbling lava measuring about 1000 feet in vertical
+breadth, and is mostly free from snow in summer. Beautiful lichens enliven the
+faces of the cliffs with their bright colors, and in some of the warmer nooks
+there are a few tufts of alpine daisies, wall-flowers and pentstemons; but,
+notwithstanding these bloom freely in the late summer, the zone as a whole is
+almost as honeyless as the icy summit, and its lower edge may be taken as the
+honey-line. Immediately below this comes the forest zone, covered with a rich
+growth of conifers, chiefly Silver Firs, rich in pollen and honey-dew, and
+diversified with countless garden openings, many of them less than a hundred
+yards across. Next, in orderly succession, comes the great bee zone. Its area
+far surpasses that of the icy summit and both the other zones combined, for it
+goes sweeping majestically around the entire mountain, with a breadth of six or
+seven miles and a circumference of nearly a hundred miles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shasta, as we have already seen, is a fire-mountain created by a succession of
+eruptions of ashes and molten lava, which, flowing over the lips of its several
+craters, grew outward and upward like the trunk of a knotty exogenous tree.
+Then followed a strange contrast. The glacial winter came on, loading the
+cooling mountain with ice, which flowed slowly outward in every direction,
+radiating from the summit in the form of one vast conical glacier&mdash;a
+down-crawling mantle of ice upon a fountain of smoldering fire, crushing and
+grinding for centuries its brown, flinty lavas with incessant activity, and
+thus degrading and remodeling the entire mountain. When, at length, the glacial
+period began to draw near its close, the ice-mantle was gradually melted off
+around the bottom, and, in receding and breaking into its present fragmentary
+condition, irregular rings and heaps of moraine matter were stored upon its
+flanks. The glacial erosion of most of the Shasta lavas produces detritus,
+composed of rough, sub-angular boulders of moderate size and of porous gravel
+and sand, which yields freely to the transporting power of running water.
+Magnificent floods from the ample fountains of ice and snow working with
+sublime energy upon this prepared glacial detritus, sorted it out and carried
+down immense quantities from the higher slopes, and reformed it in smooth,
+delta-like beds around the base; and it is these flood-beds joined together
+that now form the main honey-zone of the old volcano.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, has Mother Nature
+accomplished her beneficent designs&mdash;now a flood of fire, now a flood of
+ice, now a flood of water; and at length an outburst of organic life, a milky
+way of snowy petals and wings, girdling the rugged mountain like a cloud, as if
+the vivifying sunbeams beating against its sides had broken into a foam of
+plant-bloom and bees, as sea-waves break and bloom on a rock shore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this flowery wilderness the bees rove and revel, rejoicing in the bounty of
+the sun, clambering eagerly through bramble and hucklebloom, ringing the myriad
+bells of the manzanita, now humming aloft among polleny willows and firs, now
+down on the ashy ground among gilias and buttercups, and anon plunging deep
+into snowy banks of cherry and buckthorn. They consider the lilies and roll
+into them, and, like lilies, they toil not, for they are impelled by sun-power,
+as water-wheels by water-power; and when the one has plenty of high-pressure
+water, the other plenty of sunshine, they hum and quiver alike. Sauntering in
+the Shasta bee-lands in the sun-days of summer, one may readily infer the time
+of day from the comparative energy of bee-movements alone&mdash;drowsy and
+moderate in the cool of the morning, increasing in energy with the ascending
+sun, and, at high noon, thrilling and quivering in wild ecstasy, then gradually
+declining again to the stillness of night. In my excursions among the glaciers
+I occasionally meet bees that are hungry, like mountaineers who venture too far
+and remain too long above the bread-line; then they droop and wither like
+autumn leaves. The Shasta bees are perhaps better fed than any others in the
+Sierra. Their field-work is one perpetual feast; but, however exhilarating the
+sunshine or bountiful the supply of flowers, they are always dainty feeders.
+Humming-moths and hummingbirds seldom set foot upon a flower, but poise on the
+wing in front of it, and reach forward as if they were sucking through straws.
+But bees, though, as dainty as they, hug their favorite flowers with profound
+cordiality, and push their blunt, polleny faces against them, like babies on
+their mother&rsquo;s bosom. And fondly, too, with eternal love, does Mother
+Nature clasp her small bee-babies, and suckle them, multitudes at once, on her
+warm Shasta breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides the common honey-bee there are many other species here&mdash;fine
+mossy, burly fellows, who were nourished on the mountains thousands of sunny
+seasons before the advent of the domestic species. Among these are the
+bumblebees, mason-bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters. Butterflies, too, and
+moths of every size and pattern; some broad-winged like bats, flapping slowly,
+and sailing in easy curves; others like small, flying violets, shaking about
+loosely in short, crooked flights close to the flowers, feasting luxuriously
+night and day. Great numbers of deer also delight to dwell in the brushy
+portions of the bee-pastures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bears, too, roam the sweet wilderness, their blunt, shaggy forms harmonizing
+well with the trees and tangled bushes, and with the bees, also,
+notwithstanding the disparity in size. They are fond of all good things, and
+enjoy them to the utmost, with but little troublesome
+discrimination&mdash;flowers and leaves as well as berries, and the bees
+themselves as well as their honey. Though the California bears have as yet had
+but little experience with honeybees, they often succeed in reaching their
+bountiful stores, and it seems doubtful whether bees themselves enjoy honey
+with so great a relish. By means of their powerful teeth and claws they can
+gnaw and tear open almost any hive conveniently accessible. Most honey-bees,
+however, in search of a home are wise enough to make choice of a hollow in a
+living tree, a considerable distance above the ground, when such places are to
+be had; then they are pretty secure, for though the smaller black and brown
+bears climb well, they are unable to break into strong hives while compelled to
+exert themselves to keep from falling, and at the same time to endure the
+stings of the fighting bees without having their paws free to rub them off. But
+woe to the black bumblebees discovered in their mossy nests in the ground! With
+a few strokes of their huge paws the bears uncover the entire establishment,
+and, before time is given for a general buzz, bees old and young, larvae,
+honey, stings, nest, and all are taken in one ravishing mouthful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not the least influential of the agents concerned in the superior sweetness of
+the Shasta flora are its storms&mdash;storms I mean that are strictly local,
+bred and born on the mountain. The magical rapidity with which they are grown
+on the mountain-top, and bestow their charity in rain and snow, never fails to
+astonish the inexperienced lowlander. Often in calm, glowing days, while the
+bees are still on the wing, a storm-cloud may be seen far above in the pure
+ether, swelling its pearl bosses, and growing silently, like a plant. Presently
+a clear, ringing discharge of thunder is heard, followed by a rush of wind that
+comes sounding over the bending woods like the roar of the ocean, mingling
+raindrops, snow-flowers, honey-flowers, and bees in wild storm harmony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still more impressive are the warm, reviving days of spring in the mountain
+pastures. The blood of the plants throbbing beneath the life-giving sunshine
+seems to be heard and felt. Plant growth goes on before our eyes, and every
+tree in the woods, and every bush and flower is seen as a hive of restless
+industry. The deeps of the sky are mottled with singing wings of every tone and
+color; clouds of brilliant chrysididae dancing and swirling in exquisite
+rhythm, golden-barred vespidae, dragon-flies, butterflies, grating cicadas, and
+jolly, rattling grasshoppers, fairly enameling the light.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus63"></a>
+<img src="images/img63.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.&mdash;WHITE SAGE" />
+<p class="caption">IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.&mdash;WHITE SAGE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+On bright, crisp mornings a striking optical effect may frequently be observed
+from the shadows of the higher mountains while the sunbeams are pouring past
+overhead. Then every insect, no matter what may be its own proper color, burns
+white in the light. Gauzy-winged hymenoptera, moths, jet-black beetles, all are
+transfigured alike in pure, spiritual white, like snowflakes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Southern California, where bee-culture has had so much skilful attention of
+late years, the pasturage is not more abundant, or more advantageously varied
+as to the number of its honey-plants and their distribution over mountain and
+plain, than that of many other portions of the State where the industrial
+currents flow in other channels. The famous White Sage (<i>Audibertia</i>),
+belonging to the mint family, flourishes here in all its glory, blooming in
+May, and yielding great quantities of clear, pale honey, which is greatly
+prized in every market it has yet reached. This species grows chiefly in the
+valleys and low hills. The Black Sage on the mountains is part of a dense,
+thorny chaparral, which is composed chiefly of adenostoma, ceanothus,
+manzanita, and cherry&mdash;not differing greatly from that of the southern
+portion of the Sierra, but more dense and continuous, and taller, and remaining
+longer in bloom. Stream-side gardens, so charming a feature of both the Sierra
+and Coast Mountains, are less numerous in Southern California, but they are
+exceedingly rich in honey-flowers, wherever found,&mdash;melilotus, columbine,
+collinsia, verbena, zauschneria, wild rose, honeysuckle, philadelphus, and
+lilies rising from the warm, moist dells in a very storm of exuberance. Wild
+buckwheat of many species is developed in abundance over the dry, sandy valleys
+and lower slopes of the mountains, toward the end of summer, and is, at this
+time, the main dependence of the bees, reinforced here and there by orange
+groves, alfalfa fields, and small home gardens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The main honey months, in ordinary seasons, are April, May, June, July, and
+August; while the other months are usually flowery enough to yield sufficient
+for the bees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+According to Mr. J.T. Gordon, President of the Los Angeles County
+Bee-keepers&rsquo; Association, the first bees introduced into the county were
+a single hive, which cost $150 in San Francisco, and arrived in September,
+1854.<a href="#linknote-3" name="linknoteref-3"><sup>[1]</sup></a> In April, of
+the following year, this hive sent out two swarms, which were sold for $100
+each. From this small beginning the bees gradually multiplied to about 3000
+swarms in the year 1873. In 1876 it was estimated that there were between
+15,000 and 20,000 hives in the county, producing an annual yield of about 100
+pounds to the hive&mdash;in some exceptional cases, a much greater yield.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In San Diego County, at the beginning of the season of 1878, there were about
+24,000 hives, and the shipments from the one port of San Diego for the same
+year, from July 17 to November 10, were 1071 barrels, 15,544 cases, and nearly
+90 tons. The largest bee-ranches have about a thousand hives, and are carefully
+and skilfully managed, every scientific appliance of merit being brought into
+use. There are few bee-keepers, however, who own half as many as this, or who
+give their undivided attention to the business. Orange culture, at present, is
+heavily overshadowing every other business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A good many of the so-called bee-ranches of Los Angeles and San Diego counties
+are still of the rudest pioneer kind imaginable. A man unsuccessful in
+everything else hears the interesting story of the profits and comforts of
+bee-keeping, and concludes to try it; he buys a few colonies, or gets them,
+from some overstocked ranch on shares, takes them back to the foot of some
+cañon, where the pasturage is fresh, squats on the land, with, or without, the
+permission of the owner, sets up his hives, makes a box-cabin for himself,
+scarcely bigger than a bee-hive, and awaits his fortune.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bees suffer sadly from famine during the dry years which occasionally occur in
+the southern and middle portions of the State. If the rainfall amounts only to
+three or four inches, instead of from twelve to twenty, as in ordinary seasons,
+then sheep and cattle die in thousands, and so do these small, winged cattle,
+unless they are carefully fed, or removed to other pastures. The year 1877 will
+long be remembered as exceptionally rainless and distressing. Scarcely a flower
+bloomed on the dry valleys away from the stream-sides, and not a single
+grain-field depending upon rain was reaped. The seed only sprouted, came up a
+little way, and withered. Horses, cattle, and sheep grew thinner day by day,
+nibbling at bushes and weeds, along the shallowing edges of streams, many of
+which were dried up altogether, for the first time since the settlement of the
+country.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus64"></a>
+<img src="images/img64.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="A BEE-RANCH ON A
+SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE. CARDINAL FLOWER" />
+<p class="caption">A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE. CARDINAL FLOWER.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In the course of a trip I made during the summer of that year through Monterey,
+San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties, the
+deplorable effects of the drought were everywhere visible&mdash;leafless
+fields, dead and dying cattle, dead bees, and half-dead people with dusty,
+doleful faces. Even the birds and squirrels were in distress, though their
+suffering was less painfully apparent than that of the poor cattle. These were
+falling one by one in slow, sure starvation along the banks of the hot,
+sluggish streams, while thousands of buzzards correspondingly fat were sailing
+above them, or standing gorged on the ground beneath the trees, waiting with
+easy faith for fresh carcasses. The quails, prudently considering the hard
+times, abandoned all thought of pairing. They were too poor to marry, and so
+continued in flocks all through the year without attempting to rear young. The
+ground-squirrels, though an exceptionally industrious and enterprising race, as
+every farmer knows, were hard pushed for a living; not a fresh leaf or seed was
+to be found save in the trees, whose bossy masses of dark green foliage
+presented a striking contrast to the ashen baldness of the ground beneath them.
+The squirrels, leaving their accustomed feeding-grounds, betook themselves to
+the leafy oaks to gnaw out the acorn stores of the provident woodpeckers, but
+the latter kept up a vigilant watch upon their movements. I noticed four
+woodpeckers in league against one squirrel, driving the poor fellow out of an
+oak that they claimed. He dodged round the knotty trunk from side to side, as
+nimbly as he could in his famished condition, only to find a sharp bill
+everywhere. But the fate of the bees that year seemed the saddest of all. In
+different portions of Los Angeles and San Diego counties, from one half to
+three fourths of them died of sheer starvation. Not less than 18,000 colonies
+perished in these two counties alone, while in the adjacent counties the
+death-rate was hardly less.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus65"></a>
+<img src="images/img65.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="WILD BUCKWHEAT.&mdash;A BEE RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS" />
+<p class="caption">WILD BUCKWHEAT.&mdash;A BEE RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Even the colonies nearest to the mountains suffered this year, for the smaller
+vegetation on the foot-hills was affected by the drought almost as severely as
+that of the valleys and plains, and even the hardy, deep-rooted chaparral, the
+surest dependence of the bees, bloomed sparingly, while much of it was beyond
+reach. Every swarm could have been saved, however, by promptly supplying them
+with food when their own stores began to fail, and before they became enfeebled
+and discouraged; or by cutting roads back into the mountains, and taking them
+into the heart of the flowery chaparral. The Santa Lucia, San Rafael, San
+Gabriel, San Jacinto, and San Bernardino ranges are almost untouched as yet
+save by the wild bees. Some idea of their resources, and of the advantages and
+disadvantages they offer to bee-keepers, may be formed from an excursion that I
+made into the San Gabriel Range about the beginning of August of &ldquo;the dry
+year.&rdquo; This range, containing most of the characteristic features of the
+other ranges just mentioned, overlooks the Los Angeles vineyards and orange
+groves from the north, and is more rigidly inaccessible in the ordinary meaning
+of the word than any other that I ever attempted to penetrate. The slopes are
+exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot, and they are covered with thorny
+bushes from five to ten feet high. With the exception of little spots not
+visible in general views, the entire surface is covered with them, massed in
+close hedge growth, sweeping gracefully down into every gorge and hollow, and
+swelling over every ridge and summit in shaggy, ungovernable exuberance,
+offering more honey to the acre for half the year than the most crowded
+clover-field. But when beheld from the open San Gabriel Valley, beaten with dry
+sunshine, all that was seen of the range seemed to wear a forbidding aspect.
+From base to summit all seemed gray, barren, silent, its glorious chaparral
+appearing like dry moss creeping over its dull, wrinkled ridges and hollows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Setting out from Pasadena, I reached the foot of the range about sundown; and
+being weary and heated with my walk across the shadeless valley, concluded to
+camp for the night. After resting a few moments, I began to look about among
+the flood-boulders of Eaton Creek for a camp-ground, when I came upon a
+strange, dark-looking man who had been chopping cord-wood. He seemed surprised
+at seeing me, so I sat down with him on the live-oak log he had been cutting,
+and made haste to give a reason for my appearance in his solitude, explaining
+that I was anxious to find out something about the mountains, and meant to make
+my way up Eaton Creek next morning. Then he kindly invited me to camp with him,
+and led me to his little cabin, situated at the foot of the mountains, where a
+small spring oozes out of a bank overgrown with wild-rose bushes. After supper,
+when the daylight was gone, he explained that he was out of candles; so we sat
+in the dark, while he gave me a sketch of his life in a mixture of Spanish and
+English. He was born in Mexico, his father Irish, his mother Spanish. He had
+been a miner, rancher, prospector, hunter, etc., rambling always, and wearing
+his life away in mere waste; but now he was going to settle down. His past
+life, he said, was of &ldquo;no account,&rdquo; but the future was promising.
+He was going to &ldquo;make money and marry a Spanish woman.&rdquo; People mine
+here for water as for gold. He had been running a tunnel into a spur of the
+mountain back of his cabin. &ldquo;My prospect is good,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;and if I chance to strike a good, strong flow, I&rsquo;ll soon be worth
+$5000 or $10,000. For that flat out there,&rdquo; referring to a small,
+irregular patch of bouldery detritus, two or three acres in size, that had been
+deposited by Eaton Creek during some flood season,&mdash;&ldquo;that flat is
+large enough for a nice orange-grove, and the bank behind the cabin will do for
+a vineyard, and after watering my own trees and vines I will have some water
+left to sell to my neighbors below me, down the valley. And then,&rdquo; he
+continued, &ldquo;I can keep bees, and make money that way, too, for the
+mountains above here are just full of honey in the summer-time, and one of my
+neighbors down here says that he will let me have a whole lot of hives, on
+shares, to start with. You see I&rsquo;ve a good thing; I&rsquo;m all right
+now.&rdquo; All this prospective affluence in the sunken, boulder-choked
+flood-bed of a mountain-stream! Leaving the bees out of the count, most
+fortune-seekers would as soon think of settling on the summit of Mount Shasta.
+Next morning, wishing my hopeful entertainer good luck, I set out on my shaggy
+excursion.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus66"></a>
+<img src="images/img66.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT, SPANISH BAYONET" />
+<p class="caption">A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT, SPANISH BAYONET.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+About half an hour&rsquo;s walk above the cabin, I came to &ldquo;The
+Fall,&rdquo; famous throughout the valley settlements as the finest yet
+discovered in the San Gabriel Mountains. It is a charming little thing, with a
+low, sweet voice, singing like a bird, as it pours from a notch in a short
+ledge, some thirty-five or forty feet into a round mirror-pool. The face of the
+cliff back of it, and on both sides, is smoothly covered and embossed with
+mosses, against which the white water shines out in showy relief, like a silver
+instrument in a velvet case. Hither come the San Gabriel lads and lassies, to
+gather ferns and dabble away their hot holidays in the cool water, glad to
+escape from their commonplace palm-gardens and orange-groves. The delicate
+maidenhair grows on fissured rocks within reach of the spray, while
+broad-leaved maples and sycamores cast soft, mellow shade over a rich profusion
+of bee-flowers, growing among boulders in front of the pool&mdash;the fall, the
+flowers, the bees, the ferny rocks, and leafy shade forming a charming little
+poem of wildness, the last of a series extending down the flowery slopes of
+Mount San Antonio through the rugged, foam-beaten bosses of the main Eaton
+Canon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the base of the fall I followed the ridge that forms the western rim of
+the Eaton basin to the summit of one of the principal peaks, which is about
+5000 feet above sea-level. Then, turning eastward, I crossed the middle of the
+basin, forcing a way over its many subordinate ridges and across its eastern
+rim, having to contend almost everywhere with the floweriest and most
+impenetrable growth of honey-bushes I had ever encountered since first my
+mountaineering began. Most of the Shasta chaparral is leafy nearly to the
+ground; here the main stems are naked for three or four feet, and interspiked
+with dead twigs, forming a stiff <i>chevaux de frise</i> through which even the
+bears make their way with difficulty. I was compelled to creep for miles on all
+fours, and in following the bear-trails often found tufts of hair on the bushes
+where they had forced themselves through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For 100 feet or so above the fall the ascent was made possible only by tough
+cushions of club-moss that clung to the rock. Above this the ridge weathers
+away to a thin knife-blade for a few hundred yards, and thence to the summit of
+the range it carries a bristly mane of chaparral. Here and there small openings
+occur on rocky places, commanding fine views across the cultivated valley to
+the ocean. These I found by the tracks were favorite outlooks and
+resting-places for the wild animals&mdash;bears, wolves, foxes, wildcats,
+etc.&mdash;which abound here, and would have to be taken into account in the
+establishment of bee-ranches. In the deepest thickets I found wood-rat
+villages&mdash;groups of huts four to six feet high, built of sticks and leaves
+in rough, tapering piles, like musk-rat cabins. I noticed a good many bees,
+too, most of them wild. The tame honey-bees seemed languid and wing-weary, as
+if they had come all the way up from the flowerless valley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After reaching the summit I had time to make only a hasty survey of the basin,
+now glowing in the sunset gold, before hastening down into one of the tributary
+cañons in search, of water. Emerging from a particularly tedious breadth of
+chaparral, I found myself free and erect in a beautiful park-like grove of
+Mountain Live Oak, where the ground was planted with aspidiums and brier-roses,
+while the glossy foliage made a close canopy overhead, leaving the gray
+dividing trunks bare to show the beauty of their interlacing arches. The bottom
+of the cañon was dry where I first reached it, but a bunch of scarlet mimulus
+indicated water at no great distance, and I soon discovered about a bucketful
+in a hollow of the rock. This, however, was full of dead bees, wasps, beetles,
+and leaves, well steeped and simmered, and would, therefore, require boiling
+and filtering through fresh charcoal before it could be made available. Tracing
+the dry channel about a mile farther down to its junction with a larger
+tributary cañon, I at length discovered a lot of boulder pools, clear as
+crystal, brimming full, and linked together by glistening streamlets just
+strong enough to sing audibly. Flowers in full bloom adorned their margins,
+lilies ten feet high, larkspur, columbines, and luxuriant ferns, leaning and
+overarching in lavish abundance, while a noble old Live Oak spread its rugged
+arms over all. Here I camped, making my bed on smooth cobblestones.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus67"></a>
+<img src="images/img67.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="A BEE-KEEPER&rsquo;S
+CABIN.&mdash;BURRIELIA (ABOVE).&mdash;MADIA (BELOW)" />
+<p class="caption">A BEE-KEEPER&rsquo;S CABIN.&mdash;BURRIELIA (ABOVE).&mdash;MADIA (BELOW).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Next day, in the channel of a tributary that heads on Mount San Antonio, I
+passed about fifteen or twenty gardens like the one in which I
+slept&mdash;lilies in every one of them, in the full pomp of bloom. My third
+camp was made near the middle of the general basin, at the head of a long
+system of cascades from ten to 200 feet high, one following the other in close
+succession down a rocky, inaccessible cañon, making a total descent of nearly
+1700 feet. Above the cascades the main stream passes through a series of open,
+sunny levels, the largest of which are about an acre in size, where the wild
+bees and their companions were feasting on a showy growth of zauschneria,
+painted cups, and monardella; and gray squirrels were busy harvesting the burs
+of the Douglas Spruce, the only conifer I met in the basin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eastern slopes of the basin are in every way similar to those we have
+described, and the same may be said of other portions of the range. From the
+highest summit, far as the eye could reach, the landscape was one vast
+bee-pasture, a rolling wilderness of honey-bloom, scarcely broken by bits of
+forest or the rocky outcrops of hilltops and ridges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Behind the San Bernardino Range lies the wild &ldquo;sage-brush country,&rdquo;
+bounded on the east by the Colorado River, and extending in a general northerly
+direction to Nevada and along the eastern base of the Sierra beyond Mono Lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The greater portion of this immense region, including Owen&rsquo;s Valley,
+Death Valley, and the Sink of the Mohave, the area of which is nearly one fifth
+that of the entire State, is usually regarded as a desert, not because of any
+lack in the soil, but for want of rain, and rivers available for irrigation.
+Very little of it, however, is desert in the eyes of a bee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking now over all the available pastures of California, it appears that the
+business of beekeeping is still in its infancy. Even in the more enterprising
+of the southern counties, where so vigorous a beginning has been made, less
+than a tenth of their honey resources have as yet been developed; while in the
+Great Plain, the Coast Ranges, the Sierra Nevada, and the northern region about
+Mount Shasta, the business can hardly be said to exist at all. What the limits
+of its developments in the future may be, with the advantages of cheaper
+transportation and the invention of better methods in general, it is not easy
+to guess. Nor, on the other hand, are we able to measure the influence on bee
+interests likely to follow the destruction of the forests, now rapidly falling
+before fire and the ax. As to the sheep evil, that can hardly become greater
+than it is at the present day. In short, notwithstanding the wide-spread
+deterioration and destruction of every kind already effected, California, with
+her incomparable climate and flora, is still, as far as I know, the best of all
+the bee-lands of the world.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="linknote-3" id="linknote-3"></a> <a href="#linknoteref-3">[1]</a> 
+Fifteen hives of Italian bees were introduced into Los Angeles County in 1855,
+and in 1876 they had increased to 500. The marked superiority claimed for them
+over the common species is now attracting considerable attention.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10012 ***</div>
+</body>
+
+</html>
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #10012 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10012)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Mountains of California, by John Muir
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Mountains of California
+
+Author: John Muir
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2003 [eBook #10012]
+[Most recently updated: July 15, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Beth Trapaga and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+The Mountains of California
+
+by John Muir
+
+Contents
+
+ I THE SIERRA NEVADA
+ II THE GLACIERS
+ III THE SNOW
+ IV A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA
+ V THE PASSES
+ VI THE GLACIER LAKES
+ VII THE GLACIER MEADOWS
+ VIII THE FORESTS
+ IX THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
+ X A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS
+ XI THE RIVER FLOODS
+ XII SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS
+ XIII THE WATER-OUZEL
+ XIV THE WILD SHEEP
+ XV IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS
+ XVI THE BEE-PASTURES
+
+[Illustration: HOOFED LOCUSTS.]
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ HOOFED LOCUSTS
+ MOUNT TAMALPAIS—NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE
+ MAP OF THE SIERRA NEVADA
+ MOUNT SHASTA
+ MOUNT HOOD
+ MAP OF THE GLACIER COUNTRY
+ MOUNT RAINIER; NORTH PUYALLUP GLACIER FROM EAGLE CLIFF
+ KOLANA ROCK, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY
+ GENERAL GRANT TREE, GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK
+ MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY
+ MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION BOUNDARY
+ RANCHERIA FALLS, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY
+ VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CAÑON
+ LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS
+ THE DEATH OF A LAKE
+ SHADOW LAKE (MERCED LAKE), YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
+ VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY
+ LAKE STARR KING
+ VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST
+ EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA
+ VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST
+ NUT PINE
+ THE GROVE FORM
+ LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN CHARACTER OF WOODS
+ SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE
+ YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES
+ FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE
+ PINUS PONDEROSA
+ SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH
+ INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME
+ FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS
+ VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR
+ SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA GLACIERS
+ SEQUOIA GIGANTEA. VIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK
+ MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAÑON—YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
+ VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
+ JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR
+ STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS
+ STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH
+ GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES
+ A DWARF PINE
+ OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES
+ PATE VALLEY, SHOWING THE OAKS. TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
+ TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE WHEN SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR
+ SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE
+ TRYING THE BOW
+ A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS
+ YELLOW PINE AND LIBOCEDRUS
+ BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY
+ WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING
+ ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL
+ OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT
+ THE OUZEL AT HOME
+ YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-COUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CAÑON
+ SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA
+ HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM
+ HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP
+ CROSSING A CAÑON STREAM
+ WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE
+ INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP
+ A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA
+ WILD BEE GARDEN
+ IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.—WHITE SAGE
+ A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE.—CARDINAL FLOWER
+ WILD BUCKWHEAT.—A BEE-RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS
+ A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT.—SPANISH BAYONET
+ A BEE-KEEPER’S CABIN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+THE SIERRA NEVADA
+
+
+Go where you may within the bounds of California, mountains are ever in
+sight, charming and glorifying every landscape. Yet so simple and
+massive is the topography of the State in general views, that the main
+central portion displays only one valley, and two chains of mountains
+which seem almost perfectly regular in trend and height: the Coast
+Range on the west side, the Sierra Nevada on the east. These two ranges
+coming together in curves on the north and south inclose a magnificent
+basin, with a level floor more than 400 miles long, and from 35 to 60
+miles wide. This is the grand Central Valley of California, the waters
+of which have only one outlet to the sea through the Golden Gate. But
+with this general simplicity of features there is great complexity of
+hidden detail. The Coast Range, rising as a grand green barrier against
+the ocean, from 2000 to 8000 feet high, is composed of innumerable
+forest-crowned spurs, ridges, and rolling hill-waves which inclose a
+multitude of smaller valleys; some looking out through long,
+forest-lined vistas to the sea; others, with but few trees, to the
+Central Valley; while a thousand others yet smaller are embosomed and
+concealed in mild, round-browed hills, each, with its own climate,
+soil, and productions.
+
+Making your way through the mazes of the Coast Range to the summit of
+any of the inner peaks or passes opposite San Francisco, in the clear
+springtime, the grandest and most telling of all California landscapes
+is outspread before you. At your feet lies the great Central Valley
+glowing golden in the sunshine, extending north and south farther than
+the eye can reach, one smooth, flowery, lake-like bed of fertile soil.
+Along its eastern margin rises the mighty Sierra, miles in height,
+reposing like a smooth, cumulous cloud in the sunny sky, and so
+gloriously colored, and so luminous, it seems to be not clothed with
+light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.
+Along the top, and extending a good way down, you see a pale,
+pearl-gray belt of snow; and below it a belt of blue and dark purple,
+marking the extension of the forests; and along the base of the range a
+broad belt of rose-purple and yellow, where lie the minor’s gold-fields
+and the foot-hill gardens. All these colored belts blending smoothly
+make a wall of light ineffably fine, and as beautiful as a rainbow, yet
+firm as adamant.
+
+When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, from the
+summit of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or
+plowed as yet, was one furred, rich sheet of golden compositae, and the
+luminous wall of the mountains shone in all its glory. Then it seemed
+to me the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but
+the Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it,
+rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light,
+seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday
+radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the alpenglow,
+and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of
+irised spray, it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light,
+the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever
+seen.
+
+The Sierra is about 500 miles long, 70 miles wide, and from 7000 to
+nearly 15,000 feet high. In general views no mark of man is visible on
+it, nor anything to suggest the richness of the life it cherishes, or
+the depth and grandeur of its sculpture. None of its magnificent
+forest-crowned ridges rises much above the general level to publish its
+wealth. No great valley or lake is seen, or river, or group of
+well-marked features of any kind, standing out in distinct pictures.
+Even the summit-peaks, so clear and high in the sky, seem comparatively
+smooth and featureless. Nevertheless, glaciers are still at work in the
+shadows of the peaks, and thousands of lakes and meadows shine and
+bloom beneath them, and the whole range is furrowed with cañons to a
+depth of from 2000 to 5000 feet, in which once flowed majestic
+glaciers, and in which now flow and sing a band of beautiful rivers.
+
+Though of such stupendous depth, these famous cañons are not raw,
+gloomy, jagged-walled gorges, savage and inaccessible. With rough
+passages here and there they still make delightful pathways for the
+mountaineer, conducting from the fertile lowlands to the highest icy
+fountains, as a kind of mountain streets full of charming life and
+light, graded and sculptured by the ancient glaciers, and presenting,
+throughout all their courses, a rich variety of novel and attractive
+scenery, the most attractive that has yet been discovered in the
+mountain-ranges of the world.
+
+In many places, especially in the middle region of the western flank of
+the range, the main cañons widen into spacious valleys or parks,
+diversified like artificial landscape-gardens, with charming groves and
+meadows, and thickets of blooming bushes, while the lofty, retiring
+walls, infinitely varied in form and sculpture, are fringed with ferns,
+flowering-plants of many species, oaks, and evergreens, which find
+anchorage on a thousand narrow steps and benches; while the whole is
+enlivened and made glorious with rejoicing streams that come dancing
+and foaming over the sunny brows of the cliffs to join the shining
+river that flows in tranquil beauty down the middle of each one of
+them.
+
+The walls of these park valleys of the Yosemite kind are made up of
+rocks mountains in size, partly separated from each other by narrow
+gorges and side-cañons; and they are so sheer in front, and so
+compactly built together on a level floor, that, comprehensively seen,
+the parks they inclose look like immense halls or temples lighted from
+above. Every rock seems to glow with life. Some lean back in majestic
+repose; others, absolutely sheer, or nearly so, for thousands of feet,
+advance their brows in thoughtful attitudes beyond their companions,
+giving welcome to storms and calms alike, seemingly conscious yet
+heedless of everything going on about them, awful in stern majesty,
+types of permanence, yet associated with beauty of the frailest and
+most fleeting forms; their feet set in pine-groves and gay emerald
+meadows, their brows in the sky; bathed in light, bathed in floods of
+singing water, while snow-clouds, avalanches, and the winds shine and
+surge and wreathe about them as the years go by, as if into these
+mountain mansions Nature had taken pains to gather her choicest
+treasures to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with
+her.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT TAMALPAIS—NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE.]
+
+Here, too, in the middle region of deepest cañons are the grandest
+forest-trees, the Sequoia, king of conifers, the noble Sugar and Yellow
+Pines, Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, and the Silver Firs, each a giant of
+its kind, assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all
+other coniferous forests in the world, both in the number of its
+species and in the size and beauty of its trees. The winds flow in
+melody through their colossal spires, and they are vocal everywhere
+with the songs of birds and running water. Miles of fragrant ceanothus
+and manzanita bushes bloom beneath them, and lily gardens and meadows,
+and damp, ferny glens in endless variety of fragrance and color,
+compelling the admiration of every observer. Sweeping on over ridge and
+valley, these noble trees extend a continuous belt from end to end of
+the range, only slightly interrupted by sheer-walled cañons at
+intervals of about fifteen and twenty miles. Here the great burly brown
+bears delight to roam, harmonizing with the brown boles of the trees
+beneath which they feed. Deer, also, dwell here, and find food and
+shelter in the ceanothus tangles, with a multitude of smaller people.
+Above this region of giants, the trees grow smaller until the utmost
+limit of the timber line is reached on the stormy mountain-slopes at a
+height of from ten to twelve thousand feet above the sea, where the
+Dwarf Pine is so lowly and hard beset by storms and heavy snow, it is
+pressed into flat tangles, over the tops of which we may easily walk.
+Below the main forest belt the trees likewise diminish in size, frost
+and burning drought repressing and blasting alike.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE SIERRA NEVADA]
+
+The rose-purple zone along the base of the range comprehends nearly all
+the famous gold region of California. And here it was that miners from
+every country under the sun assembled in a wild, torrent-like rush to
+seek their fortunes. On the banks of every river, ravine, and gully
+they have left their marks. Every gravel- and boulder-bed has been
+desperately riddled over and over again. But in this region the pick
+and shovel, once wielded with savage enthusiasm, have been laid away,
+and only quartz-mining is now being carried on to any considerable
+extent. The zone in general is made up of low, tawny, waving
+foot-hills, roughened here and there with brush and trees, and
+outcropping masses of slate, colored gray and red with lichens. The
+smaller masses of slate, rising abruptly from the dry, grassy sod in
+leaning slabs, look like ancient tombstones in a deserted
+burying-ground. In early spring, say from February to April, the whole
+of this foot-hill belt is a paradise of bees and flowers. Refreshing
+rains then fall freely, birds are busy building their nests, and the
+sunshine is balmy and delightful. But by the end of May the soil,
+plants, and sky seem to have been baked in an oven. Most of the plants
+crumble to dust beneath the foot, and the ground is full of cracks;
+while the thirsty traveler gazes with eager longing through the burning
+glare to the snowy summits looming like hazy clouds in the distance.
+
+The trees, mostly _Quercus Douglasii_ and _Pinus Sabiniana_, thirty to
+forty feet high, with thin, pale-green foliage, stand far apart and
+cast but little shade. Lizards glide about on the rocks enjoying a
+constitution that no drought can dry, and ants in amazing numbers,
+whose tiny sparks of life seem to burn the brighter with the increasing
+heat, ramble industriously in long trains in search of food. Crows,
+ravens, magpies—friends in distress—gather on the ground beneath the
+best shade-trees, panting with drooping wings and bills wide open,
+scarce a note from any of them during the midday hours. Quails, too,
+seek the shade during the heat of the day about tepid pools in the
+channels of the larger mid-river streams. Rabbits scurry from thicket
+to thicket among the ceanothus bushes, and occasionally a long-eared
+hare is seen cantering gracefully across the wider openings. The nights
+are calm and dewless during the summer, and a thousand voices proclaim
+the abundance of life, notwithstanding the desolating effect of dry
+sunshine on the plants and larger animals. The hylas make a
+delightfully pure and tranquil music after sunset; and coyotes, the
+little, despised dogs of the wilderness, brave, hardy fellows, looking
+like withered wisps of hay, bark in chorus for hours. Mining-towns,
+most of them dead, and a few living ones with bright bits of
+cultivation about them, occur at long intervals along the belt, and
+cottages covered with climbing roses, in the midst of orange and peach
+orchards, and sweet-scented hay-fields in fertile flats where water for
+irrigation may be had. But they are mostly far apart, and make scarce
+any mark in general views.
+
+Every winter the High Sierra and the middle forest region get snow in
+glorious abundance, and even the foot-hills are at times whitened. Then
+all the range looks like a vast beveled wall of purest marble. The
+rough places are then made smooth, the death and decay of the year is
+covered gently and kindly, and the ground seems as clean as the sky.
+And though silent in its flight from the clouds, and when it is taking
+its place on rock, or tree, or grassy meadow, how soon the gentle snow
+finds a voice! Slipping from the heights, gathering in avalanches, it
+booms and roars like thunder, and makes a glorious show as it sweeps
+down the mountain-side, arrayed in long, silken streamers and
+wreathing, swirling films of crystal dust.
+
+The north half of the range is mostly covered with floods of lava, and
+dotted with volcanoes and craters, some of them recent and perfect in
+form, others in various stages of decay. The south half is composed of
+granite nearly from base to summit, while a considerable number of
+peaks, in the middle of the range, are capped with metamorphic slates,
+among which are Mounts Dana and Gibbs to the east of Yosemite Valley.
+Mount Whitney, the culminating point of the range near its southern
+extremity, lifts its helmet-shaped crest to a height of nearly 14,700
+feet. Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a height of
+14,440 feet at the northern extremity, and forms a noble landmark for
+all the surrounding region within a radius of a hundred miles. Residual
+masses of volcanic rocks occur throughout most of the granitic southern
+portion also, and a considerable number of old volcanoes on the flanks,
+especially along the eastern base of the range near Mono Lake and
+southward. But it is only to the northward that the entire range, from
+base to summit, is covered with lava.
+
+From the summit of Mount Whitney only granite is seen. Innumerable
+peaks and spires but little lower than its own storm-beaten crags rise
+in groups like forest-trees, in full view, segregated by cañons of
+tremendous depth and ruggedness. On Shasta nearly every feature in the
+vast view speaks of the old volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in
+Oregon, the icy volcanoes of Mount Pitt and the Three Sisters rise
+above the dark evergreen woods. Southward innumerable smaller craters
+and cones are distributed along the axis of the range and on each
+flank. Of these, Lassen’s Butte is the highest, being nearly 11,000
+feet above sea-level. Miles of its flanks are reeking and bubbling with
+hot springs, many of them so boisterous and sulphurous they seem over
+ready to become spouting geysers like those of the Yellowstone.
+
+The Cinder Cone near marks the most recent volcanic eruption in the
+Sierra. It is a symmetrical truncated cone about 700 feet high, covered
+with gray cinders and ashes, and has a regular unchanged crater on its
+summit, in which a few small Two-leaved Pines are growing. These show
+that the age of the cone is not less than eighty years. It stands
+between two lakes, which a short time ago were one. Before the cone was
+built, a flood of rough vesicular lava was poured into the lake,
+cutting it in two, and, overflowing its banks, the fiery flood advanced
+into the pine-woods, overwhelming the trees in its way, the charred
+ends of some of which may still be seen projecting from beneath the
+snout of the lava-stream where it came to rest. Later still there was
+an eruption of ashes and loose obsidian cinders, probably from the same
+vent, which, besides forming the Cinder Cone, scattered a heavy shower
+over the surrounding woods for miles to a depth of from six inches to
+several feet.
+
+The history of this last Sierra eruption is also preserved in the
+traditions of the Pitt River Indians. They tell of a fearful time of
+darkness, when the sky was black with ashes and smoke that threatened
+every living thing with death, and that when at length the sun appeared
+once more it was red like blood.
+
+Less recent craters in great numbers roughen the adjacent region; some
+of them with lakes in their throats, others overgrown with trees and
+flowers, Nature in these old hearths and firesides having literally
+given beauty for ashes. On the northwest side of Mount Shasta there is
+a subordinate cone about 3000 feet below the summit, which, has been
+active subsequent to the breaking up of the main ice-cap that once
+covered the mountain, as is shown by its comparatively unwasted crater
+and the streams of unglaciated lava radiating from it. The main summit
+is about a mile and a half in diameter, bounded by small crumbling
+peaks and ridges, among which we seek in vain for the outlines of the
+ancient crater.
+
+These ruinous masses, and the deep glacial grooves that flute the sides
+of the mountain, show that it has been considerably lowered and wasted
+by ice; how much we have no sure means of knowing. Just below the
+extreme summit hot sulphurous gases and vapor issue from irregular
+fissures, mixed with spray derived from melting snow, the last feeble
+expression of the mighty force that built the mountain. Not in one
+great convulsion was Shasta given birth. The crags of the summit and
+the sections exposed by the glaciers down the sides display enough of
+its internal framework to prove that comparatively long periods of
+quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which the
+cooling lavas ceased to flow, and became permanent additions to the
+bulk of the growing mountain. With alternate haste and deliberation
+eruption succeeded eruption till the old volcano surpassed even its
+present sublime height.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT SHASTA]
+
+Standing on the icy top of this, the grandest of all the fire-mountains
+of the Sierra, we can hardly fail to look forward to its next eruption.
+Gardens, vineyards, homes have been planted confidingly on the flanks
+of volcanoes which, after remaining steadfast for ages, have suddenly
+blazed into violent action, and poured forth overwhelming floods of
+fire. It is known that more than a thousand years of cool calm have
+intervened between violent eruptions. Like gigantic geysers spouting
+molten rock instead of water, volcanoes work and rest, and we have no
+sure means of knowing whether they are dead when still, or only
+sleeping.
+
+Along the western base of the range a telling series of sedimentary
+rocks containing the early history of the Sierra are now being studied.
+But leaving for the present these first chapters, we see that only a
+very short geological time ago, just before the coming on of that
+winter of winters called the glacial period, a vast deluge of molten
+rocks poured from many a chasm and crater on the flanks and summit of
+the range, filling lake basins and river channels, and obliterating
+nearly every existing feature on the northern portion. At length these
+all-destroying floods ceased to flow. But while the great volcanic
+cones built up along the axis still burned and smoked, the whole Sierra
+passed under the domain of ice and snow. Then over the bald,
+featureless, fire-blackened mountains, glaciers began to crawl,
+covering them from the summits to the sea with a mantle of ice; and
+then with infinite deliberation the work went on of sculpturing the
+range anew. These mighty agents of erosion, halting never through
+unnumbered centuries, crushed and ground the flinty lavas and granites
+beneath their crystal folds, wasting and building until in the fullness
+of time the Sierra was born again, brought to light nearly as we behold
+it today, with glaciers and snow-crushed pines at the top of the range,
+wheat-fields and orange-groves at the foot of it.
+
+This change from icy darkness and death to life and beauty was slow, as
+we count time, and is still going on, north and south, over all the
+world wherever glaciers exist, whether in the form of distinct rivers,
+as in Switzerland, Norway, the mountains of Asia, and the Pacific
+Coast; or in continuous mantling folds, as in portions of Alaska,
+Greenland, Franz-Joseph-Land, Nova Zembla, Spitzbergen, and the lands
+about the South Pole. But in no country, as far as I know, may these
+majestic changes be studied to better advantage than in the plains and
+mountains of California.
+
+Toward the close of the glacial period, when the snow-clouds became
+less fertile and the melting waste of sunshine became greater, the
+lower folds of the ice-sheet in California, discharging fleets of
+icebergs into the sea, began to shallow and recede from the lowlands,
+and then move slowly up the flanks of the Sierra in compliance with the
+changes of climate. The great white mantle on the mountains broke up
+into a series of glaciers more or less distinct and river-like, with
+many tributaries, and these again were melted and divided into still
+smaller glaciers, until now only a few of the smallest residual topmost
+branches of the grand system exist on the cool slopes of the summit
+peaks.
+
+Plants and animals, biding their time, closely followed the retiring
+ice, bestowing quick and joyous animation on the new-born landscapes.
+Pine-trees marched up the sun-warmed moraines in long, hopeful files,
+taking the ground and establishing themselves as soon as it was ready
+for them; brown-spiked sedges fringed the shores of the newborn lakes;
+young rivers roared in the abandoned channels of the glaciers; flowers
+bloomed around the feet of the great burnished domes,—while with quick
+fertility mellow beds of soil, settling and warming, offered food to
+multitudes of Nature’s waiting children, great and small, animals as
+well as plants; mice, squirrels, marmots, deer, bears, elephants, etc.
+The ground burst into bloom with magical rapidity, and the young
+forests into bird-song: life in every form warming and sweetening and
+growing richer as the years passed away over the mighty Sierra so
+lately suggestive of death and consummate desolation only.
+
+It is hard without long and loving study to realize the magnitude of
+the work done on these mountains during the last glacial period by
+glaciers, which are only streams of closely compacted snow-crystals.
+Careful study of the phenomena presented goes to show that the
+pre-glacial condition of the range was comparatively simple: one vast
+wave of stone in which a thousand mountains, domes, cañons, ridges,
+etc., lay concealed. And in the development of these Nature chose for a
+tool not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the
+stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly
+falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea.
+Laboring harmoniously in united strength they crushed and ground and
+wore away the rocks in their march, making vast beds of soil, and at
+the same time developed and fashioned the landscapes into the
+delightful variety of hill and dale and lordly mountain that mortals
+call beauty. Perhaps more than a mile in average depth has the range
+been thus degraded during the last glacial period,—a quantity of
+mechanical work almost inconceivably great. And our admiration must be
+excited again and again as we toil and study and learn that this vast
+job of rockwork, so far-reaching in its influences, was done by agents
+so fragile and small as are these flowers of the mountain clouds.
+Strong only by force of numbers, they carried away entire mountains,
+particle by particle, block by block, and cast them into the sea;
+sculptured, fashioned, modeled all the range, and developed its
+predestined beauty. All these new Sierra landscapes were evidently
+predestined, for the physical structure of the rocks on which the
+features of the scenery depend was acquired while they lay at least a
+mile deep below the pre-glacial surface. And it was while these
+features were taking form in the depths of the range, the particles of
+the rocks marching to their appointed places in the dark with reference
+to the coming beauty, that the particles of icy vapor in the sky
+marching to the same music assembled to bring them to the light. Then,
+after their grand task was done, these bands of snow-flowers, these
+mighty glaciers, were melted and removed as if of no more importance
+than dew destined to last but an hour. Few, however, of Nature’s agents
+have left monuments so noble and enduring as they. The great granite
+domes a mile high, the cañons as deep, the noble peaks, the Yosemite
+valleys, these, and indeed nearly all other features of the Sierra
+scenery, are glacier monuments.
+
+Contemplating the works of these flowers of the sky, one may easily
+fancy them endowed with life: messengers sent down to work in the
+mountain mines on errands of divine love. Silently flying through the
+darkened air, swirling, glinting, to their appointed places, they seem
+to have taken counsel together, saying, “Come, we are feeble; let us
+help one another. We are many, and together we will be strong. Marching
+in close, deep ranks, let us roll away the stones from these mountain
+sepulchers, and set the landscapes free. Let us uncover these
+clustering domes. Here let us carve a lake basin; there, a Yosemite
+Valley; here, a channel for a river with fluted steps and brows for the
+plunge of songful cataracts. Yonder let us spread broad sheets of soil,
+that man and beast may be fed; and here pile trains of boulders for
+pines and giant Sequoias. Here make ground for a meadow; there, for a
+garden and grove, making it smooth and fine for small daisies and
+violets and beds of heathy bryanthus, spicing it well with crystals,
+garnet feldspar, and zircon.” Thus and so on it has oftentimes seemed
+to me sang and planned and labored the hearty snow-flower crusaders;
+and nothing that I can write can possibly exaggerate the grandeur and
+beauty of their work. Like morning mist they have vanished in sunshine,
+all save the few small companies that still linger on the coolest
+mountainsides, and, as residual glaciers, are still busily at work
+completing the last of the lake basins, the last beds of soil, and the
+sculpture of some of the highest peaks.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT HOOD]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE GLACIERS
+
+
+Of the small residual glaciers mentioned in the preceding chapter, I
+have found sixty-five in that portion of the range lying between
+latitude 36° 30′ and 39°. They occur singly or in small groups on the
+north sides of the peaks of the High Sierra, sheltered beneath broad
+frosty shadows, in amphitheaters of their own making, where the snow,
+shooting down from the surrounding heights in avalanches, is most
+abundant. Over two thirds of the entire number lie between latitude 37°
+and 38°, and form the highest fountains of the San Joaquin, Merced,
+Tuolumne, and Owen’s rivers.
+
+The glaciers of Switzerland, like those of the Sierra, are mere wasting
+remnants of mighty ice-floods that once filled the great valleys and
+poured into the sea. So, also, are those of Norway, Asia, and South
+America. Even the grand continuous mantles of ice that still cover
+Greenland, Spitsbergen, Nova Zembla, Franz-Joseph-Land, parts of
+Alaska, and the south polar region are shallowing and shrinking. Every
+glacier in the world is smaller than it once was. All the world is
+growing warmer, or the crop of snow-flowers is diminishing. But in
+contemplating the condition of the glaciers of the world, we must bear
+in mind while trying to account for the changes going on that the same
+sunshine that wastes them builds them. Every glacier records the
+expenditure of an enormous amount of sun-heat in lifting the vapor for
+the snow of which it is made from the ocean to the mountains, as
+Tyndall strikingly shows.
+
+The number of glaciers in the Alps, according to the Schlagintweit
+brothers, is 1100, of which 100 may be regarded as primary, and the
+total area of ice, snow, and _névé_ is estimated at 1177 square miles,
+or an average for each glacier of little more than one square mile. On
+the same authority, the average height above sea-level at which they
+melt is about 7414 feet. The Grindelwald glacier descends below 4000
+feet, and one of the Mont Blanc glaciers reaches nearly as low a point.
+One of the largest of the Himalaya glaciers on the head waters of the
+Ganges does not, according to Captain Hodgson, descend below 12,914
+feet. The largest of the Sierra glaciers on Mount Shasta descends to
+within 9500 feet of the level of the sea, which, as far as I have
+observed, is the lowest point reached by any glacier within the bounds
+of California, the average height of all being not far from 11,000
+feet.
+
+The changes that have taken place in the glacial conditions of the
+Sierra from the time of greatest extension is well illustrated by the
+series of glaciers of every size and form extending along the mountains
+of the coast to Alaska. A general exploration of this instructive
+region shows that to the north of California, through Oregon and
+Washington, groups of active glaciers still exist on all the high
+volcanic cones of the Cascade Range,—Mount Pitt, the Three Sisters,
+Mounts Jefferson, Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier, Baker, and
+others,—some of them of considerable size, though none of them approach
+the sea. Of these mountains Rainier, in Washington, is the highest and
+iciest. Its dome-like summit, between 14,000 and 15,000 feet high, is
+capped with ice, and eight glaciers, seven to twelve miles long,
+radiate from it as a center, and form the sources of the principal
+streams of the State. The lowest-descending of this fine group flows
+through beautiful forests to within 3500 feet of the sea-level, and
+sends forth a river laden with glacier mud and sand. On through British
+Columbia and southeastern Alaska the broad, sustained mountain-chain,
+extending along the coast, is generally glacier-bearing. The upper
+branches of nearly all the main cañons and fiords are occupied by
+glaciers, which gradually increase in size, and descend lower until the
+high region between Mount Fairweather and Mount St. Elias is reached,
+where a considerable number discharge into the waters of the ocean.
+This is preëminently the ice-land of Alaska and of the entire Pacific
+Coast.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE GLACIER COUNTRY]
+
+Northward from here the glaciers gradually diminish in size and
+thickness, and melt at higher levels. In Prince William Sound and
+Cook’s Inlet many fine glaciers are displayed, pouring from the
+surrounding mountains; but to the north of latitude 62° few, if any,
+glaciers remain, the ground being mostly low and the snowfall light.
+Between latitude 56° and 60° there are probably more than 5000
+glaciers, not counting the smallest. Hundreds of the largest size
+descend through the forests to the level of the sea, or near it, though
+as far as my own observations have reached, after a pretty thorough
+examination of the region, not more than twenty-five discharge icebergs
+into the sea. All the long high-walled fiords into which these great
+glaciers of the first class flow are of course crowded with icebergs of
+every conceivable form, which are detached with thundering noise at
+intervals of a few minutes from an imposing ice-wall that is thrust
+forward into deep water. But these Pacific Coast icebergs are small as
+compared with those of Greenland and the Antarctic region, and only a
+few of them escape from the intricate system of channels, with which
+this portion of the coast is fringed, into the open sea. Nearly all of
+them are swashed and drifted by wind and tide back and forth in the
+fiords until finally melted by the ocean water, the sunshine, the warm
+winds, and the copious rains of summer. Only one glacier on the coast,
+observed by Prof. Russell, discharges its bergs directly into the open
+sea, at Icy Cape, opposite Mount St. Elias. The southernmost of the
+glaciers that reach the sea occupies a narrow, picturesque fiord about
+twenty miles to the northwest of the mouth of the Stikeen River, in
+latitude 56° 50′. The fiord is called by the natives “Hutli,” or
+Thunder Bay, from the noise made by the discharge of the icebergs.
+About one degree farther north there are four of these complete
+glaciers, discharging at the heads of the long arms of Holkam Bay. At
+the head of the Tahkoo Inlet, still farther north, there is one; and at
+the head and around the sides of Glacier Bay, trending in a general
+northerly direction from Cross Sound in latitude 58° to 59°, there are
+seven of these complete glaciers pouring bergs into the bay and its
+branches, and keeping up an eternal thundering. The largest of this
+group, the Muir, has upward of 200 tributaries, and a width below the
+confluence of the main tributaries of about twenty-five miles. Between
+the west side of this icy bay and the ocean all the ground, high and
+low, excepting the peaks of the Fairweather Range, is covered with a
+mantle of ice from 1000 to probably 3000 feet thick, which discharges
+by many distinct mouths.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT RAINIER; NORTH PUYALLUP GLACIER FROM EAGLE CLIFF]
+
+This fragmentary ice-sheet, and the immense glaciers about Mount St.
+Elias, together with the multitude of separate river-like glaciers that
+load the slopes of the coast mountains, evidently once formed part of a
+continuous ice-sheet that flowed over all the region hereabouts, and
+only a comparatively short time ago extended as far southward as the
+mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, probably farther. All the islands
+of the Alexander Archipelago, as well as the headlands and promontories
+of the mainland, display telling traces of this great mantle that are
+still fresh and unmistakable. They all have the forms of the greatest
+strength with reference to the action of a vast rigid press of
+oversweeping ice from the north and northwest, and their surfaces have
+a smooth, rounded, overrubbed appearance, generally free from angles.
+The intricate labyrinth of canals, channels, straits, passages, sounds,
+narrows, etc. between the islands, and extending into the mainland, of
+course manifest in their forms and trends and general characteristics
+the same subordination to the grinding action of universal glaciation
+as to their origin, and differ from the islands and banks of the fiords
+only in being portions of the pre-glacial margin of the continent more
+deeply eroded, and therefore covered by the ocean waters which flowed
+into them as the ice was melted out of them. The formation and
+extension of fiords in this manner is still going on, and may be
+witnessed in many places in Glacier Bay, Yakutat Bay, and adjacent
+regions. That the domain of the sea is being extended over the land by
+the wearing away of its shores, is well known, but in these icy regions
+of Alaska, and even as far south as Vancouver Island, the coast rocks
+have been so short a time exposed to wave-action they are but little
+wasted as yet. In these regions the extension of the sea effected by
+its own action in post-glacial time is scarcely appreciable as compared
+with that effected by ice-action.
+
+Traces of the vanished glaciers made during the period of greater
+extension abound on the Sierra as far south as latitude 36°. Even the
+polished rock surfaces, the most evanescent of glacial records, are
+still found in a wonderfully perfect state of preservation on the upper
+half of the middle portion of the range, and form the most striking of
+all the glacial phenomena. They occur in large irregular patches in the
+summit and middle regions, and though they have been subjected to the
+action of the weather with its corroding storms for thousands of years,
+their mechanical excellence is such that they still reflect the
+sunbeams like glass, and attract the attention of every observer. The
+attention of the mountaineer is seldom arrested by moraines, however
+regular and high they may be, or by cañons, however deep, or by rocks,
+however noble in form and sculpture; but he stoops and rubs his hands
+admiringly on the shining surfaces and trios hard to account for their
+mysterious smoothness. He has seen the snow descending in avalanches,
+but concludes this cannot be the work of snow, for he finds it where no
+avalanches occur. Nor can water have done it, for he sees this
+smoothness glowing on the sides and tops of the highest domes. Only the
+winds of all the agents he knows seem capable of flowing in the
+directions indicated by the scoring. Indians, usually so little curious
+about geological phenomena, have come to me occasionally and asked me,
+“What makeum the ground so smooth at Lake Tenaya?” Even horses and dogs
+gaze wonderingly at the strange brightness of the ground, and smell the
+polished spaces and place their feet cautiously on them when they come
+to them for the first time, as if afraid of sinking. The most perfect
+of the polished pavements and walls lie at an elevation of from 7000 to
+9000 feet above the sea, where the rock is compact silicious granite.
+Small dim patches may be found as low as 3000 feet on the driest and
+most enduring portions of sheer walls with a southern exposure, and on
+compact swelling bosses partially protected from rain by a covering of
+large boulders. On the north half of the range the striated and
+polished surfaces are less common, not only because this part of the
+chain is lower, but because the surface rocks are chiefly porous lavas
+subject to comparatively rapid waste. The ancient moraines also, though
+well preserved on most of the south half of the range, are nearly
+obliterated to the northward, but then material is found scattered and
+disintegrated.
+
+A similar blurred condition of the superficial records of glacial
+action obtains throughout most of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia,
+and Alaska, due in great part to the action of excessive moisture. Even
+in southeastern Alaska, where the most extensive glaciers on the
+continent are, the more evanescent of the traces of their former
+greater extension, though comparatively recent, are more obscure than
+those of the ancient California glaciers whore the climate is drier and
+the rocks more resisting.
+
+These general views of the glaciers of the Pacific Coast will enable my
+readers to see something of the changes that have taken place in
+California, and will throw light on the residual glaciers of the High
+Sierra.
+
+Prior to the autumn of 1871 the glaciers of the Sierra were unknown. In
+October of that year I discovered the Black Mountain Glacier in a
+shadowy amphitheater between Black and Rod Mountains, two of the peaks
+of the Merced group. This group is the highest portion of a spur that
+straggles out from the main axis of the range in the direction of
+Yosemite Valley. At the time of this interesting discovery I was
+exploring the _névé_ amphitheaters of the group, and tracing the
+courses of the ancient glaciers that once poured from its ample
+fountains through the Illilouette Basin and the Yosemite Valley, not
+expecting to find any active glaciers so far south in the land of
+sunshine.
+
+Beginning on the northwestern extremity of the group, I explored the
+chief tributary basins in succession, their moraines, roches
+moutonnées, and splendid glacier pavements, taking them in regular
+succession without any reference to the time consumed in their study.
+The monuments of the tributary that poured its ice from between Red and
+Black Mountains I found to be the most interesting of them all; and
+when I saw its magnificent moraines extending in majestic curves from
+the spacious amphitheater between the mountains, I was exhilarated with
+the work that lay before me. It was one of the golden days of the
+Sierra Indian summer, when the rich sunshine glorifies every landscape
+however rocky and cold, and suggests anything rather than glaciers. The
+path of the vanished glacier was warm now, and shone in many places as
+if washed with silver. The tall pines growing on the moraines stood
+transfigured in the glowing light, the poplar groves on the levels of
+the basin were masses of orange-yellow, and the late-blooming
+goldenrods added gold to gold. Pushing on over my rosy glacial highway,
+I passed lake after lake set in solid basins of granite, and many a
+thicket and meadow watered by a stream that issues from the
+amphitheater and links the lakes together; now wading through plushy
+bogs knee-deep in yellow and purple sphagnum; now passing over bare
+rock. The main lateral moraines that bounded the view on either hand
+are from 100 to nearly 200 feet high, and about as regular as
+artificial embankments, and covered with a superb growth of Silver Fir
+and Pine. But this garden and forest luxuriance was speedily left
+behind. The trees were dwarfed as I ascended; patches of the alpine
+bryanthus and cassiope began to appear, and arctic willows pressed into
+flat carpets by the winter snow. The lakelets, which a few miles down
+the valley were so richly embroidered with flowery meadows, had here,
+at an elevation of 10,000 feet, only small brown mats of carex, leaving
+bare rocks around more than half their shores. Yet amid this alpine
+suppression the Mountain Pine bravely tossed his storm-beaten branches
+on the ledges and buttresses of Red Mountain, some specimens being over
+100 feet high, and 24 feet in circumference, seemingly as fresh and
+vigorous as the giants of the lower zones.
+
+Evening came on just as I got fairly within the portal of the main
+amphitheater. It is about a mile wide, and a little less than two miles
+long. The crumbling spurs and battlements of Red Mountain bound it on
+the north, the somber, rudely sculptured precipices of Black Mountain
+on the south, and a hacked, splintery _col_, curving around from
+mountain to mountain, shuts it in on the east.
+
+I chose a camping-ground on the brink of one of the lakes where a
+thicket of Hemlock Spruce sheltered me from the night wind. Then, after
+making a tin-cupful of tea, I sat by my camp-fire reflecting on the
+grandeur and significance of the glacial records I had seen. As the
+night advanced the mighty rock walls of my mountain mansion seemed to
+come nearer, while the starry sky in glorious brightness stretched
+across like a ceiling from wall to wall, and fitted closely down into
+all the spiky irregularities of the summits. Then, after a long
+fireside rest and a glance at my note-book, I cut a few leafy branches
+for a bed, and fell into the clear, death-like sleep of the tired
+mountaineer.
+
+Early next morning I set out to trace the grand old glacier that had
+done so much for the beauty of the Yosemite region back to its farthest
+fountains, enjoying the charm that every explorer feels in Nature’s
+untrodden wildernesses. The voices of the mountains were still asleep.
+The wind scarce stirred the pine-needles. The sun was up, but it was
+yet too cold for the birds and the few burrowing animals that dwell
+here. Only the stream, cascading from pool to pool, seemed to be wholly
+awake. Yet the spirit of the opening day called to action. The sunbeams
+came streaming gloriously through the jagged openings of the _col_,
+glancing on the burnished pavements and lighting the silvery lakes,
+while every sun-touched rock burned white on its edges like melting
+iron in a furnace. Passing round the north shore of my camp lake I
+followed the central stream past many cascades from lakelet to lakelet.
+The scenery became more rigidly arctic, the Dwarf Pines and Hemlocks
+disappeared, and the stream was bordered with icicles. As the sun rose
+higher rocks were loosened on shattered portions of the cliffs, and
+came down in rattling avalanches, echoing wildly from crag to crag.
+
+The main lateral moraines that extend from the jaws of the amphitheater
+into the Illilouette Basin are continued in straggling masses along the
+walls of the amphitheater, while separate boulders, hundreds of tons in
+weight, are left stranded here and there out in the middle of the
+channel. Here, also, I observed a series of small terminal moraines
+ranged along the south wall of the amphitheater, corresponding in size
+and form with the shadows cast by the highest portions. The meaning of
+this correspondence between moraines and shadows was afterward made
+plain. Tracing the stream back to the last of its chain of lakelets, I
+noticed a deposit of fine gray mud on the bottom except where the force
+of the entering current had prevented its settling. It looked like the
+mud worn from a grindstone, and I at once suspected its glacial origin,
+for the stream that was carrying it came gurgling out of the base of a
+raw moraine that seemed in process of formation. Not a plant or
+weather-stain was visible on its rough, unsettled surface. It is from
+60 to over 100 feet high, and plunges forward at an angle of 38°.
+Cautiously picking my way, I gained the top of the moraine and was
+delighted to see a small but well characterized glacier swooping down
+from the gloomy precipices of Black Mountain in a finely graduated
+curve to the moraine on which I stood. The compact ice appeared on all
+the lower portions of the glacier, though gray with dirt and stones
+embedded in it. Farther up the ice disappeared beneath coarse
+granulated snow. The surface of the glacier was further characterized
+by dirt bands and the outcropping edges of the blue veins, showing the
+laminated structure of the ice. The uppermost crevasse, or
+“bergschrund,” where the _névé_ was attached to the mountain, was from
+12 to 14 feet wide, and was bridged in a few places by the remains of
+snow avalanches. Creeping along the edge of the schrund, holding on
+with benumbed fingers, I discovered clear sections where the bedded
+structure was beautifully revealed. The surface snow, though sprinkled
+with stones shot down from the cliffs, was in some places almost pure,
+gradually becoming crystalline and changing to whitish porous ice of
+different shades of color, and this again changing at a depth of 20 or
+30 feet to blue ice, some of the ribbon-like bands of which were nearly
+pure, and blended with the paler bands in the most gradual and delicate
+manner imaginable. A series of rugged zigzags enabled me to make my way
+down into the weird under-world of the crevasse. Its chambered hollows
+were hung with a multitude of clustered icicles, amid which pale,
+subdued light pulsed and shimmered with indescribable loveliness. Water
+dripped and tinkled overhead, and from far below came strange, solemn
+murmurings from currents that were feeling their way through veins and
+fissures in the dark. The chambers of a glacier are perfectly
+enchanting, notwithstanding one feels out of place in their frosty
+beauty. I was soon cold in my shirt-sleeves, and the leaning wall
+threatened to engulf me; yet it was hard to leave the delicious music
+of the water and the lovely light. Coming again to the surface, I
+noticed boulders of every size on their journeys to the terminal
+moraine—journeys of more than a hundred years, without a single stop,
+night or day, winter or summer.
+
+The sun gave birth to a network of sweet-voiced rills that ran
+gracefully down the glacier, curling and swirling in their shining
+channels, and cutting clear sections through the porous surface-ice
+into the solid blue, where the structure of the glacier was beautifully
+illustrated.
+
+The series of small terminal moraines which I had observed in the
+morning, along the south wall of the amphitheater, correspond in every
+way with the moraine of this glacier, and their distribution with
+reference to shadows was now understood. When the climatic changes came
+on that caused the melting and retreat of the main glacier that filled
+the amphitheater, a series of residual glaciers were left in the cliff
+shadows, under the protection of which they lingered, until they formed
+the moraines we are studying. Then, as the snow became still less
+abundant, all of them vanished in succession, except the one just
+described; and the cause of its longer life is sufficiently apparent in
+the greater area of snow-basin it drains, and its more perfect
+protection from wasting sunshine. How much longer this little glacier
+will last depends, of course, on the amount of snow it receives from
+year to year, as compared with melting waste.
+
+After this discovery, I made excursions over all the High Sierra,
+pushing my explorations summer after summer, and discovered that what
+at first sight in the distance looked like extensive snow-fields, wore
+in great part glaciers, busily at work completing the sculpture of the
+summit-peaks so grandly blocked out by their giant predecessors.
+
+On August 21, I set a series of stakes in the Maclure Glacier, near
+Mount Lyell, and found its rate of motion to be little more than an
+inch a day in the middle, showing a great contrast to the Muir Glacier
+in Alaska, which, near the front, flows at a rate of from five to ten
+feet in twenty-four hours. Mount Shasta has three glaciers, but Mount
+Whitney, although it is the highest mountain in the range, does not now
+cherish a single glacier. Small patches of lasting snow and ice occur
+on its northern slopes, but they are shallow, and present no well
+marked evidence of glacial motion. Its sides, however, are scored and
+polished in many places by the action of its ancient glaciers that
+flowed east and west as tributaries of the great glaciers that once
+filled the valleys of the Kern and Owen’s rivers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+THE SNOW
+
+
+The first snow that whitens the Sierra, usually falls about the end of
+October or early in November, to a depth of a few inches, after months
+of the most charming Indian summer weather imaginable. But in a few
+days, this light covering mostly melts from the slopes exposed to the
+sun and causes but little apprehension on the part of mountaineers who
+may be lingering among the high peaks at this time. The first general
+winter storm that yields snow that is to form a lasting portion of the
+season’s supply, seldom breaks on the mountains before the end of
+November. Then, warned by the sky, cautions mountaineers, together with
+the wild sheep, deer, and most of the birds and bears, make haste to
+the lowlands or foot-hills; and burrowing marmots, mountain beavers,
+wood-rats, and such people go into winter quarters, some of them not
+again to see the light of day until the general awakening and
+resurrection of the spring in June or July. The first heavy fall is
+usually from about two to four feet in depth. Then, with intervals of
+splendid sunshine, storm succeeds storm, heaping snow on snow, until
+thirty to fifty feet has fallen. But on account of its settling and
+compacting, and the almost constant waste from melting and evaporation,
+the average depth actually found at any time seldom exceeds ten feet in
+the forest region, or fifteen feet along the slopes of the summit
+peaks.
+
+Even during the coldest weather evaporation never wholly ceases, and
+the sunshine that abounds between the storms is sufficiently powerful
+to melt the surface more or less through all the winter months. Waste
+from melting also goes on to some extent on the bottom from heat stored
+up in the rocks, and given off slowly to the snow in contact with them,
+as is shown by the rising of the streams on all the higher regions
+after the first snowfall, and their steady sustained flow all winter.
+
+The greater portion of the snow deposited around the lofty summits of
+the range falls in small crisp flakes and broken crystals, or, when
+accompanied by strong winds and low temperature, the crystals, instead
+of being locked together in their fall to form tufted flakes, are
+beaten and broken into meal and fine dust. But down in the forest
+region the greater portion comes gently to the ground, light and
+feathery, some of the flakes in mild weather being nearly an inch in
+diameter, and it is evenly distributed and kept from drifting to any
+great extent by the shelter afforded by the large trees. Every tree
+during the progress of gentle storms is loaded with, fairy bloom at the
+coldest and darkest time of year, bending the branches, and hushing
+every singing needle. But as soon as the storm is over, and the sun
+shines, the snow at once begins to shift and settle and fall from the
+branches in miniature avalanches, and the white forest soon becomes
+green again. The snow on the ground also settles and thaws every bright
+day, and freezes at night, until it becomes coarsely granulated, and
+loses every trace of its rayed crystalline structure, and then a man
+may walk firmly over its frozen surface as if on ice. The forest region
+up to an elevation of 7000 feet is usually in great part free from snow
+in June, but at this time the higher regions are still heavy-laden, and
+are not touched by spring weather to any considerable extent before the
+middle or end of July.
+
+One of the most striking effects of the snow on the mountains is the
+burial of the rivers and small lakes.
+
+As the snow fa’s in the river
+A moment white, then lost forever,
+
+
+sang Burns, in illustrating the fleeting character of human pleasure.
+The first snowflakes that fall into the Sierra rivers vanish thus
+suddenly; but in great storms, when the temperature is low, the
+abundance of the snow at length chills the water nearly to the
+freezing-point, and then, of course, it ceases to melt and consume the
+snow so suddenly. The falling flakes and crystals form, cloud-like
+masses of blue sludge, which are swept forward with the current and
+carried down to warmer climates many miles distant, while some are
+lodged against logs and rocks and projecting points of the banks, and
+last for days, piled high above the level of the water, and show white
+again, instead of being at once “lost forever,” while the rivers
+themselves are at length lost for months during the snowy period. The
+snow is first built out from the banks in bossy, over-curling drifts,
+compacting and cementing until the streams are spanned. They then flow
+in the dark beneath a continuous covering across the snowy zone, which
+is about thirty miles wide. All the Sierra rivers and their tributaries
+in these high regions are thus lost every winter, as if another glacial
+period had come on. Not a drop of running water is to be seen excepting
+at a few points where large falls occur, though the rush and rumble of
+the heavier currents may still be heard. Toward spring, when the
+weather is warm during the day and frosty at night, repeated thawing
+and freezing and new layers of snow render the bridging-masses dense
+and firm, so that one may safely walk across the streams, or even lead
+a horse across them without danger of falling through. In June the
+thinnest parts of the winter ceiling, and those most exposed to
+sunshine, begin to give way, forming dark, rugged-edged, pit-like
+sinks, at the bottom of which the rushing water may be seen. At the end
+of June only here and there may the mountaineer find a secure
+snow-bridge. The most lasting of the winter bridges, thawing from below
+as well as from above, because of warm currents of air passing through
+the tunnels, are strikingly arched and sculptured; and by the
+occasional freezing of the oozing, dripping water of the ceiling they
+become brightly and picturesquely icy. In some of the reaches, where
+there is a free margin, we may walk through them. Small skylights
+appearing here and there, these tunnels are not very dark. The roaring
+river fills all the arching way with impressively loud reverberating
+music, which is sweetened at times by the ouzel, a bird that is not
+afraid to go wherever a stream may go, and to sing wherever a stream
+sings.
+
+All the small alpine pools and lakelets are in like manner obliterated
+from the winter landscapes, either by being first frozen and then
+covered by snow, or by being filled in by avalanches. The first
+avalanche of the season shot into a lake basin may perhaps find the
+surface frozen. Then there is a grand crashing of breaking ice and
+dashing of waves mingled with the low, deep booming of the avalanche.
+Detached masses of the invading snow, mixed with fragments of ice,
+drift about in sludgy, island-like heaps, while the main body of it
+forms a talus with its base wholly or in part resting on the bottom of
+the basin, as controlled by its depth and the size of the avalanche.
+The next avalanche, of course, encroaches still farther, and so on with
+each in succession until the entire basin may be filled and its water
+sponged up or displaced. This huge mass of sludge, more or less mixed
+with sand, stones, and perhaps timber, is frozen to a considerable
+depth, and much sun-heat is required to thaw it. Some of these
+unfortunate lakelets are not clear of ice and snow until near the end
+of summer. Others are never quite free, opening only on the side
+opposite the entrance of the avalanches. Some show only a narrow
+crescent of water lying between the shore and sheer bluffs of icy
+compacted snow, masses of which breaking off float in front like
+icebergs in a miniature Arctic Ocean, while the avalanche heaps leaning
+back against the mountains look like small glaciers. The frontal cliffs
+are in some instances quite picturesque, and with the berg-dotted
+waters in front of them lighted with sunshine are exceedingly
+beautiful. It often happens that while one side of a lake basin is
+hopelessly snow-buried and frozen, the other, enjoying sunshine, is
+adorned with beautiful flower-gardens. Some of the smaller lakes are
+extinguished in an instant by a heavy avalanche either of rocks or
+snow. The rolling, sliding, ponderous mass entering on one side sweeps
+across the bottom and up the opposite side, displacing the water and
+even scraping the basin clean, and shoving the accumulated rocks and
+sediments up the farther bank and taking full possession. The dislodged
+water is in part absorbed, but most of it is sent around the front of
+the avalanche and down the channel of the outlet, roaring and hurrying
+as if frightened and glad to escape.
+
+SNOW-BANNERS
+
+The most magnificent storm phenomenon I ever saw, surpassing in showy
+grandeur the most imposing effects of clouds, floods, or avalanches,
+was the peaks of the High Sierra, back of Yosemite Valley, decorated
+with snow-banners. Many of the starry snow-flowers, out of which these
+banners are made, fall before they are ripe, while most of those that
+do attain perfect development as six-rayed crystals glint and chafe
+against one another in their fall through the frosty air, and are
+broken into fragments. This dry fragmentary snow is still further
+prepared for the formation of banners by the action of the wind. For,
+instead of finding rest at once, like the snow which falls into the
+tranquil depths of the forests, it is rolled over and over, beaten
+against rock-ridges, and swirled in pits and hollows, like boulders,
+pebbles, and sand in the pot-holes of a river, until finally the
+delicate angles of the crystals are worn off, and the whole mass is
+reduced to dust. And whenever storm-winds find this prepared snow-dust
+in a loose condition on exposed slopes, where there is a free upward
+sweep to leeward, it is tossed back into the sky, and borne onward from
+peak to peak in the form of banners or cloudy drifts, according to the
+velocity of the wind and the conformation of the slopes up or around
+which it is driven. While thus flying through the air, a small portion
+makes good its escape, and remains in the sky as vapor. But far the
+greater part, after being driven into the sky again and again, is at
+length locked fast in bossy drifts, or in the wombs of glaciers, some
+of it to remain silent and rigid for centuries before it is finally
+melted and sent singing down the mountainsides to the sea.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding the abundance of winter snow-dust in the
+mountains, and the frequency of high winds, and the length of time the
+dust remains loose and exposed to their action, the occurrence of
+well-formed banners is, for causes we shall hereafter note,
+comparatively rare. I have seen only one display of this kind that
+seemed in every way perfect. This was in the winter of 1873, when the
+snow-laden summits were swept by a wild “norther.” I happened at the
+time to be wintering in Yosemite Valley, that sublime Sierra temple
+where every day one may see the grandest sights. Yet even here the wild
+gala-day of the north wind seemed surpassingly glorious. I was awakened
+in the morning by the rocking of my cabin and the beating of pine-burs
+on the roof. Detached torrents and avalanches from the main wind-flood
+overhead were rushing wildly down the narrow side cañons, and over the
+precipitous walls, with loud resounding roar, rousing the pines to
+enthusiastic action, and making the whole valley vibrate as though it
+were an instrument being played.
+
+But afar on the lofty exposed peaks of the range standing so high in
+the sky, the storm was expressing itself in still grander characters,
+which I was soon to see in all their glory. I had long been anxious to
+study some points in the structure of the ice-cone that is formed every
+winter at the foot of the upper Yosemite fall, but the blinding spray
+by which it is invested had hitherto prevented me from making a
+sufficiently near approach. This morning the entire body of the fall
+was torn into gauzy shreds, and blown horizontally along the face of
+the cliff, leaving the cone dry; and while making my way to the top of
+an overlooking ledge to seize so favorable an opportunity to examine
+the interior of the cone, the peaks of the Merced group came in sight
+over the shoulder of the South Dome, each waving a resplendent banner
+against the blue sky, as regular in form, and as firm in texture, as if
+woven of fine silk. So rare and splendid a phenomenon, of course,
+overbore all other considerations, and I at once let the ice-cone go,
+and began to force my way out of the valley to some dome or ridge
+sufficiently lofty to command a general view of the main summits,
+feeling assured that I should find them bannered still more gloriously;
+nor was I in the least disappointed. Indian Cañon, through which I
+climbed, was choked with snow that had been shot down in avalanches
+from the high cliffs on either side, rendering the ascent difficult;
+but inspired by the roaring storm, the tedious wallowing brought no
+fatigue, and in four hours I gained the top of a ridge above the
+valley, 8000 feet high. And there in bold relief, like a clear
+painting, appeared a most imposing scene. Innumerable peaks, black and
+sharp, rose grandly into the dark blue sky, their bases set in solid
+white, their sides streaked and splashed with snow, like ocean rocks
+with foam; and from every summit, all free and unconfused, was
+streaming a beautiful silky silvery banner, from half a mile to a mile
+in length, slender at the point of attachment, then widening gradually
+as it extended from the peak until it was about 1000 or 1500 feet in
+breadth, as near as I could estimate. The cluster of peaks called the
+“Crown of the Sierra,” at the head of the Merced and Tuolumne
+rivers,—Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Conness, Lyell, Maclure, Ritter, with their
+nameless compeers,—each had its own refulgent banner, waving with a
+clearly visible motion in the sunglow, and there was not a single cloud
+in the sky to mar their simple grandeur. Fancy yourself standing on
+this Yosemite ridge looking eastward. You notice a strange garish
+glitter in the air. The gale drives wildly overhead with a fierce,
+tempestuous roar, but its violence is not felt, for you are looking
+through a sheltered opening in the woods as through a window. There, in
+the immediate foreground of your picture, rises a majestic forest of
+Silver Fir blooming in eternal freshness, the foliage yellow-green, and
+the snow beneath the trees strewn with their beautiful plumes, plucked
+off by the wind. Beyond, and extending over all the middle ground, are
+somber swaths of pine, interrupted by huge swelling ridges and domes;
+and just beyond the dark forest you see the monarchs of the High Sierra
+waving their magnificent banners. They are twenty miles away, but you
+would not wish them nearer, for every feature is distinct, and the
+whole glorious show is seen in its right proportions. After this
+general view, mark how sharply the dark snowless ribs and buttresses
+and summits of the peaks are defined, excepting the portions veiled by
+the banners, and how delicately their sides are streaked with snow,
+where it has come to rest in narrow flutings and gorges. Mark, too, how
+grandly the banners wave as the wind is deflected against their sides,
+and how trimly each is attached to the very summit of its peak, like a
+streamer at a masthead; how smooth and silky they are in texture, and
+how finely their fading fringes are penciled on the azure sky. See how
+dense and opaque they are at the point of attachment, and how filmy and
+translucent toward the end, so that the peaks back of them are seen
+dimly, as though you were looking through ground glass. Yet again
+observe how some of the longest, belonging to the loftiest summits,
+stream perfectly free all the way across intervening notches and passes
+from peak to peak, while others overlap and partly hide each other. And
+consider how keenly every particle of this wondrous cloth of snow is
+flashing out jets of light. These are the main features of the
+beautiful and terrible picture as seen from the forest window; and it
+would still be surpassingly glorious were the fore- and middle-grounds
+obliterated altogether, leaving only the black peaks, the white
+banners, and the blue sky.
+
+[Illustration: KOLANA ROCK, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY]
+
+Glancing now in a general way at the formation of snow-banners, we find
+that the main causes of the wondrous beauty and perfection of those we
+have been contemplating were the favorable direction and great force of
+the wind, the abundance of snow-dust, and the peculiar conformation of
+the slopes of the peaks. It is essential not only that the wind should
+move with great velocity and steadiness to supply a sufficiently
+copious and continuous stream of snow-dust, but that it should come
+from the north. No perfect banner is ever hung on the Sierra peaks by a
+south wind. Had the gale that day blown from the south, leaving other
+conditions unchanged, only a dull, confused, fog-like drift would have
+been produced; for the snow, instead of being spouted up over the tops
+of the peaks in concentrated currents to be drawn out as streamers,
+would have been shed off around the sides, and piled down into the
+glacier wombs. The cause of the concentrated action of the north wind
+is found in the peculiar form of the north sides of the peaks, where
+the amphitheaters of the residual glaciers are. In general the south
+sides are convex and irregular, while the north sides are concave both
+in their vertical and horizontal sections; the wind in ascending these
+curves converges toward the summits, carrying the snow in concentrating
+currents with it, shooting it almost straight up into the air above the
+peaks, from which it is then carried away in a horizontal direction.
+
+This difference in form between the north and south sides of the peaks
+was almost wholly produced by the difference in the kind and quantity
+of the glaciation to which they have been subjected, the north sides
+having been hollowed by residual shadow-glaciers of a form that never
+existed on the sun-beaten sides.
+
+It appears, therefore, that shadows in great part determine not only
+the forms of lofty icy mountains, but also those of the snow-banners
+that the wild winds hang on them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA
+
+
+Early one bright morning in the middle of Indian summer, while the
+glacier meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from
+the foot of Mount Lyell, on my way down to Yosemite Valley, to
+replenish my exhausted store of bread and tea. I had spent the past
+summer, as many preceding ones, exploring the glaciers that lie on the
+head waters of the San Joaquin, Tuolumne, Merced, and Owen’s rivers;
+measuring and studying their movements, trends, crevasses, moraines,
+etc., and the part they had played during the period of their greater
+extension in the creation and development of the landscapes of this
+alpine wonderland. The time for this kind of work was nearly over for
+the year, and I began to look forward with delight to the approaching
+winter with its wondrous storms, when I would be warmly snow-bound in
+my Yosemite cabin with plenty of bread and books; but a tinge of regret
+came on when I considered that possibly I might not see this favorite
+region again until the next summer, excepting distant views from the
+heights about the Yosemite walls.
+
+To artists, few portions of the High Sierra are, strictly speaking,
+picturesque. The whole massive uplift of the range is one great
+picture, not clearly divisible into smaller ones; differing much in
+this respect from the older, and what may be called, riper mountains of
+the Coast Range. All the landscapes of the Sierra, as we have seen,
+were born again, remodeled from base to summit by the developing
+ice-floods of the last glacial winter. But all those new landscapes
+were not brought forth simultaneously; some of the highest, where the
+ice lingered longest, are tens of centuries younger than those of the
+warmer regions below them. In general, the younger the
+mountain-landscapes,—younger, I mean, with reference to the time of
+their emergence from the ice of the glacial period,—the less separable
+are they into artistic bits capable of being made into warm,
+sympathetic, lovable pictures with appreciable humanity in them.
+
+Here, however, on the head waters of the Tuolumne, is a group of wild
+peaks on which the geologist may say that the sun has but just begun to
+shine, which is yet in a high degree picturesque, and in its main
+features so regular and evenly balanced as almost to appear
+conventional—one somber cluster of snow-laden peaks with gray
+pine-fringed granite bosses braided around its base, the whole surging
+free into the sky from the head of a magnificent valley, whose lofty
+walls are beveled away on both sides so as to embrace it all without
+admitting anything not strictly belonging to it. The foreground was now
+aflame with autumn colors, brown and purple and gold, ripe in the
+mellow sunshine; contrasting brightly with the deep, cobalt blue of the
+sky, and the black and gray, and pure, spiritual white of the rocks and
+glaciers. Down through the midst, the young Tuolumne was seen pouring
+from its crystal fountains, now resting in glassy pools as if changing
+back again into ice, now leaping in white cascades as if turning to
+snow; gliding right and left between granite bosses, then sweeping on
+through the smooth, meadowy levels of the valley, swaying pensively
+from side to side with calm, stately gestures past dipping willows and
+sedges, and around groves of arrowy pine; and throughout its whole
+eventful course, whether flowing fast or slow, singing loud or low,
+ever filling the landscape with spiritual animation, and manifesting
+the grandeur of its sources in every movement and tone.
+
+Pursuing my lonely way down the valley, I turned again and again to
+gaze on the glorious picture, throwing up my arms to inclose it as in a
+frame. After long ages of growth in the darkness beneath the glaciers,
+through sunshine and storms, it seemed now to be ready and waiting for
+the elected artist, like yellow wheat for the reaper; and I could not
+help wishing that I might carry colors and brushes with me on my
+travels, and learn to paint. In the mean time I had to be content with
+photographs on my mind and sketches in my note-books. At length, after
+I had rounded a precipitous headland that puts out from the west wall
+of the valley, every peak vanished from sight, and I pushed rapidly
+along the frozen meadows, over the divide between the waters of the
+Merced and Tuolumne, and down through the forests that clothe the
+slopes of Cloud’s Rest, arriving in Yosemite in due time—which, with
+me, is _any_ time. And, strange to say, among the first people I met
+here were two artists who, with letters of introduction, were awaiting
+my return. They inquired whether in the course of my explorations in
+the adjacent mountains I had ever come upon a landscape suitable for a
+large painting; whereupon I began a description of the one that had so
+lately excited my admiration. Then, as I went on further and further
+into details, their faces began to glow, and I offered to guide them to
+it, while they declared that they would gladly follow, far or near,
+whithersoever I could spare the time to lead them.
+
+Since storms might come breaking down through the fine weather at any
+time, burying the colors in snow, and cutting off the artists’ retreat,
+I advised getting ready at once.
+
+I led them out of the valley by the Vernal and Nevada Falls, thence
+over the main dividing ridge to the Big Tuolumne Meadows, by the old
+Mono trail, and thence along the upper Tuolumne River to its head. This
+was my companions’ first excursion into the High Sierra, and as I was
+almost always alone in my mountaineering, the way that the fresh beauty
+was reflected in their faces made for me a novel and interesting study.
+They naturally were affected most of all by the colors—the intense
+azure of the sky, the purplish grays of the granite, the red and browns
+of dry meadows, and the translucent purple and crimson of huckleberry
+bogs; the flaming yellow of aspen groves, the silvery flashing of the
+streams, and the bright green and blue of the glacier lakes. But the
+general expression of the scenery—rocky and savage—seemed sadly
+disappointing; and as they threaded the forest from ridge to ridge,
+eagerly scanning the landscapes as they were unfolded, they said: “All
+this is huge and sublime, but we see nothing as yet at all available
+for effective pictures. Art is long, and art is limited, you know; and
+here are foregrounds, middle-grounds, backgrounds, all alike; bare
+rock-waves, woods, groves, diminutive flecks of meadow, and strips of
+glittering water.” “Never mind,” I replied, “only bide a wee, and I
+will show you something you will like.”
+
+At length, toward the end of the second day, the Sierra Crown began to
+come into view, and when we had fairly rounded the projecting headland
+before mentioned, the whole picture stood revealed in the flush of the
+alpenglow. Their enthusiasm was excited beyond bounds, and the more
+impulsive of the two, a young Scotchman, dashed ahead, shouting and
+gesticulating and tossing his arms in the air like a madman. Here, at
+last, was a typical alpine landscape.
+
+After feasting awhile on the view, I proceeded to make camp in a
+sheltered grove a little way back from the meadow, where pine-boughs
+could be obtained for beds, and where there was plenty of dry wood for
+fires, while the artists ran here and there, along the river-bends and
+up the sides of the cañon, choosing foregrounds for sketches. After
+dark, when our tea was made and a rousing fire had been built, we began
+to make our plans. They decided to remain several days, at the least,
+while I concluded to make an excursion in the mean time to the
+untouched summit of Ritter.
+
+It was now about the middle of October, the springtime of snow-flowers.
+The first winter-clouds had already bloomed, and the peaks were strewn
+with fresh crystals, without, however, affecting the climbing to any
+dangerous extent. And as the weather was still profoundly calm, and the
+distance to the foot of the mountain only a little more than a day, I
+felt that I was running no great risk of being storm-bound.
+
+Mount Ritter is king of the mountains of the middle portion of the High
+Sierra, as Shasta of the north and Whitney of the south sections.
+Moreover, as far as I know, it had never been climbed. I had explored
+the adjacent wilderness summer after summer, but my studies thus far
+had never drawn me to the top of it. Its height above sea-level is
+about 13,300 feet, and it is fenced round by steeply inclined glaciers,
+and cañons of tremendous depth and ruggedness, which render it almost
+inaccessible. But difficulties of this kind only exhilarate the
+mountaineer.
+
+Next morning, the artists went heartily to their work and I to mine.
+Former experiences had given good reason to know that passionate
+storms, invisible as yet, might be brooding in the calm sun-gold;
+therefore, before bidding farewell, I warned the artists not to be
+alarmed should I fail to appear before a week or ten days, and advised
+them, in case a snow-storm should set in, to keep up big fires and
+shelter themselves as best they could, and on no account to become
+frightened and attempt to seek their way back to Yosemite alone through
+the drifts.
+
+My general plan was simply this: to scale the cañon, wall, cross over
+to the eastern flank of the range, and then make my way southward to
+the northern spurs of Mount Ritter in compliance with the intervening
+topography; for to push on directly southward from camp through the
+innumerable peaks and pinnacles that adorn this portion of the axis of
+the range, however interesting, would take too much time, besides being
+extremely difficult and dangerous at this time of year.
+
+All my first day was pure pleasure; simply mountaineering indulgence,
+crossing the dry pathways of the ancient glaciers, tracing happy
+streams, and learning the habits of the birds and marmots in the groves
+and rocks. Before I had gone a mile from camp, I came to the foot of a
+white cascade that beats its way down a rugged gorge in the cañon wall,
+from a height of about nine hundred feet, and pours its throbbing
+waters into the Tuolumne. I was acquainted with its fountains, which,
+fortunately, lay in my course. What a fine traveling companion it
+proved to be, what songs it sang, and how passionately it told the
+mountain’s own joy! Gladly I climbed along its dashing border,
+absorbing its divine music, and bathing from time to time in waftings
+of irised spray. Climbing higher, higher, now beauty came streaming on
+the sight: painted meadows, late-blooming gardens, peaks of rare
+architecture, lakes here and there, shining like silver, and glimpses
+of the forested middle region and the yellow lowlands far in the west.
+Beyond the range I saw the so-called Mono Desert, lying dreamily silent
+in thick purple light—a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert
+of ice-burnished granite. Here the waters divide, shouting in glorious
+enthusiasm, and falling eastward to vanish in the volcanic sands and
+dry sky of the Great Basin, or westward to the Great Valley of
+California, and thence through the Bay of San Francisco and the Golden
+Gate to the sea.
+
+Passing a little way down over the summit until I had reached an
+elevation of about 10,000 feet, I pushed on southward toward a group of
+savage peaks that stand guard about Ritter on the north and west,
+groping my way, and dealing instinctively with every obstacle as it
+presented itself. Here a huge gorge would be found cutting across my
+path, along the dizzy edge of which I scrambled until some less
+precipitous point was discovered where I might safely venture to the
+bottom and then, selecting some feasible portion of the opposite wall,
+reascend with the same slow caution. Massive, flat-topped spurs
+alternate with the gorges, plunging abruptly from the shoulders of the
+snowy peaks, and planting their feet in the warm desert. These were
+everywhere marked and adorned with characteristic sculptures of the
+ancient glaciers that swept over this entire region like one vast
+ice-wind, and the polished surfaces produced by the ponderous flood are
+still so perfectly preserved that in many places the sunlight reflected
+from them is about as trying to the eyes as sheets of snow.
+
+God’s glacial-mills grind slowly, but they have been kept in motion
+long enough in California to grind sufficient soil for a glorious
+abundance of life, though most of the grist has been carried to the
+lowlands, leaving these high regions comparatively lean and bare; while
+the post-glacial agents of erosion have not yet furnished sufficient
+available food over the general surface for more than a few tufts of
+the hardiest plants, chiefly carices and eriogonae. And it is
+interesting to learn in this connection that the sparseness and
+repressed character of the vegetation at this height is caused more by
+want of soil than by harshness of climate; for, here and there, in
+sheltered hollows (countersunk beneath the general surface) into which
+a few rods of well-ground moraine chips have been dumped, we find
+groves of spruce and pine thirty to forty feet high, trimmed around the
+edges with willow and huckleberry bushes, and oftentimes still further
+by an outer ring of tall grasses, bright with lupines, larkspurs, and
+showy columbines, suggesting a climate by no means repressingly severe.
+All the streams, too, and the pools at this elevation are furnished
+with little gardens wherever soil can be made to lie, which, though
+making scarce any show at a distance, constitute charming surprises to
+the appreciative observer. In these bits of leanness a few birds find
+grateful homes. Having no acquaintance with man, they fear no ill, and
+flock curiously about the stranger, almost allowing themselves to be
+taken in the hand. In so wild and so beautiful a region was spent my
+first day, every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of
+himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality.
+
+Now came the solemn, silent evening. Long, blue, spiky shadows crept
+out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce
+discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top,
+flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the
+alpenglow, to me one of the most impressive of all the terrestrial
+manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains
+seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed
+and waiting like devout worshipers. Just before the alpenglow began to
+fade, two crimson clouds came streaming across the summit like wings of
+flame, rendering the sublime scene yet more impressive; then came
+darkness and the stars.
+
+Icy Ritter was still miles away, but I could proceed no farther that
+night. I found a good campground on the rim of a glacier basin about
+11,000 feet above the sea. A small lake nestles in the bottom of it,
+from which I got water for my tea, and a storm-beaten thicket near by
+furnished abundance of resiny fire-wood. Somber peaks, hacked and
+shattered, circled half-way around the horizon, wearing a savage aspect
+in the gloaming, and a waterfall chanted solemnly across the lake on
+its way down from the foot of a glacier. The fall and the lake and the
+glacier were almost equally bare; while the scraggy pines anchored in
+the rock-fissures were so dwarfed and shorn by storm-winds that you
+might walk over their tops. In tone and aspect the scene was one of the
+most desolate I ever beheld. But the darkest scriptures of the
+mountains are illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to
+make themselves felt when one is alone.
+
+I made my bed in a nook of the pine-thicket, where the branches were
+pressed and crinkled overhead like a roof, and bent down around the
+sides. These are the best bedchambers the high mountains afford—snug as
+squirrel-nests, well ventilated, full of spicy odors, and with plenty
+of wind-played needles to sing one asleep. I little expected company,
+but, creeping in through a low side-door, I found five or six birds
+nestling among the tassels. The night-wind began to blow soon after
+dark; at first only a gentle breathing, but increasing toward midnight
+to a rough gale that fell upon my leafy roof in ragged surges like a
+cascade, bearing wild sounds from the crags overhead. The waterfall
+sang in chorus, filling the old ice-fountain with its solemn roar, and
+seeming to increase in power as the night advanced—fit voice for such a
+landscape. I had to creep out many times to the fire during the night,
+for it was biting cold and I had no blankets. Gladly I welcomed the
+morning star.
+
+The dawn in the dry, wavering air of the desert was glorious.
+Everything encouraged my undertaking and betokened success. There was
+no cloud in the sky, no storm-tone in the wind. Breakfast of bread and
+tea was soon made. I fastened a hard, durable crust to my belt by way
+of provision, in case I should be compelled to pass a night on the
+mountain-top; then, securing the remainder of my little stock against
+wolves and wood-rats, I set forth free and hopeful.
+
+How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this
+alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The
+highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the
+lower peaks and spires caught the glow, and long lances of light,
+streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen
+meadows. The majestic form of Ritter was full in sight, and I pushed
+rapidly on over rounded rock-bosses and pavements, my iron-shod shoes
+making a clanking sound, suddenly hushed now and then in rugs of
+bryanthus, and sedgy lake-margins soft as moss. Here, too, in this
+so-called “land of desolation,” I met cassiope, growing in fringes
+among the battered rocks. Her blossoms had faded long ago, but they
+were still clinging with happy memories to the evergreen sprays, and
+still so beautiful as to thrill every fiber of one’s being. Winter and
+summer, you may hear her voice, the low, sweet melody of her purple
+bells. No evangel among all the mountain plants speaks Nature’s love
+more plainly than cassiope. Where she dwells, the redemption of the
+coldest solitude is complete. The very rocks and glaciers seem to feel
+her presence, and become imbued with her own fountain sweetness. All
+things were warming and awakening. Frozen rills began to flow, the
+marmots came out of their nests in boulder-piles and climbed sunny
+rocks to bask, and the dun-headed sparrows were flitting about seeking
+their breakfasts. The lakes seen from every ridge-top were brilliantly
+rippled and spangled, shimmering like the thickets of the low Dwarf
+Pines. The rocks, too, seemed responsive to the vital
+heat—rock-crystals and snow-crystals thrilling alike. I strode on
+exhilarated, as if never more to feel fatigue, limbs moving of
+themselves, every sense unfolding like the thawing flowers, to take
+part in the new day harmony.
+
+All along my course thus far, excepting when down in the cañons, the
+landscapes were mostly open to me, and expansive, at least on one side.
+On the left were the purple plains of Mono, reposing dreamily and warm;
+on the right, the near peaks springing keenly into the thin sky with
+more and more impressive sublimity. But these larger views were at
+length lost. Rugged spurs, and moraines, and huge, projecting
+buttresses began to shut me in. Every feature became more rigidly
+alpine, without, however, producing any chilling effect; for going to
+the mountains is like going home. We always find that the strangest
+objects in these fountain wilds are in some degree familiar, and we
+look upon them with a vague sense of having seen them before.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL GRANT TREE, GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK]
+
+On the southern shore of a frozen lake, I encountered an extensive
+field of hard, granular snow, up which I scampered in fine tone,
+intending to follow it to its head, and cross the rocky spur against
+which it leans, hoping thus to come direct upon the base of the main
+Ritter peak. The surface was pitted with oval hollows, made by stones
+and drifted pine-needles that had melted themselves into the mass by
+the radiation of absorbed sun-heat. These afforded good footholds, but
+the surface curved more and more steeply at the head, and the pits
+became shallower and less abundant, until I found myself in danger of
+being shed off like avalanching snow. I persisted, however, creeping on
+all fours, and shuffling up the smoothest places on my back, as I had
+often done on burnished granite, until, after slipping several times, I
+was compelled to retrace my course to the bottom, and make my way
+around the west end of the lake, and thence up to the summit of the
+divide between the head waters of Rush Creek and the northernmost
+tributaries of the San Joaquin.
+
+Arriving on the summit of this dividing crest, one of the most exciting
+pieces of pure wilderness was disclosed that I ever discovered in all
+my mountaineering. There, immediately in front, loomed the majestic
+mass of Mount Ritter, with a glacier swooping down its face nearly to
+my feet, then curving westward and pouring its frozen flood into a dark
+blue lake, whose shores were bound with precipices of crystalline snow;
+while a deep chasm drawn between the divide and the glacier separated
+the massive picture from everything else. I could see only the one
+sublime mountain, the one glacier, the one lake; the whole veiled with
+one blue shadow—rock, ice, and water close together without a single
+leaf or sign of life. After gazing spellbound, I began instinctively to
+scrutinize every notch and gorge and weathered buttress of the
+mountain, with reference to making the ascent. The entire front above
+the glacier appeared as one tremendous precipice, slightly receding at
+the top, and bristling with spires and pinnacles set above one another
+in formidable array. Massive lichen-stained battlements stood forward
+here and there, hacked at the top with angular notches, and separated
+by frosty gullies and recesses that have been veiled in shadow ever
+since their creation; while to right and left, as far as I could see,
+were huge, crumbling buttresses, offering no hope to the climber. The
+head of the glacier sends up a few finger-like branches through narrow
+_couloirs_; but these seemed too steep and short to be available,
+especially as I had no ax with which to cut steps, and the numerous
+narrow-throated gullies down which stones and snow are avalanched
+seemed hopelessly steep, besides being interrupted by vertical cliffs;
+while the whole front was rendered still more terribly forbidding by
+the chill shadow and the gloomy blackness of the rocks.
+
+Descending the divide in a hesitating mood, I picked my way across the
+yawning chasm at the foot, and climbed out upon the glacier. There were
+no meadows now to cheer with their brave colors, nor could I hear the
+dun-headed sparrows, whose cheery notes so often relieve the silence of
+our highest mountains. The only sounds were the gurgling of small rills
+down in the veins and crevasses of the glacier, and now and then the
+rattling report of falling stones, with the echoes they shot out into
+the crisp air.
+
+I could not distinctly hope to reach the summit from this side, yet I
+moved on across the glacier as if driven by fate. Contending with
+myself, the season is too far spent, I said, and even should I be
+successful, I might be storm-bound on the mountain; and in the
+cloud-darkness, with the cliffs and crevasses covered with snow, how
+could I escape? No; I must wait till next summer. I would only approach
+the mountain now, and inspect it, creep about its flanks, learn what I
+could of its history, holding myself ready to flee on the approach of
+the first storm-cloud. But we little know until tried how much of the
+uncontrollable there is in us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and
+up dangerous heights, let the judgment forbid as it may.
+
+I succeeded in gaining the foot of the cliff on the eastern extremity
+of the glacier, and there discovered the mouth of a narrow avalanche
+gully, through which I began to climb, intending to follow it as far as
+possible, and at least obtain some fine wild views for my pains. Its
+general course is oblique to the plane of the mountain-face, and the
+metamorphic slates of which the mountain is built are cut by cleavage
+planes in such a way that they weather off in angular blocks, giving
+rise to irregular steps that greatly facilitate climbing on the sheer
+places. I thus made my way into a wilderness of crumbling spires and
+battlements, built together in bewildering combinations, and glazed in
+many places with a thin coating of ice, which I had to hammer off with
+stones. The situation was becoming gradually more perilous; but, having
+passed several dangerous spots, I dared not think of descending; for,
+so steep was the entire ascent, one would inevitably fall to the
+glacier in case a single misstep were made. Knowing, therefore, the
+tried danger beneath, I became all the more anxious concerning the
+developments to be made above, and began to be conscious of a vague
+foreboding of what actually befell; not that I was given to fear, but
+rather because my instincts, usually so positive and true, seemed
+vitiated in some way, and were leading me astray. At length, after
+attaining an elevation of about 12,800 feet, I found myself at the foot
+of a sheer drop in the bed of the avalanche channel I was tracing,
+which seemed absolutely to bar further progress. It was only about
+forty-five or fifty feet high, and somewhat roughened by fissures and
+projections; but these seemed so slight and insecure, as footholds,
+that I tried hard to avoid the precipice altogether, by scaling the
+wall of the channel on either side. But, though less steep, the walls
+were smoother than the obstructing rock, and repeated efforts only
+showed that I must either go right ahead or turn back. The tried
+dangers beneath seemed even greater than that of the cliff in front;
+therefore, after scanning its face again and again, I began to scale
+it, picking my holds with intense caution. After gaining a point about
+halfway to the top, I was suddenly brought to a dead stop, with arms
+outspread, clinging close to the face of the rock, unable to move hand
+or foot either up or down. My doom appeared fixed. I _must_ fall. There
+would be a moment of bewilderment, and then a lifeless rumble down the
+one general precipice to the glacier below.
+
+When this final danger flashed upon me, I became nerve-shaken for the
+first time since setting foot on the mountains, and my mind seemed to
+fill with a stifling smoke. But this terrible eclipse lasted only a
+moment, when life blazed forth again with preternatural clearness. I
+seemed suddenly to become possessed of a new sense. The other self,
+bygone experiences, Instinct, or Guardian Angel,—call it what you
+will,—came forward and assumed control. Then my trembling muscles
+became firm again, every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as through
+a microscope, and my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision with
+which I seemed to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft
+upon wings, my deliverance could not have been more complete.
+
+Above this memorable spot, the face of the mountain is still more
+savagely hacked and torn. It is a maze of yawning chasms and gullies,
+in the angles of which rise beetling crags and piles of detached
+boulders that seem to have been gotten ready to be launched below. But
+the strange influx of strength I had received seemed inexhaustible. I
+found a way without effort, and soon stood upon the topmost crag in the
+blessed light.
+
+How truly glorious the landscape circled around this noble
+summit!—giant mountains, valleys innumerable, glaciers and meadows,
+rivers and lakes, with the wide blue sky bent tenderly over them all.
+But in my first hour of freedom from that terrible shadow, the sunlight
+in which I was laving seemed all in all.
+
+Looking southward along the axis of the range, the eye is first caught
+by a row of exceedingly sharp and slender spires, which rise openly to
+a height of about a thousand feet, above a series of short, residual
+glaciers that lean back against their bases; their fantastic sculpture
+and the unrelieved sharpness with which they spring out of the ice
+rendering them peculiarly wild and striking. These are “The Minarets.”
+Beyond them you behold a sublime wilderness of mountains, their snowy
+summits towering together in crowded abundance, peak beyond peak,
+swelling higher, higher as they sweep on southward, until the
+culminating point of the range is reached on Mount Whitney, near the
+head of the Kern River, at an elevation of nearly 14,700 feet above the
+level of the sea.
+
+Westward, the general flank of the range is seen flowing sublimely away
+from the sharp summits, in smooth undulations; a sea of huge gray
+granite waves dotted with lakes and meadows, and fluted with stupendous
+cañons that grow steadily deeper as they recede in the distance. Below
+this gray region lies the dark forest zone, broken here and there by
+upswelling ridges and domes; and yet beyond lies a yellow, hazy belt,
+marking the broad plain of the San Joaquin, bounded on its farther side
+by the blue mountains of the coast.
+
+Turning now to the northward, there in the immediate foreground is the
+glorious Sierra Crown, with Cathedral Peak, a temple of marvelous
+architecture, a few degrees to the left of it; the gray, massive form
+of Mammoth Mountain to the right; while Mounts Ord, Gibbs, Dana,
+Conness, Tower Peak, Castle Peak, Silver Mountain, and a host of noble
+companions, as yet nameless, make a sublime show along the axis of the
+range.
+
+Eastward, the whole region seems a land of desolation covered with
+beautiful light. The torrid volcanic basin of Mono, with its one bare
+lake fourteen miles long; Owen’s Valley and the broad lava table-land
+at its head, dotted with craters, and the massive Inyo Range, rivaling
+even the Sierra in height; these are spread, map-like, beneath you,
+with countless ranges beyond, passing and overlapping one another and
+fading on the glowing horizon.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY]
+
+At a distance of less than 3000 feet below the summit of Mount Ritter
+you may find tributaries of the San Joaquin and Owen’s rivers, bursting
+forth from the ice and snow of the glaciers that load its flanks; while
+a little to the north of here are found the highest affluents of the
+Tuolumne and Merced. Thus, the fountains of four of the principal
+rivers of California are within a radius of four or five miles.
+
+Lakes are seen gleaming in all sorts of places,—round, or oval, or
+square, like very mirrors; others narrow and sinuous, drawn close
+around the peaks like silver zones, the highest reflecting only rocks,
+snow, and the sky. But neither these nor the glaciers, nor the bits of
+brown meadow and moorland that occur here and there, are large enough
+to make any marked impression upon the mighty wilderness of mountains.
+The eye, rejoicing in its freedom, roves about the vast expanse, yet
+returns again and again to the fountain peaks. Perhaps some one of the
+multitude excites special attention, some gigantic castle with turret
+and battlement, or some Gothic cathedral more abundantly spired than
+Milan’s. But, generally, when looking for the first time from an
+all-embracing standpoint like this, the inexperienced observer is
+oppressed by the incomprehensible grandeur, variety, and abundance of
+the mountains rising shoulder to shoulder beyond the reach of vision;
+and it is only after they have been studied one by one, long and
+lovingly, that their far-reaching harmonies become manifest. Then,
+penetrate the wilderness where you may, the main telling features, to
+which all the surrounding topography is subordinate, are quickly
+perceived, and the most complicated clusters of peaks stand revealed
+harmoniously correlated and fashioned like works of art—eloquent
+monuments of the ancient ice-rivers that brought them into relief from
+the general mass of the range. The cañons, too, some of them a mile
+deep, mazing wildly through the mighty host of mountains, however
+lawless and ungovernable at first sight they appear, are at length
+recognized as the necessary effects of causes which followed each other
+in harmonious sequence—Nature’s poems carved on tables of stone—the
+simplest and most emphatic of her glacial compositions.
+
+Could we have been here to observe during the glacial period, we should
+have overlooked a wrinkled ocean of ice as continuous as that now
+covering the landscapes of Greenland; filling every valley and cañon
+with only the tops of the fountain peaks rising darkly above the
+rock-encumbered ice-waves like islets in a stormy sea—those islets the
+only hints of the glorious landscapes now smiling in the sun. Standing
+here in the deep, brooding silence all the wilderness seems motionless,
+as if the work of creation were done. But in the midst of this outer
+steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and change. Ever and
+anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These cliff-bound
+glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water and
+grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite
+shores and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young
+rivers is fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to
+the plains. Here are the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here
+more simply than elsewhere is the eternal flux of nature manifested.
+Ice changing to water, lakes to meadows, and mountains to plains. And
+while we thus contemplate Nature’s methods of landscape creation, and,
+reading the records she has carved on the rocks, reconstruct, however
+imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also learn that as these we
+now behold have succeeded those of the pre-glacial age, so they in turn
+are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others yet unborn.
+
+But in the midst of these fine lessons and landscapes, I had to
+remember that the sun was wheeling far to the west, while a new way
+down the mountain had to be discovered to some point on the timber line
+where I could have a fire; for I had not even burdened myself with a
+coat. I first scanned the western spurs, hoping some way might appear
+through which I might reach the northern glacier, and cross its snout;
+or pass around the lake into which it flows, and thus strike my morning
+track. This route was soon sufficiently unfolded to show that, if
+practicable at all, it would require so much time that reaching camp
+that night would be out of the question. I therefore scrambled back
+eastward, descending the southern slopes obliquely at the same time.
+Here the crags seemed less formidable, and the head of a glacier that
+flows northeast came in sight, which I determined to follow as far as
+possible, hoping thus to make my way to the foot of the peak on the
+east side, and thence across the intervening cañons and ridges to camp.
+
+The inclination of the glacier is quite moderate at the head, and, as
+the sun had softened the _névé_, I made safe and rapid progress,
+running and sliding, and keeping up a sharp outlook for crevasses.
+About half a mile from the head, there is an ice-cascade, where the
+glacier pours over a sharp declivity and is shattered into massive
+blocks separated by deep, blue fissures. To thread my way through the
+slippery mazes of this crevassed portion seemed impossible, and I
+endeavored to avoid it by climbing off to the shoulder of the mountain.
+But the slopes rapidly steepened and at length fell away in sheer
+precipices, compelling a return to the ice. Fortunately, the day had
+been warm enough to loosen the ice-crystals so as to admit of hollows
+being dug in the rotten portions of the blocks, thus enabling me to
+pick my way with far less difficulty than I had anticipated. Continuing
+down over the snout, and along the left lateral moraine, was only a
+confident saunter, showing that the ascent of the mountain by way of
+this glacier is easy, provided one is armed with an ax to cut steps
+here and there.
+
+The lower end of the glacier was beautifully waved and barred by the
+outcropping edges of the bedded ice-layers which represent the annual
+snowfalls, and to some extent the irregularities of structure caused by
+the weathering of the walls of crevasses, and by separate snowfalls
+which have been followed by rain, hail, thawing and freezing, etc.
+Small rills were gliding and swirling over the melting surface with a
+smooth, oily appearance, in channels of pure ice—their quick, compliant
+movements contrasting most impressively with the rigid, invisible flow
+of the glacier itself, on whose back they all were riding.
+
+Night drew near before I reached the eastern base of the mountain, and
+my camp lay many a rugged mile to the north; but ultimate success was
+assured. It was now only a matter of endurance and ordinary
+mountain-craft. The sunset was, if possible, yet more beautiful than
+that of the day before. The Mono landscape seemed to be fairly
+saturated with warm, purple light. The peaks marshaled along the summit
+were in shadow, but through every notch and pass streamed vivid
+sun-fire, soothing and irradiating their rough, black angles, while
+companies of small, luminous clouds hovered above them like very angels
+of light.
+
+Darkness came on, but I found my way by the trends of the cañons and
+the peaks projected against the sky. All excitement died with the
+light, and then I was weary. But the joyful sound of the waterfall
+across the lake was heard at last, and soon the stars were seen
+reflected in the lake itself. Taking my bearings from these, I
+discovered the little pine thicket in which my nest was, and then I had
+a rest such as only a tired mountaineer may enjoy. After lying loose
+and lost for awhile, I made a sunrise fire, went down to the lake,
+dashed water on my head, and dipped a cupful for tea. The revival
+brought about by bread and tea was as complete as the exhaustion from
+excessive enjoyment and toil. Then I crept beneath the pine-tassels to
+bed. The wind was frosty and the fire burned low, but my sleep was none
+the less sound, and the evening constellations had swept far to the
+west before I awoke.
+
+After thawing and resting in the morning sunshine, I sauntered
+home,—that is, back to the Tuolumne camp,—bearing away toward a cluster
+of peaks that hold the fountain snows of one of the north tributaries
+of Rush Creek. Here I discovered a group of beautiful glacier lakes,
+nestled together in a grand amphitheater. Toward evening, I crossed the
+divide separating the Mono waters from those of the Tuolumne, and
+entered the glacier basin that now holds the fountain snows of the
+stream that forms the upper Tuolumne cascades. This stream I traced
+down through its many dells and gorges, meadows and bogs, reaching the
+brink of the main Tuolumne at dusk.
+
+A loud whoop for the artists was answered again and again. Their
+camp-fire came in sight, and half an hour afterward I was with them.
+They seemed unreasonably glad to see me. I had been absent only three
+days; nevertheless, though the weather was fine, they had already been
+weighing chances as to whether I would ever return, and trying to
+decide whether they should wait longer or begin to seek their way back
+to the lowlands. Now their curious troubles were over. They packed
+their precious sketches, and next morning we set out homeward bound,
+and in two days entered the Yosemite Valley from the north by way of
+Indian Cañon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE PASSES
+
+
+The sustained grandeur of the High Sierra is strikingly illustrated by
+the great height of the passes. Between latitude 36° 20′ and 38° the
+lowest pass, gap, gorge, or notch of any kind cutting across the axis
+of the range, as far as I have discovered, exceeds 9000 feet in height
+above the level of the sea; while the average height of all that are in
+use, either by Indians or whites, is perhaps not less than 11,000 feet,
+and not one of these is a carriage-pass.
+
+Farther north a carriage-road has been constructed through what is
+known as the Sonora Pass, on the head waters of the Stanislaus and
+Walker’s rivers, the summit of which is about 10,000 feet above the
+sea. Substantial wagon-roads have also been built through the Carson
+and Johnson passes, near the head of Lake Tahoe, over which immense
+quantities of freight were hauled from California to the mining regions
+of Nevada, before the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad.
+
+Still farther north, a considerable number of comparatively low passes
+occur, some of which are accessible to wheeled vehicles, and through
+these rugged defiles during the exciting years of the gold period long
+emigrant-trains with foot-sore cattle wearily toiled. After the
+toil-worn adventurers had escaped a thousand dangers and had crawled
+thousands of miles across the plains the snowy Sierra at last loomed in
+sight, the eastern wall of the land of gold. And as with shaded eyes
+they gazed through the tremulous haze of the desert, with what joy must
+they have descried the pass through which they were to enter the better
+land of their hopes and dreams!
+
+Between the Sonora Pass and the southern extremity of the High Sierra,
+a distance of nearly 160 miles, there are only five passes through
+which trails conduct from one side of the range to the other. These are
+barely practicable for animals; a pass in these regions meaning simply
+any notch or cañon through which one may, by the exercise of unlimited
+patience, make out to lead a mule, or a sure-footed mustang; animals
+that can slide or jump as well as walk. Only three of the five passes
+may be said to be in use, viz.: the Kearsarge, Mono, and Virginia
+Creek; the tracks leading through the others being only obscure Indian
+trails, not graded in the least, and scarcely traceable by white men;
+for much of the way is over solid rock and earthquake avalanche
+taluses, where the unshod ponies of the Indians leave no appreciable
+sign. Only skilled mountaineers are able to detect the marks that serve
+to guide the Indians, such as slight abrasions of the looser rocks, the
+displacement of stones here and there, and bent bushes and weeds. A
+general knowledge of the topography is, then, the main guide, enabling
+one to determine where the trail ought to go—_must_ go. One of these
+Indian trails crosses the range by a nameless pass between the head
+waters of the south and middle forks of the San Joaquin, the other
+between the north and middle forks of the same river, just to the south
+of “The Minarets”; this last being about 9000 feet high, is the lowest
+of the five. The Kearsarge is the highest, crossing the summit near the
+head of the south fork of King’s River, about eight miles to the north
+of Mount Tyndall, through the midst of the most stupendous
+rock-scenery. The summit of this pass is over 12,000 feet above
+sea-level; nevertheless, it is one of the safest of the five, and is
+used every summer, from July to October or November, by hunters,
+prospectors, and stock-owners, and to some extent by enterprising
+pleasure-seekers also. For, besides the surpassing grandeur of the
+scenery about the summit, the trail, in ascending the western flank of
+the range, conducts through a grove of the giant Sequoias, and through
+the magnificent Yosemite Valley of the south fork of King’s River. This
+is, perhaps, the highest traveled pass on the North American continent.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION
+BOUNDARY.]
+
+The Mono Pass lies to the east of Yosemite Valley, at the head of one
+of the tributaries of the south fork of the Tuolumne. This is the best
+known and most extensively traveled of all that exist in the High
+Sierra. A trail was made through it about the time of the Mono gold
+excitement, in the year 1858, by adventurous miners and prospectors—men
+who would build a trail down the throat of darkest Erebus on the way to
+gold. Though more than a thousand feet lower than the Kearsarge, it is
+scarcely less sublime in rock-scenery, while in snowy, falling water it
+far surpasses it. Being so favorably situated for the stream of
+Yosemite travel, the more adventurous tourists cross over through this
+glorious gateway to the volcanic region around Mono Lake. It has
+therefore gained a name and fame above every other pass in the range.
+According to the few barometrical observations made upon it, its
+highest point is 10,765 feet above the sea. The other pass of the five
+we have been considering is somewhat lower, and crosses the axis of the
+range a few miles to the north of the Mono Pass, at the head of the
+southernmost tributary of Walker’s River. It is used chiefly by roaming
+bands of the Pah Ute Indians and “sheepmen.”
+
+But, leaving wheels and animals out of the question, the free
+mountaineer with a sack of bread on his shoulders and an ax to cut
+steps in ice and frozen snow can make his way across the range almost
+everywhere, and at any time of year when the weather is calm. To him
+nearly every notch between the peaks is a pass, though much patient
+step-cutting is at times required up and down steeply inclined
+glaciers, with cautious climbing over precipices that at first sight
+would seem hopelessly inaccessible.
+
+In pursuing my studies, I have crossed from side to side of the range
+at intervals of a few miles all along the highest portion of the chain,
+with far less real danger than one would naturally count on. And what
+fine wildness was thus revealed—storms and avalanches, lakes and
+waterfalls, gardens and meadows, and interesting animals—only those
+will ever know who give the freest and most buoyant portion of their
+lives to climbing and seeing for themselves.
+
+To the timid traveler, fresh from the sedimentary levels of the
+lowlands, these highways, however picturesque and grand, seem terribly
+forbidding—cold, dead, gloomy gashes in the bones of the mountains, and
+of all Nature’s ways the ones to be most cautiously avoided. Yet they
+are full of the finest and most telling examples of Nature’s love; and
+though hard to travel, none are safer. For they lead through regions
+that lie far above the ordinary haunts of the devil, and of the
+pestilence that walks in darkness. True, there are innumerable places
+where the careless step will be the last step; and a rock falling from
+the cliffs may crush without warning like lightning from the sky; but
+what then! Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the
+lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even
+divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of
+civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home.
+Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care,
+save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty
+into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these
+so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill,
+they cure a thousand.
+
+All the passes make their steepest ascents on the eastern flank. On
+this side the average rise is not far from a thousand feet to the mile,
+while on the west it is about two hundred feet. Another marked
+difference between the eastern and western portions of the passes is
+that the former begin at the very foot of the range, while the latter
+can hardly be said to begin lower than an elevation of from seven to
+ten thousand feet. Approaching the range from the gray levels of Mono
+and Owen’s Valley on the east, the traveler sees before him the steep,
+short passes in full view, fenced in by rugged spurs that come plunging
+down from the shoulders of the peaks on either side, the courses of the
+more direct being disclosed from top to bottom without interruption.
+But from the west one sees nothing of the way he may be seeking until
+near the summit, after days have been spent in threading the forests
+growing on the main dividing ridges between the river cañons.
+
+It is interesting to observe how surely the alp-crossing animals of
+every kind fall into the same trails. The more rugged and inaccessible
+the general character of the topography of any particular region, the
+more surely will the trails of white men, Indians, bears, wild sheep,
+etc., be found converging into the best passes. The Indians of the
+western slope venture cautiously over the passes in settled weather to
+attend dances, and obtain loads of pine-nuts and the larvae of a small
+fly that breeds in Mono and Owen’s lakes, which, when dried, forms an
+important article of food; while the Pah Utes cross over from the east
+to hunt the deer and obtain supplies of acorns; and it is truly
+astonishing to see what immense loads the haggard old squaws make out
+to carry bare-footed through these rough passes, oftentimes for a
+distance of sixty or seventy miles. They are always accompanied by the
+men, who stride on, unburdened and erect, a little in advance, kindly
+stooping at difficult places to pile stepping-stones for their patient,
+pack-animal wives, just as they would prepare the way for their ponies.
+
+Bears evince great sagacity as mountaineers, but although they are
+tireless and enterprising travelers they seldom cross the range. I have
+several times tracked them through the Mono Pass, but only in late
+years, after cattle and sheep had passed that way, when they doubtless
+were following to feed on the stragglers and on those that had been
+killed by falling over the rocks. Even the wild sheep, the best
+mountaineers of all, choose regular passes in making journeys across
+the summits. Deer seldom cross the range in either direction. I have
+never yet observed a single specimen of the mule-deer of the Great
+Basin west of the summit, and rarely one of the black-tailed species on
+the eastern slope, notwithstanding many of the latter ascend the range
+nearly to the summit every summer, to feed in the wild gardens and
+bring forth their young.
+
+The glaciers are the pass-makers, and it is by them that the courses of
+all mountaineers are predestined. Without exception every pass in the
+Sierra was created by them without the slightest aid or predetermining
+guidance from any of the cataclysmic agents. I have seen elaborate
+statements of the amount of drilling and blasting accomplished in the
+construction of the railroad across the Sierra, above Donner Lake; but
+for every pound of rock moved in this way, the glaciers which descended
+east and west through this same pass, crushed and carried away more
+than a hundred tons.
+
+The so-called practicable road-passes are simply those portions of the
+range more degraded by glacial action than the adjacent portions, and
+degraded in such a way as to leave the summits rounded, instead of
+sharp; while the peaks, from the superior strength and hardness of
+their rocks, or from more favorable position, having suffered less
+degradation, are left towering above the passes as if they had been
+heaved into the sky by some force acting from beneath.
+
+The scenery of all the passes, especially at the head, is of the
+wildest and grandest description,—lofty peaks massed together and laden
+around their bases with ice and snow; chains of glacier lakes;
+cascading streams in endless variety, with glorious views, westward
+over a sea of rocks and woods, and eastward over strange ashy plains,
+volcanoes, and the dry, dead-looking ranges of the Great Basin. Every
+pass, however, possesses treasures of beauty all its own.
+
+Having thus in a general way indicated the height, leading features,
+and distribution of the principal passes, I will now endeavor to
+describe the Mono Pass in particular, which may, I think, be regarded
+as a fair example of the higher alpine passes in general.
+
+The main portion of the Mono Pass is formed by Bloody Cañon, which
+begins at the summit of the range, and runs in a general
+east-northeasterly direction to the edge of the Mono Plain.
+
+The first white men who forced a way through its somber depths were, as
+we have seen, eager gold-seekers. But the cañon was known and traveled
+as a pass by the Indians and mountain animals long before its discovery
+by white men, as is shown by the numerous tributary trails which come
+into it from every direction. Its name accords well with the character
+of the “early times” in California, and may perhaps have been suggested
+by the predominant color of the metamorphic slates in which it is in
+great part eroded; or more probably by blood-stains made by the
+unfortunate animals which were compelled to slip and shuffle awkwardly
+over its rough, cutting rocks. I have never known an animal, either
+mule or horse, to make its way through the cañon, either in going up or
+down, without losing more or less blood from wounds on the legs.
+Occasionally one is killed outright—falling headlong and rolling over
+precipices like a boulder. But such accidents are rarer than from the
+terrible appearance of the trail one would be led to expect; the more
+experienced when driven loose find their way over the dangerous places
+with a caution and sagacity that is truly wonderful. During the gold
+excitement it was at times a matter of considerable pecuniary
+importance to force a way through the cañon with pack-trains early in
+the spring while it was yet heavily blocked with snow; and then the
+mules with their loads had sometimes to be let down over the steepest
+drifts and avalanche beds by means of ropes.
+
+A good bridle-path leads from Yosemite through many a grove and meadow
+up to the head of the cañon, a distance of about thirty miles. Here the
+scenery undergoes a sudden and startling condensation. Mountains, red,
+gray, and black, rise close at hand on the right, whitened around their
+bases with banks of enduring snow; on the left swells the huge red mass
+of Mount Gibbs, while in front the eye wanders down the shadowy cañon,
+and out on the warm plain of Mono, where the lake is seen gleaming like
+a burnished metallic disk, with clusters of lofty volcanic cones to the
+south of it.
+
+When at length we enter the mountain gateway, the somber rocks seem
+aware of our presence, and seem to come thronging closer about us.
+Happily the ouzel and the old familiar robin are here to sing us
+welcome, and azure daisies beam with trustfulness and sympathy,
+enabling us to feel something of Nature’s love even here, beneath the
+gaze of her coldest rocks.
+
+The effect of this expressive outspokenness on the part of the
+cañon-rocks is greatly enhanced by the quiet aspect of the alpine
+meadows through which we pass just before entering the narrow gateway.
+The forests in which they lie, and the mountain-tops rising beyond
+them, seem quiet and tranquil. We catch their restful spirit, yield to
+the soothing influences of the sunshine, and saunter dreamily on
+through flowers and bees, scarce touched by a definite thought; then
+suddenly we find ourselves in the shadowy cañon, closeted with Nature
+in one of her wildest strongholds.
+
+After the first bewildering impression begins to wear off, we perceive
+that it is not altogether terrible; for besides the reassuring birds
+and flowers we discover a chain of shining lakelets hanging down from
+the very summit of the pass, and linked together by a silvery stream.
+The highest are set in bleak, rough bowls, scantily fringed with brown
+and yellow sedges. Winter storms blow snow through the cañon in
+blinding drifts, and avalanches shoot from the heights. Then are these
+sparkling tarns filled and buried, leaving not a hint of their
+existence. In June and July they begin to blink and thaw out like
+sleepy eyes, the carices thrust up their short brown spikes, the
+daisies bloom in turn, and the most profoundly buried of them all is at
+length warmed and summered as if winter were only a dream.
+
+Red Lake is the lowest of the chain, and also the largest. It seems
+rather dull and forbidding at first sight, lying motionless in its
+deep, dark bed. The cañon wall rises sheer from the water’s edge on the
+south, but on the opposite side there is sufficient space and sunshine
+for a sedgy daisy garden, the center of which is brilliantly lighted
+with lilies, castilleias, larkspurs, and columbines, sheltered from the
+wind by leafy willows, and forming a most joyful outburst of plant-life
+keenly emphasized by the chill baldness of the onlooking cliffs.
+
+After indulging here in a dozing, shimmering lake-rest, the happy
+stream sets forth again, warbling and trilling like an ouzel, ever
+delightfully confiding, no matter how dark the way; leaping, gliding,
+hither, thither, clear or foaming: manifesting the beauty of its
+wildness in every sound and gesture.
+
+One of its most beautiful developments is the Diamond Cascade, situated
+a short distance below Red Lake. Here the tense, crystalline water is
+first dashed into coarse, granular spray mixed with dusty foam, and
+then divided into a diamond pattern by following the diagonal
+cleavage-joints that intersect the face of the precipice over which it
+pours. Viewed in front, it resembles a strip of embroidery of definite
+pattern, varying through the seasons with the temperature and the
+volume of water. Scarce a flower may be seen along its snowy border. A
+few bent pines look on from a distance, and small fringes of cassiope
+and rock-ferns are growing in fissures near the head, but these are so
+lowly and undemonstrative that only the attentive observer will be
+likely to notice them.
+
+On the north wall of the cañon, a little below the Diamond Cascade, a
+glittering side stream makes its appearance, seeming to leap directly
+out of the sky. It first resembles a crinkled ribbon of silver hanging
+loosely down the wall, but grows wider as it descends, and dashes the
+dull rock with foam. A long rough talus curves up against this part of
+the cliff, overgrown with snow-pressed willows, in which the fall
+disappears with many an eager surge and swirl and plashing leap,
+finally beating its way down to its confluence with the main cañon
+stream.
+
+Below this point the climate is no longer arctic. Butterflies become
+larger and more abundant, grasses with imposing spread of panicle wave
+above your shoulders, and the summery drone of the bumblebee thickens
+the air. The Dwarf Pine, the tree-mountaineer that climbs highest and
+braves the coldest blasts, is found scattered in storm-beaten clumps
+from the summit of the pass about half-way down the cañon. Here it is
+succeeded by the hardy Two-leaved Pine, which is speedily joined by the
+taller Yellow and Mountain Pines. These, with the burly juniper, and
+shimmering aspen, rapidly grow larger as the sunshine becomes richer,
+forming groves that block the view; or they stand more apart here and
+there in picturesque groups, that make beautiful and obvious harmony
+with the rocks and with one another. Blooming underbrush becomes
+abundant,—azalea, spiraea, and the brier-rose weaving fringes for the
+streams, and shaggy rugs to relieve the stern, unflinching rock-bosses.
+
+[Illustration: RANCHERIA FALLS, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY]
+
+Through this delightful wilderness, Cañon Creek roves without any
+constraining channel, throbbing and wavering; now in sunshine, now in
+thoughtful shade; falling, swirling, flashing from side to side in
+weariless exuberance of energy. A glorious milky way of cascades is
+thus developed, of which Bower Cascade, though one of the smallest, is
+perhaps the most beautiful of them all. It is situated in the lower
+region of the pass, just where the sunshine begins to mellow between
+the cold and warm climates. Here the glad creek, grown strong with
+tribute gathered from many a snowy fountain on the heights, sings
+richer strains, and becomes more human and lovable at every step. Now
+you may by its side find the rose and homely yarrow, and small meadows
+full of bees and clover. At the head of a low-browed rock, luxuriant
+dogwood bushes and willows arch over from bank to bank, embowering the
+stream with their leafy branches; and drooping plumes, kept in motion
+by the current, fringe the brow of the cascade in front. From this
+leafy covert the stream leaps out into the light in a fluted curve
+thick sown with sparkling crystals, and falls into a pool filled with
+brown boulders, out of which it creeps gray with foam-bells and
+disappears in a tangle of verdure like that from which it came.
+
+Hence, to the foot of the cañon, the metamorphic slates give place to
+granite, whose nobler sculpture calls forth expressions of
+corresponding beauty from the stream in passing over it,—bright trills
+of rapids, booming notes of falls, solemn hushes of smooth-gliding
+sheets, all chanting and blending in glorious harmony. When, at length,
+its impetuous alpine life is done, it slips through a meadow with
+scarce an audible whisper, and falls asleep in Moraine Lake.
+
+This water-bed is one of the finest I ever saw. Evergreens wave
+soothingly about it, and the breath of flowers floats over it like
+incense. Here our blessed stream rests from its rocky wanderings, all
+its mountaineering done,—no more foaming rock-leaping, no more wild,
+exulting song. It falls into a smooth, glassy sleep, stirred only by
+the night-wind, which, coming down the cañon, makes it croon and mutter
+in ripples along its broidered shores.
+
+Leaving the lake, it glides quietly through the rushes, destined never
+more to touch the living rock. Henceforth its path lies through ancient
+moraines and reaches of ashy sage-plain, which nowhere afford rocks
+suitable for the development of cascades or sheer falls. Yet this
+beauty of maturity, though less striking, is of a still higher order,
+enticing us lovingly on through gentian meadows and groves of rustling
+aspen to Lake Mono, where, spirit-like, our happy stream vanishes in
+vapor, and floats free again in the sky.
+
+Bloody Cañon, like every other in the Sierra, was recently occupied by
+a glacier, which derived its fountain snows from the adjacent summits,
+and descended into Mono Lake, at a time when its waters stood at a much
+higher level than now. The principal characters in which the history of
+the ancient glaciers is preserved are displayed here in marvelous
+freshness and simplicity, furnishing the student with extraordinary
+advantages for the acquisition of knowledge of this sort. The most
+striking passages are polished and striated surfaces, which in many
+places reflect the rays of the sun like smooth water. The dam of Red
+Lake is an elegantly modeled rib of metamorphic slate, brought into
+relief because of its superior strength, and because of the greater
+intensity of the glacial erosion of the rock immediately above it,
+caused by a steeply inclined tributary glacier, which entered the main
+trunk with a heavy down-thrust at the head of the lake.
+
+Moraine Lake furnishes an equally interesting example of a basin formed
+wholly, or in part, by a terminal moraine dam curved across the path of
+a stream between two lateral moraines.
+
+At Moraine Lake the cañon proper terminates, although apparently
+continued by the two lateral moraines of the vanished glacier. These
+moraines are about 300 feet high, and extend unbrokenly from the sides
+of the cañon into the plain, a distance of about five miles, curving
+and tapering in beautiful lines. Their sunward sides are gardens, their
+shady sides are groves; the former devoted chiefly to eriogonae,
+compositae, and graminae; a square rod containing five or six profusely
+flowered eriogonums of several species, about the same number of bahia
+and linosyris, and a few grass tufts; each species being planted trimly
+apart, with bare gravel between, as if cultivated artificially.
+
+My first visit to Bloody Cañon was made in the summer of 1869, under
+circumstances well calculated to heighten the impressions that are the
+peculiar offspring of mountains. I came from the blooming tangles of
+Florida, and waded out into the plant-gold of the great valley of
+California, when its flora was as yet untrodden. Never before had I
+beheld congregations of social flowers half so extensive or half so
+glorious. Golden composite covered all the ground from the Coast Range
+to the Sierra like a stratum of curdled sunshine, in which I reveled
+for weeks, watching the rising and setting of their innumerable suns;
+then I gave myself up to be borne forward on the crest of the summer
+wave that sweeps annually up the Sierra and spends itself on the snowy
+summits.
+
+At the Big Tuolumne Meadows I remained more than a month, sketching,
+botanizing, and climbing among the surrounding mountains. The
+mountaineer with whom I then happened to be camping was one of those
+remarkable men one so frequently meets in California, the hard angles
+and bosses of whose characters have been brought into relief by the
+grinding excitements of the gold period, until they resemble glacial
+landscapes. But at this late day, my friend’s activities had subsided,
+and his craving for rest caused him to become a gentle shepherd and
+literally to lie down with the lamb.
+
+Recognizing the unsatisfiable longings of my Scotch Highland instincts,
+he threw out some hints concerning Bloody Cañon, and advised me to
+explore it. “I have never seen it myself,” he said, “for I never was so
+unfortunate as to pass that way. But I have heard many a strange story
+about it, and I warrant you will at least find it wild enough.”
+
+Then of course I made haste to see it. Early next morning I made up a
+bundle of bread, tied my note-book to my belt, and strode away in the
+bracing air, full of eager, indefinite hope. The plushy lawns that lay
+in my path served to soothe my morning haste. The sod in many places
+was starred with daisies and blue gentians, over which I lingered. I
+traced the paths of the ancient glaciers over many a shining pavement,
+and marked the gaps in the upper forests that told the power of the
+winter avalanches. Climbing higher, I saw for the first time the
+gradual dwarfing of the pines in compliance with climate, and on the
+summit discovered creeping mats of the arctic willow overgrown with
+silky catkins, and patches of the dwarf vaccinium with its round
+flowers sprinkled in the grass like purple hail; while in every
+direction the landscape stretched sublimely away in fresh wildness—a
+manuscript written by the hand of Nature alone.
+
+At length, as I entered the pass, the huge rocks began to close around
+in all their wild, mysterious impressiveness, when suddenly, as I was
+gazing eagerly about me, a drove of gray hairy beings came in sight,
+lumbering toward me with a kind of boneless, wallowing motion like
+bears.
+
+I never turn back, though often so inclined, and in this particular
+instance, amid such surroundings, everything seemed singularly
+unfavorable for the calm acceptance of so grim a company. Suppressing
+my fears, I soon discovered that although as hairy as bears and as
+crooked as summit pines, the strange creatures were sufficiently erect
+to belong to our own species. They proved to be nothing more formidable
+than Mono Indians dressed in the skins of sage-rabbits. Both the men
+and the women begged persistently for whisky and tobacco, and seemed so
+accustomed to denials that I found it impossible to convince them that
+I had none to give. Excepting the names of these two products of
+civilization, they seemed to understand not a word of English; but I
+afterward learned that they were on their way to Yosemite Valley to
+feast awhile on trout and procure a load of acorns to carry back
+through the pass to their huts on the shore of Mono Lake.
+
+Occasionally a good countenance may be seen among the Mono Indians, but
+these, the first specimens I had seen, were mostly ugly, and some of
+them altogether hideous. The dirt on their faces was fairly stratified,
+and seemed so ancient and so undisturbed it might almost possess a
+geological significance. The older faces were, moreover, strangely
+blurred and divided into sections by furrows that looked like the
+cleavage-joints of rocks, suggesting exposure on the mountains in a
+castaway condition for ages. Somehow they seemed to have no right place
+in the landscape, and I was glad to see them fading out of sight down
+the pass.
+
+Then came evening, and the somber cliffs were inspired with the
+ineffable beauty of the alpenglow. A solemn calm fell upon everything.
+All the lower portion of the cañon was in gloaming shadow, and I crept
+into a hollow near one of the upper lakelets to smooth the ground in a
+sheltered nook for a bed. When the short twilight faded, I kindled a
+sunny fire, made a cup of tea, and lay down to rest and look at the
+stars. Soon the night-wind began to flow and pour in torrents among the
+jagged peaks, mingling strange tones with those of the waterfalls
+sounding far below; and as I drifted toward sleep I began to experience
+an uncomfortable feeling of nearness to the furred Monos. Then the full
+moon looked down over the edge of the cañon wall, her countenance
+seemingly filled with intense concern, and apparently so near as to
+produce a startling effect as if she had entered my bedroom, forgetting
+all the world, to gaze on me alone.
+
+The night was full of strange sounds, and I gladly welcomed the
+morning. Breakfast was soon done, and I set forth in the exhilarating
+freshness of the new day, rejoicing in the abundance of pure wildness
+so close about me. The stupendous rocks, hacked and scarred with
+centuries of storms, stood sharply out in the thin early light, while
+down in the bottom of the cañon grooved and polished bosses heaved and
+glistened like swelling sea-waves, telling a grand old story of the
+ancient glacier that poured its crushing floods above them.
+
+Here for the first time I met the arctic daisies in all their
+perfection of purity and spirituality,—gentle mountaineers face to face
+with the stormy sky, kept safe and warm by a thousand miracles. I
+leaped lightly from rock to rock, glorying in the eternal freshness and
+sufficiency of Nature, and in the ineffable tenderness with which she
+nurtures her mountain darlings in the very fountains of storms. Fresh
+beauty appeared at every step, delicate rock-ferns, and groups of the
+fairest flowers. Now another lake came to view, now a waterfall. Never
+fell light in brighter spangles, never fell water in whiter foam. I
+seemed to float through the cañon enchanted, feeling nothing of its
+roughness, and was out in the Mono levels before I was aware.
+
+Looking back from the shore of Moraine Lake, my morning ramble seemed
+all a dream. There curved Bloody Cañon, a mere glacial furrow 2000 feet
+deep, with smooth rocks projecting from the sides and braided together
+in the middle, like bulging, swelling muscles. Here the lilies were
+higher than my head, and the sunshine was warm enough for palms. Yet
+the snow around the arctic willows was plainly visible only four miles
+away, and between were narrow specimen zones of all the principal
+climates of the globe.
+
+On the bank of a small brook that comes gurgling down the side of the
+left lateral moraine, I found a camp-fire still burning, which no doubt
+belonged to the gray Indians I had met on the summit, and I listened
+instinctively and moved cautiously forward, half expecting to see some
+of their grim faces peering out of the bushes.
+
+Passing on toward the open plain, I noticed three well-defined terminal
+moraines curved gracefully across the cañon stream, and joined by long
+splices to the two noble laterals. These mark the halting-places of the
+vanished glacier when it was retreating into its summit shadows on the
+breaking-up of the glacial winter.
+
+Five miles below the foot of Moraine Lake, just where the lateral
+moraines lose themselves in the plain, there was a field of wild rye,
+growing in magnificent waving bunches six to eight feet high, bearing
+heads from six to twelve inches long. Rubbing out some of the grains, I
+found them about five eighths of an inch long, dark-colored, and sweet.
+Indian women were gathering it in baskets, bending down large handfuls,
+beating it out, and fanning it in the wind. They were quite
+picturesque, coming through the rye, as one caught glimpses of them
+here and there, in winding lanes and openings, with splendid tufts
+arching above their heads, while their incessant chat and laughter
+showed their heedless joy.
+
+Like the rye-field, I found the so-called desert of Mono blooming in a
+high state of natural cultivation with the wild rose, cherry, aster,
+and the delicate abronia; also innumerable gilias, phloxes, poppies,
+and bush-compositae. I observed their gestures and the various
+expressions of their corollas, inquiring how they could be so fresh and
+beautiful out in this volcanic desert. They told as happy a life as any
+plant-company I ever met, and seemed to enjoy even the hot sand and the
+wind.
+
+But the vegetation of the pass has been in great part destroyed, and
+the same may be said of all the more accessible passes throughout the
+range. Immense numbers of starving sheep and cattle have been driven
+through them into Nevada, trampling the wild gardens and meadows almost
+out of existence. The lofty walls are untouched by any foot, and the
+falls sing on unchanged; but the sight of crushed flowers and stripped,
+bitten bushes goes far toward destroying the charm of wildness.
+
+The cañon should be seen in winter. A good, strong traveler, who knows
+the way and the weather, might easily make a safe excursion through it
+from Yosemite Valley on snow-shoes during some tranquil time, when the
+storms are hushed. The lakes and falls would be buried then; but so,
+also, would be the traces of destructive feet, while the views of the
+mountains in their winter garb, and the ride at lightning speed down
+the pass between the snowy walls, would be truly glorious.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CAÑON.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+THE GLACIER LAKES
+
+
+Among the many unlooked-for treasures that are bound up and hidden away
+in the depths of Sierra solitudes, none more surely charm and surprise
+all kinds of travelers than the glacier lakes. The forests and the
+glaciers and the snowy fountains of the streams advertise their wealth
+in a more or less telling manner even in the distance, but nothing is
+seen of the lakes until we have climbed above them. All the upper
+branches of the rivers are fairly laden with lakes, like orchard trees
+with fruit. They lie embosomed in the deep woods, down in the grovy
+bottoms of cañons, high on bald tablelands, and around the feet of the
+icy peaks, mirroring back their wild beauty over and over again. Some
+conception of their lavish abundance may be made from the fact that,
+from one standpoint on the summit of Red Mountain, a day’s journey to
+the east of Yosemite Valley, no fewer than forty-two are displayed
+within a radius of ten miles. The whole number in the Sierra can hardly
+be less than fifteen hundred, not counting the smaller pools and tarns,
+which are innumerable. Perhaps two thirds or more lie on the western
+flank of the range, and all are restricted to the alpine and subalpine
+regions. At the close of the last glacial period, the middle and
+foot-hill regions also abounded in lakes, all of which have long since
+vanished as completely as the magnificent ancient glaciers that brought
+them into existence.
+
+Though the eastern flank of the range is excessively steep, we find
+lakes pretty regularly distributed throughout even the most precipitous
+portions. They are mostly found in the upper branches of the cañons,
+and in the glacial amphitheaters around the peaks.
+
+Occasionally long, narrow specimens occur upon the steep sides of
+dividing ridges, their basins swung lengthwise like hammocks, and very
+rarely one is found lying so exactly on the summit of the range at the
+head of some pass that its waters are discharged down both flanks when
+the snow is melting fast. But, however situated, they soon cease to
+form surprises to the studious mountaineer; for, like all the love-work
+of Nature, they are harmoniously related to one another, and to all the
+other features of the mountains. It is easy, therefore, to find the
+bright lake-eyes in the roughest and most ungovernable-looking
+topography of any landscape countenance. Even in the lower regions,
+where they have been closed for many a century, their rocky orbits are
+still discernible, filled in with the detritus of flood and avalanche.
+A beautiful system of grouping in correspondence with the glacial
+fountains is soon perceived; also their extension in the direction of
+the trends of the ancient glaciers; and in general their dependence as
+to form, size, and position upon the character of the rocks in which
+their basins have been eroded, and the quantity and direction of
+application of the glacial force expended upon each basin.
+
+In the upper cañons we usually find them in pretty regular succession,
+strung together like beads on the bright ribbons of their
+feeding-streams, which pour, white and gray with foam and spray, from
+one to the other, their perfect mirror stillness making impressive
+contrasts with the grand blare and glare of the connecting cataracts.
+In Lake Hollow, on the north side of the Hoffman spur, immediately
+above the great Tuolumne cañon, there are ten lovely lakelets lying
+near together in one general hollow, like eggs in a nest. Seen from
+above, in a general view, feathered with Hemlock Spruce, and fringed
+with sedge, they seem to me the most singularly beautiful and
+interestingly located lake-cluster I have ever yet discovered.
+
+Lake Tahoe, 22 miles long by about 10 wide, and from 500 to over 1600
+feet in depth, is the largest of all the Sierra lakes. It lies just
+beyond the northern limit of the higher portion of the range between
+the main axis and a spur that puts out on the east side from near the
+head of the Carson River. Its forested shores go curving in and out
+around many an emerald bay and pine-crowned promontory, and its waters
+are everywhere as keenly pure as any to be found among the highest
+mountains.
+
+Donner Lake, rendered memorable by the terrible fate of the Donner
+party, is about three miles long, and lies about ten miles to the north
+of Tahoe, at the head of one of the tributaries of the Truckee. A few
+miles farther north lies Lake Independence, about the same size as
+Donner. But far the greater number of the lakes lie much higher and are
+quite small, few of them exceeding a mile in length, most of them less
+than half a mile.
+
+Along the lower edge of the lake-belt, the smallest have disappeared by
+the filling-in of their basins, leaving only those of considerable
+size. But all along the upper freshly glaciated margin of the
+lake-bearing zone, every hollow, however small, lying within reach of
+any portion of the close network of streams, contains a bright,
+brimming pool; so that the landscape viewed from the mountain-tops
+seems to be sown broadcast with them. Many of the larger lakes are
+encircled with smaller ones like central gems girdled with sparkling
+brilliants. In general, however, there is no marked dividing line as to
+size. In order, therefore, to prevent confusion, I would state here
+that in giving numbers, I include none less than 500 yards in
+circumference.
+
+In the basin of the Merced River, I counted 131, of which 111 are upon
+the tributaries that fall so grandly into Yosemite Valley. Pohono
+Creek, which forms the fall of that name, takes its rise in a beautiful
+lake, lying beneath the shadow of a lofty granite spur that puts out
+from Buena Vista peak. This is now the only lake left in the whole
+Pohono Basin. The Illilouette has sixteen, the Nevada no fewer than
+sixty-seven, the Tenaya eight, Hoffmann Creek five, and Yosemite Creek
+fourteen. There are but two other lake-bearing affluents of the Merced,
+viz., the South Fork with fifteen, and Cascade Creek with five, both of
+which unite with the main trunk below Yosemite.
+
+[Illustration: LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS.]
+
+The Merced River, as a whole, is remarkably like an elm-tree, and it
+requires but little effort on the part of the imagination to picture it
+standing upright, with all its lakes hanging upon its spreading
+branches, the topmost eighty miles in height. Now add all the other
+lake-bearing rivers of the Sierra, each in its place, and you will have
+a truly glorious spectacle,—an avenue the length and width of the
+range; the long, slender, gray shafts of the main trunks, the milky way
+of arching branches, and the silvery lakes, all clearly defined and
+shining on the sky. How excitedly such an addition to the scenery would
+be gazed at! Yet these lakeful rivers are still more excitingly
+beautiful and impressive in their natural positions to those who have
+the eyes to see them as they lie imbedded in their meadows and forests
+and glacier-sculptured rocks.
+
+When a mountain lake is born,—when, like a young eye, it first opens to
+the light,—it is an irregular, expressionless crescent, inclosed in
+banks of rock and ice,—bare, glaciated rock on the lower side, the
+rugged snout of a glacier on the upper. In this condition it remains
+for many a year, until at length, toward the end of some auspicious
+cluster of seasons, the glacier recedes beyond the upper margin of the
+basin, leaving it open from shore to shore for the first time,
+thousands of years after its conception beneath the glacier that
+excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its
+pure depths; the winds ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun fills it
+with throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around
+its leafless shores,—sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at
+night its only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors.
+Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede, and numerous rills, still
+younger than the lake itself, bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and
+pebbles, giving rise to margin-rings and plats of soil. To these fresh
+soil-beds come many a waiting plant. First, a hardy carex with arching
+leaves and a spike of brown flowers; then, as the seasons grow warmer,
+and the soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take their appointed
+places, and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies, dodecatheons,
+violets, honeyworts, and many a lowly moss. Shrubs also hasten in time
+to the new gardens,—kalmia with its glossy leaves and purple flowers,
+the arctic willow, making soft woven carpets, together with the heathy
+bryanthus and cassiope, the fairest and dearest of them all. Insects
+now enrich the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed
+by the ouzel, which is the first bird to visit a glacier lake, as the
+sedge is the first of plants.
+
+So the young lake grows in beauty, becoming more and more humanly
+lovable from century to century. Groves of aspen spring up, and hardy
+pines, and the Hemlock Spruce, until it is richly overshadowed and
+embowered. But while its shores are being enriched, the soil-beds creep
+out with incessant growth, contracting its area, while the lighter
+mud-particles deposited on the bottom cause it to grow constantly
+shallower, until at length the last remnant of the lake
+vanishes,—closed forever in ripe and natural old age. And now its
+feeding-stream goes winding on without halting through the new gardens
+and groves that have taken its place.
+
+The length of the life of any lake depends ordinarily upon the capacity
+of its basin, as compared with the carrying power of the streams that
+flow into it, the character of the rocks over which these streams flow,
+and the relative position of the lake toward other lakes. In a series
+whose basins lie in the same cañon, and are fed by one and the same
+main stream, the uppermost will, of course, vanish first unless some
+other lake-filling agent comes in to modify the result; because at
+first it receives nearly all of the sediments that the stream brings
+down, only the finest of the mud-particles being carried through the
+highest of the series to the next below. Then the next higher, and the
+next would be successively filled, and the lowest would be the last to
+vanish. But this simplicity as to duration is broken in upon in various
+ways, chiefly through the action of side-streams that enter the lower
+lakes direct. For, notwithstanding many of these side tributaries are
+quite short, and, during late summer, feeble, they all become powerful
+torrents in springtime when the snow is melting, and carry not only
+sand and pine-needles, but large trunks and boulders tons in weight,
+sweeping them down their steeply inclined channels and into the lake
+basins with astounding energy. Many of these side affluents also have
+the advantage of access to the main lateral moraines of the vanished
+glacier that occupied the cañon, and upon these they draw for
+lake-filling material, while the main trunk stream flows mostly over
+clean glacier pavements, where but little moraine matter is ever left
+for them to carry. Thus a small rapid stream with abundance of loose
+transportable material within its reach may fill up an extensive basin
+in a few centuries, while a large perennial trunk stream, flowing over
+clean, enduring pavements, though ordinarily a hundred times larger,
+may not fill a smaller basin in thousands of years.
+
+The comparative influence of great and small streams as lake-fillers is
+strikingly illustrated in Yosemite Valley, through which the Merced
+flows. The bottom of the valley is now composed of level meadow-lands
+and dry, sloping soil-beds planted with oak and pine, but it was once a
+lake stretching from wall to wall and nearly from one end of the valley
+to the other, forming one of the most beautiful cliff-bound sheets of
+water that ever existed in the Sierra. And though never perhaps seen by
+human eye, it was but yesterday, geologically speaking, since it
+disappeared, and the traces of its existence are still so fresh, it may
+easily be restored to the eye of imagination and viewed in all its
+grandeur, about as truly and vividly as if actually before us. Now we
+find that the detritus which fills this magnificent basin was not
+brought down from the distant mountains by the main streams that
+converge here to form the river, however powerful and available for the
+purpose at first sight they appear; but almost wholly by the small
+local tributaries, such as those of Indian Cañon, the Sentinel, and the
+Three Brothers, and by a few small residual glaciers which lingered in
+the shadows of the walls long after the main trunk glacier had receded
+beyond the head of the valley.
+
+Had the glaciers that once covered the range been melted at once,
+leaving the entire surface bare from top to bottom simultaneously, then
+of course all the lakes would have come into existence at the same
+time, and the highest, other circumstances being equal, would, as we
+have seen, be the first to vanish. But because they melted gradually
+from the foot of the range upward, the lower lakes were the first to
+see the light and the first to be obliterated. Therefore, instead of
+finding the lakes of the present day at the foot of the range, we find
+them at the top. Most of the lower lakes vanished thousands of years
+before those now brightening the alpine landscapes were born. And in
+general, owing to the deliberation of the upward retreat of the
+glaciers, the lowest of the existing lakes are also the oldest, a
+gradual transition being apparent throughout the entire belt, from the
+older, forested, meadow-rimmed and contracted forms all the way up to
+those that are new born, lying bare and meadowless among the highest
+peaks.
+
+[Illustration: THE DEATH OF A LAKE.]
+
+A few small lakes unfortunately situated are extinguished suddenly by a
+single swoop of an avalanche, carrying down immense numbers of trees,
+together with the soil they were growing upon. Others are obliterated
+by land-slips, earthquake taluses, etc., but these lake-deaths compared
+with those resulting from the deliberate and incessant deposition of
+sediments, may be termed accidental. Their fate is like that of trees
+struck by lightning.
+
+The lake-line is of course still rising, its present elevation being
+about 8000 feet above sea-level; somewhat higher than this toward the
+southern extremity of the range, lower toward the northern, on account
+of the difference in time of the withdrawal of the glaciers, due to
+difference in climate. Specimens occur here and there considerably
+below this limit, in basins specially protected from inwashing
+detritus, or exceptional in size. These, however, are not sufficiently
+numerous to make any marked irregularity in the line. The highest I
+have yet found lies at an elevation of about 12,000 feet, in a glacier
+womb, at the foot of one of the highest of the summit peaks, a few
+miles to the north of Mount Hitter. The basins of perhaps twenty-five
+or thirty are still in process of formation beneath the few lingering
+glaciers, but by the time they are born, an equal or greater number
+will probably have died. Since the beginning of the close of the
+ice-period the whole number in the range has perhaps never been greater
+than at present.
+
+A rough approximation to the average duration of these mountain lakes
+may be made from data already suggested, but I cannot stop here to
+present the subject in detail. I must also forego, in the mean time,
+the pleasure of a full discussion of the interesting question of
+lake-basin formation, for which fine, clear, demonstrative material
+abounds in these mountains. In addition to what has been already given
+on the subject, I will only make this one statement. Every lake in the
+Sierra is a glacier lake. Their basins were not merely remodeled and
+scoured out by this mighty agent, but in the first place were eroded
+from the solid.
+
+I must now make haste to give some nearer views of representative
+specimens lying at different elevations on the main lake-belt,
+confining myself to descriptions of the features most characteristic of
+each.
+
+SHADOW LAKE
+
+This is a fine specimen of the oldest and lowest of the existing lakes.
+It lies about eight miles above Yosemite Valley, on the main branch of
+the Merced, at an elevation of about 7350 feet above the sea; and is
+everywhere so securely cliff-bound that without artificial trails only
+wild animals can get down to its rocky shores from any direction. Its
+original length was about a mile and a half; now it is only half a mile
+in length by about a fourth of a mile in width, and over the lowest
+portion of the basin ninety-eight feet deep. Its crystal waters are
+clasped around on the north and south by majestic granite walls
+sculptured in true Yosemitic style into domes, gables, and battlemented
+headlands, which on the south come plunging down sheer into deep water,
+from a height of from 1500 to 2000 feet. The South Lyell glacier eroded
+this magnificent basin out of solid porphyritic granite while forcing
+its way westward from the summit fountains toward Yosemite, and the
+exposed rocks around the shores, and the projecting bosses of the
+walls, ground and burnished beneath the vast ice-flood, still glow with
+silvery radiance, notwithstanding the innumerable corroding storms that
+have fallen upon them. The general conformation of the basin, as well
+as the moraines laid along the top of the walls, and the grooves and
+scratches on the bottom and sides, indicate in the most unmistakable
+manner the direction pursued by this mighty ice-river, its great depth,
+and the tremendous energy it exerted in thrusting itself into and out
+of the basin; bearing down with superior pressure upon this portion of
+its channel, because of the greater declivity, consequently eroding it
+deeper than the other portions about it, and producing the lake-bowl as
+the necessary result.
+
+With these magnificent ice-characters so vividly before us it is not
+easy to realize that the old glacier that made them vanished tens of
+centuries ago; for, excepting the vegetation that has sprung up, and
+the changes effected by an earthquake that hurled rock-avalanches from
+the weaker headlands, the basin as a whole presents the same appearance
+that it did when first brought to light. The lake itself, however, has
+undergone marked changes; one sees at a glance that it is growing old.
+More than two thirds of its original area is now dry land, covered with
+meadow-grasses and groves of pine and fir, and the level bed of
+alluvium stretching across from wall to wall at the head is evidently
+growing out all along its lakeward margin, and will at length close the
+lake forever.
+
+[Illustration: SHADOW LAKE (MERCED LAKE), YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.]
+
+Every lover of fine wildness would delight to saunter on a summer day
+through the flowery groves now occupying the filled-up portion of the
+basin. The curving shore is clearly traced by a ribbon of white sand
+upon which the ripples play; then comes a belt of broad-leafed sedges,
+interrupted here and there by impenetrable tangles of willows; beyond
+this there are groves of trembling aspen; then a dark, shadowy belt of
+Two-leaved Pine, with here and there a round carex meadow ensconced
+nest-like in its midst; and lastly, a narrow outer margin of majestic
+Silver Fir 200 feet high. The ground beneath the trees is covered with
+a luxuriant crop of grasses, chiefly triticum, bromus, and
+calamagrostis, with purple spikes and panicles arching to one’s
+shoulders; while the open meadow patches glow throughout the summer
+with showy flowers,—heleniums, goldenrods, erigerons, lupines,
+castilleias, and lilies, and form favorite hiding and feeding-grounds
+for bears and deer.
+
+The rugged south wall is feathered darkly along the top with an
+imposing array of spirey Silver Firs, while the rifted precipices all
+the way down to the water’s edge are adorned with picturesque old
+junipers, their cinnamon-colored bark showing finely upon the neutral
+gray of the granite. These, with a few venturesome Dwarf Pines and
+Spruces, lean out over fissured ribs and tablets, or stand erect back
+in shadowy niches, in an indescribably wild and fearless manner.
+Moreover, the white-flowered Douglas spiraea and dwarf evergreen oak
+form graceful fringes along the narrower seams, wherever the slightest
+hold can be effected. Rock-ferns, too, are here, such as allosorus,
+pellaea, and cheilanthes, making handsome rosettes on the drier
+fissures; and the delicate maidenhair, cistoperis, and woodsia hide
+back in mossy grottoes, moistened by some trickling rill; and then the
+orange wall-flower holds up its showy panicles here and there in the
+sunshine, and bahia makes bosses of gold. But, notwithstanding all this
+plant beauty, the general impression in looking across the lake is of
+stern, unflinching rockiness; the ferns and flowers are scarcely seen,
+and not one fiftieth of the whole surface is screened with plant life.
+
+The sunnier north wall is more varied in sculpture, but the general
+tone is the same. A few headlands, flat-topped and soil-covered,
+support clumps of cedar and pine; and up-curving tangles of chinquapin
+and live-oak, growing on rough earthquake taluses, girdle their bases.
+Small streams come cascading down between them, their foaming margins
+brightened with gay primulas, gilias, and mimuluses. And close along
+the shore on this side there is a strip of rocky meadow enameled with
+buttercups, daisies, and white violets, and the purple-topped grasses
+out on its beveled border dip their leaves into the water.
+
+The lower edge of the basin is a dam-like swell of solid granite,
+heavily abraded by the old glacier, but scarce at all cut into as yet
+by the outflowing stream, though it has flowed on unceasingly since the
+lake came into existence.
+
+As soon as the stream is fairly over the lake-lip it breaks into
+cascades, never for a moment halting, and scarce abating one jot of its
+glad energy, until it reaches the next filled-up basin, a mile below.
+Then swirling and curving drowsily through meadow and grove, it breaks
+forth anew into gray rapids and falls, leaping and gliding in glorious
+exuberance of wild bound and dance down into another and yet another
+filled-up lake basin. Then, after a long rest in the levels of Little
+Yosemite, it makes its grandest display in the famous Nevada Fall. Out
+of the clouds of spray at the foot of the fall the battered, roaring
+river gropes its way, makes another mile of cascades and rapids, rests
+a moment in Emerald Pool, then plunges over the grand cliff of the
+Vernal Fall, and goes thundering and chafing down a boulder-choked
+gorge of tremendous depth and wildness into the tranquil reaches of the
+old Yosemite lake basin.
+
+The color-beauty about Shadow Lake during the Indian summer is much
+richer than one could hope to find in so young and so glacial a
+wilderness. Almost every leaf is tinted then, and the golden-rods are
+in bloom; but most of the color is given by the ripe grasses, willows,
+and aspens. At the foot of the lake you stand in a trembling aspen
+grove, every leaf painted like a butterfly, and away to right and left
+round the shores sweeps a curving ribbon of meadow, red and brown
+dotted with pale yellow, shading off here and there into hazy purple.
+The walls, too, are dashed with bits of bright color that gleam out on
+the neutral granite gray. But neither the walls, nor the margin meadow,
+nor yet the gay, fluttering grove in which you stand, nor the lake
+itself, flashing with spangles, can long hold your attention; for at
+the head of the lake there is a gorgeous mass of orange-yellow,
+belonging to the main aspen belt of the basin, which seems the very
+fountain whence all the color below it had flowed, and here your eye is
+filled and fixed. This glorious mass is about thirty feet high, and
+extends across the basin nearly from wall to wall. Rich bosses of
+willow flame in front of it, and from the base of these the brown
+meadow comes forward to the water’s edge, the whole being relieved
+against the unyielding green of the coniferae, while thick sun-gold is
+poured over all.
+
+During these blessed color-days no cloud darkens the sky, the winds are
+gentle, and the landscape rests, hushed everywhere, and indescribably
+impressive. A few ducks are usually seen sailing on the lake,
+apparently more for pleasure than anything else, and the ouzels at the
+head of the rapids sing always; while robins, grosbeaks, and the
+Douglas squirrels are busy in the groves, making delightful company,
+and intensifying the feeling of grateful sequestration without ruffling
+the deep, hushed calm and peace.
+
+[Illustration: VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY]
+
+This autumnal mellowness usually lasts until the end of November. Then
+come days of quite another kind. The winter clouds grow, and bloom, and
+shed their starry crystals on every leaf and rock, and all the colors
+vanish like a sunset. The deer gather and hasten down their well-known
+trails, fearful of being snow-bound. Storm succeeds storm, heaping snow
+on the cliffs and meadows, and bending the slender pines to the ground
+in wide arches, one over the other, clustering and interlacing like
+lodged wheat. Avalanches rush and boom from the shelving heights,
+piling immense heaps upon the frozen lake, and all the summer glory is
+buried and lost. Yet in the midst of this hearty winter the sun shines
+warm at times, calling the Douglas squirrel to frisk in the snowy pines
+and seek out his hidden stores; and the weather is never so severe as
+to drive away the grouse and little nut-hatches and chickadees.
+
+Toward May, the lake begins to open. The hot sun sends down innumerable
+streams over the cliffs, streaking them round and round with foam. The
+snow slowly vanishes, and the meadows show tintings of green. Then
+spring comes on apace; flowers and flies enrich the air and the sod,
+and the deer come back to the upper groves like birds to an old nest.
+
+I first discovered this charming lake in the autumn of 1872, while on
+my way to the glaciers at the head of the river. It was rejoicing then
+in its gayest colors, untrodden, hidden in the glorious wildness like
+unmined gold. Year after year I walked its shores without discovering
+any other trace of humanity than the remains of an Indian camp-fire,
+and the thigh-bones of a deer that had been broken to get at the
+marrow. It lies out of the regular ways of Indians, who love to hunt in
+more accessible fields adjacent to trails. Their knowledge of
+deer-haunts had probably enticed them here some hunger-time when they
+wished to make sure of a feast; for hunting in this lake-hollow is like
+hunting in a fenced park. I had told the beauty of Shadow Lake only to
+a few friends, fearing it might come to be trampled and “improved” like
+Yosemite. On my last visit, as I was sauntering along the shore on the
+strip of sand between the water and sod, reading the tracks of the wild
+animals that live here, I was startled by a human track, which I at
+once saw belonged to some shepherd; for each step was turned out 35° or
+40° from the general course pursued, and was also run over in an
+uncertain sprawling fashion at the heel, while a row of round dots on
+the right indicated the staff that shepherds carry. None but a shepherd
+could make such a track, and after tracing it a few minutes I began to
+fear that he might be seeking pasturage; for what else could he be
+seeking? Returning from the glaciers shortly afterward, nay worst fears
+were realized. A trail had been made down the mountain-side from the
+north, and all the gardens and meadows were destroyed by a horde of
+hoofed locusts, as if swept by a fire. The money-changers were in the
+temple.
+
+ORANGE LAKE
+
+Besides these larger cañon lakes, fed by the main cañon streams, there
+are many smaller ones lying aloft on the top of rock benches, entirely
+independent of the general drainage channels, and of course drawing
+their supplies from a very limited area. Notwithstanding they are
+mostly small and shallow, owing to their immunity from avalanche
+detritus and the inwashings of powerful streams, they often endure
+longer than others many times larger but less favorably situated. When
+very shallow they become dry toward the end of summer; but because
+their basins are ground out of seamless stone they suffer no loss save
+from evaporation alone; and the great depth of snow that falls, lasting
+into June, makes their dry season short in any case.
+
+Orange Lake is a fair illustration of this bench form. It lies in the
+middle of a beautiful glacial pavement near the lower margin of the
+lake-line, about a mile and a half to the northwest of Shadow Lake. It
+is only about 100 yards in circumference. Next the water there is a
+girdle of carices with wide overarching leaves, then in regular order a
+shaggy ruff of huckleberry bushes, a zone of willows with here and
+there a bush of the Mountain Ash, then a zone of aspens with a few
+pines around the outside. These zones are of course concentric, and
+together form a wall beyond which the naked ice-burnished granite
+stretches away in every direction, leaving it conspicuously relieved,
+like a bunch of palms in a desert.
+
+In autumn, when the colors are ripe, the whole circular grove, at a
+little distance, looks like a big handful of flowers set in a cup to be
+kept fresh—a tuft of goldenrods. Its feeding-streams are exceedingly
+beautiful, notwithstanding their inconstancy and extreme shallowness.
+They have no channel whatever, and consequently are left free to spread
+in thin sheets upon the shining granite and wander at will. In many
+places the current is less than a fourth of an inch deep, and flows
+with so little friction it is scarcely visible. Sometimes there is not
+a single foam-bell, or drifting pine-needle, or irregularity of any
+sort to manifest its motion. Yet when observed narrowly it is seen to
+form a web of gliding lacework exquisitely woven, giving beautiful
+reflections from its minute curving ripples and eddies, and differing
+from the water-laces of large cascades in being everywhere transparent.
+In spring, when the snow is melting, the lake-bowl is brimming full,
+and sends forth quite a large stream that slips glassily for 200 yards
+or so, until it comes to an almost vertical precipice 800 feet high,
+down which it plunges in a fine cataract; then it gathers its scattered
+waters and goes smoothly over folds of gently dipping granite to its
+confluence with the main cañon stream. During the greater portion of
+the year, however, not a single water sound will you hear either at
+head or foot of the lake, not oven the whispered lappings of
+ripple-waves along the shore; for the winds are fenced out. But the
+deep mountain silence is sweetened now and then by birds that stop here
+to rest and drink on their way across the cañon.
+
+LAKE STARR KING
+
+A beautiful variety of the bench-top lakes occurs just where the great
+lateral moraines of the main glaciers have been shoved forward in
+outswelling concentric rings by small residual tributary glaciers.
+Instead of being encompassed by a narrow ring of trees like Orange
+Lake, these lie embosomed in dense moraine woods, so dense that in
+seeking them you may pass them by again and again, although you may
+know nearly where they lie concealed.
+
+[Illustration: LAKE STARR KING.]
+
+Lake Starr King, lying to the north of the cone of that name, above the
+Little Yosemite Valley, is a fine specimen of this variety. The ouzels
+pass it by, and so do the ducks; they could hardly get into it if they
+would, without plumping straight down inside the circling trees.
+
+Yet these isolated gems, lying like fallen fruit detached from the
+branches, are not altogether without inhabitants and joyous, animating
+visitors. Of course fishes cannot get into them, and this is generally
+true of nearly every glacier lake in the range, but they are all well
+stocked with happy frogs. How did the frogs get into them in the first
+place? Perhaps their sticky spawn was carried in on the feet of ducks
+or other birds, else their progenitors must have made some exciting
+excursions through the woods and up the sides of the cañons. Down in
+the still, pure depths of these hidden lakelets you may also find the
+larvae of innumerable insects and a great variety of beetles, while the
+air above them is thick with humming wings, through the midst of which
+fly-catchers are constantly darting. And in autumn, when the
+huckleberries are ripe, bands of robins and grosbeaks come to feast,
+forming altogether delightful little byworlds for the naturalist.
+
+Pushing our way upward toward the axis of the range, we find lakes in
+greater and greater abundance, and more youthful in aspect. At an
+elevation of about 9000 feet above sea-level they seem to have arrived
+at middle age,—that is, their basins seem to be about half filled with
+alluvium. Broad sheets of meadow-land are seen extending into them,
+imperfect and boggy in many places and more nearly level than those of
+the older lakes below them, and the vegetation of their shores is of
+course more alpine. Kalmia, lodum, and cassiope fringe the meadow
+rocks, while the luxuriant, waving groves, so characteristic of the
+lower lakes, are represented only by clumps of the Dwarf Pine and
+Hemlock Spruce. These, however, are oftentimes very picturesquely
+grouped on rocky headlands around the outer rim of the meadows, or with
+still more striking effect crown some rocky islet.
+
+Moreover, from causes that we cannot stop here to explain, the cliffs
+about these middle-aged lakes are seldom of the massive Yosemite type,
+but are more broken, and less sheer, and they usually stand back,
+leaving the shores comparatively free; while the few precipitous rocks
+that do come forward and plunge directly into deep water are seldom
+more than three or four hundred feet high.
+
+I have never yet met ducks in any of the lakes of this kind, but the
+ouzel is never wanting where the feeding-streams are perennial. Wild
+sheep and deer may occasionally be seen on the meadows, and very rarely
+a bear. One might camp on the rugged shores of these bright fountains
+for weeks, without meeting any animal larger than the marmots that
+burrow beneath glacier boulders along the edges of the meadows.
+
+The highest and youngest of all the lakes lie nestled in glacier wombs.
+At first sight, they seem pictures of pure bloodless desolation,
+miniature arctic seas, bound in perpetual ice and snow, and
+overshadowed by harsh, gloomy, crumbling precipices. Their waters are
+keen ultramarine blue in the deepest parts, lively grass-green toward
+the shore shallows and around the edges of the small bergs usually
+floating about in them. A few hardy sedges, frost-pinched every night,
+are occasionally found making soft sods along the sun-touched portions
+of their shores, and when their northern banks slope openly to the
+south, and are soil-covered, no matter how coarsely, they are sure to
+be brightened with flowers. One lake in particular now comes to mind
+which illustrates the floweriness of the sun-touched banks of these icy
+gems. Close up under the shadow of the Sierra Matterhorn, on the
+eastern slope of the range, lies one of the iciest of these glacier
+lakes at an elevation of about 12,000 feet. A short, ragged-edged
+glacier crawls into it from the south, and on the opposite side it is
+embanked and dammed by a series of concentric terminal moraines, made
+by the glacier when it entirely filled the basin. Half a mile below
+lies a second lake, at a height of 11,500 feet, about as cold and as
+pure as a snow-crystal. The waters of the first come gurgling down into
+it over and through the moraine dam, while a second stream pours into
+it direct from a glacier that lies to the southeast. Sheer precipices
+of crystalline snow rise out of deep water on the south, keeping
+perpetual winter on that side, but there is a fine summery spot on the
+other, notwithstanding the lake is only about 300 yards wide. Here, on
+August 25, 1873, I found a charming company of flowers, not pinched,
+crouching dwarfs, scarce able to look up, but warm and juicy, standing
+erect in rich cheery color and bloom. On a narrow strip of shingle,
+close to the water’s edge, there were a few tufts of carex gone to
+seed; and a little way back up the rocky bank at the foot of a
+crumbling wall so inclined as to absorb and radiate as well as reflect
+a considerable quantity of sun-heat, was the garden, containing a
+thrifty thicket of Cowania covered with large yellow flowers; several
+bushes of the alpine ribes with berries nearly ripe and wildly acid; a
+few handsome grasses belonging to two distinct species, and one
+goldenrod; a few hairy lupines and radiant spragueas, whose blue and
+rose-colored flowers were set off to fine advantage amid green carices;
+and along a narrow seam in the very warmest angle of the wall a
+perfectly gorgeous fringe of _Epilobium obcordatum_ with flowers an
+inch wide, crowded together in lavish profusion, and colored as royal a
+purple as ever was worn by any high-bred plant of the tropics; and best
+of all, and greatest of all, a noble thistle in full bloom, standing
+erect, head and shoulders above his companions, and thrusting out his
+lances in sturdy vigor as if growing on a Scottish brae. All this brave
+warm bloom among the raw stones, right in the face of the onlooking
+glaciers.
+
+As far as I have been able to find out, these upper lakes are
+snow-buried in winter to a depth of about thirty-five or forty feet,
+and those most exposed to avalanches, to a depth of even a hundred feet
+or more. These last are, of course, nearly lost to the landscape. Some
+remain buried for years, when the snowfall is exceptionally great, and
+many open only on one side late in the season. The snow of the closed
+side is composed of coarse granules compacted and frozen into a firm,
+faintly stratified mass, like the _névé_ of a glacier. The lapping
+waves of the open portion gradually undermine and cause it to break off
+in large masses like icebergs, which gives rise to a precipitous front
+like the discharging wall of a glacier entering the sea. The play of
+the lights among the crystal angles of these snow-cliffs, the pearly
+white of the outswelling bosses, the bergs drifting in front, aglow in
+the sun and edged with green water, and the deep blue disk of the lake
+itself extending to your feet,—this forms a picture that enriches all
+your afterlife, and is never forgotten. But however perfect the season
+and the day, the cold incompleteness of these young lakes is always
+keenly felt. We approach them with a kind of mean caution, and steal
+unconfidingly around their crystal shores, dashed and ill at ease, as
+if expecting to hear some forbidding voice. But the love-songs of the
+ouzels and the love-looks of the daisies gradually reassure us, and
+manifest the warm fountain humanity that pervades the coldest and most
+solitary of them all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+THE GLACIER MEADOWS
+
+
+After the lakes on the High Sierra come the glacier meadows. They are
+smooth, level, silky lawns, lying embedded in the upper forests, on the
+floors of the valleys, and along the broad backs of the main dividing
+ridges, at a height of about 8000 to 9500 feet above the sea.
+
+They are nearly as level as the lakes whose places they have taken, and
+present a dry, even surface free from rock-heaps, mossy bogginess, and
+the frowsy roughness of rank, coarse-leaved, weedy, and shrubby
+vegetation. The sod is close and fine, and so complete that you cannot
+see the ground; and at the same time so brightly enameled with flowers
+and butterflies that it may well be called a garden-meadow, or
+meadow-garden; for the plushy sod is in many places so crowded with
+gentians, daisies, ivesias, and various species of orthocarpus that the
+grass is scarcely noticeable, while in others the flowers are only
+pricked in here and there singly, or in small ornamental rosettes.
+
+The most influential of the grasses composing the sod is a delicate
+calamagrostis with fine filiform leaves, and loose, airy panicles that
+seem to float above the flowery lawn like a purple mist. But, write as
+I may, I cannot give anything like an adequate idea of the exquisite
+beauty of these mountain carpets as they lie smoothly outspread in the
+savage wilderness. What words are fine enough to picture them I to what
+shall we liken them? The flowery levels of the prairies of the old
+West, the luxuriant savannahs of the South, and the finest of
+cultivated meadows are coarse in comparison. One may at first sight
+compare them with the carefully tended lawns of pleasure-grounds; for
+they are as free from weeds as they, and as smooth, but here the
+likeness ends; for these wild lawns, with all their exquisite fineness,
+have no trace of that painful, licked, snipped, repressed appearance
+that pleasure-ground lawns are apt to have even when viewed at a
+distance. And, not to mention the flowers with which they are
+brightened, their grasses are very much finer both in color and
+texture, and instead of lying flat and motionless, matted together like
+a dead green cloth, they respond to the touches of every breeze,
+rejoicing in pure wildness, blooming and fruiting in the vital light.
+
+Glacier meadows abound throughout all the alpine and subalpine regions
+of the Sierra in still greater numbers than the lakes. Probably from
+2500 to 3000 exist between latitude 36° 30′ and 39°, distributed, of
+course, like the lakes, in concordance with all the other glacial
+features of the landscape.
+
+On the head waters of the rivers there are what are called “Big
+Meadows,” usually about from five to ten miles long. These occupy the
+basins of the ancient ice-seas, where many tributary glaciers came
+together to form the grand trunks. Most, however, are quite small,
+averaging perhaps but little more than three fourths of a mile in
+length.
+
+One of the very finest of the thousands I have enjoyed lies hidden in
+an extensive forest of the Two-leaved Pine, on the edge of the basin of
+the ancient Tuolumne Mer de Glace, about eight miles to the west of
+Mount Dana.
+
+Imagine yourself at the Tuolumne Soda Springs on the bank of the river,
+a day’s journey above Yosemite Valley. You set off northward through a
+forest that stretches away indefinitely before you, seemingly unbroken
+by openings of any kind. As soon as you are fairly into the woods, the
+gray mountain-peaks, with their snowy gorges and hollows, are lost to
+view. The ground is littered with fallen trunks that lie crossed and
+recrossed like storm-lodged wheat; and besides this close forest of
+pines, the rich moraine soil supports a luxuriant growth of
+ribbon-leaved grasses—bromus, triticum, calamagrostis, agrostis, etc.,
+which rear their handsome spikes and panicles above your waist. Making
+your way through the fertile wilderness,—finding lively bits of
+interest now and then in the squirrels and Clark crows, and perchance
+in a deer or bear,—after the lapse of an hour or two vertical bars of
+sunshine are seen ahead between the brown shafts of the pines, showing
+that you are approaching an open space, and then you suddenly emerge
+from the forest shadows upon a delightful purple lawn lying smooth and
+free in the light like a lake. This is a glacier meadow. It is about a
+mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile wide. The trees come
+pressing forward all around in close serried ranks, planting their feet
+exactly on its margin, and holding themselves erect, strict and orderly
+like soldiers on parade; thus bounding the meadow with exquisite
+precision, yet with free curving lines such as Nature alone can draw.
+With inexpressible delight you wade out into the grassy sun-lake,
+feeling yourself contained in one of Nature’s most sacred chambers,
+withdrawn from the sterner influences of the mountains, secure from all
+intrusion, secure from yourself, free in the universal beauty. And
+notwithstanding the scene is so impressively spiritual, and you seem
+dissolved in it, yet everything about you is beating with warm,
+terrestrial, human love and life delightfully substantial and familiar.
+The resiny pines are types of health and steadfastness; the robins
+feeding on the sod belong to the same species you have known since
+childhood; and surely these daisies, larkspurs, and goldenrods are the
+very friend-flowers of the old home garden. Bees hum as in a harvest
+noon, butterflies waver above the flowers, and like them you lave in
+the vital sunshine, too richly and homogeneously joy-filled to be
+capable of partial thought. You are all eye, sifted through and through
+with light and beauty. Sauntering along the brook that meanders
+silently through the meadow from the east, special flowers call you
+back to discriminating consciousness. The sod comes curving down to the
+water’s edge, forming bossy outswelling banks, and in some places
+overlapping countersunk boulders and forming bridges. Here you find
+mats of the curious dwarf willow scarce an inch high, yet sending up a
+multitude of gray silky catkins, illumined here and there with, the
+purple cups and bells of bryanthus and vaccinium.
+
+Go where you may, you everywhere find the lawn divinely beautiful, as
+if Nature had fingered and adjusted every plant this very day. The
+floating grass panicles are scarcely felt in brushing through their
+midst, so flue are they, and none of the flowers have tall or rigid
+stalks. In the brightest places you find three species of gentians with
+different shades of blue, daisies pure as the sky, silky leaved ivesias
+with warm yellow flowers, several species of orthocarpus with blunt,
+bossy spikes, red and purple and yellow; the alpine goldenrod,
+pentstemon, and clover, fragrant and honeyful, with their colors massed
+and blended. Parting the grasses and looking more closely you may trace
+the branching of their shining stems, and note the marvelous beauty of
+their mist of flowers, the glumes and pales exquisitely penciled, the
+yellow dangling stamens, and feathery pistils. Beneath the lowest
+leaves you discover a fairy realm of mosses,—hypnum, dicranum,
+polytriclium, and many others,—their precious spore-cups poised
+daintily on polished shafts, curiously hooded, or open, showing the
+richly ornate peristomas worn like royal crowns. Creeping liverworts
+are here also in abundance, and several rare species of fungi,
+exceedingly small, and frail, and delicate, as if made only for beauty.
+Caterpillars, black beetles, and ants roam the wilds of this lower
+world, making their way through miniature groves and thickets like
+bears in a thick wood.
+
+And how rich, too, is the life of the sunny air! Every leaf and flower
+seems to have its winged representative overhead. Dragon-flies shoot in
+vigorous zigzags through the dancing swarms, and a rich profusion of
+butterflies—the leguminosae of insects—make a fine addition to the
+general show. Many of these last are comparatively small at this
+elevation, and as yet almost unknown to science; but every now and then
+a familiar vanessa or papilio comes sailing past. Humming-birds, too,
+are quite common here, and the robin is always found along the margin
+of the stream, or out in the shallowest portions of the sod, and
+sometimes the grouse and mountain quail, with their broods of precious
+fluffy chickens. Swallows skim the grassy lake from end to end,
+fly-catchers come and go in fitful flights from the tops of dead spars,
+while woodpeckers swing across from side to side in graceful festoon
+curves,—birds, insects, and flowers all in their own way telling a deep
+summer joy.
+
+The influences of pure nature seem to be so little known as yet, that
+it is generally supposed that complete pleasure of this kind,
+permeating one’s very flesh and bones, unfits the student for
+scientific pursuits in which cool judgment and observation are
+required. But the effect is just the opposite. Instead of producing a
+dissipated condition, the mind is fertilized and stimulated and
+developed like sun-fed plants. All that we have seen here enables us to
+see with surer vision the fountains among the summit-peaks to the east
+whence flowed the glaciers that ground soil for the surrounding forest;
+and down at the foot of the meadow the moraine which formed the dam
+which gave rise to the lake that occupied this basin before the meadow
+was made; and around the margin the stones that were shoved back and
+piled up into a rude wall by the expansion of the lake ice during long
+bygone winters; and along the sides of the streams the slight hollows
+of the meadow which mark those portions of the old lake that were the
+last to vanish.
+
+I would fain ask my readers to linger awhile in this fertile
+wilderness, to trace its history from its earliest glacial beginnings,
+and learn what we may of its wild inhabitants and visitors. How happy
+the birds are all summer and some of them all winter; how the pouched
+marmots drive tunnels under the snow, and how fine and brave a life the
+slandered coyote lives here, and the deer and bears! But, knowing well
+the difference between reading and seeing, I will only ask attention to
+some brief sketches of its varying aspects as they are presented
+throughout the more marked seasons of the year.
+
+The summer life we have been depicting lasts with but little abatement
+until October, when the night frosts begin to sting, bronzing the
+grasses, and ripening the leaves of the creeping heathworts along the
+banks of the stream to reddish purple and crimson; while the flowers
+disappear, all save the goldenrods and a few daisies, that continue to
+bloom on unscathed until the beginning of snowy winter. In still nights
+the grass panicles and every leaf and stalk are laden with frost
+crystals, through which the morning sunbeams sift in ravishing
+splendor, transforming each to a precious diamond radiating the colors
+of the rainbow. The brook shallows are plaited across and across with
+slender lances of ice, but both these and the grass crystals are melted
+before midday, and, notwithstanding the great elevation of the meadow,
+the afternoons are still warm enough to revive the chilled butterflies
+and call them out to enjoy the late-flowering goldenrods. The divine
+alpenglow flushes the surrounding forest every evening, followed by a
+crystal night with hosts of lily stars, whose size and brilliancy
+cannot be conceived by those who have never risen above the lowlands.
+
+Thus come and go the bright sun-days of autumn, not a cloud in the sky,
+week after week until near December. Then comes a sudden change. Clouds
+of a peculiar aspect with a slow, crawling gait gather and grow in the
+azure, throwing out satiny fringes, and becoming gradually darker until
+every lake-like rift and opening is closed and the whole bent firmament
+is obscured in equal structureless gloom. Then comes the snow, for the
+clouds are ripe, the meadows of the sky are in bloom, and shed their
+radiant blossoms like an orchard in the spring. Lightly, lightly they
+lodge in the brown grasses and in the tasseled needles of the pines,
+falling hour after hour, day after day, silently, lovingly,—all the
+winds hushed,—glancing and circling hither, thither, glinting against
+one another, rays interlocking in flakes as large as daisies; and then
+the dry grasses, and the trees, and the stones are all equally abloom
+again. Thunder-showers occur here during the summer months, and
+impressive it is to watch the coming of the big transparent drops, each
+a small world in itself,—one unbroken ocean without islands hurling
+free through the air like planets through space. But still more
+impressive to me is the coming of the snow-flowers,—falling stars,
+winter daisies,—giving bloom to all the ground alike. Raindrops blossom
+brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow
+comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.
+
+The later snow-storms are oftentimes accompanied by winds that break up
+the crystals, when the temperature is low, into single petals and
+irregular dusty fragments; but there is comparatively little drifting
+on the meadow, so securely is it embosomed in the woods. From December
+to May, storm succeeds storm, until the snow is about fifteen or twenty
+feet deep, but the surface is always as smooth as the breast of a bird.
+
+Hushed now is the life that so late was beating warmly. Most of the
+birds have gone down below the snow-line, the plants sleep, and all the
+fly-wings are folded. Yet the sun beams gloriously many a cloudless day
+in midwinter, casting long lance shadows athwart the dazzling expanse.
+In June small flecks of the dead, decaying sod begin to appear,
+gradually widening and uniting with one another, covered with creeping
+rags of water during the day, and ice by night, looking as hopeless and
+unvital as crushed rocks just emerging from the darkness of the glacial
+period. Walk the meadow now! Scarce the memory of a flower will you
+find. The ground seems twice dead. Nevertheless, the annual
+resurrection is drawing near. The life-giving sun pours his floods, the
+last snow-wreath melts, myriads of growing points push eagerly through
+the steaming mold, the birds come back, new wings fill the air, and
+fervid summer life comes surging on, seemingly yet more glorious than
+before.
+
+This is a perfect meadow, and under favorable circumstances exists
+without manifesting any marked changes for centuries. Nevertheless,
+soon or late it must inevitably grow old and vanish. During the calm
+Indian summer, scarce a sand-grain moves around its banks, but in
+flood-times and storm-times, soil is washed forward upon it and laid in
+successive sheets around its gently sloping rim, and is gradually
+extended to the center, making it dryer. Through a considerable period
+the meadow vegetation is not greatly affected thereby, for it gradually
+rises with the rising ground, keeping on the surface like water-plants
+rising on the swell of waves. But at length the elevation of the
+meadow-land goes on so far as to produce too dry a soil for the
+specific meadow-plants, when, of course, they have to give up their
+places to others fitted for the new conditions. The most characteristic
+of the newcomers at this elevation above the sea are principally
+sun-loving gilias, eriogonae, and compositae, and finally forest-trees.
+Henceforward the obscuring changes are so manifold that the original
+lake-meadow can be unveiled and seen only by the geologist.
+
+Generally speaking, glacier lakes vanish more slowly than the meadows
+that succeed them, because, unless very shallow, a greater quantity of
+material is required to fill up their basins and obliterate them than
+is required to render the surface of the meadow too high and dry for
+meadow vegetation. Furthermore, owing to the weathering to which the
+adjacent rocks are subjected, material of the finer sort, susceptible
+of transportation by rains and ordinary floods, is more abundant during
+the meadow period than during the lake period. Yet doubtless many a
+fine meadow favorably situated exists in almost prime beauty for
+thousands of years, the process of extinction being exceedingly slow,
+as we reckon time. This is especially the case with meadows
+circumstanced like the one we have described—embosomed in deep woods,
+with the ground rising gently away from it all around, the network of
+tree-roots in which all the ground is clasped preventing any rapid
+torrential washing. But, in exceptional cases, beautiful lawns formed
+with great deliberation are overwhelmed and obliterated at once by the
+action of land-slips, earthquake avalanches, or extraordinary floods,
+just as lakes are.
+
+In those glacier meadows that take the places of shallow lakes which
+have been fed by feeble streams, glacier mud and fine vegetable humus
+enter largely into the composition of the soil; and on account of the
+shallowness of this soil, and the seamless, water-tight, undrained
+condition of the rock-basins, they are usually wet, and therefore
+occupied by tall grasses and sedges, whose coarse appearance offers a
+striking contrast to that of the delicate lawn-making kind described
+above. These shallow-soiled meadows are oftentimes still further
+roughened and diversified by partially buried moraines and swelling
+bosses of the bed-rock, which, with the trees and shrubs growing upon
+them, produce a striking effect as they stand in relief like islands in
+the grassy level, or sweep across in rugged curves from one forest wall
+to the other.
+
+Throughout the upper meadow region, wherever water is sufficiently
+abundant and low in temperature, in basins secure from flood-washing,
+handsome bogs are formed with a deep growth of brown and yellow
+sphagnum picturesquely ruined with patches of kalmia and ledum which
+ripen masses of beautiful color in the autumn. Between these cool,
+spongy bogs and the dry, flowery meadows there are many interesting
+varieties which are graduated into one another by the varied conditions
+already alluded to, forming a series of delightful studies.
+
+HANGING MEADOWS
+
+Another, very well-marked and interesting kind of meadow, differing
+greatly both in origin and appearance from the lake-meadows, is found
+lying aslant upon moraine-covered hillsides trending in the direction
+of greatest declivity, waving up and down over rock heaps and ledges,
+like rich green ribbons brilliantly illumined with tall flowers. They
+occur both in the alpine and subalpine regions in considerable numbers,
+and never fail to make telling features in the landscape. They are
+often a mile or more in length, but never very wide—usually from thirty
+to fifty yards. When the mountain or cañon side on which, they lie dips
+at the required angle, and other conditions are at the same time
+favorable, they extend from above the timber line to the bottom of a
+cañon or lake basin, descending in fine, fluent lines like cascades,
+breaking here and there into a kind of spray on large boulders, or
+dividing and flowing around on either side of some projecting islet.
+Sometimes a noisy stream goes brawling down through them, and again,
+scarcely a drop of water is in sight. They owe their existence,
+however, to streams, whether visible or invisible, the wildest
+specimens being found where some perennial fountain, as a glacier or
+snowbank or moraine spring sends down its waters across a rough sheet
+of soil in a dissipated web of feeble, oozing rivulets. These
+conditions give rise to a meadowy vegetation, whose extending roots
+still more obstruct the free flow of the waters, and tend to dissipate
+them out over a yet wider area. Thus the moraine soil and the necessary
+moisture requisite for the better class of meadow plants are at times
+combined about as perfectly as if smoothly outspread on a level
+surface. Where the soil happens to be composed of the finer qualities
+of glacial detritus and the water is not in excess, the nearest
+approach is made by the vegetation to that of the lake-meadow. But
+where, as is more commonly the case, the soil is coarse and bouldery,
+the vegetation is correspondingly rank. Tall, wide-leaved grasses take
+their places along the sides, and rushes and nodding carices in the
+wetter portions, mingled with the most beautiful and imposing
+flowers,—orange lilies and larkspurs seven or eight feet high, lupines,
+senecios, aliums, painted-cups, many species of mimulus and pentstemon,
+the ample boat-leaved _veratrum alba_, and the magnificent alpine
+columbine, with spurs an inch and a half long. At an elevation of from
+seven to nine thousand feet showy flowers frequently form the bulk of
+the vegetation; then the hanging meadows become hanging gardens.
+
+In rare instances we find an alpine basin the bottom of which is a
+perfect meadow, and the sides nearly all the way round, rising in
+gentle curves, are covered with moraine soil, which, being saturated
+with melting snow from encircling fountains, gives rise to an almost
+continuous girdle of down-curving meadow vegetation that blends
+gracefully into the level meadow at the bottom, thus forming a grand,
+smooth, soft, meadow-lined mountain nest. It is in meadows of this sort
+that the mountain beaver (_Haplodon_) loves to make his home,
+excavating snug chambers beneath the sod, digging canals, turning the
+underground waters from channel to channel to suit his convenience, and
+feeding the vegetation.
+
+Another kind of meadow or bog occurs on densely timbered hillsides
+where small perennial streams have been dammed at short intervals by
+fallen trees. Still another kind is found hanging down smooth, flat
+precipices, while corresponding leaning meadows rise to meet them.
+
+There are also three kinds of small pot-hole meadows one of which is
+found along the banks of the main streams, another on the summits of
+rocky ridges, and the third on glacier pavements, all of them
+interesting in origin and brimful of plant beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+THE FORESTS
+
+
+The coniferous forests of the Sierra are the grandest and most
+beautiful in the world, and grow in a delightful climate on the most
+interesting and accessible of mountain-ranges, yet strange to say they
+are not well known. More than sixty years ago David Douglas, an
+enthusiastic botanist and tree lover, wandered alone through fine
+sections of the Sugar Pine and Silver Fir woods wild with delight. A
+few years later, other botanists made short journeys from the coast
+into the lower woods. Then came the wonderful multitude of miners into
+the foot-hill zone, mostly blind with gold-dust, soon followed by
+“sheepmen,” who, with wool over their eyes, chased their flocks through
+all the forest belts from one end of the range to the other. Then the
+Yosemite Valley was discovered, and thousands of admiring tourists
+passed through sections of the lower and middle zones on their way to
+that wonderful park, and gained fine glimpses of the Sugar Pines and
+Silver Firs along the edges of dusty trails and roads. But few indeed,
+strong and free with eyes undimmed with care, have gone far enough and
+lived long enough with the trees to gain anything like a loving
+conception of their grandeur and significance as manifested in the
+harmonies of their distribution and varying aspects throughout the
+seasons, as they stand arrayed in their winter garb rejoicing in
+storms, putting forth their fresh leaves in the spring while steaming
+with resiny fragrance, receiving the thunder-showers of summer, or
+reposing heavy-laden with ripe cones in the rich sungold of autumn. For
+knowledge of this kind one must dwell with the trees and grow with
+them, without any reference to time in the almanac sense.
+
+The distribution of the general forest in belts is readily perceived.
+These, as we have seen, extend in regular order from one extremity of
+the range to the other; and however dense and somber they may appear in
+general views, neither on the rocky heights nor down in the leafiest
+hollows will you find anything to remind you of the dank, malarial
+selvas of the Amazon and Orinoco, with, their “boundless contiguity of
+shade,” the monotonous uniformity of the Deodar forests of the
+Himalaya, the Black Forest of Europe, or the dense dark woods of
+Douglas Spruce where rolls the Oregon. The giant pines, and firs, and
+Sequoias hold their arms open to the sunlight, rising above one another
+on the mountain benches, marshaled in glorious array, giving forth the
+utmost expression of grandeur and beauty with inexhaustible variety and
+harmony.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST.]
+
+The inviting openness of the Sierra woods is one of their most
+distinguishing characteristics. The trees of all the species stand more
+or less apart in groves, or in small, irregular groups, enabling one to
+find a way nearly everywhere, along sunny colonnades and through
+openings that have a smooth, park-like surface, strewn with brown
+needles and burs. Now you cross a wild garden, now a meadow, now a
+ferny, willowy stream; and ever and anon you emerge from all the groves
+and flowers upon some granite pavement or high, bare ridge commanding
+superb views above the waving sea of evergreens far and near.
+
+One would experience but little difficulty in riding on horseback
+through the successive belts all the way up to the storm-beaten fringes
+of the icy peaks. The deep cañons, however, that extend from the axis
+of the range, cut the belts more or less completely into sections, and
+prevent the mounted traveler from tracing them lengthwise.
+
+This simple arrangement in zones and sections brings the forest, as a
+whole, within the comprehension of every observer. The different
+species are ever found occupying the same relative positions to one
+another, as controlled by soil, climate, and the comparative vigor of
+each species in taking and holding the ground; and so appreciable are
+these relations, one need never be at a loss in determining, within a
+few hundred feet, the elevation above sea-level by the trees alone;
+for, notwithstanding some of the species range upward for several
+thousand feet, and all pass one another more or less, yet even those
+possessing the greatest vertical range are available in this
+connection, in as much as they take on new forms corresponding with the
+variations in altitude.
+
+Crossing the treeless plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin from the
+west and reaching the Sierra foot-hills, you enter the lower fringe of
+the forest, composed of small oaks and pines, growing so far apart that
+not one twentieth of the surface of the ground is in shade at clear
+noonday. After advancing fifteen or twenty miles, and making an ascent
+of from two to three thousand feet, you reach the lower margin of the
+main pine belt, composed of the gigantic Sugar Pine, Yellow Pine,
+Incense Cedar, and Sequoia. Next you come to the magnificent Silver Fir
+belt, and lastly to the upper pine belt, which sweeps up the rocky
+acclivities of the summit peaks in a dwarfed, wavering fringe to a
+height of from ten to twelve thousand feet.
+
+[Illustration: EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA.]
+
+This general order of distribution, with reference to climate dependent
+on elevation, is perceived at once, but there are other harmonies, as
+far-reaching in this connection, that become manifest only after
+patient observation and study. Perhaps the most interesting of these is
+the arrangement of the forests in long, curving bands, braided together
+into lace-like patterns, and outspread in charming variety. The key to
+this beautiful harmony is the ancient glaciers; where they flowed the
+trees followed, tracing their wavering courses along cañons, over
+ridges, and over high, rolling plateaus. The Cedars of Lebanon, says
+Hooker, are growing upon one of the moraines of an ancient glacier. All
+the forests of the Sierra are growing upon moraines. But moraines
+vanish like the glaciers that make them. Every storm that falls upon
+them wastes them, cutting gaps, disintegrating boulders, and carrying
+away their decaying material into new formations, until at length they
+are no longer recognizable by any save students, who trace their
+transitional forms down from the fresh moraines still in process of
+formation, through those that are more and more ancient, and more and
+more obscured by vegetation and all kinds of post-glacial weathering.
+
+Had the ice-sheet that once covered all the range been melted
+simultaneously from the foot-hills to the summits, the flanks would, of
+course, have been left almost bare of soil, and these noble forests
+would be wanting. Many groves and thickets would undoubtedly have grown
+up on lake and avalanche beds, and many a fair flower and shrub would
+have found food and a dwelling-place in weathered nooks and crevices,
+but the Sierra as a whole would have been a bare, rocky desert.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST.]
+
+It appears, therefore, that the Sierra forests in general indicate the
+extent and positions of the ancient moraines as well as they do lines
+of climate. For forests, properly speaking, cannot exist without soil;
+and, since the moraines have been deposited upon the solid rock, and
+only upon elected places, leaving a considerable portion of the old
+glacial surface bare, we find luxuriant forests of pine and fir
+abruptly terminated by scored and polished pavements on which not even
+a moss is growing, though soil alone is required to fit them for the
+growth of trees 200 feet in height.
+
+THE NUT PINE
+(_Pinus Sabiniana_)
+
+The Nut Pine, the first conifer met in ascending the range from the
+west, grows only on the torrid foothills, seeming to delight in the
+most ardent sun-heat, like a palm; springing up here and there singly,
+or in scattered groups of five or six, among scrubby White Oaks and
+thickets of ceanothus and manzanita; its extreme upper limit being
+about 4000 feet above the sea, its lower about from 500 to 800 feet.
+
+This tree is remarkable for its airy, widespread, tropical appearance,
+which suggests a region of palms, rather than cool, resiny pine woods.
+No one would take it at first sight to be a conifer of any kind, it is
+so loose in habit and so widely branched, and its foliage is so thin
+and gray. Full-grown specimens are from forty to fifty feet in height,
+and from two to three feet in diameter. The trunk usually divides into
+three or four main branches, about fifteen and twenty feet from the
+ground, which, after bearing away from one another, shoot straight up
+and form separate summits; while the crooked subordinate branches
+aspire, and radiate, and droop in ornamental sprays. The slender,
+grayish-green needles are from eight to twelve inches long, loosely
+tasseled, and inclined to droop in handsome curves, contrasting with
+the stiff, dark-colored trunk and branches in a very striking manner.
+No other tree of my acquaintance, so substantial in body, is in its
+foliage so thin and so pervious to the light. The sunbeams sift through
+even the leafiest trees with scarcely any interruption, and the weary,
+heated traveler finds but little protection in their shade.
+
+[Illustration: THE NUT PINE (_Pinus Sabiniana_)]
+
+The generous crop of nutritious nuts which the Nut Pine yields makes it
+a favorite with Indians, bears, and squirrels. The cones are most
+beautiful, measuring from five to eight inches in length, and not much
+less in thickness, rich chocolate-brown in color, and protected by
+strong, down-curving hooks which terminate the scales. Nevertheless,
+the little Douglas squirrel can open them. Indians gathering the ripe
+nuts make a striking picture. The men climb the trees like bears and
+beat off the cones with sticks, or recklessly cut off the more fruitful
+branches with hatchets, while the squaws gather the big, generous
+cones, and roast them until the scales open sufficiently to allow the
+hard-shelled seeds to be beaten out. Then, in the cool evenings, men,
+women, and children, with their capacity for dirt greatly increased by
+the soft resin with which they are all bedraggled, form circles around
+camp-fires, on the bank of the nearest stream, and lie in easy
+independence cracking nuts and laughing and chattering, as heedless of
+the future as the squirrels.
+
+_Pinus tuberculata_
+
+This curious little pine is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000
+feet, growing in close, willowy groves. It is exceedingly slender and
+graceful in habit, although trees that chance to stand alone outside
+the groves sweep forth long, curved branches, producing a striking
+contrast to the ordinary grove form. The foliage is of the same
+peculiar gray-green color as that of the Nut Pine, and is worn about as
+loosely, so that the body of the tree is scarcely obscured by it.
+
+[Illustration: THE GROVE FORM. THE ISOLATED FORM (PINUS TUBERCULATA).]
+
+At the age of seven or eight years it begins to bear cones, not on
+branches, but on the main axis, and, as they never fall off, the trunk
+is soon picturesquely dotted with them. The branches also become
+fruitful after they attain sufficient size. The average size of the
+older trees is about thirty or forty feet in height, and twelve to
+fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are about four inches long,
+exceedingly hard, and covered with a sort of silicious varnish and gum,
+rendering them impervious to moisture, evidently with a view to the
+careful preservation of the seeds.
+
+No other conifer in the range is so closely restricted to special
+localities. It is usually found apart, standing deep in chaparral on
+sunny hill-and cañon-sides where there is but little depth of soil,
+and, where found at all, it is quite plentiful; but the ordinary
+traveler, following carriage-roads and trails, may ascend the range
+many times without meeting it.
+
+While exploring the lower portion of the Merced Cañon I found a lonely
+miner seeking his fortune in a quartz vein on a wild mountain-side
+planted with this singular tree. He told me that he called it the
+Hickory Pine, because of the whiteness and toughness of the wood. It is
+so little known, however, that it can hardly be said to have a common
+name. Most mountaineers refer to it as “that queer little pine-tree
+covered all over with burs.” In my studies of this species I found a
+very interesting and significant group of facts, whose relations will
+be seen almost as soon as stated:
+
+1st. All the trees in the groves I examined, however unequal in size,
+are of the same age.
+
+2d. Those groves are all planted on dry hillsides covered with
+chaparral, and therefore are liable to be swept by fire.
+
+3d. There are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves,
+but there is always a fine, hopeful crop springing up on the ground
+once occupied by any grove that has been destroyed by the burning of
+the chaparral.
+
+4th. The cones never fall off and never discharge their seeds until the
+tree or branch to which they belong dies.
+
+[Illustration: LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN
+CHARACTER OF WOODS.]
+
+A full discussion of the bearing of these facts upon one another would
+perhaps be out of place here, but I may at least call attention to the
+admirable adaptation of the tree to the fire-swept regions where alone
+it is found. After a grove has been destroyed, the ground is at once
+sown lavishly with all the seeds ripened during its whole life, which
+seem to have been carefully held in store with reference to such a
+calamity. Then a young grove immediately springs up, giving beauty for
+ashes.
+
+SUGAR PINE
+(_Pinus Lambertiana_)
+
+This is the noblest pine yet discovered, surpassing all others not
+merely in size but also in kingly beauty and majesty.
+
+It towers sublimely from every ridge and cañon of the range, at an
+elevation of from three to seven thousand feet above the sea, attaining
+most perfect development at a height of about 5000 feet.
+
+Full-grown specimens are commonly about 220 feet high, and from six to
+eight feet in diameter near the ground, though some grand old patriarch
+is occasionally met that has enjoyed five or six centuries of storms,
+and attained a thickness of ten or even twelve feet, living on
+undecayed, sweet and fresh in every fiber.
+
+In southern Oregon, where it was first discovered by David Douglas, on
+the head waters of the Umpqua, it attains still grander dimensions, one
+specimen having been measured that was 245 feet high, and over eighteen
+feet in diameter three feet from the ground. The discoverer was the
+Douglas for whom the noble Douglas Spruce is named, and many other
+plants which will keep his memory sweet and fresh as long as trees and
+flowers are loved. His first visit to the Pacific Coast was made in the
+year 1825. The Oregon Indians watched him with curiosity as he wandered
+in the woods collecting specimens, and, unlike the fur-gathering
+strangers they had hitherto known, caring nothing about trade. And when
+at length they came to know him better, and saw that from year to year
+the growing things of the woods and prairies were his only objects of
+pursuit, they called him “The Man of Grass,” a title of which he was
+proud. During his first summer on the waters of the Columbia he made
+Fort Vancouver his headquarters, making excursions from this Hudson Bay
+post in every direction. On one of his long trips he saw in an Indian’s
+pouch some of the seeds of a new species of pine which he learned were
+obtained from a very large tree far to the southward of the Columbia.
+At the end of the next summer, returning to Fort Vancouver after the
+setting in of the winter rains, bearing in mind the big pine he had
+heard of, he set out on an excursion up the Willamette Valley in search
+of it; and how he fared, and what dangers and hardships he endured, are
+best told in his own journal, from which I quote as follows:
+
+_October_ 26, 1826. Weather dull. Cold and cloudy. When my friends in
+England are made acquainted with my travels I fear they will think I
+have told them nothing but my miseries…. I quitted my camp early in the
+morning to survey the neighboring country, leaving my guide to take
+charge of the horses until my return in the evening. About an hour’s
+walk from the camp I met an Indian, who on perceiving me instantly
+strung his bow, placed on his left arm a sleeve of raccoon skin and
+stood on the defensive. Being quite sure that conduct was prompted by
+fear and not by hostile intentions, the poor fellow having probably
+never seen such a being as myself before, I laid my gun at my feet on
+the ground and waved my hand for him to come to me, which he did slowly
+and with great caution. I then made him place his bow and quiver of
+arrows beside my gun, and striking a light gave him a smoke out of my
+own pipe and a present of a few beads. With my pencil I made a rough
+sketch of the cone and pine tree which I wanted to obtain, and drew his
+attention to it, when he instantly pointed with his hand to the hills
+fifteen or twenty miles distant towards the south; and when I expressed
+my intention of going thither, cheerfully set out to accompany me. At
+midday I reached my long-wished-for pines, and lost no time in
+examining them and endeavoring to collect specimens and seeds. New and
+strange things seldom fail to make strong impressions, and are
+therefore frequently over-rated; so that, lest I should never see my
+friends in England to inform them verbally of this most beautiful and
+immensely grand tree, I shall here state the dimensions of the largest
+I could find among several that had been blown down by the wind. At 3
+feet from the ground its circumference is 57 feet 9 inches; at 134
+feet, 17 feet 5 inches; the extreme length 245 feet…. As it was
+impossible either to climb the tree or hew it down, I endeavored to
+knock off the cones by firing at them with ball, when the report of my
+gun brought eight Indians, all of them painted with red earth, armed
+with bows, arrows, bone-tipped spears, and flint-knives. They appeared
+anything but friendly. I explained to them what I wanted, and they
+seemed satisfied and sat down to smoke; but presently I saw one of them
+string his bow, and another sharpen his flint knife with a pair of
+wooden pincers and suspend it off the wrist of his right hand. Further
+testimony of their intentions was unnecessary. To save myself by flight
+was impossible, so without hesitation I stepped back about five paces,
+cocked my gun, drew one of the pistols out of my belt, and holding it
+in my left hand and the gun in my right, showed myself determined to
+fight for my life. As much as possible I endeavored to preserve my
+coolness, and thus we stood looking at one another without making any
+movement or uttering a word for perhaps ten minutes, when one at last,
+who seemed to be the leader, gave a sign that they wished for some
+tobacco; this I signified that they should have if they fetched a
+quantity of cones. They went off immediately in search of them, and no
+sooner were they all out of sight than I picked up my three cones and
+some twigs of the trees and made the quickest possible retreat,
+hurrying back to the camp, which I reached before dusk…. I now write
+lying on the grass with my gun cocked beside me, and penning these
+lines by the light of my Columbian candle, namely, an ignited piece of
+rosin-wood.
+
+
+This grand pine discovered under such, exciting circumstances Douglas
+named in honor of his friend Dr. Lambert of London.
+
+The trunk is a smooth, round, delicately tapered shaft, mostly without
+limbs, and colored rich purplish-brown, usually enlivened with tufts of
+yellow lichen. At the top of this magnificent bole, long, curving
+branches sweep gracefully outward and downward, sometimes forming a
+palm-like crown, but far more nobly impressive than any palm crown I
+ever beheld. The needles are about three inches long, finely tempered
+and arranged in rather close tassels at the ends of slender branchlets
+that clothe the long, outsweeping limbs. How well they sing in the
+wind, and how strikingly harmonious an effect is made by the immense
+cylindrical cones that depend loosely from the ends of the main
+branches! No one knows what Nature can do in the way of pine-burs until
+he has seen those of the Sugar Pine. They are commonly from fifteen to
+eighteen inches long, and three in diameter; green, shaded with dark
+purple on their sunward sides. They are ripe in September and October.
+Then the flat scales open and the seeds take wing, but the empty cones
+become still more beautiful and effective, for their diameter is nearly
+doubled by the spreading of the scales, and their color changes to a
+warm yellowish-brown; while they remain swinging on the tree all the
+following winter and summer, and continue effectively beautiful even on
+the ground many years after they fall. The wood is deliciously
+fragrant, and fine in grain and texture; it is of a rich cream-yellow,
+as if formed of condensed sunbeams. _Retinospora obtusa, Siebold_, the
+glory of Eastern forests, is called “Fu-si-no-ki” (tree of the sun) by
+the Japanese; the Sugar Pine is the sun-tree of the Sierra.
+Unfortunately it is greatly prized by the lumbermen, and in accessible
+places is always the first tree in the woods to feel their steel. But
+the regular lumbermen, with their saw-mills, have been, less generally
+destructive thus far than the shingle-makers. The wood splits freely,
+and there is a constant demand for the shingles. And because an ax, and
+saw, and frow are all the capital required for the business, many of
+that drifting, unsteady class of men so large in California engage in
+it for a few months in the year. When prospectors, hunters, ranch
+hands, etc., touch their “bottom dollar” and find themselves out of
+employment, they say, “Well, I can at least go to the Sugar Pines and
+make shingles.” A few posts are set in the ground, and a single length
+cut from the first tree felled produces boards enough for the walls and
+roof of a cabin; all the rest the lumberman makes is for sale, and he
+is speedily independent. No gardener or haymaker is more sweetly
+perfumed than these rough mountaineers while engaged in this business,
+but the havoc they make is most deplorable.
+
+[Illustration: SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE.]
+
+The sugar, from which the common name is derived, is to my taste the
+best of sweets—better than maple sugar. It exudes from the heart-wood,
+where wounds have been made, either by forest fires, or the ax, in the
+shape of irregular, crisp, candy-like kernels, which are crowded
+together in masses of considerable size, like clusters of resin-beads.
+When fresh, it is perfectly white and delicious, but, because most of
+the wounds on which it is found have been made by fire, the exuding sap
+is stained on the charred surface, and the hardened sugar becomes
+brown. Indians are fond of it, but on account of its laxative
+properties only small quantities may be eaten. Bears, so fond of sweet
+things in general, seem never to taste it; at least I have failed to
+find any trace of their teeth in this connection.
+
+No lover of trees will ever forget his first meeting with the Sugar
+Pine, nor will he afterward need a poet to call him to “listen what the
+pine-tree saith.” In most pine-trees there is a sameness of expression,
+which, to most people, is apt to become monotonous; for the typical
+spiry form, however beautiful, affords but little scope for appreciable
+individual character. The Sugar Pine is as free from conventionalities
+of form and motion as any oak. No two are alike, even to the most
+inattentive observer; and, notwithstanding they are ever tossing out
+their immense arms in what might seem most extravagant gestures, there
+is a majesty and repose about them that precludes all possibility of
+the grotesque, or even picturesque, in their general expression. They
+are the priests of pines, and seem ever to be addressing the
+surrounding forest. The Yellow Pine is found growing with them on warm
+hillsides, and the White Silver Fir on cool northern slopes; but, noble
+as these are, the Sugar Pine is easily king, and spreads his arms above
+them in blessing while they rock and wave in sign of recognition. The
+main branches are sometimes found to be forty feet in length, yet
+persistently simple, seldom dividing at all, excepting near the end;
+but anything like a bare cable appearance is prevented by the small,
+tasseled branchlets that extend all around them; and when these superb
+limbs sweep out symmetrically on all sides, a crown sixty or seventy
+feet wide is formed, which, gracefully poised on the summit of the
+noble shaft, and filled with sunshine, is one of the most glorious
+forest objects conceivable. Commonly, however, there is a great
+preponderance of limbs toward the east, away from the direction of the
+prevailing winds.
+
+No other pine seems to me so unfamiliar and self-contained. In
+approaching it, we feel as if in the presence of a superior being, and
+begin to walk with a light step, holding our breath. Then, perchance,
+while we gaze awe-stricken, along comes a merry squirrel, chattering
+and laughing, to break the spell, running up the trunk with no
+ceremony, and gnawing off the cones as if they were made only for him;
+while the carpenter-woodpecker hammers away at the bark, drilling holes
+in which to store his winter supply of acorns.
+
+[Illustration: YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES.]
+
+Although so wild and unconventional when full-grown, the Sugar Pine is
+a remarkably proper tree in youth. The old is the most original and
+independent in appearance of all the Sierra evergreens; the young is
+the most regular,—a strict follower of coniferous fashions,—slim,
+erect, with leafy, supple branches kept exactly in place, each tapering
+in outline and terminating in a spiry point. The successive
+transitional forms presented between the cautious neatness of youth and
+bold freedom of maturity offer a delightful study. At the age of fifty
+or sixty years, the shy, fashionable form begins to be broken up.
+Specialized branches push out in the most unthought-of places, and bend
+with the great cones, at once marking individual character, and this
+being constantly augmented from year to year by the varying action of
+the sunlight, winds, snow-storms, etc., the individuality of the tree
+is never again lost in the general forest.
+
+The most constant companion of this species is the Yellow Pine, and a
+worthy companion it is.
+
+[Illustration: FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE.]
+
+The Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, Sequoia, and the White Silver Fir are
+also more or less associated with it; but on many deep-soiled
+mountain-sides, at an elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, it
+forms the bulk of the forest, filling every swell and hollow and
+down-plunging ravine. The majestic crowns, approaching each other in
+bold curves, make a glorious canopy through which the tempered sunbeams
+pour, silvering the needles, and gilding the massive boles, and
+flowery, park-like ground, into a scene of enchantment.
+
+On the most sunny slopes the white-flowered fragrant chamoebatia is
+spread like a carpet, brightened during early summer with the crimson
+Sarcodes, the wild rose, and innumerable violets and gilias. Not even
+in the shadiest nooks will you find any rank, untidy weeds or
+unwholesome darkness. On the north sides of ridges the boles are more
+slender, and the ground is mostly occupied by an underbrush of hazel,
+ceanothus, and flowering dogwood, but never so densely as to prevent
+the traveler from sauntering where he will; while the crowning branches
+are never impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and never so
+interblended as to lose their individuality.
+
+View the forest from beneath or from some commanding ridge-top; each
+tree presents a study in itself, and proclaims the surpassing grandeur
+of the species.
+
+YELLOW, OR SILVER PINE
+(_Pinus ponderosa_)
+
+The Silver, or Yellow, Pine, as it is commonly called, ranks second
+among the pines of the Sierra as a lumber tree, and almost rivals the
+Sugar Pine in stature and nobleness of port. Because of its superior
+powers of enduring variations of climate and soil, it has a more
+extensive range than any other conifer growing on the Sierra. On the
+western slope it is first met at an elevation of about 2000 feet, and
+extends nearly to the upper limit of the timber line. Thence, crossing
+the range by the lowest passes, it descends to the eastern base, and
+pushes out for a considerable distance into the hot volcanic plains,
+growing bravely upon well-watered moraines, gravelly lake basins,
+arctic ridges, and torrid lava-beds; planting itself upon the lips of
+craters, flourishing vigorously even there, and tossing ripe cones
+among the ashes and cinders of Nature’s hearths.
+
+The average size of full-grown trees on the western slope, where it is
+associated with the Sugar Pine, is a little less than 200 feet in
+height and from five to six feet in diameter, though specimens may
+easily be found that are considerably larger. I measured one, growing
+at an elevation of 4000 feet in the valley of the Merced, that is a few
+inches over eight feet in diameter, and 220 feet high.
+
+Where there is plenty of free sunshine and other conditions are
+favorable, it presents a striking contrast in form to the Sugar Pine,
+being a symmetrical spire, formed of a straight round trunk, clad with
+innumerable branches that are divided over and over again. About one
+half of the trunk is commonly branchless, but where it grows at all
+close, three fourths or more become naked; the tree presenting then a
+more slender and elegant shaft than any other tree in the woods. The
+bark is mostly arranged in massive plates, some of them measuring four
+or five feet in length by eighteen inches in width, with a thickness of
+three or four inches, forming a quite marked and distinguishing
+feature. The needles are of a fine, warm, yellow-green color, six to
+eight inches long, firm and elastic, and crowded in handsome, radiant
+tassels on the upturning ends of the branches. The cones are about
+three or four inches long, and two and a half wide, growing in close,
+sessile clusters among the leaves.
+
+[Illustration: PINUS PONDEROSA]
+
+The species attains its noblest form in filled-up lake basins,
+especially in those of the older yosemites, and so prominent a part
+does it form of their groves that it may well be called the Yosemite
+Pine. Ripe specimens favorably situated are almost always 200 feet or
+more in height, and the branches clothe the trunk nearly to the ground,
+as seen in the illustration.
+
+The Jeffrey variety attains its finest development in the northern
+portion of the range, in the wide basins of the McCloud and Pitt
+rivers, where it forms magnificent forests scarcely invaded by any
+other tree. It differs from the ordinary form in size, being only about
+half as tall, and in its redder and more closely furrowed bark,
+grayish-green foliage, less divided branches, and larger cones; but
+intermediate forms come in which make a clear separation impossible,
+although some botanists regard it as a distinct species. It is this
+variety that climbs storm-swept ridges, and wanders out among the
+volcanoes of the Great Basin. Whether exposed to extremes of heat or
+cold, it is dwarfed like every other tree, and becomes all knots and
+angles, wholly unlike the majestic forms we have been sketching. Old
+specimens, bearing cones about as big as pineapples, may sometimes be
+found clinging to rifted rocks at an elevation of seven or eight
+thousand feet, whose highest branches scarce reach above one’s
+shoulders.
+
+[Illustration: SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH. (THE FORM GROWING IN
+YOSEMITE VALLEY.)]
+
+I have oftentimes feasted on the beauty of these noble trees when they
+were towering in all their winter grandeur, laden with snow—one mass of
+bloom; in summer, too, when the brown, staminate clusters hang thick
+among the shimmering needles, and the big purple burs are ripening in
+the mellow light; but it is during cloudless wind-storms that these
+colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like
+willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when
+the sun shines upon them at the required angle, entire groves glow as
+if every leaf were burnished silver. The fall of tropic light on the
+royal crown of a palm is a truly glorious spectacle, the fervid
+sun-flood breaking upon the glossy leaves in long lance-rays, like
+mountain water among boulders. But to me there is something more
+impressive in the fall of light upon these Silver Pines. It seems
+beaten to the finest dust, and is shed off in myriads of minute
+sparkles that seem to come from the very heart of the trees, as if,
+like rain falling upon fertile soil, it had been absorbed, to reappear
+in flowers of light.
+
+This species also gives forth the finest music to the wind. After
+listening to it in all kinds of winds, night and day, season after
+season, I think I could approximate to my position on the mountains by
+this pine-music alone. If you would catch the tones of separate
+needles, climb a tree. They are well tempered, and give forth no
+uncertain sound, each standing out, with no interference excepting
+during heavy gales; then you may detect the click of one needle upon
+another, readily distinguishable from their free, wing-like hum. Some
+idea of their temper may be drawn from the fact that, notwithstanding
+they are so long, the vibrations that give rise to the peculiar
+shimmering of the light are made at the rate of about two hundred and
+fifty per minute.
+
+When a Sugar Pine and one of this species equal in size are observed
+together, the latter is seen to be far more simple in manners, more
+lithely graceful, and its beauty is of a kind more easily appreciated;
+but then, it is, on the other hand, much less dignified and original in
+demeanor. The Silver Pine seems eager to shoot aloft. Even while it is
+drowsing in autumn sun-gold, you may still detect a skyward aspiration.
+But the Sugar Pine seems too unconsciously noble, and too complete in
+every way, to leave room for even a heavenward care.
+
+DOUGLAS SPRUCE
+(_Pseudotsuga Douglasii_)
+
+This tree is the king of the spruces, as the Sugar Pine is king of
+pines. It is by far the most majestic spruce I ever beheld in any
+forest, and one of the largest and longest lived of the giants that
+flourish throughout the main pine belt, often attaining a height of
+nearly 200 feet, and a diameter of six or seven. Where the growth is
+not too close, the strong, spreading branches come more than halfway
+down the trunk, and these are hung with innumerable slender, swaying
+sprays, that are handsomely feathered with the short leaves which
+radiate at right angles all around them. This vigorous spruce is ever
+beautiful, welcoming the mountain winds and the snow as well as the
+mellow summer light, and maintaining its youthful freshness
+undiminished from century to century through a thousand storms.
+
+It makes its finest appearance in the months of June and July. The rich
+brown buds with which its sprays are tipped swell and break about this
+time, revealing the young leaves, which at first are bright yellow,
+making the tree appear as if covered with gay blossoms; while the
+pendulous bracted cones with their shell-like scales are a constant
+adornment.
+
+The young trees are mostly gathered into beautiful family groups, each
+sapling exquisitely symmetrical. The primary branches are whorled
+regularly around the axis, generally in fives, while each is draped
+with long, feathery sprays, that descend in curves as free and as
+finely drawn as those of falling water.
+
+In Oregon and Washington it grows in dense forests, growing tall and
+mast-like to a height of 300 feet, and is greatly prized as a lumber
+tree. But in the Sierra it is scattered among other trees, or forms
+small groves, seldom ascending higher than 5500 feet, and never making
+what would be called a forest. It is not particular in its choice of
+soil—wet or dry, smooth or rocky, it makes out to live well on them
+all. Two of the largest specimens I have measured are in Yosemite
+Valley, one of which is more than eight feet in diameter, and is
+growing upon the terminal moraine of the residual glacier that occupied
+the South Fork Canon; the other is nearly as large, growing upon
+angular blocks of granite that have been shaken from the precipitous
+front of the Liberty Cap near the Nevada Fall. No other tree seems so
+capable of adapting itself to earthquake taluses, and many of these
+rough boulder-slopes are occupied by it almost exclusively, especially
+in yosemite gorges moistened by the spray of waterfalls.
+
+INCENSE CEDAR
+(_Libocedrus decurrens_)
+
+The Incense Cedar is another of the giants quite generally distributed
+throughout this portion of the forest, without exclusively occupying
+any considerable area, or even making extensive groves. It ascends to
+about 5000 feet on the warmer hillsides, and reaches the climate most
+congenial to it at about from 3000 to 4000 feet, growing vigorously at
+this elevation on all kinds of soil, and in particular it is capable of
+enduring more moisture about its roots than any of its companions,
+excepting only the Sequoia.
+
+The largest specimens are about 150 feet high, and seven feet in
+diameter. The bark is brown, of a singularly rich tone very attractive
+to artists, and the foliage is tinted with a warmer yellow than that of
+any other evergreen in the woods. Casting your eye over the general
+forest from some ridge-top, the color alone of its spiry summits is
+sufficient to identify it in any company.
+
+[Illustration: INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME.]
+
+In youth, say up to the age of seventy or eighty years, no other tree
+forms so strictly tapered a cone from top to bottom. The branches swoop
+outward and downward in bold curves, excepting the younger ones near
+the top, which aspire, while the lowest droop to the ground, and all
+spread out in flat, ferny plumes, beautifully fronded, and imbricated
+upon one another. As it becomes older, it grows strikingly irregular
+and picturesque. Large special branches put out at right angles from
+the trunk, form big, stubborn elbows, and then shoot up parallel with
+the axis. Very old trees are usually dead at the top, the main axis
+protruding above ample masses of green plumes, gray and lichen-covered,
+and drilled full of acorn holes by the woodpeckers. The plumes are
+exceedingly beautiful; no waving fern-frond in shady dell is more
+unreservedly beautiful in form and texture, or half so inspiring in
+color and spicy fragrance. In its prime, the whole tree is thatched
+with them, so that they shed off rain and snow like a roof, making fine
+mansions for storm-bound birds and mountaineers. But if you would see
+the _Libocedrus_ in all its glory, you must go to the woods in winter.
+Then it is laden with myriads of four-sided staminate cones about the
+size of wheat grains,—winter wheat,—producing a golden tinge, and
+forming a noble illustration of Nature’s immortal vigor and virility.
+The fertile cones are about three fourths of an inch long, borne on the
+outside of the plumy branchlets, where they serve to enrich still more
+the surpassing beauty of this grand winter-blooming goldenrod.
+
+WHITE SILVER FIR
+(_Abies concolor_)
+
+[Illustration: FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS. TWO SEQUOIAS IN THE
+FOREGROUND ON THE LEFT.]
+
+We come now to the most regularly planted of all the main forest belts,
+composed almost exclusively of two noble firs—_A. concolor_ and _A.
+magnifica_. It extends with no marked interruption for 450 miles, at an
+elevation of from 5000 to nearly 9000 feet above the sea. In its youth
+_A. concolor_ is a charmingly symmetrical tree with branches regularly
+whorled in level collars around its whitish-gray axis, which terminates
+in a strong, hopeful shoot. The leaves are in two horizontal rows,
+along branchlets that commonly are less than eight years old, forming
+handsome plumes, pinnated like the fronds of ferns. The cones are
+grayish-green when ripe, cylindrical, about from three to four inches
+long by one and a half to two inches wide, and stand upright on the
+upper branches.
+
+Full-grown trees, favorably situated as to soil and exposure, are about
+200 feet high, and five or six feet in diameter near the ground, though
+larger specimens are by no means rare.
+
+As old age creeps on, the bark becomes rougher and grayer, the branches
+lose their exact regularity, many are snow-bent or broken off, and the
+main axis often becomes double or otherwise irregular from accidents to
+the terminal bud or shoot; but throughout all the vicissitudes of its
+life on the mountains, come what may, the noble grandeur of the species
+is patent to every eye.
+
+MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR, OR RED FIR
+(_Abies magnifica_)
+
+This is the most charmingly symmetrical of all the giants of the Sierra
+woods, far surpassing its companion species in this respect, and easily
+distinguished from it by the purplish-red bark, which is also more
+closely furrowed than that of the white, and by its larger cones, more
+regularly whorled and fronded branches, and by its leaves, which are
+shorter, and grow all around the branchlets and point upward.
+
+In size, these two Silver Firs are about equal, the _magnifica_ perhaps
+a little the taller. Specimens from 200 to 250 feet high are not rare
+on well-ground moraine soil, at an elevation of from 7500 to 8500 feet
+above sea-level. The largest that I measured stands back three miles
+from the brink of the north wall of Yosemite Valley. Fifteen years ago
+it was 240 feet high, with a diameter of a little more than five feet.
+
+Happy the man with the freedom and the love to climb one of these
+superb trees in full flower and fruit. How admirable the forest-work of
+Nature is then seen to be, as one makes his way up through the midst of
+the broad, fronded branches, all arranged in exquisite order around the
+trunk, like the whorled leaves of lilies, and each branch and branchlet
+about as strictly pinnate as the most symmetrical fern-frond. The
+staminate cones are seen growing straight downward from the under side
+of the young branches in lavish profusion, making fine purple clusters
+amid the grayish-green foliage. On the topmost branches the fertile
+cones are set firmly on end like small casks. They are about six inches
+long, three wide, covered with a fine gray down, and streaked with
+crystal balsam that seems to have been poured upon each cone from
+above.
+
+Both the Silver Firs live 250 years or more when the conditions about
+them are at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may often be seen,
+heavily storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising
+generation, with a protecting grove of saplings pressing close around
+his feet, each dressed with such loving care that not a leaf seems
+wanting. Other companies are made up of trees near the prime of life,
+exquisitely harmonized to one another in form and gesture, as if Nature
+had culled them one by one with nice discrimination from all the rest
+of the woods.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR.]
+
+It is from this tree, called Red Fir by the lumberman, that
+mountaineers always cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate
+as to be within its limits. Two rows of the plushy branches overlapping
+along the middle, and a crescent of smaller plumes mixed with ferns and
+flowers for a pillow, form the very best bed imaginable. The essences
+of the pressed leaves seem to fill every pore of one’s body, the sounds
+of falling water make a soothing hush, while the spaces between the
+grand spires afford noble openings through which to gaze dreamily into
+the starry sky. Even in the matter of sensuous ease, any combination of
+cloth, steel springs, and feathers seems vulgar in comparison.
+
+The fir woods are delightful sauntering-grounds at any time of year,
+but most so in autumn. Then the noble trees are hushed in the hazy
+light, and drip with balsam; the cones are ripe, and the seeds, with
+their ample purple wings, mottle the air like flocks of butterflies;
+while deer feeding in the flowery openings between the groves, and
+birds and squirrels in the branches, make a pleasant stir which
+enriches the deep, brooding calm of the wilderness, and gives a
+peculiar impressiveness to every tree. No wonder the enthusiastic
+Douglas went wild with joy when he first discovered this species. Even
+in the Sierra, where so many noble evergreens challenge admiration, we
+linger among these colossal firs with fresh love, and extol their
+beauty again and again, as if no other in the world could henceforth
+claim our regard.
+
+[Illustration: SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN
+AND TENAYA GLACIERS.]
+
+It is in these woods the great granite domes rise that are so striking
+and characteristic a feature of the Sierra. And here too we find the
+best of the garden meadows. They lie level on the tops of the dividing
+ridges, or sloping on the sides of them, embedded in the magnificent
+forest. Some of these meadows are in great part occupied by
+_Veratrumalba_, which here grows rank and tall, with boat-shaped leaves
+thirteen inches long and twelve inches wide, ribbed like those of
+cypripedium. Columbine grows on the drier margins with tall larkspurs
+and lupines waist-deep in grasses and sedges; several species of
+castilleia also make a bright show in beds of blue and white violets
+and daisies. But the glory of these forest meadows is a lily—_L.
+parvum_. The flowers are orange-colored and quite small, the smallest I
+ever saw of the true lilies; but it is showy nevertheless, for it is
+seven to eight feet high and waves magnificent racemes of ten to twenty
+flowers or more over one’s head, while it stands out in the open ground
+with just enough of grass and other plants about it to make a fringe
+for its feet and show it off to best advantage.
+
+A dry spot a little way back from the margin of a Silver Fir lily
+garden makes a glorious campground, especially where the slope is
+toward the east and opens a view of the distant peaks along the summit
+of the range. The tall lilies are brought forward in all their glory by
+the light of your blazing camp-fire, relieved against the outer
+darkness, and the nearest of the trees with their whorled branches
+tower above you like larger lilies, and the sky seen through the garden
+opening seems one vast meadow of white lily stars.
+
+In the morning everything is joyous and bright, the delicious purple of
+the dawn changes softly to daffodil yellow and white; while the
+sunbeams pouring through the passes between the peaks give a margin of
+gold to each of them. Then the spires of the firs in the hollows of the
+middle region catch the glow, and your camp grove is filled with light.
+The birds begin to stir, seeking sunny branches on the edge of the
+meadow for sun-baths after the cold night, and looking for their
+breakfasts, every one of them as fresh as a lily and as charmingly
+arrayed. Innumerable insects begin to dance, the deer withdraw from the
+open glades and ridge-tops to their leafy hiding-places in the
+chaparral, the flowers open and straighten their petals as the dew
+vanishes, every pulse beats high, every life-cell rejoices, the very
+rocks seem to tingle with life, and God is felt brooding over
+everything great and small.
+
+BIG TREE
+(_Sequoia gigantea_)
+
+Between the heavy pine and Silver Fir belts we find the Big Tree, the
+king of all the conifers in the world, “the noblest of a noble race.”
+It extends in a widely interrupted belt from a small grove on the
+middle fork of the American River to the head of Deer Creek, a distance
+of about 260 miles, the northern limit being near the thirty-ninth
+parallel, the southern a little below the thirty-sixth, and the
+elevation of the belt above the sea varies from about 5000 to 8000
+feet. From the American River grove to the forest on King’s River the
+species occurs only in small isolated groups so sparsely distributed
+along the belt that three of the gaps in it are from forty to sixty
+miles wide. But from King’s River southward the Sequoia is not
+restricted to mere groves, but extends across the broad rugged basins
+of the Kaweah and Tule rivers in noble forests, a distance of nearly
+seventy miles, the continuity of this part of the belt being broken
+only by deep cañons. The Fresno, the largest of the northern groves,
+occupies an area of three or four square miles, a short distance to the
+southward of the famous Mariposa Grove. Along the beveled rim of the
+cañon of the south fork of King’s River there is a majestic forest of
+Sequoia about six miles long by two wide. This is the northernmost
+assemblage of Big Trees that may fairly be called a forest. Descending
+the precipitous divide between the King’s River and Kaweah you enter
+the grand forests that form the main continuous portion of the belt.
+Advancing southward the giants become more and more irrepressibly
+exuberant, heaving their massive crowns into the sky from every ridge
+and slope, and waving onward in graceful compliance with the
+complicated topography of the region. The finest of the Kaweah section
+of the belt is on the broad ridge between Marble Creek and the middle
+fork, and extends from the granite headlands overlooking the hot plains
+to within a few miles of the cool glacial fountains of the summit
+peaks. The extreme upper limit of the belt is reached between the
+middle and south forks of the Kaweah at an elevation of 8400 feet. But
+the finest block of Big Tree forest in the entire belt is on the north
+fork of Tule River. In the northern groves there are comparatively few
+young trees or saplings. But here for every old, storm-stricken giant
+there are many in all the glory of prime vigor, and for each of these a
+crowd of eager, hopeful young trees and saplings growing heartily on
+moraines, rocky ledges, along watercourses, and in the moist alluvium
+of meadows, seemingly in hot pursuit of eternal life.
+
+[Illustration:  SEQUOIA GIGANTEA—VIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK.]
+
+But though the area occupied by the species increases so much from
+north to south there is no marked increase in the size of the trees. A
+height of 275 feet and a diameter near the ground of about 20 feet is
+perhaps about the average size of full-grown trees favorably situated;
+specimens 25 feet in diameter are not very rare, and a few are nearly
+300 feet high. In the Calaveras Grove there are four trees over 300
+feet in height, the tallest of which by careful measurement is 325
+feet. The largest I have yet met in the course of my explorations is a
+majestic old scarred monument in the King’s River forest. It is 35 feet
+8 inches in diameter inside the bark four feet from the ground. Under
+the most favorable conditions these giants probably live 5000 years or
+more, though few of even the larger trees are more than half as old. I
+never saw a Big Tree that had died a natural death; barring accidents
+they seem to be immortal, being exempt from all the diseases that
+afflict and kill other trees. Unless destroyed by man, they live on
+indefinitely until burned, smashed by lightning, or cast down by
+storms, or by the giving way of the ground on which they stand. The age
+of one that was felled in the Calaveras Grove, for the sake of having
+its stump for a dancing-floor, was about 1300 years, and its diameter,
+measured across the stump, 24 feet inside the bark. Another that was
+cut down in the King’s River forest was about the same size, but nearly
+a thousand years older (2200 years), though not a very old-looking
+tree. It was felled to procure a section for exhibition, and thus an
+opportunity was given to count its annual rings of growth. The colossal
+scarred monument in the King’s River forest mentioned above is burned
+half through, and I spent a day in making an estimate of its age,
+clearing away the charred surface with an ax and carefully counting the
+annual rings with the aid of a pocket-lens. The wood-rings in the
+section I laid bare were so involved and contorted in some places that
+I was not able to determine its age exactly, but I counted over 4000
+rings, which showed that this tree was in its prime, swaying in the
+Sierra winds, when Christ walked the earth. No other tree in the world,
+as far as I know, has looked down on so many centuries as the Sequoia,
+or opens such impressive and suggestive views into history.
+
+So exquisitely harmonious and finely balanced are even the very
+mightiest of these monarchs of the woods in all their proportions and
+circumstances there never is anything overgrown or monstrous-looking
+about them. On coming in sight of them for the first time, you are
+likely to say, “Oh, see what beautiful, noble-looking trees are
+towering there among the firs and pines!”—their grandeur being in the
+mean time in great part invisible, but to the living eye it will be
+manifested sooner or later, stealing slowly on the senses, like the
+grandeur of Niagara, or the lofty Yosemite domes. Their great size is
+hidden from the inexperienced observer as long as they are seen at a
+distance in one harmonious view. When, however, you approach them and
+walk round them, you begin to wonder at their colossal size and seek a
+measuring-rod. These giants bulge considerably at the base, but not
+more than is required for beauty and safety; and the only reason that
+this bulging seems in some cases excessive is that only a comparatively
+small section of the shaft is seen at once in near views. One that I
+measured in the King’s River forest was 25 feet in diameter at the
+ground, and 10 feet in diameter 200 feet above the ground, showing that
+the taper of the trunk as a whole is charmingly fine. And when you
+stand back far enough to see the massive columns from the swelling
+instep to the lofty summit dissolving in a dome of verdure, you rejoice
+in the unrivaled display of combined grandeur and beauty. About a
+hundred feet or more of the trunk is usually branchless, but its
+massive simplicity is relieved by the bark furrows, which instead of
+making an irregular network run evenly parallel, like the fluting of an
+architectural column, and to some extent by tufts of slender sprays
+that wave lightly in the winds and cast flecks of shade, seeming to
+have been pinned on here and there for the sake of beauty only. The
+young trees have slender simple branches down to the ground, put on
+with strict regularity, sharply aspiring at the top, horizontal about
+half-way down, and drooping in handsome curves at the base. By the time
+the sapling is five or six hundred years old this spiry, feathery,
+juvenile habit merges into the firm, rounded dome form of middle age,
+which in turn takes on the eccentric picturesqueness of old age. No
+other tree in the Sierra forest has foliage so densely massed or
+presents outlines so firmly drawn and so steadily subordinate to a
+special type. A knotty ungovernable-looking branch five to eight feet
+thick may be seen pushing out abruptly from the smooth trunk, as if
+sure to throw the regular curve into confusion, but as soon as the
+general outline is reached it stops short and dissolves in spreading
+bosses of law-abiding sprays, just as if every tree were growing
+beneath some huge, invisible bell-glass, against whose sides every
+branch was being pressed and molded, yet somehow indulging in so many
+small departures from the regular form that there is still an
+appearance of freedom.
+
+The foliage of the saplings is dark bluish-green in color, while the
+older trees ripen to a warm brownish-yellow tint like Libocedrus. The
+bark is rich cinnamon-brown, purplish in young trees and in shady
+portions of the old, while the ground is covered with brown leaves and
+burs forming color-masses of extraordinary richness, not to mention the
+flowers and underbrush that rejoice about them in their seasons. Walk
+the Sequoia woods at any time of year and you will say they are the
+most beautiful and majestic on earth. Beautiful and impressive
+contrasts meet you everywhere: the colors of tree and flower, rock and
+sky, light and shade, strength and frailty, endurance and evanescence,
+tangles of supple hazel-bushes, tree-pillars about as rigid as granite
+domes, roses and violets, the smallest of their kind, blooming around
+the feet of the giants, and rugs of the lowly chamaebatia where the
+sunbeams fall. Then in winter the trees themselves break forth in
+bloom, myriads of small four-sided staminate cones crowd the ends of
+the slender sprays, coloring the whole tree, and when ripe dusting the
+air and the ground with golden pollen. The fertile cones are bright
+grass-green, measuring about two inches in length by one and a half in
+thickness, and are made up of about forty firm rhomboidal scales
+densely packed, with from five to eight seeds at the base of each. A
+single cone, therefore, contains from two to three hundred seeds, which
+are about a fourth of an inch long by three sixteenths wide, including
+a thin, flat margin that makes them go glancing and wavering in their
+fall like a boy’s kite. The fruitfulness of Sequoia may be illustrated
+by two specimen branches one and a half and two inches in diameter on
+which I counted 480 cones. No other Sierra conifer produces nearly so
+many seeds. Millions are ripened annually by a single tree, and in a
+fruitful year the product of one of the northern groves would be enough
+to plant all the mountain-ranges of the world. Nature takes care,
+however, that not one seed in a million shall germinate at all, and of
+those that do perhaps not one in ten thousand is suffered to live
+through the many vicissitudes of storm, drought, fire, and
+snow-crushing that beset their youth.
+
+The Douglas squirrel is the happy harvester of most of the Sequoia
+cones. Out of every hundred perhaps ninety fall to his share, and
+unless cut off by his ivory sickle they shake out their seeds and
+remain on the tree for many years. Watching the squirrels at their
+harvest work in the Indian summer is one of the most delightful
+diversions imaginable. The woods are calm and the ripe colors are
+blazing in all their glory; the cone-laden trees stand motionless in
+the warm, hazy air, and you may see the crimson-crested woodcock, the
+prince of Sierra woodpeckers, drilling some dead limb or fallen trunk
+with his bill, and ever and anon filling the glens with his happy
+cackle. The humming-bird, too, dwells in these noble woods, and may
+oftentimes be seen glancing among the flowers or resting wing-weary on
+some leafless twig; here also are the familiar robin of the orchards,
+and the brown and grizzly bears so obviously fitted for these majestic
+solitudes; and the Douglas squirrel, making more hilarious, exuberant,
+vital stir than all the bears, birds, and humming wings together.
+
+As soon as any accident happens to the crown of these Sequoias, such as
+being stricken off by lightning or broken by storms, then the branches
+beneath the wound, no matter how situated, seem to be excited like a
+colony of bees that have lost their queen, and become anxious to repair
+the damage. Limbs that have grown outward for centuries at right angles
+to the trunk begin to turn upward to assist in making a new crown, each
+speedily assuming the special form of true summits. Even in the case of
+mere stumps, burned half through, some mere ornamental tuft will try to
+go aloft and do its best as a leader in forming a new head.
+
+Groups of two or three of these grand trees are often found standing
+close together, the seeds from which they sprang having probably grown
+on ground cleared for their reception by the fall of a large tree of a
+former generation. These patches of fresh, mellow soil beside the
+upturned roots of the fallen giant may be from forty to sixty feet
+wide, and they are speedily occupied by seedlings. Out of these
+seedling-thickets perhaps two or three may become trees, forming those
+close groups called “three graces,” “loving couples,” etc. For even
+supposing that the trees should stand twenty or thirty feet apart while
+young, by the time they are full-grown their trunks will touch and
+crowd against each other and even appear as one in some cases.
+
+It is generally believed that this grand Sequoia was once far more
+widely distributed over the Sierra; but after long and careful study I
+have come to the conclusion that it never was, at least since the close
+of the glacial period, because a diligent search along the margins of
+the groves, and in the gaps between, fails to reveal a single trace of
+its previous existence beyond its present bounds. Notwithstanding, I
+feel confident that if every Sequoia in the range were to die to-day,
+numerous monuments of their existence would remain, of so imperishable
+a nature as to be available for the student more than ten thousand
+years hence.
+
+In the first place we might notice that no species of coniferous tree
+in the range keeps its individuals so well together as Sequoia; a mile
+is perhaps the greatest distance of any straggler from the main body,
+and all of those stragglers that have come under my observation are
+young, instead of old monumental trees, relics of a more extended
+growth.
+
+Again, Sequoia trunks frequently endure for centuries after they fall.
+I have a specimen block, cut from a fallen trunk, which is hardly
+distinguishable from specimens cut from living trees, although the old
+trunk-fragment from which it was derived has lain in the damp forest
+more than 380 years, probably thrice as long. The time measure in the
+case is simply this: when the ponderous trunk to which the old vestige
+belonged fell, it sunk itself into the ground, thus making a long,
+straight ditch, and in the middle of this ditch a Silver Fir is growing
+that is now four feet in diameter and 380 years old, as determined by
+cutting it half through and counting the rings, thus demonstrating that
+the remnant of the trunk that made the ditch has lain on the ground
+_more_ than 380 years. For it is evident that to find the whole time,
+we must add to the 380 years the time that the vanished portion of the
+trunk lay in the ditch before being burned out of the way, plus the
+time that passed before the seed from which the monumental fir sprang
+fell into the prepared soil and took root. Now, because Sequoia trunks
+are never wholly consumed in one forest fire, and those fires recur
+only at considerable intervals, and because Sequoia ditches after being
+cleared are often left unplanted for centuries, it becomes evident that
+the trunk remnant in question may probably have lain a thousand years
+or more. And this instance is by no means a rare one.
+
+But admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been once covered
+with Sequoia every tree may have fallen, and every trunk may have been
+burned or buried, leaving not a remnant, many of the ditches made by
+the fall of the ponderous trunks, and the bowls made by their upturning
+roots, would remain patent for thousands of years after the last
+vestige of the trunks that made them had vanished. Much of this
+ditch-writing would no doubt be quickly effaced by the flood-action of
+overflowing streams and rain-washing; but no inconsiderable portion
+would remain enduringly engraved on ridge-tops beyond such destructive
+action; for, where all the conditions are favorable, it is almost
+imperishable. _Now these historic ditches and root bowls occur in all
+the present Sequoia groves and forests, but as far as I have observed,
+not the faintest vestige of one presents itself outside of them_.
+
+We therefore conclude that the area covered by Sequoia has not been
+diminished during the last eight or ten thousand years, and probably
+not at all in post-glacial times.
+
+_Is the species verging to extinction? What are its relations to
+climate, soil, and associated trees?_
+
+All the phenomena bearing on these questions also throw light, as we
+shall endeavor to show, upon the peculiar distribution of the species,
+and sustain the conclusion already arrived at on the question of
+extension.
+
+In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are few young trees or
+saplings growing up around the failing old ones to perpetuate the race,
+and in as much as those aged Sequoias, so nearly childless, are the
+only ones commonly known, the species, to most observers, seems doomed
+to speedy extinction, as being nothing more than an expiring remnant,
+vanquished in the so-called struggle for life by pines and firs that
+have driven it into its last strongholds in moist glens where climate
+is exceptionally favorable. But the language of the majestic continuous
+forests of the south creates a very different impression. No tree of
+all the forest is more enduringly established in concordance with
+climate and soil. It grows heartily everywhere—on moraines, rocky
+ledges, along watercourses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows,
+with a multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the aged,
+seemingly abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. For
+every old storm-stricken tree, there is one or more in all the glory of
+prime; and for each of these many young trees and crowds of exuberant
+saplings. So that if all the trees of any section of the main Sequoia
+forest were ranged together according to age, a very promising curve
+would be presented, all the way up from last year’s seedlings to
+giants, and with the young and middle-aged portion of the curve many
+times longer than the old portion. Even as far north as the Fresno, I
+counted 536 saplings and seedlings growing promisingly upon a piece of
+rough avalanche soil not exceeding two acres in area. This soil bed is
+about seven years old, and has been seeded almost simultaneously by
+pines, firs, Libocedrus, and Sequoia, presenting a simple and
+instructive illustration of the struggle for life among the rival
+species; and it was interesting to note that the conditions thus far
+affecting them have enabled the young Sequoias to gain a marked
+advantage.
+
+In every instance like the above I have observed that the seedling
+Sequoia is capable of growing on both drier and wetter soil than its
+rivals, but requires more sunshine than they; the latter fact being
+clearly shown wherever a Sugar Pine or fir is growing in close contact
+with a Sequoia of about equal age and size, and equally exposed to the
+sun; the branches of the latter in such cases are always less leafy.
+Toward the south, however, where the Sequoia becomes _more_ exuberant
+and numerous, the rival trees become _less_ so; and where they mix with
+Sequoias, they mostly grow up beneath them, like slender grasses among
+stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of sandy flood-soil I counted
+ninety-four Sequoias, from one to twelve feet high, on a patch, of
+ground once occupied by four large Sugar Pines which lay crumbling
+beneath them,—an instance of conditions which have enabled Sequoias to
+crowd out the pines.
+
+[Illustration: MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAÑON—YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.]
+
+I also noted eighty-six vigorous saplings upon a piece of fresh ground
+prepared for their reception by fire. Thus fire, the great destroyer of
+Sequoia, also furnishes bare virgin ground, one of the conditions
+essential for its growth from the seed. Fresh ground is, however,
+furnished in sufficient quantities for the constant renewal of the
+forests without fire, viz., by the fall of old trees. The soil is thus
+upturned and mellowed, and many trees are planted for every one that
+falls. Land-slips and floods also give rise to bare virgin ground; and
+a tree now and then owes its existence to a burrowing wolf or squirrel,
+but the most regular supply of fresh soil is furnished by the fall of
+aged trees.
+
+The climatic changes in progress in the Sierra, bearing on the tenure
+of tree life, are entirely misapprehended, especially as to the time
+and the means employed by Nature in effecting them. It is constantly
+asserted in a vague way that the Sierra was vastly wetter than now, and
+that the increasing drought will of itself extinguish Sequoia, leaving
+its ground to other trees supposed capable of nourishing in a drier
+climate. But that Sequoia can and does grow on as dry ground as any of
+its present rivals, is manifest in a thousand places. “Why, then,” it
+will be asked, “are Sequoias always found in greatest abundance in
+well-watered places where streams are exceptionally abundant?” Simply
+because a growth of Sequoias creates those streams. The thirsty
+mountaineer knows well that in every Sequoia grove he will find running
+water, but it is a mistake to suppose that the water is the cause of
+the grove being there; on the contrary, the grove is the cause of the
+water being there. Drain off the water and the trees will remain, but
+cut off the trees, and the streams will vanish. Never was cause more
+completely mistaken for effect than in the case of these related
+phenomena of Sequoia woods and perennial streams, and I confess that at
+first I shared in the blunder.
+
+When attention is called to the method of Sequoia stream-making, it
+will be apprehended at once. The roots of this immense tree fill the
+ground, forming a thick sponge that absorbs and holds back the rains
+and melting snows, only allowing them to ooze and flow gently. Indeed,
+every fallen leaf and rootlet, as well as long clasping root, and
+prostrate trunk, may be regarded as a dam hoarding the bounty of
+storm-clouds, and dispensing it as blessings all through the summer,
+instead of allowing it to go headlong in short-lived floods.
+Evaporation is also checked by the dense foliage to a greater extent
+than by any other Sierra tree, and the air is entangled in masses and
+broad sheets that are quickly saturated; while thirsty winds are not
+allowed to go sponging and licking along the ground.
+
+So great is the retention of water in many places in the main belt,
+that bogs and meadows are created by the killing of the trees. A single
+trunk falling across a stream in the woods forms a dam 200 feet long,
+and from ten to thirty feet high, giving rise to a pond which kills the
+trees within its reach. These dead trees fall in turn, thus making a
+clearing, while sediments gradually accumulate changing the pond into a
+bog, or meadow, for a growth of carices and sphagnum. In some instances
+a series of small bogs or meadows rise above one another on a hillside,
+which are gradually merged into one another, forming sloping bogs, or
+meadows, which make striking features of Sequoia woods, and since all
+the trees that have fallen into them have been preserved, they contain
+records of the generations that have passed since they began to form.
+
+Since, then, it is a fact that thousands of Sequoias are growing
+thriftily on what is termed dry ground, and even clinging like mountain
+pines to rifts in granite precipices; and since it has also been shown
+that the extra moisture found in connection with the denser growths is
+an effect of their presence, instead of a cause of their presence, then
+the notions as to the former extension of the species and its near
+approach to extinction, based upon its supposed dependence on greater
+moisture, are seen to be erroneous.
+
+The decrease in the rain- and snow-fall since the close of the glacial
+period in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed. The highest
+post-glacial watermarks are well preserved in all the upper river
+channels, and they are not greatly higher than the spring floodmarks of
+the present; showing conclusively that no extraordinary decrease has
+taken place in the volume of the upper tributaries of post-glacial
+Sierra streams since they came into existence. But in the mean time,
+eliminating all this complicated question of climatic change, the plain
+fact remains that _the present rain- and snow-fall is abundantly
+sufficient for the luxuriant growth of Sequoia forests_. Indeed, all my
+observations tend to show that in a prolonged drought the Sugar Pines
+and firs would perish before the Sequoia, not alone because of the
+greater longevity of individual trees, but because the species can
+endure more drought, and make the most of whatever moisture falls.
+
+Again, if the restriction and irregular distribution of the species be
+interpreted as a result of the desiccation of the range, then instead
+of increasing as it does in individuals toward the south where the
+rainfall is less, it should diminish.
+
+If, then, the peculiar distribution of Sequoia has not been governed by
+superior conditions of soil as to fertility or moisture, by what has it
+been governed?
+
+In the course of my studies I observed that the northern groves, the
+only ones I was at first acquainted with, were located on just those
+portions of the general forest soil-belt that were first laid bare
+toward the close of the glacial period when the ice-sheet began to
+break up into individual glaciers. And while searching the wide basin
+of the San Joaquin, and trying to account for the absence of Sequoia
+where every condition seemed favorable for its growth, it occured to me
+that this remarkable gap in the Sequoia belt is located exactly in the
+basin of the vast ancient _mer de glace_ of the San Joaquin and King’s
+River basins, which poured its frozen floods to the plain, fed by the
+snows that fell on more than fifty miles of the summit. I then
+perceived that the next great gap in the belt to the northward, forty
+miles wide, extending between the Calaveras and Tuolumne groves, occurs
+in the basin of the great ancient _mer de glace_ of the Tuolumne and
+Stanislaus basins, and that the smaller gap between the Merced and
+Mariposa groves occurs in the basin of the smaller glacier of the
+Merced. _The wider the ancient glacier, the wider the corresponding gap
+in the Sequoia belt_.
+
+Finally, pursuing my investigations across the basins of the Kaweah and
+Tule, I discovered that the Sequoia belt attained its greatest
+development just where, owing to the topographical peculiarities of the
+region, the ground had been most perfectly protected from the main
+ice-rivers that continued to pour past from the summit fountains long
+after the smaller local glaciers had been melted.
+
+Taking now a general view of the belt, beginning at the south, we see
+that the majestic ancient glaciers were shed off right and left down
+the valleys of Kern and King’s rivers by the lofty protective spurs
+outspread embracingly above the warm Sequoia-filled basins of the
+Kaweah and Tule. Then, next northward, occurs the wide Sequoia-less
+channel, or basin, of the ancient San Joaquin and King’s River _mer de
+glace_; then the warm, protected spots of Fresno and Mariposa groves;
+then the Sequoia-less channel of the ancient Merced glacier; next the
+warm, sheltered ground of the Merced and Tuolumne groves; then the
+Sequoia-less channel of the grand ancient _mer de glace_ of the
+Tuolumne and Stanislaus; then the warm old ground of the Calaveras and
+Stanislaus groves. It appears, therefore, that just where, at a certain
+period in the history of the Sierra, the glaciers were not, there the
+Sequoia is, and just where the glaciers were, there the Sequoia is not.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.]
+
+What the other conditions may have been that enabled Sequoia to
+establish itself upon these oldest and warmest portions of the main
+glacial soil-belt, I cannot say. I might venture to state, however, in
+this connection, that since the Sequoia forests present a more and more
+ancient aspect as they extend southward, I am inclined to think that
+the species was distributed from the south, while the Sugar Pine, its
+great rival in the northern groves, seems to have come around the head
+of the Sacramento valley and down the Sierra from the north;
+consequently, when the Sierra soil-beds were first thrown open to
+preemption on the melting of the ice-sheet, the Sequoia may have
+established itself along the available portions of the south half of
+the range prior to the arrival of the Sugar Pine, while the Sugar Pine
+took possession of the north half prior to the arrival of Sequoia.
+
+But however much uncertainty may attach to this branch of the question,
+there are no obscuring shadows upon the grand general relationship we
+have pointed out between the present distribution of Sequoia and the
+ancient glaciers of the Sierra. And when we bear in mind that all the
+present forests of the Sierra are young, growing on moraine soil
+recently deposited, and that the flank of the range itself, with all
+its landscapes, is new-born, recently sculptured, and brought to the
+light of day from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial winter, then a
+thousand lawless mysteries disappear, and broad harmonies take their
+places.
+
+But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial
+history of this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was
+more widely distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial
+epoch; that its present forests are scarcely past prime, if, indeed,
+they have reached prime; that the post-glacial day of the species is
+probably not half done; yet, when from a wider outlook the vast
+antiquity of the genus is considered, and its ancient richness in
+species and individuals; comparing our Sierra Giant and _Sequoia
+sempervirens_ of the Coast Range, the only other living species of
+Sequoia, with the twelve fossil species already discovered and
+described by Heer and Lesquereux, some of which seem to have flourished
+over vast areas in the Arctic regions and in Europe and our own
+territories, during tertiary and cretaceous times,—then indeed it
+becomes plain that our two surviving species, restricted to narrow
+belts within the limits of California, are mere remnants of the genus,
+both as to species and individuals, and that they probably are verging
+to extinction. But the verge of a period beginning in cretaceous times
+may have a breadth of tens of thousands of years, not to mention the
+possible existence of conditions calculated to multiply and reëxtend
+both species and individuals. This, however, is a branch of the
+question into which I do not now purpose to enter.
+
+In studying the fate of our forest king, we have thus far considered
+the action of purely natural causes only; but, unfortunately, _man_ is
+in the woods, and waste and pure destruction are making rapid headway.
+If the importance of forests were at all understood, even from an
+economic standpoint, their preservation would call forth the most
+watchful attention of government. Only of late years by means of forest
+reservations has the simplest groundwork for available legislation been
+laid, while in many of the finest groves every species of destruction
+is still moving on with accelerated speed.
+
+In the course of my explorations I found no fewer than five mills
+located on or near the lower edge of the Sequoia belt, all of which
+were cutting considerable quantities of Big Tree lumber. Most of the
+Fresno group are doomed to feed the mills recently erected near them,
+and a company of lumbermen are now cutting the magnificent forest on
+King’s River. In these milling operations waste far exceeds use, for
+after the choice young manageable trees on any given spot have been
+felled, the woods are fired to clear the ground of limbs and refuse
+with reference to further operations, and, of course, most of the
+seedlings and saplings are destroyed.
+
+These mill ravages, however, are small as compared with the
+comprehensive destruction caused by “sheepmen.” Incredible numbers of
+sheep are driven to the mountain pastures every summer, and their
+course is ever marked by desolation. Every wild garden is trodden down,
+the shrubs are stripped of leaves as if devoured by locusts, and the
+woods are burned. Running fires are set everywhere, with a view to
+clearing the ground of prostrate trunks, to facilitate the movements of
+the flocks and improve the pastures. The entire forest belt is thus
+swept and devastated from one extremity of the range to the other, and,
+with the exception of the resinous _Pinus contorta_, Sequoia suffers
+most of all. Indians burn off the underbrush in certain localities to
+facilitate deer-hunting, mountaineers and lumbermen carelessly allow
+their camp-fires to run; but the fires of the sheepmen, or
+_muttoneers_, form more than ninety per cent. of all destructive fires
+that range the Sierra forests.
+
+It appears, therefore, that notwithstanding our forest king might live
+on gloriously in Nature’s keeping, it is rapidly vanishing before the
+fire and steel of man; and unless protective measures be speedily
+invented and applied, in a few decades, at the farthest, all that will
+be left of _Sequoia gigantea_ will be a few hacked and scarred
+monuments.
+
+TWO-LEAVED, OR TAMARACK, PINE
+(_Pinus contorta_, var._Marrayana_)
+
+This species forms the bulk of the alpine forests, extending along the
+range, above the fir zone, up to a height of from 8000 to 9500 feet
+above the sea, growing in beautiful order upon moraines that are
+scarcely changed as yet by post-glacial weathering. Compared with the
+giants of the lower zones, this is a small tree, seldom attaining a
+height of a hundred feet. The largest specimen I ever measured was
+ninety feet in height, and a little over six in diameter four feet from
+the ground. The average height of mature trees throughout the entire
+belt is probably not far from fifty or sixty feet, with a diameter of
+two feet. It is a well-proportioned, rather handsome little pine, with
+grayish-brown bark, and crooked, much-divided branches, which cover the
+greater portion of the trunk, not so densely, however, as to prevent
+its being seen. The lower limbs curve downward, gradually take a
+horizontal position about half-way up the trunk, then aspire more and
+more toward the summit, thus forming a sharp, conical top. The foliage
+is short and rigid, two leaves in a fascicle, arranged in comparatively
+long, cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough, up-curving
+branchlets. The cones are about two inches long, growing in stiff
+clusters among the needles, without making any striking effect, except
+while very young, when they are of a vivid crimson color, and the whole
+tree appears to be dotted with brilliant flowers. The sterile cones are
+still more showy, on account of their great abundance, often giving a
+reddish-yellow tinge to the whole mass of the foliage, and filling the
+air with pollen.
+
+No other pine on the range is so regularly planted as this one. Moraine
+forests sweep along the sides of the high, rocky valleys for miles
+without interruption; still, strictly speaking, they are not dense, for
+flecks of sunshine and flowers find their way into the darkest places,
+where the trees grow tallest and thickest. Tall, nutritious grasses are
+specially abundant beneath them, growing over all the ground, in
+sunshine and shade, over extensive areas like a farmer’s crop, and
+serving as pasture for the multitude of sheep that are driven from the
+arid plains every summer as soon as the snow is melted.
+
+The Two-leaved Pine, more than any other, is subject to destruction by
+fire. The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled with resin, as though it
+had been showered down upon it like rain, so that even the green trees
+catch fire readily, and during strong winds whole forests are
+destroyed, the flames leaping from tree to tree, forming one continuous
+belt of roaring fire that goes surging and racing onward above the
+bending woods, like the grass-fires of a prairie. During the calm, dry
+season of Indian summer, the fire creeps quietly along the ground,
+feeding on the dry needles and burs; then, arriving at the foot of a
+tree, the resiny bark is ignited, and the heated air ascends in a
+powerful current, increasing in velocity, and dragging the flames
+swiftly upward; then the leaves catch fire, and an immense column of
+flame, beautifully spired on the edges, and tinted a rose-purple hue,
+rushes aloft thirty or forty feet above the top of the tree, forming a
+grand spectacle, especially on a dark night. It lasts, however, only a
+few seconds, vanishing with magical rapidity, to be succeeded by others
+along the fire-line at irregular intervals for weeks at a time—tree
+after tree flashing and darkening, leaving the trunks and branches
+hardly scarred. The heat, however, is sufficient to kill the trees, and
+in a few years the bark shrivels and falls off. Belts miles in extent
+are thus killed and left standing with the branches on, peeled and
+rigid, appearing gray in the distance, like misty clouds. Later the
+branches drop off, leaving a forest of bleached spars. At length the
+roots decay, and the forlorn trunks are blown down during some storm,
+and piled one upon another encumbering the ground until they are
+consumed by the next fire, and leave it ready for a fresh crop.
+
+The endurance of the species is shown by its wandering occasionally out
+over the lava plains with the Yellow Pine, and climbing moraineless
+mountain-sides with the Dwarf Pine, clinging to any chance support in
+rifts and crevices of storm-beaten rocks—always, however, showing the
+effects of such hardships in every feature.
+
+Down in sheltered lake hollows, on beds of rich alluvium, it varies so
+far from the common form as frequently to be taken for a distinct
+species. Here it grows in dense sods, like grasses, from forty to
+eighty feet high, bending all together to the breeze and whirling in
+eddying gusts more lithely than any other tree in the woods. I have
+frequently found specimens fifty feet high less than five inches in
+diameter. Being thus slender, and at the same time well clad with leafy
+boughs, it is oftentimes bent to the ground when laden with soft snow,
+forming beautiful arches in endless variety, some of which last until
+the melting of the snow in spring.
+
+MOUNTAIN PINE
+(_Pinus monticola_)
+
+The Mountain Pine is king of the alpine woods, brave, hardy, and
+long-lived, towering grandly above its companions, and becoming
+stronger and more imposing just where other species begin to crouch and
+disappear. At its best it is usually about ninety feet high and five or
+six in diameter, though a specimen is often met considerably larger
+than this. The trunk is as massive and as suggestive of enduring
+strength as that of an oak. About two thirds of the trunk is commonly
+free of limbs, but close, fringy tufts of sprays occur all the way
+down, like those which adorn the colossal shafts of Sequoia. The bark
+is deep reddish-brown upon trees that occupy exposed situations near
+its upper limit, and furrowed rather deeply, the main furrows running
+nearly parallel with each other, and connected by conspicuous cross
+furrows, which, with one exception, are, as far as I have noticed,
+peculiar to this species.
+
+The cones are from four to eight inches long, slender, cylindrical, and
+somewhat curved, resembling those of the common White Pine of the
+Atlantic coast. They grow in clusters of about from three to six or
+seven, becoming pendulous as they increase in weight, chiefly by the
+bending of the branches.
+
+This species is nearly related to the Sugar Pine, and, though not half
+so tall, it constantly suggests its noble relative in the way that it
+extends its long arms and in general habit. The Mountain Pine is first
+met on the upper margin of the fir zone, growing singly in a subdued,
+inconspicuous form, in what appear as chance situations, without making
+much impression on the general forest. Continuing up through the
+Two-leaved Pines in the same scattered growth, it begins to show its
+character, and at an elevation of about 10,000 feet attains its noblest
+development near the middle of the range, tossing its tough arms in the
+frosty air, welcoming storms and feeding on them, and reaching the
+grand old age of 1000 years.
+
+JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR
+(_Juniperus occidentalis_)
+
+[Illustration: JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR.]
+
+The Juniper is preëminently a rock tree, occupying the baldest domes
+and pavements, where there is scarcely a handful of soil, at a height
+of from 7000 to 9500 feet. In such situations the trunk is frequently
+over eight feet in diameter, and not much more in height. The top is
+almost always dead in old trees, and great stubborn limbs push out
+horizontally that are mostly broken and bare at the ends, but densely
+covered and embedded here and there with bossy mounds of gray foliage.
+Some are mere weathered stumps, as broad as long, decorated with a few
+leafy sprays, reminding one of the crumbling towers of some ancient
+castle scantily draped with ivy. Only upon the head waters of the
+Carson have I found this species established on good moraine soil. Here
+it flourishes with the Silver and Two-leaved Pines, in great beauty and
+luxuriance, attaining a height of from forty to sixty feet, and
+manifesting but little of that rocky angularity so characteristic a
+feature throughout the greater portion, of its range. Two of the
+largest, growing at the head of Hope Valley, measured twenty-nine feet
+three inches and twenty-five feet six inches in circumference,
+respectively, four feet from the ground. The bark is of a bright
+cinnamon color, and, in thrifty trees, beautifully braided and
+reticulated, flaking off in thin, lustrous ribbons that are sometimes
+used by Indians for tent-matting. Its fine color and odd
+picturesqueness always catch an artist’s eye, but to me the Juniper
+seems a singularly dull and taciturn tree, never speaking to one’s
+heart. I have spent many a day and night in its company, in all kinds
+of weather, and have ever found it silent, cold, and rigid, like a
+column of ice. Its broad stumpiness, of course, precludes all
+possibility of waving, or even shaking; but it is not this rocky
+steadfastness that constitutes its silence. In calm, sun-days the Sugar
+Pine preaches the grandeur of the mountains like an apostle without
+moving a leaf.
+
+[Illustration: STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS.]
+
+On level rocks it dies standing, and wastes insensibly out of existence
+like granite, the wind exerting about as little control over it alive
+or dead as it does over a glacier boulder. Some are undoubtedly over
+2000 years old. All the trees of the alpine woods suffer, more or less,
+from avalanches, the Two-leaved Pine most of all. Gaps two or three
+hundred yards wide, extending from the upper limit of the tree-line to
+the bottoms of valleys and lake basins, are of common occurrence in all
+the upper forests, resembling the clearings of settlers in the old
+backwoods. Scarcely a tree is spared, even the soil is scraped away,
+while the thousands of uprooted pines and spruces are piled upon one
+another heads downward, and tucked snugly in along the sides of the
+clearing in two windrows, like lateral moraines. The pines lie with
+branches wilted and drooping like weeds. Not so the burly junipers.
+After braving in silence the storms of perhaps a dozen or twenty
+centuries, they seem in this, their last calamity, to become somewhat
+communicative, making sign of a very unwilling acceptance of their
+fate, holding themselves well up from the ground on knees and elbows,
+seemingly ill at ease, and anxious, like stubborn wrestlers, to rise
+again.
+
+HEMLOCK SPRUCE
+(_Tsuga Pattoniana_)
+
+The Hemlock Spruce is the most singularly beautiful of all the
+California coniferae. So slender is its axis at the top, that it bends
+over and droops like the stalk of a nodding lily. The branches droop
+also, and divide into innumerable slender, waving sprays, which are
+arranged in a varied, eloquent harmony that is wholly indescribable.
+Its cones are purple, and hang free, in the form of little tassels two
+inches long from all the sprays from top to bottom. Though exquisitely
+delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best where the snow lies
+deepest, far up in the region of storms, at an elevation of from 9000
+to 9500 feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it is capable of growing
+considerably higher, say 10,500 feet. The tallest specimens, growing in
+sheltered hollows somewhat beneath the heaviest wind-currents, are from
+eighty to a hundred feet high, and from two to four feet in diameter.
+The very largest specimen I ever found was nineteen feet seven inches
+in circumference four feet from the ground, growing on the edge of Lake
+Hollow, at an elevation of 9250 feet above the level of the sea. At the
+age of twenty or thirty years it becomes fruitful, and hangs out its
+beautiful purple cones at the ends of the slender sprays, where they
+swing free in the breeze, and contrast delightfully with the cool green
+foliage. They are translucent when young, and their beauty is
+delicious. After they are fully ripe, they spread their shell-like
+scales and allow the brown-winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while
+the empty cones remain to beautify the tree until the coming of a fresh
+crop.
+
+[Illustration: STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH.]
+
+The staminate cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in
+bright clusters, yellow, and rose, and crimson. Those of the Hemlock
+Spruce are the most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue
+flowers, each on a slender stem.
+
+Under all conditions, sheltered or storm-beaten, well-fed or ill-fed,
+this tree is singularly graceful in habit. Even at its highest limit
+upon exposed ridge-tops, though compelled to crouch in dense thickets,
+huddled close together, as if for mutual protection, it still manages
+to throw out its sprays in irrepressible loveliness; while on
+well-ground moraine soil it develops a perfectly tropical luxuriance of
+foliage and fruit, and is the very loveliest tree in the forest; poised
+in thin white sunshine, clad with branches from head to foot, yet not
+in the faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in unassuming
+majesty, drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its
+race, loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven and
+joyously receptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like
+sensitive tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it. No other of
+our alpine conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches
+yield to the mountains’ gentlest breath; yet is it strong to meet the
+wildest onsets of the gale,—strong not in resistance, but compliance,
+bowing, snow-laden, to the ground, gracefully accepting burial month
+after month in the darkness beneath the heavy mantle of winter.
+
+When the first soft snow begins to fall, the flakes lodge in the
+leaves, weighing down the branches against the trunk. Then the axis
+bends yet lower and lower, until the slender top touches the ground,
+thus forming a fine ornamental arch. The snow still falls lavishly, and
+the whole tree is at length buried, to sleep and rest in its beautiful
+grave as though dead. Entire groves of young trees, from ten to forty
+feet high, are thus buried every winter like slender grasses. But, like
+the violets and daisies which the heaviest snows crush not, they are
+safe. It is as though this were only Nature’s method of putting her
+darlings to sleep instead of leaving them exposed to the biting storms
+of winter.
+
+Thus warmly wrapped they await the summer resurrection. The snow
+becomes soft in the sunshine, and freezes at night, making the mass
+hard and compact, like ice, so that during the months of April and May
+you can ride a horse over the prostrate groves without catching sight
+of a single leaf. At length the down-pouring sunshine sets them free.
+First the elastic tops of the arches begin to appear, then one branch
+after another, each springing loose with a gentle rustling sound, and
+at length the whole tree, with the assistance of the winds, gradually
+unbends and rises and settles back into its place in the warm air, as
+dry and feathery and fresh as young ferns just out of the coil.
+
+Some of the finest groves I have yet found are on the southern slopes
+of Lassen’s Butte. There are also many charming companies on the head
+waters of the Tuolumne, Merced, and San Joaquin, and, in general, the
+species is so far from being rare that you can scarcely fail to find
+groves of considerable extent in crossing the range, choose what pass
+you may. The Mountain Pine grows beside it, and more frequently the
+two-leaved species; but there are many beautiful groups, numbering 1000
+individuals, or more, without a single intruder.
+
+I wish I had space to write more of the surpassing beauty of this
+favorite spruce. Every tree-lover is sure to regard it with special
+admiration; apathetic mountaineers, even, seeking only game or gold,
+stop to gaze on first meeting it, and mutter to themselves: “That’s a
+mighty pretty tree,” some of them adding, “d——d pretty!” In autumn,
+when its cones are ripe, the little striped tamias, and the Douglas
+squirrel, and the Clark crow make a happy stir in its groves. The deer
+love to lie down beneath its spreading branches; bright streams from
+the snow that is always near ripple through its groves, and bryanthus
+spreads precious carpets in its shade. But the best words only hint its
+charms. Come to the mountains and see.
+
+DWARF PINE
+(_Pinus albicaulis_)
+
+This species forms the extreme edge of the timber line throughout
+nearly the whole extent of the range on both flanks. It is first met
+growing in company with _Pinus contorta_, var. _Murrayana_, on the
+upper margin of the belt, as an erect tree from fifteen to thirty feet
+high and from one to two feet in thickness; thence it goes straggling
+up the flanks of the summit peaks, upon moraines or crumbling ledges,
+wherever it can obtain a foothold, to an elevation of from 10,000 to
+12,000 feet, where it dwarfs to a mass of crumpled, prostrate branches,
+covered with slender, upright shoots, each tipped with a short,
+close-packed tassel of leaves. The bark is smooth and purplish, in some
+places almost white. The fertile cones grow in rigid clusters upon the
+upper branches, dark chocolate in color while young, and bear beautiful
+pearly seeds about the size of peas, most of which are eaten by two
+species of tamias and the notable Clark crow. The staminate cones occur
+in clusters, about an inch wide, down among the leaves, and, as they
+are colored bright rose-purple, they give rise to a lively, flowery
+appearance little looked for in such a tree.
+
+[Illustration: GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES.]
+
+Pines are commonly regarded as sky-loving trees that must necessarily
+aspire or die. This species forms a marked exception, creeping lowly,
+in compliance with the most rigorous demands of climate, yet enduring
+bravely to a more advanced age than many of its lofty relatives in the
+sun-lands below. Seen from a distance, it would never be taken for a
+tree of any kind. Yonder, for example, is Cathedral Peak, some three
+miles away, with a scattered growth of this pine creeping like mosses
+over the roof and around the beveled edges of the north gable, nowhere
+giving any hint of an ascending axis. When approached quite near it
+still appears matted and heathy, and is so low that one experiences no
+great difficulty in walking over the top of it. Yet it is seldom
+absolutely prostrate, at its lowest usually attaining a height of three
+or four feet, with a main trunk, and branches outspread and
+intertangled above it, as if in ascending they had been checked by a
+ceiling, against which they had grown and been compelled to spread
+horizontally. The winter snow is indeed such a ceiling, lasting half
+the year; while the pressed, shorn surface is made yet smoother by
+violent winds, armed with cutting sand-grains, that beat down any shoot
+that offers to rise much above the general level, and carve the dead
+trunks and branches in beautiful patterns.
+
+During stormy nights I have often camped snugly beneath the interlacing
+arches of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for
+centuries, make fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers,
+such as deer and wild sheep, who paw out oval hollows and lie beneath
+the larger trees in safe and comfortable concealment.
+
+[Illustration: A DWARF PINE.]
+
+The longevity of this lowly dwarf is far greater than would be guessed.
+Here, for example, is a specimen, growing at an elevation of 10,700
+feet, which seems as though it might be plucked up by the roots, for it
+is only three and a half inches in diameter, and its topmost tassel is
+hardly three feet above the ground. Cutting it half through and
+counting the annual rings with the aid of a lens, we find its age to be
+no less than 255 years. Here is another telling specimen about the same
+height, 426 years old, whose trunk is only six inches in diameter; and
+one of its supple branchlets, hardly an eighth of an inch in diameter
+inside the bark, is seventy-five years old, and so filled with oily
+balsam, and so well seasoned by storms, that we may tie it in knots
+like a whip-cord.
+
+WHITE PINE
+(_Pinus flexilis_)
+
+This species is widely distributed throughout the Rocky Mountains, and
+over all the higher of the many ranges of the Great Basin, between the
+Wahsatch Mountains and the Sierra, where it is known as White Pine. In
+the Sierra it is sparsely scattered along the eastern flank, from
+Bloody Cañon southward nearly to the extremity of the range, opposite
+the village of Lone Pine, nowhere forming any appreciable portion of
+the general forest. From its peculiar position, in loose, straggling
+parties, it seems to have been derived from the Basin ranges to the
+eastward, where it is abundant.
+
+It is a larger tree than the Dwarf Pine. At an elevation of about 9000
+feet above the sea, it often attains a height of forty or fifty feet,
+and a diameter of from three to five feet. The cones open freely when
+ripe, and are twice as large as those of the _albicaulis_, and the
+foliage and branches are more open, having a tendency to sweep out in
+free, wild curves, like those of the Mountain Pine, to which it is
+closely allied. It is seldom found lower than 9000 feet above
+sea-level, but from this elevation it pushes upward over the roughest
+ledges to the extreme limit of tree-growth, where, in its dwarfed,
+storm-crushed condition, it is more like the white-barked species.
+
+Throughout Utah and Nevada it is one of the principal timber-trees,
+great quantities being cut every year for the mines. The famous White
+Pine Mining District, White Pine City, and the White Pine Mountains
+have derived their names from it.
+
+NEEDLE PINE
+(_Pinus aristata_)
+
+This species is restricted in the Sierra to the southern portion of the
+range, about the head waters of Kings and Kern rivers, where it forms
+extensive forests, and in some places accompanies the Dwarf Pine to the
+extreme limit of tree-growth.
+
+It is first met at an elevation of between 9000 and 10,000 feet, and
+runs up to 11,000 without seeming to suffer greatly from the climate or
+the leanness of the soil. It is a much finer tree than the Dwarf Pine.
+Instead of growing in clumps and low, heathy mats, it manages in some
+way to maintain an erect position, and usually stands single. Wherever
+the young trees are at all sheltered, they grow up straight and arrowy,
+with delicately tapered bole, and ascending branches terminated with
+glossy, bottle-brush tassels. At middle age, certain limbs are
+specialized and pushed far out for the bearing of cones, after the
+manner of the Sugar Pine; and in old age these branches droop and cast
+about in every direction, giving rise to very picturesque effects. The
+trunk becomes deep brown and rough, like that of the Mountain Pine,
+while the young cones are of a strange, dull, blackish-blue color,
+clustered on the upper branches. When ripe they are from three to four
+inches long, yellowish brown, resembling in every way those of the
+Mountain Pine. Excepting the Sugar Pine, no tree on the mountains is so
+capable of individual expression, while in grace of form and movement
+it constantly reminds one of the Hemlock Spruce.
+
+[Illustration: OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES.]
+
+The largest specimen I measured was a little over five feet in diameter
+and ninety feet in height, but this is more than twice the ordinary
+size.
+
+This species is common throughout the Rocky Mountains and most of the
+short ranges of the Great Basin, where it is called the Fox-tail Pine,
+from its long dense leaf-tassels. On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and
+Golden Gate ranges it is quite abundant. About a foot or eighteen
+inches of the ends of the branches is densely packed with stiff
+outstanding needles which radiate like an electric fox or squirrel’s
+tail. The needles have a glossy polish, and the sunshine sifting
+through them makes them burn with silvery luster, while their number
+and elastic temper tell delightfully in the winds. This tree is here
+still more original and picturesque than in the Sierra, far surpassing
+not only its companion conifers in this respect, but also the most
+noted of the lowland oaks. Some stand firmly erect, feathered with
+radiant tassels down to the ground, forming slender tapering towers of
+shining verdure; others, with two or three specialized branches pushed
+out at right angles to the trunk and densely clad with tasseled sprays,
+take the form of beautiful ornamental crosses. Again in the same woods
+you find trees that are made up of several boles united near the
+ground, spreading at the sides in a plane parallel to the axis of the
+mountain, with the elegant tassels hung in charming order between them,
+making a harp held against the main wind lines where they are most
+effective in playing the grand storm harmonies. And besides these there
+are many variable arching forms, alone or in groups, with innumerable
+tassels drooping beneath the arches or radiant above them, and many
+lowly giants of no particular form that have braved the storms of a
+thousand years. But whether old or young, sheltered or exposed to the
+wildest gales, this tree is ever found irrepressibly and extravagantly
+picturesque, and offers a richer and more varied series of forms to the
+artist than any other conifer I know of.
+
+NUT PINE
+(_Pinus monophylla_)
+
+The Nut Pine covers or rather dots the eastern flank of the Sierra, to
+which it is mostly restricted, in grayish, bush-like patches, from the
+margin of the sage-plains to an elevation of from 7000 to 8000 feet.
+
+A more contentedly fruitful and unaspiring conifer could not be
+conceived. All the species we have been sketching make departures more
+or less distant from the typical spire form, but none goes so far as
+this. Without any apparent exigency of climate or soil, it remains near
+the ground, throwing out crooked, divergent branches like an orchard
+apple-tree, and seldom pushes a single shoot higher than fifteen or
+twenty feet above the ground.
+
+The average thickness of the trunk is, perhaps, about ten or twelve
+inches. The leaves are mostly undivided, like round awls, instead of
+being separated, like those of other pines, into twos and threes and
+fives. The cones are green while growing, and are usually found over
+all the tree, forming quite a marked feature as seen against the
+bluish-gray foliage. They are quite small, only about two inches in
+length, and give no promise of edible nuts; but when we come to open
+them, we find that about half the entire bulk of the cone is made up of
+sweet, nutritious seeds, the kernels of which are nearly as large as
+those of hazel-nuts.
+
+This is undoubtedly the most important food-tree on the Sierra, and
+furnishes the Mono, Carson, and Walker River Indians with more and
+better nuts than all the other species taken together. It is the
+Indians’ own tree, and many a white man have they killed for cutting it
+down.
+
+In its development Nature seems to have aimed at the formation of as
+great a fruit-bearing surface as possible. Being so low and accessible,
+the cones are readily beaten off with poles, and the nuts procured by
+roasting them until the scales open. In bountiful seasons a single
+Indian will gather thirty or forty bushels of them—a fine squirrelish
+employment.
+
+Of all the conifers along the eastern base of the Sierra, and on all
+the many mountain groups and short ranges of the Great Basin, this
+foodful little pine is the commonest tree, and the most important.
+Nearly every mountain is planted with it to a height of from 8000 to
+9000 feet above the sea. Some are covered from base to summit by this
+one species, with only a sparse growth of juniper on the lower slopes
+to break the continuity of its curious woods, which, though
+dark-looking at a distance, are almost shadeless, and have none of the
+damp, leafy glens and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods.
+Tens of thousands of acres occur in continuous belts. Indeed, viewed
+comprehensively the entire Basin seems to be pretty evenly divided into
+level plains dotted with sage-bushes and mountain-chains covered with
+Nut Pines. No slope is too rough, none too dry, for these bountiful
+orchards of the red man.
+
+The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It
+furnishes charcoal and timber for the mines, and, with the juniper,
+supplies the ranches with fuel and rough fencing. In fruitful seasons
+the nut crop is perhaps greater than the California wheat crop, which
+exerts so much influence throughout the food markets of the world.
+When, the crop is ripe, the Indians make ready the long beating-poles;
+bags, baskets, mats, and sacks are collected; the women out at service
+among the settlers, washing or drudging, assemble at the family huts;
+the men leave their ranch work; old and young, all are mounted on
+ponies and start in great glee to the nut-lands, forming curiously
+picturesque cavalcades; flaming scarfs and calico skirts stream loosely
+over the knotty ponies, two squaws usually astride of each, with baby
+midgets bandaged in baskets slung on their backs or balanced on the
+saddle-bow; while nut-baskets and water-jars project from each side,
+and the long beating-poles make angles in every direction. Arriving at
+some well-known central point where grass and water are found, the
+squaws with baskets, the men with poles ascend the ridges to the laden
+trees, followed by the children. Then the beating begins right merrily,
+the burs fly in every direction, rolling down the slopes, lodging here
+and there against rocks and sage-bushes, chased and gathered by the
+women and children with fine natural gladness. Smoke-columns speedily
+mark the joyful scene of their labors as the roasting-fires are
+kindled, and, at night, assembled in gay circles garrulous as jays,
+they begin the first nut feast of the season.
+
+The nuts are about half an inch long and a quarter of an inch in
+diameter, pointed at the top, round at the base, light brown in general
+color, and, like many other pine seeds, handsomely dotted with purple,
+like birds’ eggs. The shells are thin and may be crushed between the
+thumb and finger. The kernels are white, becoming brown by roasting,
+and are sweet to every palate, being eaten by birds, squirrels, dogs,
+horses, and men. Perhaps less than one bushel in a thousand of the
+whole crop is ever gathered. Still, besides supplying their own wants,
+in times of plenty the Indians bring large quantities to market; then
+they are eaten around nearly every fireside in the State, and are even
+fed to horses occasionally instead of barley.
+
+Of other trees growing on the Sierra, but forming a very small part of
+the general forest, we may briefly notice the following:
+
+_Chamoecyparis Lawsoniana_ is a magnificent tree in the coast ranges,
+but small in the Sierra. It is found only well to the northward along
+the banks of cool streams on the upper Sacramento toward Mount Shasta.
+Only a few trees of this species, as far as I have seen, have as yet
+gained a place in the Sierra woods. It has evidently been derived from
+the coast range by way of the tangle of connecting mountains at the
+head of the Sacramento Valley.
+
+In shady dells and on cool stream banks of the northern Sierra we also
+find the Yew (_Taxus brevifolia_).
+
+The interesting Nutmeg Tree (_Torreya Californica_) is sparsely
+distributed along the western flank of the range at an elevation of
+about 4000 feet, mostly in gulches and cañons. It is a small, prickly
+leaved, glossy evergreen, like a conifer, from twenty to fifty feet
+high, and one to two feet in diameter. The fruit resembles a green-gage
+plum, and contains one seed, about the size of an acorn, and like a
+nutmeg, hence the common name. The wood is fine-grained and of a
+beautiful, creamy yellow color like box, sweet-scented when dry, though
+the green leaves emit a disagreeable odor.
+
+_Betula occidentalis_, the only birch, is a small, slender tree
+restricted to the eastern flank of the range along stream-sides below
+the pine-belt, especially in Owen’s Valley.
+
+Alder, Maple, and Nuttall’s Flowering Dogwood make beautiful bowers
+over swift, cool streams at an elevation of from 3000 to 5000 feet,
+mixed more or less with willows and cottonwood; and above these in lake
+basins the aspen forms fine ornamental groves, and lets its light shine
+gloriously in the autumn months.
+
+The Chestnut Oak (_Quercus densiflora_) seems to have come from the
+coast range around the head of the Sacramento Valley, like the
+_Chamaecyparis_, but as it extends southward along the lower edge of
+the main pine-belt it grows smaller until it finally dwarfs to a mere
+chaparral bush. In the coast mountains it is a fine, tall, rather
+slender tree, about from sixty to seventy-five feet high, growing with
+the grand _Sequoia sempervirens_, or Redwood. But unfortunately it is
+too good to live, and is now being rapidly destroyed for tan-bark.
+
+[Illustration: PATE VALLEY, SHOWING THE OAKS. TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE
+NATIONAL PARK.]
+
+Besides the common Douglas Oak and the grand _Quercus Wislizeni_ of the
+foot-hills, and several small ones that make dense growths of
+chaparral, there are two mountain-oaks that grow with the pines up to
+an elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, and greatly enhance the
+beauty of the yosemite parks. These are the Mountain Live Oak and the
+Kellogg Oak, named in honor of the admirable botanical pioneer of
+California. Kellogg’s Oak (_Quercus Kelloggii_) is a firm, bright,
+beautiful tree, reaching a height of sixty feet, four to seven feet in
+diameter, with wide-spreading branches, and growing at an elevation of
+from 3000 to 5000 feet in sunny valleys and flats among the evergreens,
+and higher in a dwarfed state. In the cliff-bound parks about 4000 feet
+above the sea it is so abundant and effective it might fairly be called
+the Yosemite Oak. The leaves make beautiful masses of purple in the
+spring, and yellow in ripe autumn; while its acorns are eagerly
+gathered by Indians, squirrels, and woodpeckers. The Mountain Live Oak
+(_Q. Chrysolepis_) is a tough, rugged mountaineer of a tree, growing
+bravely and attaining noble dimensions on the roughest earthquake
+taluses in deep cañons and yosemite valleys. The trunk is usually
+short, dividing near the ground into great, wide-spreading limbs, and
+these again into a multitude of slender sprays, many of them cord-like
+and drooping to the ground, like those of the Great White Oak of the
+lowlands (_Q. lobata_). The top of the tree where there is plenty of
+space is broad and bossy, with a dense covering of shining leaves,
+making delightful canopies, the complicated system of gray,
+interlacing, arching branches as seen from beneath being exceedingly
+rich and picturesque. No other tree that I know dwarfs so regularly and
+completely as this under changes of climate due to changes in
+elevation. At the foot of a cañon 4000 feet above the sea you may find
+magnificent specimens of this oak fifty feet high, with craggy, bulging
+trunks, five to seven feet in diameter, and at the head of the cañon,
+2500 feet higher, a dense, soft, low, shrubby growth of the same
+species, while all the way up the cañon between these extremes of size
+and habit a perfect gradation may be traced. The largest I have seen
+was fifty feet high, eight feet in diameter, and about seventy-five
+feet in spread. The trunk was all knots and buttresses, gray like
+granite, and about as angular and irregular as the boulders on which it
+was growing—a type of steadfast, unwedgeable strength.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
+(_Sciurus Douglasii_)
+
+
+The Douglas Squirrel is by far the most interesting and influential of
+the California sciuridae, surpassing every other species in force of
+character, numbers, and extent of range, and in the amount of influence
+he brings to bear upon the health and distribution of the vast forests
+he inhabits.
+
+Go where you will throughout the noble woods of the Sierra Nevada,
+among the giant pines and spruces of the lower zones, up through the
+towering Silver Firs to the storm-bent thickets of the summit peaks,
+you everywhere find this little squirrel the master-existence. Though
+only a few inches long, so intense is his fiery vigor and restlessness,
+he stirs every grove with wild life, and makes himself more important
+than even the huge bears that shuffle through the tangled underbrush
+beneath him. Every wind is fretted by his voice, almost every bole and
+branch feels the sting of his sharp feet. How much the growth of the
+trees is stimulated by this means it is not easy to learn, but his
+action in manipulating their seeds is more appreciable. Nature has made
+him master forester and committed most of her coniferous crops to his
+paws. Probably over fifty per cent. of all the cones ripened on the
+Sierra are cut off and handled by the Douglas alone, and of those of
+the Big Trees perhaps ninety per cent. pass through his hands: the
+greater portion is of course stored away for food to last during the
+winter and spring, but some of them are tucked separately into loosely
+covered holes, where some of the seeds germinate and become trees. But
+the Sierra is only one of the many provinces over which he holds sway,
+for his dominion extends over all the Redwood Belt of the Coast
+Mountains, and far northward throughout the majestic forests of Oregon,
+Washington, and British Columbia. I make haste to mention these facts,
+to show upon how substantial a foundation the importance I ascribe to
+him rests.
+
+The Douglas is closely allied to the Red Squirrel or Chickaree of the
+eastern woods. Ours may be a lineal descendant of this species,
+distributed westward to the Pacific by way of the Great Lakes and the
+Rocky Mountains, and thence southward along our forested ranges. This
+view is suggested by the fact that our species becomes redder and more
+Chickaree-like in general, the farther it is traced back along the
+course indicated above. But whatever their relationship, and the
+evolutionary forces that have acted upon them, the Douglas is now the
+larger and more beautiful animal.
+
+From the nose to the root of the tail he measures about eight inches;
+and his tail, which he so effectively uses in interpreting his
+feelings, is about six inches in length. He wears dark bluish-gray over
+the back and half-way down the sides, bright buff on the belly, with a
+stripe of dark gray, nearly black, separating the upper and under
+colors; this dividing stripe, however, is not very sharply defined. He
+has long black whiskers, which gives him a rather fierce look when
+observed closely, strong claws, sharp as fish-hooks, and the brightest
+of bright eyes, full of telling speculation.
+
+A King’s River Indian told me that they call him “Pillillooeet,” which,
+rapidly pronounced with the first syllable heavily accented, is not
+unlike the lusty exclamation he utters on his way up a tree when
+excited. Most mountaineers in California call him the Pine Squirrel;
+and when I asked an old trapper whether he knew our little forester, he
+replied with brightening countenance: “Oh, yes, of course I know him;
+everybody knows him. When I’m huntin’ in the woods, I often find out
+where the deer are by his barkin’ at ’em. I call ’em Lightnin’
+Squirrels, because they’re so mighty quick and peert.”
+
+All the true squirrels are more or less birdlike in speech and
+movements; but the Douglas is preëminently so, possessing, as he does,
+every attribute peculiarly squirrelish enthusiastically concentrated.
+He is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his
+favorite evergreens crisp and glossy and undiseased as a sunbeam. Give
+him wings and he would outfly any bird in the woods. His big gray
+cousin is a looser animal, seemingly light enough to float on the wind;
+yet when leaping from limb to limb, or out of one tree-top to another,
+he sometimes halts to gather strength, as if making efforts concerning
+the upshot of which he does not always feel exactly confident. But the
+Douglas, with his denser body, leaps and glides in hidden strength,
+seemingly as independent of common muscles as a mountain stream. He
+threads the tasseled branches of the pines, stirring their needles like
+a rustling breeze; now shooting across openings in arrowy lines; now
+launching in curves, glinting deftly from side to side in sudden
+zigzags, and swirling in giddy loops and spirals around the knotty
+trunks; getting into what seem to be the most impossible situations
+without sense of danger; now on his haunches, now on his head; yet ever
+graceful, and punctuating his most irrepressible outbursts of energy
+with little dots and dashes of perfect repose. He is, without
+exception, the wildest animal I ever saw,—a fiery, sputtering little
+bolt of life, luxuriating in quick oxygen and the woods’ best juices.
+One can hardly think of such a creature being dependent, like the rest
+of us, on climate and food. But, after all, it requires no long
+acquaintance to learn he is human, for he works for a living. His
+busiest time is in the Indian summer. Then he gathers burs and
+hazel-nuts like a plodding farmer, working continuously every day for
+hours; saying not a word; cutting off the ripe cones at the top of his
+speed, as if employed by the job, and examining every branch in regular
+order, as if careful that not one should escape him; then, descending,
+he stores them away beneath logs and stumps, in anticipation of the
+pinching hunger days of winter. He seems himself a kind of coniferous
+fruit,—both fruit and flower. The resiny essences of the pines pervade
+every pore of his body, and eating his flesh is like chewing gum.
+
+One never tires of this bright chip of nature,—this brave little voice
+crying in the wilderness,—of observing his many works and ways, and
+listening to his curious language. His musical, piny gossip is as
+savory to the ear as balsam to the palate; and, though he has not
+exactly the gift of song, some of his notes are as sweet as those of a
+linnet—almost flute-like in softness, while others prick and tingle
+like thistles. He is the mocking-bird of squirrels, pouring forth mixed
+chatter and song like a perennial fountain; barking like a dog,
+screaming like a hawk, chirping like a blackbird or a sparrow; while in
+bluff, audacious noisiness he is a very jay.
+
+[Illustration: TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE
+WHEN SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR.]
+
+In descending the trunk of a tree with the intention of alighting on
+the ground, he preserves a cautious silence, mindful, perhaps, of foxes
+and wildcats; but while rocking safely at home in the pine-tops there
+is no end to his capers and noise; and woe to the gray squirrel or
+chipmunk that ventures to set foot on his favorite tree! No matter how
+slyly they trace the furrows of the bark, they are speedily discovered,
+and kicked down-stairs with comic vehemence, while a torrent of angry
+notes comes rushing from his whiskered lips that sounds remarkably like
+swearing. He will even attempt at times to drive away dogs and men,
+especially if he has had no previous knowledge of them. Seeing a man
+for the first time, he approaches nearer and nearer, until within a few
+feet; then, with an angry outburst, he makes a sudden rush, all teeth
+and eyes, as if about to eat you up. But, finding that the big, forked
+animal doesn’t scare, he prudently beats a retreat, and sets himself up
+to reconnoiter on some overhanging branch, scrutinizing every movement
+you make with ludicrous solemnity. Gathering courage, he ventures down
+the trunk again, churring and chirping, and jerking nervously up and
+down in curious loops, eyeing you all the time, as if snowing off and
+demanding your admiration. Finally, growing calmer, he settles down in
+a comfortable posture on some horizontal branch commanding a good view,
+and beats time with his tail to a steady “Chee-up! chee-up!” or, when
+somewhat less excited, “Pee-ah!” with the first syllable keenly
+accented, and the second drawn out like the scream of a hawk,—repeating
+this slowly and more emphatically at first, then gradually faster,
+until a rate of about 150 words a minute is reached; usually sitting
+all the time on his haunches, with paws resting on his breast, which
+pulses visibly with each word. It is remarkable, too, that, though
+articulating distinctly, he keeps his mouth shut most of the time, and
+speaks through his nose. I have occasionally observed him even eating
+Sequoia seeds and nibbling a troublesome flea, without ceasing or in
+any way confusing his “Pee-ah! pee-ah!” for a single moment.
+
+While ascending trees all his claws come into play, but in descending
+the weight of his body is sustained chiefly by those of the hind feet;
+still in neither case do his movements suggest effort, though if you
+are near enough you may see the bulging strength of his short,
+bear-like arms, and note his sinewy fists clinched in the bark.
+
+Whether going up or down, he carries his tail extended at full length
+in line with his body, unless it be required for gestures. But while
+running along horizontal limbs or fallen trunks, it is frequently
+folded forward over the back, with the airy tip daintily upcurled. In
+cool weather it keeps him warm. Then, after he has finished his meal,
+you may see him crouched close on some level limb with his tail-robe
+neatly spread and reaching forward to his ears, the electric,
+outstanding hairs quivering in the breeze like pine-needles. But in wet
+or very cold weather he stays in his nest, and while curled up there
+his comforter is long enough to come forward around his nose. It is
+seldom so cold, however, as to prevent his going out to his stores when
+hungry.
+
+Once as I lay storm-bound on the upper edge of the timber line on Mount
+Shasta, the thermometer nearly at zero and the sky thick with driving
+snow, a Douglas came bravely out several times from one of the lower
+hollows of a Dwarf Pine near my camp, faced the wind without seeming to
+feel it much, frisked lightly about over the mealy snow, and dug his
+way down to some hidden seeds with wonderful precision, as if to his
+eyes the thick snow-covering were glass.
+
+No other of the Sierra animals of my acquaintance is better fed, not
+even the deer, amid abundance of sweet herbs and shrubs, or the
+mountain sheep, or omnivorous bears. His food consists of grass-seeds,
+berries, hazel-nuts, chinquapins, and the nuts and seeds of all the
+coniferous trees without exception,—Pine, Fir, Spruce, Libocedrus,
+Juniper, and Sequoia,—he is fond of them all, and they all agree with
+him, green or ripe. No cone is too large for him to manage, none so
+small as to be beneath his notice. The smaller ones, such as those of
+the Hemlock, and the Douglas Spruce, and the Two-leaved Pine, he cuts
+off and eats on a branch of the tree, without allowing them to fall;
+beginning at the bottom of the cone and cutting away the scales to
+expose the seeds; not gnawing by guess, like a bear, but turning them
+round and round in regular order, in compliance with their spiral
+arrangement.
+
+When thus employed, his location in the tree is betrayed by a dribble
+of scales, shells, and seed-wings, and, every few minutes, by the fall
+of the stripped axis of the cone. Then of course he is ready for
+another, and if you are watching you may catch a glimpse of him as he
+glides silently out to the end of a branch and see him examining the
+cone-clusters until he finds one to his mind; then, leaning over, pull
+back the springy needles out of his way, grasp the cone with his paws
+to prevent its falling, snip it off in an incredibly short time, seize
+it with jaws grotesquely stretched, and return to his chosen seat near
+the trunk. But the immense size of the cones of the Sugar Pine—from
+fifteen to twenty inches in length—and those of the Jeffrey variety of
+the Yellow Pine compel him to adopt a quite different method. He cuts
+them off without attempting to hold them, then goes down and drags them
+from where they have chanced to fall up to the bare, swelling ground
+around the instep of the tree, where he demolishes them in the same
+methodical way, beginning at the bottom and following the scale-spirals
+to the top.
+
+[Illustration: SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE. (NAT. SIZE.)]
+
+From a single Sugar Pine cone he gets from two to four hundred seeds
+about half the size of a hazel-nut, so that in a few minutes he can
+procure enough to last a week. He seems, however, to prefer those of
+the two Silver First above all others; perhaps because they are most
+easily obtained, as the scales drop off when ripe without needing to be
+cut. Both species are filled with an exceedingly pungent, aromatic oil,
+which spices all his flesh, and is of itself sufficient to account for
+his lightning energy.
+
+You may easily know this little workman by his chips. On sunny
+hillsides around the principal trees they lie in big piles,—bushels and
+basketfuls of them, all fresh and clean, making the most beautiful
+kitchen-middens imaginable. The brown and yellow scales and nut-shells
+are as abundant and as delicately penciled and tinted as the shells
+along the sea-shore; while the beautiful red and purple seed-wings
+mingled with them would lead one to fancy that innumerable butterflies
+had there met their fate.
+
+He feasts on all the species long before they are ripe, but is wise
+enough to wait until they are matured before he gathers them into his
+barns. This is in October and November, which with him are the two
+busiest months of the year. All kinds of burs, big and little, are now
+cut off and showered down alike, and the ground is speedily covered
+with them. A constant thudding and bumping is kept up; some of the
+larger cones chancing to fall on old logs make the forest reëcho with
+the sound. Other nut-eaters less industrious know well what is going
+on, and hasten to carry away the cones as they fall. But however busy
+the harvester may be, he is not slow to descry the pilferers below, and
+instantly leaves his work to drive them away. The little striped tamias
+is a thorn in his flesh, stealing persistently, punish him as he may.
+The large Gray Squirrel gives trouble also, although the Douglas has
+been accused of stealing from him. Generally, however, just the
+opposite is the case.
+
+The excellence of the Sierra evergreens is well known to nurserymen
+throughout the world, consequently there is considerable demand for the
+seeds. The greater portion of the supply has hitherto been procured by
+chopping down the trees in the more accessible sections of the forest
+alongside of bridle-paths that cross the range. Sequoia seeds at first
+brought from twenty to thirty dollars per pound, and therefore were
+eagerly sought after. Some of the smaller fruitful trees were cut down
+in the groves not protected by government, especially those of Fresno
+and King’s River. Most of the Sequoias, however, are of so gigantic a
+size that the seedsmen have to look for the greater portion of their
+supplies to the Douglas, who soon learns he is no match for these
+freebooters. He is wise enough, however, to cease working the instant
+he perceives them, and never fails to embrace every opportunity to
+recover his burs whenever they happen to be stored in any place
+accessible to him, and the busy seedsman often finds on returning to
+camp that the little Douglas has exhaustively spoiled the spoiler. I
+know one seed-gatherer who, whenever he robs the squirrels, scatters
+wheat or barley beneath the trees as conscience-money.
+
+The want of appreciable life remarked by so many travelers in the
+Sierra forests is never felt at this time of year. Banish all the
+humming insects and the birds and quadrupeds, leaving only Sir Douglas,
+and the most solitary of our so-called solitudes would still throb with
+ardent life. But if you should go impatiently even into the most
+populous of the groves on purpose to meet him, and walk about looking
+up among the branches, you would see very little of him. But lie down
+at the foot of one of the trees and straightway he will come. For, in
+the midst of the ordinary forest sounds, the falling of burs, piping of
+quails, the screaming of the Clark Crow, and the rustling of deer and
+bears among the chaparral, he is quick to detect your strange
+footsteps, and will hasten to make a good, close inspection of you as
+soon as you are still. First, you may hear him sounding a few notes of
+curious inquiry, but more likely the first intimation of his approach
+will be the prickly sounds of his feet as he descends the tree
+overhead, just before he makes his savage onrush to frighten you and
+proclaim your presence to every squirrel and bird in the neighborhood.
+If you remain perfectly motionless, he will come nearer and nearer, and
+probably set your flesh a-tingle by frisking across your body. Once,
+while I was seated at the foot of a Hemlock Spruce in one of the most
+inaccessible of the San Joaquin yosemites engaged in sketching, a
+reckless fellow came up behind me, passed under my bended arm, and
+jumped on my paper. And one warm afternoon, while an old friend of mine
+was reading out in the shade of his cabin, one of his Douglas neighbors
+jumped from the gable upon his head, and then with admirable assurance
+ran down over his shoulder and on to the book he held in his hand.
+
+Our Douglas enjoys a large social circle; for, besides his numerous
+relatives, _Sciurus fossor, Tamias quadrivitatus, T. Townsendii,
+Spermophilus Beccheyi, S. Douglasii_, he maintains intimate relations
+with the nut-eating birds, particularly the Clark Crow (_Picicorvus
+columbianus_) and the numerous woodpeckers and jays. The two
+spermophiles are astonishingly abundant in the lowlands and lower
+foot-hills, but more and more sparingly distributed up through the
+Douglas domains,—seldom venturing higher than six or seven thousand
+feet above the level of the sea. The gray sciurus ranges but little
+higher than this. The little striped tamias alone is associated with
+him everywhere. In the lower and middle zones, where they all meet,
+they are tolerably harmonious—a happy family, though very amusing
+skirmishes may occasionally be witnessed. Wherever the ancient glaciers
+have spread forest soil there you find our wee hero, most abundant
+where depth of soil and genial climate have given rise to a
+corresponding luxuriance in the trees, but following every kind of
+growth up the curving moraines to the highest glacial fountains.
+
+Though I cannot of course expect all my readers to sympathize fully in
+my admiration of this little animal, few, I hope, will think this
+sketch of his life too long. I cannot begin to tell here how much he
+has cheered my lonely wanderings during all the years I have been
+pursuing my studies in these glorious wilds; or how much unmistakable
+humanity I have found in him. Take this for example: One calm, creamy
+Indian summer morning, when the nuts were ripe, I was camped in the
+upper pine-woods of the south fork of the San Joaquin, where the
+squirrels seemed to be about as plentiful as the ripe burs. They were
+taking an early breakfast before going to their regular harvest-work.
+While I was busy with my own breakfast I heard the thudding fall of two
+or three heavy cones from a Yellow Pine near me. I stole noiselessly
+forward within about twenty feet of the base of it to observe. In a few
+moments down came the Douglas. The breakfast-burs he had cut off had
+rolled on the gently sloping ground into a clump of ceanothus bushes,
+but he seemed to know exactly where they were, for he found them at
+once, apparently without searching for them. They were more than twice
+as heavy as himself, but after turning them into the right position for
+getting a good hold with his long sickle-teeth he managed to drag them
+up to the foot of the tree from which he had cut them, moving backward.
+Then seating himself comfortably, he held them on end, bottom up, and
+demolished them at his ease. A good deal of nibbling had to be done
+before he got anything to eat, because the lower scales are barren, but
+when he had patiently worked his way up to the fertile ones he found
+two sweet nuts at the base of each, shaped like trimmed hams, and
+spotted purple like birds’ eggs. And notwithstanding these cones were
+dripping with soft balsam, and covered with prickles, and so strongly
+put together that a boy would be puzzled to cut them open with a
+jack-knife, he accomplished his meal with easy dignity and cleanliness,
+making less effort apparently than a man would in eating soft cookery
+from a plate.
+
+Breakfast done, I whistled a tune for him before he went to work,
+curious to see how he would be affected by it. He had not seen me all
+this while; but the instant I began to whistle he darted up the tree
+nearest to him, and came out on a small dead limb opposite me, and
+composed himself to listen. I sang and whistled more than a dozen airs,
+and as the music changed his eyes sparkled, and he turned his head
+quickly from side to side, but made no other response. Other squirrels,
+hearing the strange sounds, came around on all sides, also chipmunks
+and birds. One of the birds, a handsome, speckle-breasted thrush,
+seemed even more interested than the squirrels. After listening for
+awhile on one of the lower dead sprays of a pine, he came swooping
+forward within a few feet of my face, and remained fluttering in the
+air for half a minute or so, sustaining himself with whirring
+wing-beats, like a humming-bird in front of a flower, while I could
+look into his eyes and see his innocent wonder.
+
+By this time my performance must have lasted nearly half an hour. I
+sang or whistled “Bonnie Boon,” “Lass o’ Gowrie,” “O’er the Water to
+Charlie,” “Bonnie Woods o’ Cragie Lee,” etc., all of which seemed to be
+listened to with bright interest, my first Douglas sitting patiently
+through it all, with his telling eyes fixed upon me until I ventured to
+give the “Old Hundredth,” when he screamed his Indian name,
+Pillillooeet, turned tail, and darted with ludicrous haste up the tree
+out of sight, his voice and actions in the case leaving a somewhat
+profane impression, as if he had said, “I’ll be hanged if you get me to
+hear anything so solemn and unpiny.” This acted as a signal for the
+general dispersal of the whole hairy tribe, though the birds seemed
+willing to wait further developments, music being naturally more in
+their line.
+
+What there can be in that grand old church-tune that is so offensive to
+birds and squirrels I can’t imagine. A year or two after this High
+Sierra concert, I was sitting one fine day on a hill in the Coast Range
+where the common Ground Squirrels were abundant. They were very shy on
+account of being hunted so much; but after I had been silent and
+motionless for half an hour or so they began to venture out of their
+holes and to feed on the seeds of the grasses and thistles around me as
+if I were no more to be feared than a tree-stump. Then it occurred to
+me that this was a good opportunity to find out whether they also
+disliked “Old Hundredth.” Therefore I began to whistle as nearly as I
+could remember the same familiar airs that had pleased the mountaineers
+of the Sierra. They at once stopped eating, stood erect, and listened
+patiently until I came to “Old Hundredth,” when with ludicrous haste
+every one of them rushed to their holes and bolted in, their feet
+twinkling in the air for a moment as they vanished.
+
+No one who makes the acquaintance of our forester will fail to admire
+him; but he is far too self-reliant and warlike ever to be taken for a
+darling.
+
+How long the life of a Douglas Squirrel may be, I don’t know. The young
+seem to sprout from knot-holes, perfect from the first, and as enduring
+as their own trees. It is difficult, indeed, to realize that so
+condensed a piece of sun-fire should ever become dim or die at all. He
+is seldom killed by hunters, for he is too small to encourage much of
+their attention, and when pursued in settled regions becomes
+excessively shy, and keeps close in the furrows of the highest trunks,
+many of which are of the same color as himself. Indian boys, however,
+lie in wait with unbounded patience to shoot them with arrows. In the
+lower and middle zones a few fall a prey to rattlesnakes. Occasionally
+he is pursued by hawks and wildcats, etc. But, upon the whole, he
+dwells safely in the deep bosom of the woods, the most highly favored
+of all his happy tribe. May his tribe increase!
+
+[Illustration: TRYING THE BOW.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS
+
+
+The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are
+measured and bestowed with love on the forests to develop their
+strength and beauty. However restricted the scope of other forest
+influences, that of the winds is universal. The snow bends and trims
+the upper forests every winter, the lightning strikes a single tree
+here and there, while avalanches mow down thousands at a swoop as a
+gardener trims out a bed of flowers. But the winds go to every tree,
+fingering every leaf and branch and furrowed bole; not one is
+forgotten; the Mountain Pine towering with outstretched arms on the
+rugged buttresses of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring
+tenant of the dells; they seek and find them all, caressing them
+tenderly, bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth,
+plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire tree or
+grove, now whispering and cooing through the branches like a sleepy
+child, now roaring like the ocean; the winds blessing the forests, the
+forests the winds, with ineffable beauty and harmony as the sure
+result.
+
+[Illustration: A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS. (AFTER A
+SKETCH BY THE AUTHOR.)]
+
+After one has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses
+before a mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a
+crash that shakes the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the
+lowest thickset trees, could ever have found a period sufficiently
+stormless to establish themselves; or, once established, that they
+should not, sooner or later, have been blown down. But when the storm
+is over, and we behold the same forests tranquil again, towering fresh
+and unscathed in erect majesty, and consider what centuries of storms
+have fallen upon them since they were first planted,—hail, to break the
+tender seedlings; lightning, to scorch and shatter; snow, winds, and
+avalanches, to crush and overwhelm,—while the manifest result of all
+this wild storm-culture is the glorious perfection we behold; then
+faith in Nature’s forestry is established, and we cease to deplore the
+violence of her most destructive gales, or of any other storm-implement
+whatsoever.
+
+There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never blown down, so
+long as they continue in sound health. These are the Juniper and the
+Dwarf Pine of the summit peaks. Their stiff, crooked roots grip the
+storm-beaten ledges like eagles’ claws, while their lithe, cord-like
+branches bend round compliantly, offering but slight holds for winds,
+however violent. The other alpine conifers—the Needle Pine, Mountain
+Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruce—are never thinned out by this
+agent to any destructive extent, on account of their admirable
+toughness and the closeness of their growth. In general the same is
+true of the giants of the lower zones. The kingly Sugar Pine, towering
+aloft to a height of more than 200 feet, offers a fine mark to
+storm-winds; but it is not densely foliaged, and its long, horizontal
+arms swing round compliantly in the blast, like tresses of green,
+fluent algae in a brook; while the Silver Firs in most places keep
+their ranks well together in united strength. The Yellow or Silver Pine
+is more frequently overturned than any other tree on the Sierra,
+because its leaves and branches form a larger mass in proportion to its
+height, while in many places it is planted sparsely, leaving open lanes
+through which storms may enter with full force. Furthermore, because it
+is distributed along the lower portion of the range, which was the
+first to be left bare on the breaking up of the ice-sheet at the close
+of the glacial winter, the soil it is growing upon has been longer
+exposed to post-glacial weathering, and consequently is in a more
+crumbling, decayed condition than the fresher soils farther up the
+range, and therefore offers a less secure anchorage for the roots.
+
+While exploring the forest zones of Mount Shasta, I discovered the path
+of a hurricane strewn with thousands of pines of this species. Great
+and small had been uprooted or wrenched off by sheer force, making a
+clean gap, like that made by a snow avalanche. But hurricanes capable
+of doing this class of work are rare in the Sierra, and when we have
+explored the forests from one extremity of the range to the other, we
+are compelled to believe that they are the most beautiful on the face
+of the earth, however we may regard the agents that have made them so.
+
+There is always something deeply exciting, not only in the sounds of
+winds in the woods, which exert more or less influence over every mind,
+but in their varied waterlike flow as manifested by the movements of
+the trees, especially those of the conifers. By no other trees are they
+rendered so extensively and impressively visible, not even by the
+lordly tropic palms or tree-ferns responsive to the gentlest breeze.
+The waving of a forest of the giant Sequoias is indescribably
+impressive and sublime, but the pines seem to me the best interpreters
+of winds. They are mighty waving goldenrods, ever in tune, singing and
+writing wind-music all their long century lives. Little, however, of
+this noble tree-waving and tree-music will you see or hear in the
+strictly alpine portion of the forests. The burly Juniper, whose girth
+sometimes more than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks
+on which it grows. The slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine
+stream out in wavering ripples, but the tallest and slenderest are far
+too unyielding to wave even in the heaviest gales. They only shake in
+quick, short vibrations. The Hemlock Spruce, however, and the Mountain
+Pine, and some of the tallest thickets of the Two-leaved species bow in
+storms with considerable scope and gracefulness. But it is only in the
+lower and middle zones that the meeting of winds and woods is to be
+seen in all its grandeur.
+
+One of the most beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever enjoyed in the
+Sierra occurred in December, 1874, when I happened to be exploring one
+of the tributary valleys of the Yuba River. The sky and the ground and
+the trees had been thoroughly rain-washed and were dry again. The day
+was intensely pure, one of those incomparable bits of California
+winter, warm and balmy and full of white sparkling sunshine, redolent
+of all the purest influences of the spring, and at the same time
+enlivened with one of the most bracing wind-storms conceivable. Instead
+of camping out, as I usually do, I then chanced to be stopping at the
+house of a friend. But when the storm began to sound, I lost no time in
+pushing out into the woods to enjoy it. For on such occasions Nature
+has always something rare to show us, and the danger to life and limb
+is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly
+beneath a roof.
+
+It was still early morning when I found myself fairly adrift. Delicious
+sunshine came pouring over the hills, lighting the tops of the pines,
+and setting free a steam of summery fragrance that contrasted strangely
+with the wild tones of the storm. The air was mottled with pine-tassels
+and bright green plumes, that went flashing past in the sunlight like
+birds pursued. But there was not the slightest dustiness, nothing less
+pure than leaves, and ripe pollen, and flecks of withered bracken and
+moss. I heard trees falling for hours at the rate of one every two or
+three minutes; some uprooted, partly on account of the loose,
+water-soaked condition of the ground; others broken straight across,
+where some weakness caused by fire had determined the spot. The
+gestures of the various trees made a delightful study. Young Sugar
+Pines, light and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the
+ground; while the grand old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been
+tried in a hundred storms, waved solemnly above them, their long,
+arching branches streaming fluently on the gale, and every needle
+thrilling and ringing and shedding off keen lances of light like a
+diamond. The Douglas Spruces, with long sprays drawn out in level
+tresses, and needles massed in a gray, shimmering glow, presented a
+most striking appearance as they stood in bold relief along the
+hilltops. The madroños in the dells, with their red bark and large
+glossy leaves tilted every way, reflected the sunshine in throbbing
+spangles like those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a
+glacier lake. But the Silver Pines were now the most impressively
+beautiful of all. Colossal spires 200 feet in height waved like supple
+golden-rods chanting and bowing low as if in worship, while the whole
+mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous
+blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such that the most
+steadfast monarch of them all rocked down to its roots with a motion
+plainly perceptible when one leaned against it. Nature was holding high
+festival, and every fiber of the most rigid giants thrilled with glad
+excitement.
+
+I drifted on through the midst of this passionate music and motion,
+across many a glen, from ridge to ridge; often halting in the lee of a
+rock for shelter, or to gaze and listen. Even when the grand anthem had
+swelled to its highest pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones
+of individual trees,—Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak,—and
+even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet.
+Each was expressing itself in its own way,—singing its own song, and
+making its own peculiar gestures,—manifesting a richness of variety to
+be found in no other forest I have yet seen. The coniferous woods of
+Canada, and the Carolinas, and Florida, are made up of trees that
+resemble one another about as nearly as blades of grass, and grow close
+together in much the same way. Coniferous trees, in general, seldom
+possess individual character, such as is manifest among Oaks and Elms.
+But the California forests are made up of a greater number of distinct
+species than any other in the world. And in them we find, not only a
+marked differentiation into special groups, but also a marked
+individuality in almost every tree, giving rise to storm effects
+indescribably glorious.
+
+Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through copses of hazel
+and ceanothus, I gained the summit of the highest ridge in the
+neighborhood; and then it occurred to me that it would be a fine thing
+to climb one of the trees to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear
+close to the Aeolian music of its topmost needles. But under the
+circumstances the choice of a tree was a serious matter. One whose
+instep was not very strong seemed in danger of being blown down, or of
+being struck by others in case they should fall; another was branchless
+to a considerable height above the ground, and at the same time too
+large to be grasped with arms and legs in climbing; while others were
+not favorably situated for clear views. After cautiously casting about,
+I made choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that were
+growing close together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed
+likely to fall unless all the rest fell with it. Though comparatively
+young, they were about 100 feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were
+rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy. Being accustomed to climb trees
+in making botanical studies, I experienced no difficulty in reaching
+the top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so noble an
+exhilaration of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in
+the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward,
+round and round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and
+horizontal curves, while I clung with muscles firm braced, like a
+bobolink on a reed.
+
+[Illustration: YELLOW PINE AND LIBOCEDRUS
+The two inside trees are Libocedrus, the two outside trees, Yellow
+Pine.]
+
+In its widest sweeps my tree-top described an arc of from twenty to
+thirty degrees, but I felt sure of its elastic temper, having seen
+others of the same species still more severely tried—bent almost to the
+ground indeed, in heavy snows—without breaking a fiber. I was therefore
+safe, and free to take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the excited
+forest from my superb outlook. The view from here must be extremely
+beautiful in any weather. Now my eye roved over the piny hills and
+dales as over fields of waving grain, and felt the light running in
+ripples and broad swelling undulations across the valleys from ridge to
+ridge, as the shining foliage was stirred by corresponding waves of
+air. Oftentimes these waves of reflected light would break up suddenly
+into a kind of beaten foam, and again, after chasing one another in
+regular order, they would seem to bend forward in concentric curves,
+and disappear on some hillside, like sea-waves on a shelving shore. The
+quantity of light reflected from the bent needles was so great as to
+make whole groves appear as if covered with snow, while the black
+shadows beneath the trees greatly enhanced the effect of the silvery
+splendor.
+
+Excepting only the shadows there was nothing somber in all this wild
+sea of pines. On the contrary, notwithstanding this was the winter
+season, the colors were remarkably beautiful. The shafts of the pine
+and libocedrus were brown and purple, and most of the foliage was well
+tinged with yellow; the laurel groves, with the pale undersides of
+their leaves turned upward, made masses of gray; and then there was
+many a dash of chocolate color from clumps of manzanita, and jet of
+vivid crimson from the bark of the madroños, while the ground on the
+hillsides, appearing here and there through openings between the
+groves, displayed masses of pale purple and brown.
+
+The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with this wild
+exuberance of light and motion. The profound bass of the naked branches
+and boles booming like waterfalls; the quick, tense vibrations of the
+pine-needles, now rising to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a
+silky murmur; the rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen
+metallic click of leaf on leaf—all this was heard in easy analysis when
+the attention was calmly bent.
+
+The varied gestures of the multitude were seen to fine advantage, so
+that one could recognize the different species at a distance of several
+miles by this means alone, as well as by their forms and colors, and
+the way they reflected the light. All seemed strong and comfortable, as
+if really enjoying the storm, while responding to its most enthusiastic
+greetings. We hear much nowadays concerning the universal struggle for
+existence, but no struggle in the common meaning of the word was
+manifest here; no recognition of danger by any tree; no deprecation;
+but rather an invincible gladness as remote from exultation as from
+fear.
+
+I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy
+the music by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance
+that was streaming past. The fragrance of the woods was less marked
+than that produced during warm rain, when so many balsamic buds and
+leaves are steeped like tea; but, from the chafing of resiny branches
+against each other, and the incessant attrition of myriads of needles,
+the gale was spiced to a very tonic degree. And besides the fragrance
+from these local sources there were traces of scents brought from afar.
+For this wind came first from the sea, rubbing against its fresh, briny
+waves, then distilled through the redwoods, threading rich ferny
+gulches, and spreading itself in broad undulating currents over many a
+flower-enameled ridge of the coast mountains, then across the golden
+plains, up the purple foot-hills, and into these piny woods with the
+varied incense gathered by the way.
+
+Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we
+may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents
+alone. Mariners detect the flowery perfume of land-winds far at sea,
+and sea-winds carry the fragrance of dulse and tangle far inland, where
+it is quickly recognized, though mingled with the scents of a thousand
+land-flowers. As an illustration of this, I may tell here that I
+breathed sea-air on the Firth of Forth, in Scotland, while a boy; then
+was taken to Wisconsin, where I remained nineteen years; then, without
+in all this time having breathed one breath of the sea, I walked
+quietly, alone, from the middle of the Mississippi Valley to the Gulf
+of Mexico, on a botanical excursion, and while in Florida, far from the
+coast, my attention wholly bent on the splendid tropical vegetation
+about me, I suddenly recognized a sea-breeze, as it came sifting
+through the palmettos and blooming vine-tangles, which at once awakened
+and set free a thousand dormant associations, and made me a boy again
+in Scotland, as if all the intervening years had been annihilated.
+
+Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear them in mind; but
+few care to look at the winds, though far more beautiful and sublime,
+and though they become at times about as visible as flowing water. When
+the north winds in winter are making upward sweeps over the curving
+summits of the High Sierra, the fact is sometimes published with flying
+snow-banners a mile long. Those portions of the winds thus embodied can
+scarce be wholly invisible, even to the darkest imagination. And when
+we look around over an agitated forest, we may see something of the
+wind that stirs it, by its effects upon the trees. Yonder it descends
+in a rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the bending pines from
+hill to hill. Nearer, we see detached plumes and leaves, now speeding
+by on level currents, now whirling in eddies, or, escaping over the
+edges of the whirls, soaring aloft on grand, upswelling domes of air,
+or tossing on flame-like crests. Smooth, deep currents, cascades,
+falls, and swirling eddies, sing around every tree and leaf, and over
+all the varied topography of the region with telling changes of form,
+like mountain rivers conforming to the features of their channels.
+
+After tracing the Sierra streams from their fountains to the plains,
+marking where they bloom white in falls, glide in crystal plumes, surge
+gray and foam-filled in boulder-choked gorges, and slip through the
+woods in long, tranquil reaches—after thus learning their language and
+forms in detail, we may at length hear them chanting all together in
+one grand anthem, and comprehend them all in clear inner vision,
+covering the range like lace. But even this spectacle is far less
+sublime and not a whit more substantial than what we may behold of
+these storm-streams of air in the mountain woods.
+
+We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never
+occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that
+trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys,
+not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and
+back again, are only little more than tree-wavings—many of them not so
+much.
+
+When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through
+the calming woods. The storm-tones died away, and, turning toward the
+east, I beheld the countless hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil,
+towering above one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout
+audience. The setting sun filled them with amber light, and seemed to
+say, while they listened, “My peace I give unto you.”
+
+As I gazed on the impressive scene, all the so-called ruin of the storm
+was forgotten, and never before did these noble woods appear so fresh,
+so joyous, so immortal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+THE RIVER FLOODS
+
+
+The Sierra rivers are flooded every spring by the melting of the snow
+as regularly as the famous old Nile. They begin to rise in May, and in
+June high-water mark is reached. But because the melting does not go on
+rapidly over all the fountains, high and low, simultaneously, and the
+melted snow is not reinforced at this time of year by rain, the spring
+floods are seldom very violent or destructive. The thousand falls,
+however, and the cascades in the cañons are then in full bloom, and
+sing songs from one end of the range to the other. Of course the snow
+on the lower tributaries of the rivers is first melted, then that on
+the higher fountains most exposed to sunshine, and about a month later
+the cooler, shadowy fountains send down their treasures, thus allowing
+the main trunk streams nearly six weeks to get their waters hurried
+through the foot-hills and across the lowlands to the sea. Therefore
+very violent spring floods are avoided, and will be as long as the
+shading, restraining forests last. The rivers of the north half of the
+range are still less subject to sudden floods, because their upper
+fountains in great part lie protected from the changes of the weather
+beneath thick folds of lava, just as many of the rivers of Alaska lie
+beneath folds of ice, coming to the light farther down the range in
+large springs, while those of the high Sierra lie on the surface of
+solid granite, exposed to every change of temperature. More than ninety
+per cent. of the water derived from the snow and ice of Mount Shasta is
+at once absorbed and drained away beneath the porous lava folds of the
+mountain, where mumbling and groping in the dark they at length find
+larger fissures and tunnel-like caves from which they emerge, filtered
+and cool, in the form of large springs, some of them so large they give
+birth to rivers that set out on their journeys beneath the sun without
+any visible intermediate period of childhood. Thus the Shasta River
+issues from a large lake-like spring in Shasta Valley, and about two
+thirds of the volume of the McCloud River gushes forth suddenly from
+the face of a lava bluff in a roaring spring seventy-five yards wide.
+
+These spring rivers of the north are of course shorter than those of
+the south whose tributaries extend up to the tops of the mountains.
+Fall River, an important tributary of the Pitt or Upper Sacramento, is
+only about ten miles long, and is all falls, cascades, and springs from
+its head to its confluence with the Pitt. Bountiful springs, charmingly
+embowered, issue from the rocks at one end of it, a snowy fall a
+hundred and eighty feet high thunders at the other, and a rush of
+crystal rapids sing and dance between. Of course such streams are but
+little affected by the weather. Sheltered from evaporation their flow
+is nearly as full in the autumn as in the time of general spring
+floods. While those of the high Sierra diminish to less than the
+hundredth part of their springtime prime, shallowing in autumn to a
+series of silent pools among the rocks and hollows of their channels,
+connected by feeble, creeping threads of water, like the sluggish
+sentences of a tired writer, connected by a drizzle of “ands” and
+“buts.” Strange to say, the greatest floods occur in winter, when one
+would suppose all the wild waters would be muffled and chained in frost
+and snow. The same long, all-day storms of the so-called Rainy Season
+in California, that give rain to the lowlands, give dry frosty snow to
+the mountains. But at rare intervals warm rains and warm winds invade
+the mountains and push back the snow line from 2000 feet to 8000, or
+even higher, and then come the big floods.
+
+I was usually driven down out of the High Sierra about the end of
+November, but the winter of 1874 and 1875 was so warm and calm that I
+was tempted to seek general views of the geology and topography of the
+basin of Feather River in January. And I had just completed a hasty
+survey of the region, and made my way down to winter quarters, when one
+of the grandest flood-storms that I ever saw broke on the mountains. I
+was then in the edge of the main forest belt at a small foot-hill town
+called Knoxville, on the divide between the waters of the Feather and
+Yuba rivers. The cause of this notable flood was simply a sudden and
+copious fall of warm wind and rain on the basins of these rivers at a
+time when they contained a considerable quantity of snow. The rain was
+so heavy and long-sustained that it was, of itself, sufficient to make
+a good wild flood, while the snow which the warm wind and rain melted
+on the upper and middle regions of the basins was sufficient to make
+another flood equal to that of the rain. Now these two distinct
+harvests of flood waters were gathered simultaneously and poured out on
+the plain in one magnificent avalanche. The basins of the Yuba and
+Feather, like many others of the Sierra, are admirably adapted to the
+growth of floods of this kind. Their many tributaries radiate far and
+wide, comprehending extensive areas, and the tributaries are steeply
+inclined, while the trunks are comparatively level. While the
+flood-storm was in progress the thermometer at Knoxville ranged between
+44° and 50°; and when warm wind and warm rain fall simultaneously on
+snow contained in basins like these, both the rain and that portion of
+the snow which the rain and wind melt are at first sponged up and held
+back until the combined mass becomes sludge, which at length, suddenly
+dissolving, slips and descends all together to the trunk channel; and
+since the deeper the stream the faster it flows, the flooded portion of
+the current above overtakes the slower foot-hill portion below it, and
+all sweeping forward together with a high, overcurling front, debouches
+on the open plain with a violence and suddenness that at first seem
+wholly unaccountable. The destructiveness of the lower portion of this
+particular flood was somewhat augmented by mining gravel in the river
+channels, and by levees which gave way after having at first restrained
+and held back the accumulating waters. These exaggerating conditions
+did not, however, greatly influence the general result, the main effect
+having been caused by the rare combination of flood factors indicated
+above. It is a pity that but few people meet and enjoy storms so noble
+as this in their homes in the mountains, for, spending themselves in
+the open levels of the plains, they are likely to be remembered more by
+the bridges and houses they carry away than by their beauty or the
+thousand blessings they bring to the fields and gardens of Nature.
+
+On the morning of the flood, January 19th, all the Feather and Yuba
+landscapes were covered with running water, muddy torrents filled every
+gulch and ravine, and the sky was thick with rain. The pines had long
+been sleeping in sunshine; they were now awake, roaring and waving with
+the beating storm, and the winds sweeping along the curves of hill and
+dale, streaming through the woods, surging and gurgling on the tops of
+rocky ridges, made the wildest of wild storm melody.
+
+It was easy to see that only a small part of the rain reached the
+ground in the form of drops. Most of it was thrashed into dusty spray
+like that into which small waterfalls are divided when they dash on
+shelving rocks. Never have I seen water coming from the sky in denser
+or more passionate streams. The wind chased the spray forward in
+choking drifts, and compelled me again and again to seek shelter in the
+dell copses and back of large trees to rest and catch my breath.
+Wherever I went, on ridges or in hollows, enthusiastic water still
+flashed and gurgled about my ankles, recalling a wild winter flood in
+Yosemite when a hundred waterfalls came booming and chanting together
+and filled the grand valley with a sea-like roar.
+
+After drifting an hour or two in the lower woods, I set out for the
+summit of a hill 900 feet high, with a view to getting as near the
+heart of the storm as possible. In order to reach it I had to cross Dry
+Creek, a tributary of the Yuba that goes crawling along the base of the
+hill on the northwest. It was now a booming river as large as the
+Tuolumne at ordinary stages, its current brown with mining-mud washed
+down from many a “claim,” and mottled with sluice-boxes, fence-rails,
+and logs that had long lain above its reach. A slim foot-bridge
+stretched across it, now scarcely above the swollen current. Here I was
+glad to linger, gazing and listening, while the storm was in its
+richest mood—the gray rain-flood above, the brown river-flood beneath.
+The language of the river was scarcely less enchanting than that of the
+wind and rain; the sublime overboom of the main bouncing, exulting
+current, the swash and gurgle of the eddies, the keen dash and clash of
+heavy waves breaking against rocks, and the smooth, downy hush of
+shallow currents feeling their way through the willow thickets of the
+margin. And amid all this varied throng of sounds I heard the smothered
+bumping and rumbling of boulders on the bottom as they were shoving and
+rolling forward against one another in a wild rush, after having lain
+still for probably 100 years or more.
+
+The glad creek rose high above its banks and wandered from its channel
+out over many a briery sand-flat and meadow. Alders and willows
+waist-deep were bearing up against the current with nervous trembling
+gestures, as if afraid of being carried away, while supple branches
+bending confidingly, dipped lightly and rose again, as if stroking the
+wild waters in play. Leaving the bridge and passing on through the
+storm-thrashed woods, all the ground seemed to be moving. Pine-tassels,
+flakes of bark, soil, leaves, and broken branches were being swept
+forward, and many a rock-fragment, weathered from exposed ledges, was
+now receiving its first rounding and polishing in the wild streams of
+the storm. On they rushed through every gulch and hollow, leaping,
+gliding, working with a will, and rejoicing like living creatures.
+
+Nor was the flood confined to the ground. Every tree had a water system
+of its own spreading far and wide like miniature Amazons and
+Mississippis.
+
+Toward midday, cloud, wind, and rain reached their highest development.
+The storm was in full bloom, and formed, from my commanding outlook on
+the hilltop, one of the most glorious views I ever beheld. As far as
+the eye could reach, above, beneath, around, wind-driven rain filled
+the air like one vast waterfall. Detached clouds swept imposingly up
+the valley, as if they were endowed with independent motion and had
+special work to do in replenishing the mountain wells, now rising above
+the pine-tops, now descending into their midst, fondling their arrowy
+spires and soothing every branch and leaf with gentleness in the midst
+of all the savage sound and motion. Others keeping near the ground
+glided behind separate groves, and brought them forward into relief
+with admirable distinctness; or, passing in front, eclipsed whole
+groves in succession, pine after pine melting in their gray fringes and
+bursting forth again seemingly clearer than before.
+
+The forms of storms are in great part measured, and controlled by the
+topography of the regions where they rise and over which they pass.
+When, therefore, we attempt to study them from the valleys, or from
+gaps and openings of the forest, we are confounded by a multitude of
+separate and apparently antagonistic impressions. The bottom of the
+storm is broken up into innumerable waves and currents that surge
+against the hillsides like sea-waves against a shore, and these,
+reacting on the nether surface of the storm, erode immense cavernous
+hollows and cañons, and sweep forward the resulting detritus in long
+trains, like the moraines of glaciers. But, as we ascend, these
+partial, confusing effects disappear and the phenomena are beheld
+united and harmonious.
+
+The longer I gazed into the storm, the more plainly visible it became.
+The drifting cloud detritus gave it a kind of visible body, which
+explained many perplexing phenomena, and published its movements in
+plain terms, while the texture of the falling mass of rain rounded it
+out and rendered it more complete. Because raindrops differ in size
+they fall at different velocities and overtake and clash against one
+another, producing mist and spray. They also, of course, yield unequal
+compliance to the force of the wind, which gives rise to a still
+greater degree of interference, and passionate gusts sweep off clouds
+of spray from the groves like that torn from wave-tops in a gale. All
+these factors of irregularity in density, color, and texture of the
+general rain mass tend to make it the more appreciable and telling. It
+is then seen as one grand flood rushing over bank and brae, bending the
+pines like weeds, curving this way and that, whirling in huge eddies in
+hollows and dells, while the main current pours grandly over all, like
+ocean currents over the landscapes that lie hidden at the bottom of the
+sea.
+
+I watched the gestures of the pines while the storm was at its height,
+and it was easy to see that they were not distressed. Several large
+Sugar Pines stood near the thicket in which I was sheltered, bowing
+solemnly and tossing their long arms as if interpreting the very words
+of the storm while accepting its wildest onsets with passionate
+exhilaration. The lions were feeding. Those who have observed
+sunflowers feasting on sunshine during the golden days of Indian summer
+know that none of their gestures express thankfulness. Their celestial
+food is too heartily given, too heartily taken to leave room for
+thanks. The pines were evidently accepting the benefactions of the
+storm in the same whole-souled manner; and when I looked down among the
+budding hazels, and still lower to the young violets and fern-tufts on
+the rocks, I noticed the same divine methods of giving and taking, and
+the same exquisite adaptations of what seems an outbreak of violent and
+uncontrollable force to the purposes of beautiful and delicate life.
+Calms like sleep come upon landscapes, just as they do on people and
+trees, and storms awaken them in the same way. In the dry midsummer of
+the lower portion of the range the withered hills and valleys seem to
+lie as empty and expressionless as dead shells on a shore. Even the
+highest mountains may be found occasionally dull and uncommunicative as
+if in some way they had lost countenance and shrunk to less than half
+their real stature. But when the lightnings crash and echo in the
+cañons, and the clouds come down wreathing and crowning their bald
+snowy heads, every feature beams with expression and they rise again in
+all their imposing majesty.
+
+Storms are fine speakers, and tell all they know, but their voices of
+lightning, torrent, and rushing wind are much less numerous than the
+nameless still, small voices too low for human ears; and because we are
+poor listeners we fail to catch much that is fairly within reach. Our
+best rains are heard mostly on roofs, and winds in chimneys; and when
+by choice or compulsion we are pushed into the heart of a storm, the
+confusion made by cumbersome equipments and nervous haste and mean
+fear, prevent our hearing any other than the loudest expressions. Yet
+we may draw enjoyment from storm sounds that are beyond hearing, and
+storm movements we cannot see. The sublime whirl of planets around
+their suns is as silent as raindrops oozing in the dark among the roots
+of plants. In this great storm, as in every other, there were tones and
+gestures inexpressibly gentle manifested in the midst of what is called
+violence and fury, but easily recognized by all who look and listen for
+them. The rain brought out the colors of the woods with delightful
+freshness, the rich brown of the bark of the trees and the fallen burs
+and leaves and dead ferns; the grays of rocks and lichens; the light
+purple of swelling buds, and the warm yellow greens of the libocedrus
+and mosses. The air was steaming with delightful fragrance, not rising
+and wafting past in separate masses, but diffused through all the
+atmosphere. Pine woods are always fragrant, but most so in spring when
+the young tassels are opening and in warm weather when the various gums
+and balsams are softened by the sun. The wind was now chafing their
+innumerable needles and the warm rain was steeping them. Monardella
+grows here in large beds in the openings, and there is plenty of laurel
+in dells and manzanita on the hillsides, and the rosy, fragrant
+chamoebatia carpets the ground almost everywhere. These, with the gums
+and balsams of the woods, form the main local fragrance-fountains of
+the storm. The ascending clouds of aroma wind-rolled and rain-washed
+became pure like light and traveled with the wind as part of it. Toward
+the middle of the afternoon the main flood cloud lifted along its
+western border revealing a beautiful section of the Sacramento Valley
+some twenty or thirty miles away, brilliantly sun-lighted and
+glistering with rain-sheets as if paved with silver. Soon afterward a
+jagged bluff-like cloud with a sheer face appeared over the valley of
+the Yuba, dark-colored and roughened with numerous furrows like some
+huge lava-table. The blue Coast Range was seen stretching along the sky
+like a beveled wall, and the somber, craggy Marysville Buttes rose
+impressively out of the flooded plain like islands out of the sea. Then
+the rain began to abate and I sauntered down through the dripping
+bushes reveling in the universal vigor and freshness that inspired all
+the life about me. How clean and unworn and immortal the woods seemed
+to be!—the lofty cedars in full bloom laden with golden pollen and
+their washed plumes shining; the pines rocking gently and settling back
+into rest, and the evening sunbeams spangling on the broad leaves of
+the madroños, their tracery of yellow boughs relieved against dusky
+thickets of Chestnut Oak; liverworts, lycopodiums, ferns were exulting
+in glorious revival, and every moss that had ever lived seemed to be
+coming crowding back from the dead to clothe each trunk and stone in
+living green. The steaming ground seemed fairly to throb and tingle
+with life; smilax, fritillaria, saxifrage, and young violets were
+pushing up as if already conscious of the summer glory, and innumerable
+green and yellow buds were peeping and smiling everywhere.
+
+As for the birds and squirrels, not a wing or tail of them was to be
+seen while the storm was blowing. Squirrels dislike wet weather more
+than cats do; therefore they were at home rocking in their dry nests.
+The birds were hiding in the dells out of the wind, some of the
+strongest of them pecking at acorns and manzanita berries, but most
+were perched on low twigs, their breast feathers puffed out and keeping
+one another company through the hard time as best they could.
+
+When I arrived at the village about sundown, the good people bestirred
+themselves, pitying my bedraggled condition as if I were some benumbed
+castaway snatched from the sea, while I, in turn, warm with excitement
+and reeking like the ground, pitied them for being dry and defrauded of
+all the glory that Nature had spread round about them that day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS
+
+
+The weather of spring and summer in the middle region of the Sierra is
+usually well flecked with rains and light dustings of snow, most of
+which are far too obviously joyful and life-giving to be regarded as
+storms; and in the picturesque beauty and clearness of outlines of
+their clouds they offer striking contrasts to those boundless,
+all-embracing cloud-mantles of the storms of winter. The smallest and
+most perfectly individualized specimens present a richly modeled
+cumulous cloud rising above the dark woods, about 11 A.M., swelling
+with a visible motion straight up into the calm, sunny sky to a height
+of 12,000 to 14,000 feet above the sea, its white, pearly bosses
+relieved by gray and pale purple shadows in the hollows, and showing
+outlines as keenly defined as those of the glacier-polished domes. In
+less than an hour it attains full development and stands poised in the
+blazing sunshine like some colossal mountain, as beautiful in form and
+finish as if it were to become a permanent addition to the landscape.
+Presently a thunderbolt crashes through the crisp air, ringing like
+steel on steel, sharp and clear, its startling detonation breaking into
+a spray of echoes against the cliffs and cañon walls. Then down comes a
+cataract of rain. The big drops sift through the pine-needles, plash
+and patter on the granite pavements, and pour down the sides of ridges
+and domes in a network of gray, bubbling rills. In a few minutes the
+cloud withers to a mesh of dim filaments and disappears, leaving the
+sky perfectly clear and bright, every dust-particle wiped and washed
+out of it. Everything is refreshed and invigorated, a steam of
+fragrance rises, and the storm is finished—one cloud, one
+lightning-stroke, and one dash of rain. This is the Sierra mid-summer
+thunder-storm reduced to its lowest terms. But some of them attain much
+larger proportions, and assume a grandeur and energy of expression
+hardly surpassed by those bred in the depths of winter, producing those
+sudden floods called “cloud-bursts,” which are local, and to a
+considerable extent periodical, for they appear nearly every day about
+the same time for weeks, usually about eleven o’clock, and lasting from
+five minutes to an hour or two. One soon becomes so accustomed to see
+them that the noon sky seems empty and abandoned without them, as if
+Nature were forgetting something. When the glorious pearl and alabaster
+clouds of these noonday storms are being built I never give attention
+to anything else. No mountain or mountain-range, however divinely
+clothed with light, has a more enduring charm than those fleeting
+mountains of the sky—floating fountains bearing water for every well,
+the angels of the streams and lakes; brooding in the deep azure, or
+sweeping softly along the ground over ridge and dome, over meadow, over
+forest, over garden and grove; lingering with cooling shadows,
+refreshing every flower, and soothing rugged rock-brows with a
+gentleness of touch and gesture wholly divine.
+
+[Illustration: BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY.]
+
+The most beautiful and imposing of the summer storms rise just above
+the upper edge of the Silver Fir zone, and all are so beautiful that it
+is not easy to choose any one for particular description. The one that
+I remember best fell on the mountains near Yosemite Valley, July 19,
+1869, while I was encamped in the Silver Fir woods. A range of bossy
+cumuli took possession of the sky, huge domes and peaks rising one
+beyond another with deep cañons between them, bending this way and that
+in long curves and reaches, interrupted here and there with white
+upboiling masses that looked like the spray of waterfalls. Zigzag
+lances of lightning followed each other in quick succession, and the
+thunder was so gloriously loud and massive it seemed as if surely an
+entire mountain was being shattered at every stroke. Only the trees
+were touched, however, so far as I could see,—a few firs 200 feet high,
+perhaps, and five to six feet in diameter, were split into long rails
+and slivers from top to bottom and scattered to all points of the
+compass. Then came the rain in a hearty flood, covering the ground and
+making it shine with a continuous sheet of water that, like a
+transparent film or skin, fitted closely down over all the rugged
+anatomy of the landscape.
+
+It is not long, geologically speaking, since the first raindrop fell on
+the present landscapes of the Sierra; and in the few tens of thousands
+of years of stormy cultivation they have been blest with, how beautiful
+they have become! The first rains fell on raw, crumbling moraines and
+rocks without a plant. Now scarcely a drop can fail to find a beautiful
+mark: on the tops of the peaks, on the smooth glacier pavements, on the
+curves of the domes, on moraines full of crystals, on the thousand
+forms of yosemitic sculpture with their tender beauty of balmy, flowery
+vegetation, laving, plashing, glinting, pattering; some falling softly
+on meadows, creeping out of sight, seeking and finding every thirsty
+rootlet, some through the spires of the woods, sifting in dust through
+the needles, and whispering good cheer to each of them; some falling
+with blunt tapping sounds, drumming on the broad leaves of veratrum,
+cypripedium, saxifrage; some falling straight into fragrant corollas,
+kissing the lips of lilies, glinting on the sides of crystals, on
+shining grains of gold; some falling into the fountains of snow to
+swell their well-saved stores; some into the lakes and rivers, patting
+the smooth glassy levels, making dimples and bells and spray, washing
+the mountain windows, washing the wandering winds; some plashing into
+the heart of snowy falls and cascades as if eager to join in the dance
+and the song and beat the foam yet finer. Good work and happy work for
+the merry mountain raindrops, each one of them a brave fall in itself,
+rushing from the cliffs and hollows of the clouds into the cliffs and
+hollows of the mountains; away from the thunder of the sky into the
+thunder of the roaring rivers. And how far they have to go, and how
+many cups to fill—cassiope-cups, holding half a drop, and lake basins
+between the hills, each replenished with equal care—every drop God’s
+messenger sent on its way with glorious pomp and display of
+power—silvery new-born stars with lake and river, mountain and
+valley—all that the landscape holds—reflected in their crystal depths.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+THE WATER-OUZEL
+
+
+The waterfalls of the Sierra are frequented by only one bird,—the Ouzel
+or Water Thrush (_Cinclus Mexicanus_, SW.). He is a singularly joyous
+and lovable little fellow, about the size of a robin, clad in a plain
+waterproof suit of bluish gray, with a tinge of chocolate on the head
+and shoulders. In form he is about as smoothly plump and compact as a
+pebble that has been whirled in a pot-hole, the flowing contour of his
+body being interrupted only by his strong feet and bill, the crisp
+wing-tips, and the up-slanted wren-like tail. Among all the countless
+waterfalls I have met in the course of ten years’ exploration in the
+Sierra, whether among the icy peaks, or warm foot-hills, or in the
+profound yosemitic cañons of the middle region, not one was found
+without its Ouzel. No cañon is too cold for this little bird, none too
+lonely, provided it be rich in falling water. Find a fall, or cascade,
+or rushing rapid, anywhere upon a clear stream, and there you will
+surely find its complementary Ouzel, flitting about in the spray,
+diving in foaming eddies, whirling like a leaf among beaten foam-bells;
+ever vigorous and enthusiastic, yet self-contained, and neither seeking
+nor shunning your company.
+
+[Illustration: WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING.]
+
+If disturbed while dipping about in the margin shallows, he either sets
+off with a rapid whir to some other feeding-ground up or down the
+stream, or alights on some half-submerged rock or snag out in the
+current, and immediately begins to nod and courtesy like a wren,
+turning his head from side to side with many other odd dainty movements
+that never fail to fix the attention of the observer.
+
+He is the mountain streams’ own darling, the humming-bird of blooming
+waters, loving rocky ripple-slopes and sheets of foam as a bee loves
+flowers, as a lark loves sunshine and meadows. Among all the mountain
+birds, none has cheered me so much in my lonely wanderings,—none so
+unfailingly. For both in winter and summer he sings, sweetly, cheerily,
+independent alike of sunshine and of love, requiring no other
+inspiration than the stream on which he dwells. While water sings, so
+must he, in heat or cold, calm or storm, ever attuning his voice in
+sure accord; low in the drought of summer and the drought of winter,
+but never silent.
+
+During the golden days of Indian summer, after most of the snow has
+been melted, and the mountain streams have become feeble,—a succession
+of silent pools, linked together by shallow, transparent currents and
+strips of silvery lacework,—then the song of the Ouzel is at its lowest
+ebb. But as soon as the winter clouds have bloomed, and the mountain
+treasuries are once more replenished with snow, the voices of the
+streams and ouzels increase in strength and richness until the flood
+season of early summer. Then the torrents chant their noblest anthems,
+and then is the flood-time of our songster’s melody. As for weather,
+dark days and sun days are the same to him. The voices of most
+song-birds, however joyous, suffer a long winter eclipse; but the Ouzel
+sings on through all the seasons and every kind of storm. Indeed no
+storm can be more violent than those of the waterfalls in the midst of
+which he delights to dwell. However dark and boisterous the weather,
+snowing, blowing, or cloudy, all the same he sings, and with never a
+note of sadness. No need of spring sunshine to thaw _his_ song, for it
+never freezes. Never shall you hear anything wintry from _his_ warm
+breast; no pinched cheeping, no wavering notes between sorrow and joy;
+his mellow, fluty voice is ever tuned to downright gladness, as free
+from dejection as cock-crowing.
+
+It is pitiful to see wee frost-pinched sparrows on cold mornings in the
+mountain groves shaking the snow from their feathers, and hopping about
+as if anxious to be cheery, then hastening back to their hidings out of
+the wind, puffing out their breast-feathers over their toes, and
+subsiding among the leaves, cold and breakfastless, while the snow
+continues to fall, and there is no sign of clearing. But the Ouzel
+never calls forth a single touch of pity; not because he is strong to
+endure, but rather because he seems to live a charmed life beyond the
+reach of every influence that makes endurance necessary.
+
+One wild winter morning, when Yosemite Valley was swept its length from
+west to east by a cordial snow-storm, I sallied forth to see what I
+might learn and enjoy. A sort of gray, gloaming-like darkness filled
+the valley, the huge walls were out of sight, all ordinary sounds were
+smothered, and even the loudest booming of the falls was at times
+buried beneath the roar of the heavy-laden blast. The loose snow was
+already over five feet deep on the meadows, making extended walks
+impossible without the aid of snow-shoes. I found no great difficulty,
+however, in making my way to a certain ripple on the river where one of
+my ouzels lived. He was at home, busily gleaning his breakfast among
+the pebbles of a shallow portion of the margin, apparently unaware of
+anything extraordinary in the weather. Presently he flew out to a stone
+against which the icy current was beating, and turning his back to the
+wind, sang as delightfully as a lark in springtime.
+
+After spending an hour or two with my favorite, I made my way across
+the valley, boring and wallowing through the drifts, to learn as
+definitely as possible how the other birds were spending their time.
+The Yosemite birds are easily found during the winter because all of
+them excepting the Ouzel are restricted to the sunny north side of the
+valley, the south side being constantly eclipsed by the great frosty
+shadow of the wall. And because the Indian Cañon groves, from their
+peculiar exposure, are the warmest, the birds congregate there, more
+especially in severe weather.
+
+I found most of the robins cowering on the lee side of the larger
+branches where the snow could not fall upon them, while two or three of
+the more enterprising were making desperate efforts to reach the
+mistletoe berries by clinging nervously to the under side of the
+snow-crowned masses, back downward, like woodpeckers. Every now and
+then they would dislodge some of the loose fringes of the snow-crown,
+which would come sifting down on them and send them screaming back to
+camp, where they would subside among their companions with a shiver,
+muttering in low, querulous chatter like hungry children.
+
+Some of the sparrows were busy at the feet of the larger trees gleaning
+seeds and benumbed insects, joined now and then by a robin weary of his
+unsuccessful attempts upon the snow-covered berries. The brave
+woodpeckers were clinging to the snowless sides of the larger boles and
+overarching branches of the camp trees, making short nights from side
+to side of the grove, pecking now and then at the acorns they had
+stored in the bark, and chattering aimlessly as if unable to keep
+still, yet evidently putting in the time in a very dull way, like
+storm-bound travelers at a country tavern. The hardy nut-hatches were
+threading the open furrows of the trunks in their usual industrious
+manner, and uttering their quaint notes, evidently less distressed than
+their neighbors. The Steller jays were of course making more noisy stir
+than all the other birds combined; ever coming and going with loud
+bluster, screaming as if each had a lump of melting sludge in his
+throat, and taking good care to improve the favorable opportunity
+afforded by the storm to steal from the acorn stores of the
+woodpeckers. I also noticed one solitary gray eagle braving the storm
+on the top of a tall pine-stump just outside the main grove. He was
+standing bolt upright with his back to the wind, a tuft of snow piled
+on his square shoulders, a monument of passive endurance. Thus every
+snow-bound bird seemed more or less uncomfortable if not in positive
+distress.
+
+The storm was reflected in every gesture, and not one cheerful note,
+not to say song, came from a single bill; their cowering, joyless
+endurance offering a striking contrast to the spontaneous,
+irrepressible gladness of the Ouzel, who could no more help exhaling
+sweet song than a rose sweet fragrance. He _must_ sing though the
+heavens fall. I remember noticing the distress of a pair of robins
+during the violent earthquake of the year 1872, when the pines of the
+Valley, with strange movements, flapped and waved their branches, and
+beetling rock-brows came thundering down to the meadows in tremendous
+avalanches. It did not occur to me in the midst of the excitement of
+other observations to look for the ouzels, but I doubt not they were
+singing straight on through it all, regarding the terrible rock-thunder
+as fearlessly as they do the booming of the waterfalls.
+
+What may be regarded as the separate songs of the Ouzel are exceedingly
+difficult of description, because they are so variable and at the same
+time so confluent. Though I have been acquainted with my favorite ten
+years, and during most of this time have heard him sing nearly every
+day, I still detect notes and strains that seem new to me. Nearly all
+of his music is sweet and tender, lapsing from his round breast like
+water over the smooth lip of a pool, then breaking farther on into a
+sparkling foam of melodious notes, which, glow with subdued enthusiasm,
+yet without expressing much of the strong, gushing ecstasy of the
+bobolink or skylark.
+
+The more striking strains are perfect arabesques of melody, composed of
+a few full, round, mellow notes, embroidered with delicate trills which
+fade and melt in long slender cadences. In a general way his music is
+that of the streams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes
+of the falls are in it, the trills of rapids, the gurgling of margin
+eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of
+separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses and falling into tranquil
+pools.
+
+The Ouzel never sings in chorus with other birds, nor with his kind,
+but only with the streams. And like flowers that bloom beneath the
+surface of the ground, some of our favorite’s best song-blossoms never
+rise above the surface of the heavier music of the water. I have often
+observed him singing in the midst of beaten spray, his music completely
+buried beneath the water’s roar; yet I knew he was surely singing by
+his gestures and the movements of his bill.
+
+His food, as far as I have noticed, consists of all kinds of water
+insects, which in summer are chiefly procured along shallow margins.
+Here he wades about ducking his head under water and deftly turning
+over pebbles and fallen leaves with his bill, seldom choosing to go
+into deep water where he has to use his wings in diving.
+
+He seems to be especially fond of the larvae; of mosquitos, found in
+abundance attached to the bottom of smooth rock channels where the
+current is shallow. When feeding in such places he wades up-stream, and
+often while his head is under water the swift current is deflected
+upward along the glossy curves of his neck and shoulders, in the form
+of a clear, crystalline shell, which fairly incloses him like a
+bell-glass, the shell being broken and re-formed as he lifts and dips
+his head; while ever and anon he sidles out to where the too powerful
+current carries him off his feet; then he dexterously rises on the wing
+and goes gleaning again in shallower places.
+
+But during the winter, when the stream-banks are embossed in snow, and
+the streams themselves are chilled nearly to the freezing-point, so
+that the snow falling into them in stormy weather is not wholly
+dissolved, but forms a thin, blue sludge, thus rendering the current
+opaque—then he seeks the deeper portions of the main rivers, where he
+may dive to clear water beneath the sludge. Or he repairs to some open
+lake or mill-pond, at the bottom of which he feeds in safety.
+
+When thus compelled to betake himself to a lake, he does not plunge
+into it at once like a duck, but always alights in the first place upon
+some rock or fallen pine along the shore. Then flying out thirty or
+forty yards, more or less, according to the character of the bottom, he
+alights with a dainty glint on the surface, swims about, looks down,
+finally makes up his mind, and disappears with a sharp stroke of his
+wings. After feeding for two or three minutes he suddenly reappears,
+showers the water from his wings with one vigorous shake, and rises
+abruptly into the air as if pushed up from beneath, comes back to his
+perch, sings a few minutes, and goes out to dive again; thus coming and
+going, singing and diving at the same place for hours.
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL.]
+
+The Ouzel is usually found singly; rarely in pairs, excepting during
+the breeding season, and _very_ rarely in threes or fours. I once
+observed three thus spending a winter morning in company, upon a small
+glacier lake, on the Upper Merced, about 7500 feet above the level of
+the sea. A storm had occurred during the night, but the morning sun
+shone unclouded, and the shadowy lake, gleaming darkly in its setting
+of fresh snow, lay smooth and motionless as a mirror. My camp chanced
+to be within a few feet of the water’s edge, opposite a fallen pine,
+some of the branches of which leaned out over the lake. Here my three
+dearly welcome visitors took up their station, and at once began to
+embroider the frosty air with their delicious melody, doubly delightful
+to me that particular morning, as I had been somewhat apprehensive of
+danger in breaking my way down through the snow-choked cañons to the
+lowlands.
+
+The portion of the lake bottom selected for a feeding-ground lies at a
+depth of fifteen or twenty feet below the surface, and is covered with
+a short growth of algae and other aquatic plants,—facts I had
+previously determined while sailing over it on a raft. After alighting
+on the glassy surface, they occasionally indulged in a little play,
+chasing one another round about in small circles; then all three would
+suddenly dive together, and then come ashore and sing.
+
+The Ouzel seldom swims more than a few yards on the surface, for, not
+being web-footed, he makes rather slow progress, but by means of his
+strong, crisp wings he swims, or rather flies, with celerity under the
+surface, often to considerable distances. But it is in withstanding the
+force of heavy rapids that his strength of wing in this respect is most
+strikingly manifested. The following may be regarded as a fair
+illustration of his power of sub-aquatic flight. One stormy morning in
+winter when the Merced River was blue and green with unmelted snow, I
+observed one of my ouzels perched on a snag out in the midst of a
+swift-rushing rapid, singing cheerily, as if everything was just to his
+mind; and while I stood on the bank admiring him, he suddenly plunged
+into the sludgy current, leaving his song abruptly broken off. After
+feeding a minute or two at the bottom, and when one would suppose that
+he must inevitably be swept far down-stream, he emerged just where he
+went down, alighted on the same snag, showered the water-beads from his
+feathers, and continued his unfinished song, seemingly in tranquil ease
+as if it had suffered no interruption.
+
+[Illustration: OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT.]
+
+The Ouzel alone of all birds dares to enter a white torrent. And though
+strictly terrestrial in structure, no other is so inseparably related
+to water, not even the duck, or the bold ocean albatross, or the
+stormy-petrel. For ducks go ashore as soon as they finish feeding in
+undisturbed places, and very often make long flights over land from
+lake to lake or field to field. The same is true of most other aquatic
+birds. But the Ouzel, born on the brink of a stream, or on a snag or
+boulder in the midst of it, seldom leaves it for a single moment. For,
+notwithstanding he is often on the wing, he never flies overland, but
+whirs with, rapid, quail-like beat above the stream, tracing all its
+windings. Even when the stream is quite small, say from five to ten
+feet wide, he seldom shortens his flight by crossing a bend, however
+abrupt it may be; and even when disturbed by meeting some one on the
+bank, he prefers to fly over one’s head, to dodging out over the
+ground. When, therefore, his flight along a crooked stream is viewed
+endwise, it appears most strikingly wavered—a description on the air of
+every curve with lightning-like rapidity.
+
+The vertical curves and angles of the most precipitous torrents he
+traces with the same rigid fidelity, swooping down the inclines of
+cascades, dropping sheer over dizzy falls amid the spray, and ascending
+with the same fearlessness and ease, seldom seeking to lessen the
+steepness of the acclivity by beginning to ascend before reaching the
+base of the fall. No matter though it may be several hundred feet in
+height he holds straight on, as if about to dash headlong into the
+throng of booming rockets, then darts abruptly upward, and, after
+alighting at the top of the precipice to rest a moment, proceeds to
+feed and sing. His flight is solid and impetuous, without any
+intermission of wing-beats,—one homogeneous buzz like that of a laden
+bee on its way home. And while thus buzzing freely from fall to fall,
+he is frequently heard giving utterance to a long outdrawn train of
+unmodulated notes, in no way connected with his song, but corresponding
+closely with his flight in sustained vigor.
+
+Were the flights of all the ouzels in the Sierra traced on a chart,
+they would indicate the direction of the flow of the entire system of
+ancient glaciers, from about the period of the breaking up of the
+ice-sheet until near the close of the glacial winter; because the
+streams which the ouzels so rigidly follow are, with the unimportant
+exceptions of a few side tributaries, all flowing in channels eroded
+for them out of the solid flank of the range by the vanished
+glaciers,—the streams tracing the ancient glaciers, the ouzels tracing
+the streams. Nor do we find so complete compliance to glacial
+conditions in the life of any other mountain bird, or animal of any
+kind. Bears frequently accept the pathways laid down by glaciers as the
+easiest to travel; but they often leave them and cross over from cañon
+to cañon. So also, most of the birds trace the moraines to some extent,
+because the forests are growing on them. But they wander far, crossing
+the cañons from grove to grove, and draw exceedingly angular and
+complicated courses.
+
+The Ouzel’s nest is one of the most extraordinary pieces of bird
+architecture I ever saw, odd and novel in design, perfectly fresh and
+beautiful, and in every way worthy of the genius of the little builder.
+It is about a foot in diameter, round and bossy in outline, with a
+neatly arched opening near the bottom, somewhat like an old-fashioned
+brick oven, or Hottentot’s hut. It is built almost exclusively of green
+and yellow mosses, chiefly the beautiful fronded hypnum that covers the
+rocks and old drift-logs in the vicinity of waterfalls. These are
+deftly interwoven, and felted together into a charming little hut; and
+so situated that many of the outer mosses continue to flourish as if
+they had not been plucked. A few fine, silky-stemmed grasses are
+occasionally found interwoven with the mosses, but, with the exception
+of a thin layer lining the floor, their presence seems accidental, as
+they are of a species found growing with the mosses and are probably
+plucked with them. The site chosen for this curious mansion is usually
+some little rock-shelf within reach of the lighter particles of the
+spray of a waterfall, so that its walls are kept green and growing, at
+least during the time of high water.
+
+No harsh lines are presented by any portion of the nest as seen in
+place, but when removed from its shelf, the back and bottom, and
+sometimes a portion of the top, is found quite sharply angular, because
+it is made to conform to the surface of the rock upon which and against
+which it is built, the little architect always taking advantage of
+slight crevices and protuberances that may chance to offer, to render
+his structure stable by means of a kind of gripping and dovetailing.
+
+In choosing a building-spot, concealment does not seem to be taken into
+consideration; yet notwithstanding the nest is large and guilelessly
+exposed to view, it is far from being easily detected, chiefly because
+it swells forward like any other bulging moss-cushion growing naturally
+in such situations. This is more especially the case where the nest is
+kept fresh by being well sprinkled. Sometimes these romantic little
+huts have their beauty enhanced by rock-ferns and grasses that spring
+up around the mossy walls, or in front of the door-sill, dripping with
+crystal beads.
+
+Furthermore, at certain hours of the day, when the sunshine is poured
+down at the required angle, the whole mass of the spray enveloping the
+fairy establishment is brilliantly irised; and it is through so
+glorious a rainbow atmosphere as this that some of our blessed ouzels
+obtain their first peep at the world.
+
+Ouzels seem so completely part and parcel of the streams they inhabit,
+they scarce suggest any other origin than the streams themselves; and
+one might almost be pardoned in fancying they come direct from the
+living waters, like flowers from the ground. At least, from whatever
+cause, it never occurred to me to look for their nests until more than
+a year after I had made the acquaintance of the birds themselves,
+although I found one the very day on which I began the search. In
+making my way from Yosemite to the glaciers at the heads of the Merced
+and Tuolumne rivers, I camped in a particularly wild and romantic
+portion of the Nevada cañon where in previous excursions I had never
+failed to enjoy the company of my favorites, who were attracted here,
+no doubt, by the safe nesting-places in the shelving rocks, and by the
+abundance of food and falling water. The river, for miles above and
+below, consists of a succession of small falls from ten to sixty feet
+in height, connected by flat, plume-like cascades that go flashing from
+fall to fall, free and almost channelless, over waving folds of
+glacier-polished granite.
+
+On the south side of one of the falls, that portion of the precipice
+which is bathed by the spray presents a series of little shelves and
+tablets caused by the development of planes of cleavage in the granite,
+and by the consequent fall of masses through the action of the water.
+“Now here,” said I, “of all places, is the most charming spot for an
+Ouzel’s nest.” Then carefully scanning the fretted face of the
+precipice through the spray, I at length noticed a yellowish
+moss-cushion, growing on the edge of a level tablet within five or six
+feet of the outer folds of the fall. But apart from the fact of its
+being situated where one acquainted with the lives of ouzels would
+fancy an Ouzel’s nest ought to be, there was nothing in its appearance
+visible at first sight, to distinguish it from other bosses of
+rock-moss similarly situated with reference to perennial spray; and it
+was not until I had scrutinized it again and again, and had removed my
+shoes and stockings and crept along the face of the rock within eight
+or ten feet of it, that I could decide certainly whether it was a nest
+or a natural growth.
+
+In these moss huts three or four eggs are laid, white like
+foam-bubbles; and well may the little birds hatched from them sing
+water songs, for they hear them all their lives, and even before they
+are born.
+
+I have often observed the young just out of the nest making their odd
+gestures, and seeming in every way as much at home as their experienced
+parents, like young bees on their first excursions to the flower
+fields. No amount of familiarity with people and their ways seems to
+change them in the least. To all appearance their behavior is just the
+same on seeing a man for the first time, as when they have seen him
+frequently.
+
+[Illustration: THE OUZEL AT HOME.]
+
+On the lower reaches of the rivers where mills are built, they sing on
+through the din of the machinery, and all the noisy confusion of dogs,
+cattle, and workmen. On one occasion, while a wood-chopper was at work
+on the river-bank, I observed one cheerily singing within reach of the
+flying chips. Nor does any kind of unwonted disturbance put him in bad
+humor, or frighten him out of calm self-possession. In passing through
+a narrow gorge, I once drove one ahead of me from rapid to rapid,
+disturbing him four times in quick succession where he could not very
+well fly past me on account of the narrowness of the channel. Most
+birds under similar circumstances fancy themselves pursued, and become
+suspiciously uneasy; but, instead of growing nervous about it, he made
+his usual dippings, and sang one of his most tranquil strains. When
+observed within a few yards their eyes are seen to express remarkable
+gentleness and intelligence; but they seldom allow so near a view
+unless one wears clothing of about the same color as the rocks and
+trees, and knows how to sit still. On one occasion, while rambling
+along the shore of a mountain lake, where the birds, at least those
+born that season, had never seen a man, I sat down to rest on a large
+stone close to the water’s edge, upon which it seemed the ouzels and
+sandpipers were in the habit of alighting when they came to feed on
+that part of the shore, and some of the other birds also, when they
+came down to wash or drink. In a few minutes, along came a whirring
+Ouzel and alighted on the stone beside me, within reach of my hand.
+Then suddenly observing me, he stooped nervously as if about to fly on
+the instant, but as I remained as motionless as the stone, he gained
+confidence, and looked me steadily in the face for about a minute, then
+flew quietly to the outlet and began to sing. Next came a sandpiper and
+gazed at me with much the same guileless expression of eye as the
+Ouzel. Lastly, down with a swoop came a Steller’s jay out of a
+fir-tree, probably with the intention of moistening his noisy throat.
+But instead of sitting confidingly as my other visitors had done, he
+rushed off at once, nearly tumbling heels over head into the lake in
+his suspicious confusion, and with loud screams roused the
+neighborhood.
+
+Love for song-birds, with their sweet human voices, appears to be more
+common and unfailing than love for flowers. Every one loves flowers to
+some extent, at least in life’s fresh morning, attracted by them as
+instinctively as humming-birds and bees. Even the young Digger Indians
+have sufficient love for the brightest of those found growing on the
+mountains to gather them and braid them, as decorations for the hair.
+And I was glad to discover, through the few Indians that could be
+induced to talk on the subject, that they have names for the wild rose
+and the lily, and other conspicuous flowers, whether available as food
+or otherwise. Most men, however, whether savage or civilized, become
+apathetic toward all plants that have no other apparent use than the
+use of beauty. But fortunately one’s first instinctive love of
+song-birds is never wholly obliterated, no matter what the influences
+upon our lives may be. I have often been delighted to see a pure,
+spiritual glow come into the countenances of hard business-men and old
+miners, when a song-bird chanced to alight near them. Nevertheless, the
+little mouthful of meat that swells out the breasts of some song-birds
+is too often the cause of their death. Larks and robins in particular
+are brought to market in hundreds. But fortunately the Ouzel has no
+enemy so eager to eat his little body as to follow him into the
+mountain solitudes. I never knew him to be chased even by hawks.
+
+An acquaintance of mine, a sort of foot-hill mountaineer, had a pet
+cat, a great, dozy, overgrown creature, about as broad-shouldered as a
+lynx. During the winter, while the snow lay deep, the mountaineer sat
+in his lonely cabin among the pines smoking his pipe and wearing the
+dull time away. Tom was his sole companion, sharing his bed, and
+sitting beside him on a stool with much the same drowsy expression of
+eye as his master. The good-natured bachelor was content with his hard
+fare of soda-bread and bacon, but Tom, the only creature in the world
+acknowledging dependence on him, must needs be provided with fresh
+meat. Accordingly he bestirred himself to contrive squirrel-traps, and
+waded the snowy woods with his gun, making sad havoc among the few
+winter birds, sparing neither robin, sparrow, nor tiny nuthatch, and
+the pleasure of seeing Tom eat and grow fat was his great reward.
+
+One cold afternoon, while hunting along the river-bank, he noticed a
+plain-feathered little bird skipping about in the shallows, and
+immediately raised his gun. But just then the confiding songster began
+to sing, and after listening to his summery melody the charmed hunter
+turned away, saying, “Bless your little heart, I can’t shoot you, not
+even for Tom.”
+
+[Illustration: YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN
+CAÑON.]
+
+Even so far north as icy Alaska, I have found my glad singer. When I
+was exploring the glaciers between Mount Fairweather and the Stikeen
+River, one cold day in November, after trying in vain to force a way
+through the innumerable icebergs of Sum Dum Bay to the great glaciers
+at the head of it, I was weary and baffled and sat resting in my canoe
+convinced at last that I would have to leave this part of my work for
+another year. Then I began to plan my escape to open water before the
+young ice which was beginning to form should shut me in. While I thus
+lingered drifting with the bergs, in the midst of these gloomy
+forebodings and all the terrible glacial desolation and grandeur, I
+suddenly heard the well-known whir of an Ouzel’s wings, and, looking
+up, saw my little comforter coming straight across the ice from the
+shore. In a second or two he was with me, flying three times round my
+head with a happy salute, as if saying, “Cheer up, old friend; you see
+I’m here, and all’s well.” Then he flew back to the shore, alighted on
+the topmost jag of a stranded iceberg, and began to nod and bow as
+though he were on one of his favorite boulders in the midst of a sunny
+Sierra cascade.
+
+The species is distributed all along the mountain-ranges of the Pacific
+Coast from Alaska to Mexico, and east to the Rocky Mountains.
+Nevertheless, it is as yet comparatively little known. Audubon and
+Wilson did not meet it. Swainson was, I believe, the first naturalist
+to describe a specimen from Mexico. Specimens were shortly afterward
+procured by Drummond near the sources of the Athabasca River, between
+the fifty-fourth and fifty-sixth parallels; and it has been collected
+by nearly all of the numerous exploring expeditions undertaken of late
+through our Western States and Territories; for it never fails to
+engage the attention of naturalists in a very particular manner.
+
+Such, then, is our little cinclus, beloved of every one who is so
+fortunate as to know him. Tracing on strong wing every curve of the
+most precipitous torrents from one extremity of the Sierra to the
+other; not fearing to follow them through their darkest gorges and
+coldest snow-tunnels; acquainted with every waterfall, echoing their
+divine music; and throughout the whole of their beautiful lives
+interpreting all that we in our unbelief call terrible in the
+utterances of torrents and storms, as only varied expressions of God’s
+eternal love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+THE WILD SHEEP
+(_Ovis montana_)
+
+
+The wild sheep ranks highest among the animal mountaineers of the
+Sierra. Possessed of keen sight and scent, and strong limbs, he dwells
+secure amid the loftiest summits, leaping unscathed from crag to crag,
+up and down the fronts of giddy precipices, crossing foaming torrents
+and slopes of frozen snow, exposed to the wildest storms, yet
+maintaining a brave, warm life, and developing from generation to
+generation in perfect strength and beauty.
+
+Nearly all the lofty mountain-chains of the globe are inhabited by wild
+sheep, most of which, on account of the remote and all but inaccessible
+regions where they dwell, are imperfectly known as yet. They are
+classified by different naturalists under from five to ten distinct
+species or varieties, the best known being the burrhel of the Himalaya
+(_Ovis burrhel_, Blyth); the argali, the large wild sheep of central
+and northeastern Asia (_O. ammon_, Linn., or _Caprovis argali_); the
+Corsican mouflon (_O. musimon_, Pal.); the aoudad of the mountains of
+northern Africa (_Ammotragus tragelaphus_); and the Rocky Mountain
+bighorn (_O. montana_, Cuv.). To this last-named species belongs the
+wild sheep of the Sierra. Its range, according to the late Professor
+Baird of the Smithsonian Institution, extends “from the region of the
+upper Missouri and Yellowstone to the Rocky Mountains and the high
+grounds adjacent to them on the eastern slope, and as far south as the
+Rio Grande. Westward it extends to the coast ranges of Washington,
+Oregon, and California, and follows the highlands some distance into
+Mexico.”[1] Throughout the vast region bounded on the east by the
+Wahsatch Mountains and on the west by the Sierra there are more than a
+hundred subordinate ranges and mountain groups, trending north and
+south, range beyond range, with summits rising from eight to twelve
+thousand feet above the level of the sea, probably all of which,
+according to my own observations, is, or has been, inhabited by this
+species.
+
+Compared with the argali, which, considering its size and the vast
+extent of its range, is probably the most important of all the wild
+sheep, our species is about the same size, but the horns are less
+twisted and less divergent. The more important characteristics are,
+however, essentially the same, some of the best naturalists maintaining
+that the two are only varied forms of one species. In accordance with
+this view, Cuvier conjectures that since central Asia seems to be the
+region where the sheep first appeared, and from which it has been
+distributed, the argali may have been distributed over this continent
+from Asia by crossing Bering Strait on ice. This conjecture is not so
+ill founded as at first sight would appear; for the Strait is only
+about fifty miles wide, is interrupted by three islands, and is jammed
+with ice nearly every winter. Furthermore the argali is abundant on the
+mountains adjacent to the Strait at East Cape, where it is well known
+to the Tschuckchi hunters and where I have seen many of their horns.
+
+On account of the extreme variability of the sheep under culture, it is
+generally supposed that the innumerable domestic breeds have all been
+derived from the few wild species; but the whole question is involved
+in obscurity. According to Darwin, sheep have been domesticated from a
+very ancient period, the remains of a small breed, differing from any
+now known, having been found in the famous Swiss lake-dwellings.
+
+Compared with the best-known domestic breeds, we find that our wild
+species is much larger, and, instead of an all-wool garment, wears a
+thick over-coat of hair like that of the deer, and an under-covering of
+fine wool. The hair, though rather coarse, is comfortably soft and
+spongy, and lies smooth, as if carefully tended with comb and brush.
+The predominant color during most of the year is brownish-gray, varying
+to bluish-gray in the autumn; the belly and a large, conspicuous patch
+on the buttocks are white; and the tail, which is very short, like that
+of a deer, is black, with a yellowish border. The wool is white, and
+grows in beautiful spirals down out of sight among the shining hair,
+like delicate climbing vines among stalks of corn.
+
+The horns of the male are of immense size, measuring in their greater
+diameter from five to six and a half inches, and from two and a half to
+three feet in length around the curve. They are yellowish-white in
+color, and ridged transversely, like those of the domestic ram. Their
+cross-section near the base is somewhat triangular in outline, and
+flattened toward the tip. Rising boldly from the top of the head, they
+curve gently backward and outward, then forward and outward, until
+about three fourths of a circle is described, and until the flattened,
+blunt tips are about two feet or two and a half feet apart. Those of
+the female are flattened throughout their entire length, are less
+curved than those of the male, and much smaller, measuring less than a
+foot along the curve.
+
+A ram and ewe that I obtained near the Modoc lava-beds, to the
+northeast of Mount Shasta, measured as follows:
+
+_Ram._ _Ewe._ 
+_ft._ _in._ _ft._ _in._
+Height at shoulders 3 6 3 0
+Girth around shoulders 3 11 3 3¾
+Length from nose to root of tail 5 10¼ 4 3½
+Length of ears 0 4¾ 0 5
+Length of tail 0 4½ 0 4½
+Length of horns around curve 2 9 0 11½
+Distance across from tip to tip of horns 2 5½  
+Circumference of horns at base 1 4 0 6
+
+The measurements of a male obtained in the Rocky Mountains by Audubon
+vary but little as compared with the above. The weight of his specimen
+was 344 pounds,[2] which is, perhaps, about an average for full-grown
+males. The females are about a third lighter.
+
+Besides these differences in size, color, hair, etc., as noted above,
+we may observe that the domestic sheep, in a general way, is
+expressionless, like a dull bundle of something only half alive, while
+the wild is as elegant and graceful as a deer, every movement
+manifesting admirable strength and character. The tame is timid; the
+wild is bold. The tame is always more or less ruffled and dirty; while
+the wild is as smooth and clean as the flowers of his mountain
+pastures.
+
+The earliest mention that I have been able to find of the wild sheep in
+America is by Father Picolo, a Catholic missionary at Monterey, in the
+year 1797, who, after describing it, oddly enough, as “a kind of deer
+with a sheep-like head, and about as large as a calf one or two years
+old,” naturally hurries on to remark: “I have eaten of these beasts;
+their flesh is very tender and delicious.” Mackenzie, in his northern
+travels, heard the species spoken of by the Indians as “white
+buffaloes.” And Lewis and Clark tell us that, in a time of great
+scarcity on the head waters of the Missouri, they saw plenty of wild
+sheep, but they were “too shy to be shot.”
+
+A few of the more energetic of the Pah Ute Indians hunt the wild sheep
+every season among the more accessible sections of the High Sierra, in
+the neighborhood of passes, where, from having been pursued, they have
+become extremely wary; but in the rugged wilderness of peaks and
+cañons, where the foaming tributaries of the San Joaquin and King’s
+rivers take their rise, they fear no hunter save the wolf, and are more
+guileless and approachable than their tame kindred.
+
+While engaged in the work of exploring high regions where they delight
+to roam I have been greatly interested in studying their habits. In the
+months of November and December, and probably during a considerable
+portion of midwinter, they all flock together, male and female, old and
+young. I once found a complete band of this kind numbering upward of
+fifty, which, on being alarmed, went bounding away across a jagged
+lava-bed at admirable speed, led by a majestic old ram, with the lambs
+safe in the middle of the flock.
+
+In spring and summer, the full-grown rams form separate bands of from
+three to twenty, and are usually found feeding along the edges of
+glacier meadows, or resting among the castle-like crags of the high
+summits; and whether quietly feeding, or scaling the wild cliffs, their
+noble forms and the power and beauty of their movements never fail to
+strike the beholder with lively admiration.
+
+Their resting-places seem to be chosen with reference to sunshine and a
+wide outlook, and most of all to safety. Their feeding-grounds are
+among the most beautiful of the wild gardens, bright with daisies and
+gentians and mats of purple bryanthus, lying hidden away on rocky
+headlands and cañon sides, where sunshine is abundant, or down in the
+shady glacier valleys, along the banks of the streams and lakes, where
+the plushy sod is greenest. Here they feast all summer, the happy
+wanderers, perhaps relishing the beauty as well as the taste of the
+lovely flora on which they feed.
+
+[Illustration: SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA.]
+
+When the winter storms set in, loading their highland pastures with
+snow, then, like the birds, they gather and go to lower climates,
+usually descending the eastern flank of the range to the rough,
+volcanic table-lands and treeless ranges of the Great Basin adjacent to
+the Sierra. They never make haste, however, and seem to have no dread
+of storms, many of the strongest only going down leisurely to bare,
+wind-swept ridges, to feed on bushes and dry bunch-grass, and then
+returning up into the snow. Once I was snow-bound on Mount Shasta for
+three days, a little below the timber line. It was a dark and stormy
+time, well calculated to test the skill and endurance of mountaineers.
+The snow-laden gale drove on night and day in hissing, blinding floods,
+and when at length it began to abate, I found that a small band of wild
+sheep had weathered the storm in the lee of a clump of Dwarf Pines a
+few yards above my storm-nest, where the snow was eight or ten feet
+deep. I was warm back of a rock, with blankets, bread, and fire. My
+brave companions lay in the snow, without food, and with only the
+partial shelter of the short trees, yet they made no sign of suffering
+or faint-heartedness.
+
+In the months of May and June, the wild sheep bring forth their young
+in solitary and almost inaccessible crags, far above the nesting-rocks
+of the eagle. I have frequently come upon the beds of the ewes and
+lambs at an elevation of from 12,000 to 13,000 feet above sea-level.
+These beds are simply oval-shaped hollows, pawed out among loose,
+disintegrating rock-chips and sand, upon some sunny spot commanding a
+good outlook, and partially sheltered from the winds that sweep those
+lofty peaks almost without intermission. Such is the cradle of the
+little mountaineer, aloft in the very sky; rocked in storms, curtained
+in clouds, sleeping in thin, icy air; but, wrapped in his hairy coat,
+and nourished by a strong, warm mother, defended from the talons of the
+eagle and the teeth of the sly coyote, the bonny lamb grows apace. He
+soon learns to nibble the tufted rock-grasses and leaves of the white
+spirsea; his horns begin to shoot, and before summer is done he is
+strong and agile, and goes forth with the flock, watched by the same
+divine love that tends the more helpless human lamb in its cradle by
+the fireside.
+
+Nothing is more commonly remarked by noisy, dusty trail-travelers in
+the Sierra than the want of animal life—no song-birds, no deer, no
+squirrels, no game of any kind, they say. But if such could only go
+away quietly into the wilderness, sauntering afoot and alone with
+natural deliberation, they would soon learn that these mountain
+mansions are not without inhabitants, many of whom, confiding and
+gentle, would not try to shun their acquaintance.
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM (DOMESTIC).]
+
+In the fall of 1873 I was tracing the South Fork of the San Joaquin up
+its wild cañon to its farthest glacier fountains. It was the season of
+alpine Indian summer. The sun beamed lovingly; the squirrels were
+nutting in the pine-trees, butterflies hovered about the last of the
+goldenrods, the willow and maple thickets were yellow, the meadows
+brown, and the whole sunny, mellow landscape glowed like a countenance
+in the deepest and sweetest repose. On my way over the glacier-polished
+rocks along the river, I came to an expanded portion of the cañon,
+about two miles long and half a mile wide, which formed a level park
+inclosed with picturesque granite walls like those of Yosemite Valley.
+Down through the middle of it poured the beautiful river shining and
+spangling in the golden light, yellow groves on its banks, and strips
+of brown meadow; while the whole park was astir with wild life, some of
+which even the noisiest and least observing of travelers must have seen
+had they been with me. Deer, with their supple, well-grown fawns,
+bounded from thicket to thicket as I advanced; grouse kept rising from
+the brown grass with a great whirring of wings, and, alighting on the
+lower branches of the pines and poplars, allowed a near approach, as if
+curious to see me. Farther on, a broad-shouldered wildcat showed
+himself, coming out of a grove, and crossing the river on a flood-jamb
+of logs, halting for a moment to look back. The bird-like tamias
+frisked about my feet everywhere among the pine-needles and seedy
+grass-tufts; cranes waded the shallows of the river-bends, the
+kingfisher rattled from perch to perch, and the blessed ouzel sang amid
+the spray of every cascade. Where may lonely wanderer find a more
+interesting family of mountain-dwellers, earth-born companions and
+fellow-mortals? It was afternoon when I joined them, and the glorious
+landscape began to fade in the gloaming before I awoke from their
+enchantment. Then I sought a camp-ground on the river-bank, made a
+cupful of tea, and lay down to sleep on a smooth place among the yellow
+leaves of an aspen grove. Next day I discovered yet grander landscapes
+and grander life. Following the river over huge, swelling rock-bosses
+through a majestic cañon, and past innumerable cascades, the scenery in
+general became gradually wilder and more alpine. The Sugar Pine and
+Silver Firs gave place to the hardier Cedar and Hemlock Spruce. The
+cañon walls became more rugged and bare, and gentians and arctic
+daisies became more abundant in the gardens and strips of meadow along
+the streams. Toward the middle of the afternoon I came to another
+valley, strikingly wild and original in all its features, and perhaps
+never before touched by human foot. As regards area of level
+bottom-land, it is one of the very smallest of the Yosemite type, but
+its walls are sublime, rising to a height of from 2000 to 4000 feet
+above the river. At the head of the valley the main cañon forks, as is
+found to be the case in all yosemites. The formation of this one is due
+chiefly to the action of two great glaciers, whose fountains lay to the
+eastward, on the flanks of Mounts Humphrey and Emerson and a cluster of
+nameless peaks farther south.
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP.]
+
+The gray, boulder-chafed river was singing loudly through the valley,
+but above its massy roar I heard the booming of a waterfall, which drew
+me eagerly on; and just as I emerged from the tangled groves and
+brier-thickets at the head of the valley, the main fork of the river
+came in sight, falling fresh from its glacier fountains in a snowy
+cascade, between granite walls 2000 feet high. The steep incline down
+which the glad waters thundered seemed to bar all farther progress. It
+was not long, however, before I discovered a crooked seam in the rock,
+by which I was enabled to climb to the edge of a terrace that crosses
+the cañon, and divides the cataract nearly in the middle. Here I sat
+down to take breath and make some entries in my note-book, taking
+advantage, at the same time, of my elevated position above the trees to
+gaze back over the valley into the heart of the noble landscape, little
+knowing the while what neighbors were near.
+
+After spending a few minutes in this way, I chanced to look across the
+fall, and there stood three sheep quietly observing me. Never did the
+sudden appearance of a mountain, or fall, or human friend more forcibly
+seize and rivet my attention. Anxiety to observe accurately held me
+perfectly still. Eagerly I marked the flowing undulations of their
+firm, braided muscles, their strong legs, ears, eyes, heads, their
+graceful rounded necks, the color of their hair, and the bold,
+upsweeping curves of their noble horns. When they moved I watched every
+gesture, while they, in no wise disconcerted either by my attention or
+by the tumultuous roar of the water, advanced deliberately alongside
+the rapids, between the two divisions of the cataract, turning now and
+then to look at me. Presently they came to a steep, ice-burnished
+acclivity, which they ascended by a succession of quick, short,
+stiff-legged leaps, reaching the top without a struggle. This was the
+most startling feat of mountaineering I had ever witnessed, and,
+considering only the mechanics of the thing, my astonishment could
+hardly have been greater had they displayed wings and taken to flight.
+“Surefooted” mules on such ground would have fallen and rolled like
+loosened boulders. Many a time, where the slopes are far lower, I have
+been compelled to take off my shoes and stockings, tie them to my belt,
+and creep barefooted, with the utmost caution. No wonder then, that I
+watched the progress of these animal mountaineers with keen sympathy,
+and exulted in the boundless sufficiency of wild nature displayed in
+their invention, construction, and keeping. A few minutes later I
+caught sight of a dozen more in one band, near the foot of the upper
+fall. They were standing on the same side of the river with me, only
+twenty-five or thirty yards away, looking as unworn and perfect as if
+created on the spot. It appeared by their tracks, which I had seen in
+the Little Yosemite, and by their present position, that when I came up
+the cañon they were all feeding together down in the valley, and in
+their haste to reach high ground, where they could look about them to
+ascertain the nature of the strange disturbance, they were divided,
+three ascending on one side the river, the rest on the other.
+
+The main band, headed by an experienced chief, now began to cross the
+wild rapids between the two divisions of the cascade. This was another
+exciting feat; for, among all the varied experiences of mountaineers,
+the crossing of boisterous, rock-dashed torrents is found to be one of
+the most trying to the nerves. Yet these fine fellows walked fearlessly
+to the brink, and jumped from boulder to boulder, holding themselves in
+easy poise above the whirling, confusing current, as if they were doing
+nothing extraordinary.
+
+[Illustration: CROSSING A CAÑON STREAM.]
+
+In the immediate foreground of this rare picture there was a fold of
+ice-burnished granite, traversed by a few bold lines in which
+rock-ferns and tufts of bryanthus were growing, the gray cañon walls on
+the sides, nobly sculptured and adorned with brown cedars and pines;
+lofty peaks in the distance, and in the middle ground the snowy fall,
+the voice and soul of the landscape; fringing bushes beating time to
+its thunder-tones, the brave sheep in front of it, their gray forms
+slightly obscured in the spray, yet standing out in good, heavy relief
+against the close white water, with their huge horns rising like the
+upturned roots of dead pine-trees, while the evening sunbeams streaming
+up the cañon colored all the picture a rosy purple and made it
+glorious. After crossing the river, the dauntless climbers, led by
+their chief, at once began to scale the cañon wall, turning now right,
+now left, in long, single file, keeping well apart out of one another’s
+way, and leaping in regular succession from crag to crag, now ascending
+slippery dome-curves, now walking leisurely along the edges of
+precipices, stopping at times to gaze down at me from some flat-topped
+rock, with heads held aslant, as if curious to learn what I thought
+about it, or whether I was likely to follow them. After reaching the
+top of the wall, which, at this place, is somewhere between 1500 and
+2000 feet high, they were still visible against the sky as they
+lingered, looking down in groups of twos or threes.
+
+Throughout the entire ascent they did not make a single awkward step,
+or an unsuccessful effort of any kind. I have frequently seen tame
+sheep in mountains jump upon a sloping rock-surface, hold on
+tremulously a few seconds, and fall back baffled and irresolute. But in
+the most trying situations, where the slightest want or inaccuracy
+would have been fatal, these always seemed to move in comfortable
+reliance on their strength and skill, the limits of which they never
+appeared to know. Moreover, each one of the flock, while following the
+guidance of the most experienced, yet climbed with intelligent
+independence as a perfect individual, capable of separate existence
+whenever it should wish or be compelled to withdraw from the little
+clan. The domestic sheep, on the contrary, is only a fraction of an
+animal, a whole flock being required to form an individual, just as
+numerous flowerets are required to make one complete sunflower.
+
+Those shepherds who, in summer, drive their flocks to the mountain
+pastures, and, while watching them night and day, have seen them
+frightened by bears and storms, and scattered like wind-driven chaff,
+will, in some measure, be able to appreciate the self-reliance and
+strength and noble individuality of Nature’s sheep.
+
+Like the Alp-climbing ibex of Europe, our mountaineer is said to plunge
+headlong down the faces of sheer precipices, and alight on his big
+horns. I know only two hunters who claim to have actually witnessed
+this feat; I never was so fortunate. They describe the act as a diving
+head-foremost. The horns are so large at the base that they cover the
+upper portion of the head down nearly to a level with the eyes, and the
+skull is exceedingly strong. I struck an old, bleached specimen on
+Mount Ritter a dozen blows with my ice-ax without breaking it. Such
+skulls would not fracture very readily by the wildest rock-diving, but
+other bones could hardly be expected to hold together in such a
+performance; and the mechanical difficulties in the way of controlling
+their movements, after striking upon an irregular surface, are, in
+themselves, sufficient to show this boulder-like method of progression
+to be impossible, even in the absence of all other evidence on the
+subject; moreover, the ewes follow wherever the rams may lead, although
+their horns are mere spikes. I have found many pairs of the horns of
+the old rams considerably battered, doubtless a result of fighting. I
+was particularly interested in the question, after witnessing the
+performances of this San Joaquin band upon the glaciated rocks at the
+foot of the falls; and as soon as I procured specimens and examined
+their feet, all the mystery disappeared. The secret, considered in
+connection with exceptionally strong muscles, is simply this: the wide
+posterior portion of the bottom of the foot, instead of wearing down
+and becoming flat and hard, like the feet of tame sheep and horses,
+bulges out in a soft, rubber-like pad or cushion, which not only grips
+and holds well on smooth rocks, but fits into small cavities, and down
+upon or against slight protuberances. Even the hardest portions of the
+edge of the hoof are comparatively soft and elastic; furthermore, the
+toes admit of an extraordinary amount of both lateral and vertical
+movement, allowing the foot to accommodate itself still more perfectly
+to the irregularities of rock surfaces, while at the same time
+increasing the gripping power.
+
+At the base of Sheep Rock, one of the winter strongholds of the Shasta
+flocks, there lives a stock-raiser who has had the advantage of
+observing the movements of wild sheep every winter; and, in the course
+of a conversation with him on the subject of their diving habits, he
+pointed to the front of a lava headland about 150 feet high, which is
+only eight or ten degrees out of the perpendicular. “There,” said he,
+“I followed a band of them fellows to the back of that rock yonder, and
+expected to capture them all, for I thought I had a dead thing on them.
+I got behind them on a narrow bench that runs along the face of the
+wall near the top and comes to an end where they couldn’t get away
+without falling and being killed; but they jumped off, and landed all
+right, as if that were the regular thing with them.”
+
+“What!” said I, “jumped 150 feet perpendicular! Did you see them do
+it?”
+
+“No,” he replied, “I didn’t see them going down, for I was behind them;
+but I saw them go off over the brink, and then I went below and found
+their tracks where they struck on the loose rubbish at the bottom. They
+just _sailed right off_, and landed on their feet right side up. That
+is the kind of animal _they_ is—beats anything else that goes on four
+legs.”
+
+[Illustration: WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE.]
+
+On another occasion, a flock that was pursued by hunters retreated to
+another portion of this same cliff where it is still higher, and, on
+being followed, they were seen jumping down in perfect order, one
+behind another, by two men who happened to be chopping where they had a
+fair view of them and could watch their progress from top to bottom of
+the precipice. Both ewes and rams made the frightful descent without
+evincing any extraordinary concern, hugging the rock closely, and
+controlling the velocity of their half falling, half leaping movements
+by striking at short intervals and holding back with their cushioned,
+rubber feet upon small ledges and roughened inclines until near the
+bottom, when they “sailed off” into the free air and alighted on their
+feet, but with their bodies so nearly in a vertical position that they
+appeared to be diving.
+
+It appears, therefore, that the methods of this wild mountaineering
+become clearly comprehensible as soon as we make ourselves acquainted
+with the rocks, and the kind of feet and muscles brought to bear upon
+them.
+
+The Modoc and Pah Ute Indians are, or rather have been, the most
+successful hunters of the wild sheep in the regions that have come
+under my own observation. I have seen large numbers of heads and horns
+in the caves of Mount Shasta and the Modoc lava-beds, where the Indians
+had been feasting in stormy weather; also in the cañons of the Sierra
+opposite Owen’s Valley; while the heavy obsidian arrow-heads found on
+some of the highest peaks show that this warfare has long been going
+on.
+
+In the more accessible ranges that stretch across the desert regions of
+western Utah and Nevada, considerable numbers of Indians used to hunt
+in company like packs of wolves, and being perfectly acquainted with
+the topography of their hunting-grounds, and with the habits and
+instincts of the game, they were pretty successful. On the tops of
+nearly every one of the Nevada mountains that I have visited, I found
+small, nest-like inclosures built of stones, in which, as I afterward
+learned, one or more Indians would lie in wait while their companions
+scoured the ridges below, knowing that the alarmed sheep would surely
+run to the summit, and when they could be made to approach with the
+wind they were shot at short range.
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP.]
+
+Still larger bands of Indians used to make extensive hunts upon some
+dominant mountain much frequented by the sheep, such as Mount Grant on
+the Wassuck Range to the west of Walker Lake. On some particular spot,
+favorably situated with reference to the well-known trails of the
+sheep, they built a high-walled corral, with long guiding wings
+diverging from the gateway; and into this inclosure they sometimes
+succeeded in driving the noble game. Great numbers of Indians were of
+course required, more, indeed, than they could usually muster, counting
+in squaws, children, and all; they were compelled, therefore, to build
+rows of dummy hunters out of stones, along the ridge-tops which they
+wished to prevent the sheep from crossing. And, without discrediting
+the sagacity of the game, these dummies were found effective; for, with
+a few live Indians moving about excitedly among them, they could hardly
+be distinguished at a little distance from men, by any one not in the
+secret. The whole ridge-top then seemed to be alive with hunters.
+
+The only animal that may fairly be regarded as a companion or rival of
+the sheep is the so-called Rocky Mountain goat (_Aplocerus montana_,
+Rich.), which, as its name indicates, is more antelope than goat. He,
+too, is a brave and hardy climber, fearlessly crossing the wildest
+summits, and braving the severest storms, but he is shaggy,
+short-legged, and much less dignified in demeanor than the sheep. His
+jet-black horns are only about five or six inches in length, and the
+long, white hair with which he is covered obscures the expression of
+his limbs. I have never yet seen a single specimen in the Sierra,
+though possibly a few flocks may have lived on Mount Shasta a
+comparatively short time ago.
+
+The ranges of these two mountaineers are pretty distinct, and they see
+but little of each other; the sheep being restricted mostly to the dry,
+inland mountains; the goat or chamois to the wet, snowy glacier-laden
+mountains of the northwest coast of the continent in Oregon,
+Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. Probably more than 200 dwell
+on the icy, volcanic cone of Mount Rainier; and while I was exploring
+the glaciers of Alaska I saw flocks of these admirable mountaineers
+nearly every day, and often followed their trails through the mazes of
+bewildering crevasses, in which they are excellent guides.
+
+Three species of deer are found in California,—the black-tailed,
+white-tailed, and mule deer. The first mentioned (_Cervus Columbianus_)
+is by far the most abundant, and occasionally meets the sheep during
+the summer on high glacier meadows, and along the edge of the timber
+line; but being a forest animal, seeking shelter and rearing its young
+in dense thickets, it seldom visits the wild sheep in its higher homes.
+The antelope, though not a mountaineer, is occasionally met in winter
+by the sheep while feeding along the edges of the sage-plains and bare
+volcanic hills to the east of the Sierra. So also is the mule deer,
+which is almost restricted in its range to this eastern region. The
+white-tailed species belongs to the coast ranges.
+
+Perhaps no wild animal in the world is without enemies, but
+highlanders, as a class, have fewer than lowlanders. The wily panther,
+slipping and crouching among long grass and bushes, pounces upon the
+antelope and deer, but seldom crosses the bald, craggy thresholds of
+the sheep. Neither can the bears be regarded as enemies; for, though
+they seek to vary their every-day diet of nuts and berries by an
+occasional meal of mutton, they prefer to hunt tame and helpless
+flocks. Eagles and coyotes, no doubt, capture an unprotected lamb at
+times, or some unfortunate beset in deep, soft snow, but these cases
+are little more than accidents. So, also, a few perish in
+long-continued snow-storms, though, in all my mountaineering, I have
+not found more than five or six that seemed to have met their fate in
+this way. A little band of three were discovered snow-bound in Bloody
+Canon a few years ago, and were killed with an ax by mountaineers, who
+chanced to be crossing the range in winter.
+
+Man is the most dangerous enemy of all, but even from him our brave
+mountain-dweller has little to fear in the remote solitudes of the High
+Sierra. The golden plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin were lately
+thronged with bands of elk and antelope, but, being fertile and
+accessible, they were required for human pastures. So, also, are many
+of the feeding-grounds of the deer—hill, valley, forest, and meadow—but
+it will be long before man will care to take the highland castles of
+the sheep. And when we consider here how rapidly entire species of
+noble animals, such as the elk, moose, and buffalo, are being pushed to
+the very verge of extinction, all lovers of wildness will rejoice with
+me in the rocky security of _Ovis montana_, the bravest of all the
+Sierra mountaineers.
+
+ [1] Pacific Railroad Survey, Vol. VIII, page 678.
+
+
+ [2] Audubon and Bachman’s “Quadrupeds of North America.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS
+
+
+Murphy’s camp is a curious old mining-town in Calaveras County, at an
+elevation of 2400 feet above the sea, situated like a nest in the
+center of a rough, gravelly region, rich in gold. Granites, slates,
+lavas, limestone, iron ores, quartz veins, auriferous gravels, remnants
+of dead fire-rivers and dead water-rivers are developed here side by
+side within a radius of a few miles, and placed invitingly open before
+the student like a book, while the people and the region beyond the
+camp furnish mines of study of never-failing interest and variety.
+
+When I discovered this curious place, I was tracing the channels of the
+ancient pre-glacial rivers, instructive sections of which have been
+laid bare here and in the adjacent regions by the miners. Rivers,
+according to the poets, “go on forever”; but those of the Sierra are
+young as yet and have scarcely learned the way down to the sea; while
+at least one generation of them have died and vanished together with
+most of the basins they drained. All that remains of them to tell their
+history is a series of interrupted fragments of channels, mostly choked
+with gravel, and buried beneath broad, thick sheets of lava. These are
+known as the “Dead Rivers of California,” and the gravel deposited in
+them is comprehensively called the “Blue Lead.” In some places the
+channels of the present rivers trend in the same direction, or nearly
+so, as those of the ancient rivers; but, in general, there is little
+correspondence between them, the entire drainage having been changed,
+or, rather, made new. Many of the hills of the ancient landscapes have
+become hollows, and the old hollows have become hills. Therefore the
+fragmentary channels, with their loads of auriferous gravel, occur in
+all kinds of unthought-of places, trending obliquely, or even at right
+angles to the present drainage, across the tops of lofty ridges or far
+beneath them, presenting impressive illustrations of the magnitude of
+the changes accomplished since those ancient streams were annihilated.
+The last volcanic period preceding the regeneration of the Sierra
+landscapes seems to have come on over all the range almost
+simultaneously, like the glacial period, notwithstanding lavas of
+different age occur together in many places, indicating numerous
+periods of activity in the Sierra fire-fountains. The most important of
+the ancient river-channels in this region is a section that extends
+from the south side of the town beneath Coyote Creek and the ridge
+beyond it to the Cañon of the Stanislaus; but on account of its depth
+below the general surface of the present valleys the rich gold gravels
+it is known to contain cannot be easily worked on a large scale. Their
+extraordinary richness may be inferred from the fact that many claims
+were profitably worked in them by sinking shafts to a depth of 200 feet
+or more, and hoisting the dirt by a windlass. Should the dip of this
+ancient channel be such as to make the Stanislaus Cañon available as a
+dump, then the grand deposit might be worked by the hydraulic method,
+and although a long, expensive tunnel would be required, the scheme
+might still prove profitable, for there is “millions in it.”
+
+The importance of these ancient gravels as gold fountains is well known
+to miners. Even the superficial placers of the present streams have
+derived much of their gold from them. According to all accounts, the
+Murphy placers have been very rich—“terrific rich,” as they say here.
+The hills have been cut and scalped, and every gorge and gulch and
+valley torn to pieces and disemboweled, expressing a fierce and
+desperate energy hard to understand. Still, any kind of effort-making
+is better than inaction, and there is something sublime in seeing men
+working in dead earnest at anything, pursuing an object with
+glacier-like energy and persistence. Many a brave fellow has recorded a
+most eventful chapter of life on these Calaveras rocks. But most of the
+pioneer miners are sleeping now, their wild day done, while the few
+survivors linger languidly in the washed-out gulches or sleepy village
+like harried bees around the ruins of their hive. “We have no industry
+left _now_,” they told me, “and no men; everybody and everything
+hereabouts has gone to decay. We are only bummers—out of the game, a
+thin scatterin’ of poor, dilapidated cusses, compared with what we used
+to be in the grand old gold-days. We were giants then, and you can look
+around here and see our tracks.” But although these lingering pioneers
+are perhaps more exhausted than the mines, and about as dead as the
+dead rivers, they are yet a rare and interesting set of men, with much
+gold mixed with the rough, rocky gravel of their characters; and they
+manifest a breeding and intelligence little looked for in such
+surroundings as theirs. As the heavy, long-continued grinding of the
+glaciers brought out the features of the Sierra, so the intense
+experiences of the gold period have brought out the features of these
+old miners, forming a richness and variety of character little known as
+yet. The sketches of Bret Harte, Hayes, and Miller have not exhausted
+this field by any means. It is interesting to note the extremes
+possible in one and the same character: harshness and gentleness,
+manliness and childishness, apathy and fierce endeavor. Men who, twenty
+years ago, would not cease their shoveling to save their lives, now
+play in the streets with children. Their long, Micawber-like waiting
+after the exhaustion of the placers has brought on an exaggerated form
+of dotage. I heard a group of brawny pioneers in the street eagerly
+discussing the quantity of tail required for a boy’s kite; and one
+graybeard undertook the sport of flying it, volunteering the
+information that he was a boy, “always was a boy, and d—n a man who was
+not a boy inside, however ancient outside!” Mines, morals, politics,
+the immortality of the soul, etc., were discussed beneath shade-trees
+and in saloons, the time for each being governed apparently by the
+temperature. Contact with Nature, and the habits of observation
+acquired in gold-seeking, had made them all, to some extent,
+collectors, and, like wood-rats, they had gathered all kinds of odd
+specimens into their cabins, and now required me to examine them. They
+were themselves the oddest and most interesting specimens. One of them
+offered to show me around the old diggings, giving me fair warning
+before setting out that I might not like him, “because,” said he,
+“people say I’m eccentric. I notice everything, and gather beetles and
+snakes and anything that’s queer; and so some don’t like me, and call
+me eccentric. I’m always trying to find out things. Now, there’s a
+weed; the Indians eat it for greens. What do you call those long-bodied
+flies with big heads?” “Dragon-flies,” I suggested. “Well, their jaws
+work sidewise, instead of up and down, and grasshoppers’ jaws work the
+same way, and therefore I think they are the same species. I always
+notice everything like that, and just because I do, they say I’m
+eccentric,” etc.
+
+Anxious that I should miss none of the wonders of their old gold-field,
+the good people had much to say about the marvelous beauty of Cave City
+Cave, and advised me to explore it. This I was very glad to do, and
+finding a guide who knew the way to the mouth of it, I set out from
+Murphy the next morning.
+
+The most beautiful and extensive of the mountain caves of California
+occur in a belt of metamorphic limestone that is pretty generally
+developed along the western flank of the Sierra from the McCloud River
+on the north to the Kaweah on the south, a distance of over 400 miles,
+at an elevation of from 2000 to 7000 feet above the sea. Besides this
+regular belt of caves, the California landscapes are diversified by
+long imposing ranks of sea-caves, rugged and variable in architecture,
+carved in the coast headlands and precipices by centuries of
+wave-dashing; and innumerable lava-caves, great and small, originating
+in the unequal flowing and hardening of the lava sheets in which they
+occur, fine illustrations of which are presented in the famous Modoc
+Lava Beds, and around the base of icy Shasta. In this comprehensive
+glance we may also notice the shallow wind-worn caves in stratified
+sandstones along the margins of the plains; and the cave-like recesses
+in the Sierra slates and granites, where bears and other mountaineers
+find shelter during the fall of sudden storms. In general, however, the
+grand massive uplift of the Sierra, as far as it has been laid-bare to
+observation, is about as solid and caveless as a boulder.
+
+Fresh beauty opens one’s eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very
+abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps
+prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing,
+therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the
+sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or
+in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns
+underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those
+out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our
+return to common every-day beauty.
+
+Our way from Murphy’s to the cave lay across a series of picturesque,
+moory ridges in the chaparral region between the brown foot-hills and
+the forests, a flowery stretch of rolling hill-waves breaking here and
+there into a kind of rocky foam on the higher summits, and sinking into
+delightful bosky hollows embowered with vines. The day was a fine
+specimen of California summer, pure sunshine, unshaded most of the time
+by a single cloud. As the sun rose higher, the heated air began to flow
+in tremulous waves from every southern slope. The sea-breeze that
+usually comes up the foot-hills at this season, with cooling on its
+wings, was scarcely perceptible. The birds were assembled beneath leafy
+shade, or made short, languid flights in search of food, all save the
+majestic buzzard; with broad wings outspread he sailed the warm air
+unwearily from ridge to ridge, seeming to enjoy the fervid sunshine
+like a butterfly. Squirrels, too, whose spicy ardor no heat or cold may
+abate, were nutting among the pines, and the innumerable hosts of the
+insect kingdom were throbbing and wavering unwearied as sunbeams.
+
+This brushy, berry-bearing region used to be a deer and bear pasture,
+but since the disturbances of the gold period these fine animals have
+almost wholly disappeared. Here, also, once roamed the mastodon and
+elephant, whose bones are found entombed in the river gravels and
+beneath thick folds of lava. Toward noon, as we were riding slowly over
+bank and brae, basking in the unfeverish sun-heat, we witnessed the
+upheaval of a new mountain-range, a Sierra of clouds abounding in
+landscapes as truly sublime and beautiful—if only we have a mind to
+think so and eyes to see—as the more ancient rocky Sierra beneath it,
+with its forests and waterfalls; reminding us that, as there is a lower
+world of caves, so, also, there is an upper world of clouds. Huge,
+bossy cumuli developed with astonishing rapidity from mere buds,
+swelling with visible motion into colossal mountains, and piling
+higher, higher, in long massive ranges, peak beyond peak, dome over
+dome, with many a picturesque valley and shadowy cave between; while
+the dark firs and pines of the upper benches of the Sierra were
+projected against their pearl bosses with exquisite clearness of
+outline. These cloud mountains vanished in the azure as quickly as they
+were developed, leaving no detritus; but they were not a whit less real
+or interesting on this account. The more enduring hills over which we
+rode were vanishing as surely as they, only not so fast, a difference
+which is great or small according to the standpoint from which it is
+contemplated.
+
+At the bottom of every dell we found little homesteads embosomed in
+wild brush and vines wherever the recession of the hills left patches
+of arable ground. These secluded flats are settled mostly by Italians
+and Germans, who plant a few vegetables and grape-vines at odd times,
+while their main business is mining and prospecting. In spite of all
+the natural beauty of these dell cabins, they can hardly be called
+homes. They are only a better kind of camp, gladly abandoned whenever
+the hoped-for gold harvest has been gathered. There is an air of
+profound unrest and melancholy about the best of them. Their beauty is
+thrust upon them by exuberant Nature, apart from which they are only a
+few logs and boards rudely jointed and without either ceiling or floor,
+a rough fireplace with corresponding cooking utensils, a shelf-bed, and
+stool. The ground about them is strewn with battered prospecting-pans,
+picks, sluice-boxes, and quartz specimens from many a ledge, indicating
+the trend of their owners’ hard lives.
+
+The ride from Murphy’s to the cave is scarcely two hours long, but we
+lingered among quartz-ledges and banks of dead river gravel until long
+after noon. At length emerging from a narrow-throated gorge, a small
+house came in sight set in a thicket of fig-trees at the base of a
+limestone hill. “That,” said my guide, pointing to the house, “is Cave
+City, and the cave is in that gray hill.” Arriving at the one house of
+this one-house city, we were boisterously welcomed by three drunken men
+who had come to town to hold a spree. The mistress of the house tried
+to keep order, and in reply to our inquiries told us that the cave
+guide was then in the cave with a party of ladies. “And must we wait
+until he returns?” we asked. No, that was unnecessary; we might take
+candles and go into the cave alone, provided we shouted from time to
+time so as to be found by the guide, and were careful not to fall over
+the rocks or into the dark pools. Accordingly taking a trail from the
+house, we were led around the base of the hill to the mouth of the
+cave, a small inconspicuous archway, mossy around the edges and shaped
+like the door of a water-ouzel’s nest, with no appreciable hint or
+advertisement of the grandeur of the many crystal chambers within.
+Lighting our candles, which seemed to have no illuminating power in the
+thick darkness, we groped our way onward as best we could along narrow
+lanes and alleys, from chamber to chamber, around rustic columns and
+heaps of fallen rocks, stopping to rest now and then in particularly
+beautiful places—fairy alcoves furnished with admirable variety of
+shelves and tables, and round bossy stools covered with sparkling
+crystals. Some of the corridors were muddy, and in plodding along these
+we seemed to be in the streets of some prairie village in spring-time.
+Then we would come to handsome marble stairways conducting right and
+left into upper chambers ranged above one another three or four stories
+high, floors, ceilings, and walls lavishly decorated with innumerable
+crystalline forms. After thus wandering exploringly, and alone for a
+mile or so, fairly enchanted, a murmur of voices and a gleam of light
+betrayed the approach of the guide and his party, from whom, when they
+came up, we received a most hearty and natural stare, as we stood half
+concealed in a side recess among stalagmites. I ventured to ask the
+dripping, crouching company how they had enjoyed their saunter, anxious
+to learn how the strange sunless scenery of the underworld had
+impressed them. “Ah, it’s nice! It’s splendid!” they all replied and
+echoed. “The Bridal Chamber back here is just glorious! This morning we
+came down from the Calaveras Big Tree Grove, and the trees are nothing
+to it.” After making this curious comparison they hastened sunward, the
+guide promising to join us shortly on the bank of a deep pool, where we
+were to wait for him. This is a charming little lakelet of unknown
+depth, never yet stirred by a breeze, and its eternal calm excites the
+imagination even more profoundly than the silvery lakes of the glaciers
+rimmed with meadows and snow and reflecting sublime mountains.
+
+Our guide, a jolly, rollicking Italian, led us into the heart of the
+hill, up and down, right and left, from chamber to chamber more and
+more magnificent, all a-glitter like a glacier cave with icicle-like
+stalactites and stalagmites combined in forms of indescribable beauty.
+We were shown one large room that was occasionally used as a
+dancing-hall; another that was used as a chapel, with natural pulpit
+and crosses and pews, sermons in every stone, where a priest had said
+mass. Mass-saying is not so generally developed in connection with
+natural wonders as dancing. One of the first conceits excited by the
+giant Sequoias was to cut one of them down and dance on its stump. We
+have also seen dancing in the spray of Niagara; dancing in the famous
+Bower Cave above Coulterville; and nowhere have I seen so much dancing
+as in Yosemite. A dance on the inaccessible South Dome would likely
+follow the making of an easy way to the top of it.
+
+It was delightful to witness here the infinite deliberation of Nature,
+and the simplicity of her methods in the production of such mighty
+results, such perfect repose combined with restless enthusiastic
+energy. Though cold and bloodless as a landscape of polar ice, building
+was going on in the dark with incessant activity. The archways and
+ceilings were everywhere hung with down-growing crystals, like inverted
+groves of leafless saplings, some of them large, others delicately
+attenuated, each tipped with a single drop of water, like the terminal
+bud of a pine-tree. The only appreciable sounds were the dripping and
+tinkling of water failing into pools or faintly plashing on the crystal
+floors.
+
+In some places the crystal decorations are arranged in graceful flowing
+folds deeply plicated like stiff silken drapery. In others straight
+lines of the ordinary stalactite forms are combined with reference to
+size and tone in a regularly graduated system like the strings of a
+harp with musical tones corresponding thereto; and on these stone harps
+we played by striking the crystal strings with a stick. The delicious
+liquid tones they gave forth seemed perfectly divine as they sweetly
+whispered and wavered through the majestic halls and died away in
+faintest cadence,—the music of fairy-land. Here we lingered and
+reveled, rejoicing to find so much music in stony silence, so much
+splendor in darkness, so many mansions in the depths of the mountains,
+buildings ever in process of construction, yet ever finished,
+developing from perfection to perfection, profusion without
+overabundance; every particle visible or invisible in glorious motion,
+marching to the music of the spheres in a region regarded as the abode
+of eternal stillness and death.
+
+The outer chambers of mountain caves are frequently selected as homes
+by wild beasts. In the Sierra, however, they seem to prefer homes and
+hiding-places in chaparral and beneath shelving precipices, as I have
+never seen their tracks in any of the caves. This is the more
+remarkable because notwithstanding the darkness and oozing water there
+is nothing uncomfortably cellar-like or sepulchral about them.
+
+When we emerged into the bright landscapes of the sun everything looked
+brighter, and we felt our faith in Nature’s beauty strengthened, and
+saw more clearly that beauty is universal and immortal, above, beneath,
+on land and sea, mountain and plain, in heat and cold, light and
+darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+THE BEE-PASTURES
+
+
+When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its
+entire length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy
+Sierra to the ocean.
+
+Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin
+wilderness—through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers,
+along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain,
+park and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the
+mountains—throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber
+line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish, abundance. Here they grew more or
+less apart in special sheets and patches of no great size, there in
+broad, flowing folds hundreds of miles in length—zones of polleny
+forests, zones of flowery chaparral, stream-tangles of rubus and wild
+rose, sheets of golden composite, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds
+of bryanthus and clover, and so on, certain species blooming somewhere
+all the year round.
+
+But of late years plows and sheep have made sad havoc in these glorious
+pastures, destroying tens of thousands of the flowery acres like a
+fire, and banishing many species of the best honey-plants to rocky
+cliffs and fence-corners, while, on the other hand, cultivation thus
+far has given no adequate compensation, at least in kind; only acres of
+alfalfa for miles of the richest wild pasture, ornamental roses and
+honeysuckles around cottage doors for cascades of wild roses in the
+dells, and small, square orchards and orange-groves for broad
+mountain-belts of chaparral.
+
+The Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March,
+April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so
+marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a
+distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred
+flowers at every step. Mints, gilias, nemophilas, castilleias, and
+innumerable compositae were so crowded together that, had ninety-nine
+per cent. of them been taken away, the plain would still have seemed to
+any but Californians extravagantly flowery. The radiant, honeyful
+corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another,
+glowed in the living light like a sunset sky—one sheet of purple and
+gold, with the bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it from
+the north, the San Joaquin from the south, and their many tributaries
+sweeping in at right angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into
+sections fringed with trees.
+
+Along the rivers there is a strip of bottom-land, countersunk beneath
+the general level, and wider toward the foot-hills, where magnificent
+oaks, from three to eight feet in diameter, cast grateful masses of
+shade over the open, prairie-like levels. And close along the water’s
+edge there was a fine jungle of tropical luxuriance, composed of
+wild-rose and bramble bushes and a great variety of climbing vines,
+wreathing and interlacing the branches and trunks of willows and
+alders, and swinging across from summit to summit in heavy festoons.
+Here the wild bees reveled in fresh bloom long after the flowers of the
+drier plain had withered and gone to seed. And in midsummer, when the
+“blackberries” were ripe, the Indians came from the mountains to
+feast—men, women, and babies in long, noisy trains, often joined by the
+farmers of the neighborhood, who gathered this wild fruit with
+commendable appreciation of its superior flavor, while their home
+orchards were full of ripe peaches, apricots, nectarines, and figs, and
+their vineyards were laden with grapes. But, though these luxuriant,
+shaggy river-beds were thus distinct from the smooth, treeless plain,
+they made no heavy dividing lines in general views. The whole appeared
+as one continuous sheet of bloom bounded only by the mountains.
+
+When I first saw this central garden, the most extensive and regular of
+all the bee-pastures of the State, it seemed all one sheet of plant
+gold, hazy and vanishing in the distance, distinct as a new map along
+the foot-hills at my feet.
+
+Descending the eastern slopes of the Coast Range through beds of gilias
+and lupines, and around many a breezy hillock and bush-crowned
+headland, I at length waded out into the midst of it. All the ground
+was covered, not with grass and green leaves, but with radiant
+corollas, about ankle-deep next the foot-hills, knee-deep or more five
+or six miles out. Here were bahia, madia, madaria, burrielia,
+chrysopsis, corethrogyne, grindelia, etc., growing in close social
+congregations of various shades of yellow, blending finely with the
+purples of clarkia, orthocarpus, and oenothera, whose delicate petals
+were drinking the vital sunbeams without giving back any sparkling
+glow.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA.]
+
+Because so long a period of extreme drought succeeds the rainy season,
+most of the vegetation is composed of annuals, which spring up
+simultaneously, and bloom together at about the same height above the
+ground, the general surface being but slightly ruffled by the taller
+phacelias, pentstemons, and groups of _Salvia carduacea_, the king of
+the mints.
+
+Sauntering in any direction, hundreds of these happy sun-plants brushed
+against my feet at every step, and closed over them as if I were wading
+in liquid gold. The air was sweet with fragrance, the larks sang their
+blessed songs, rising on the wing as I advanced, then sinking out of
+sight in the polleny sod, while myriads of wild bees stirred the lower
+air with their monotonous hum—monotonous, yet forever fresh and sweet
+as every-day sunshine. Hares and spermophiles showed themselves in
+considerable numbers in shallow places, and small bands of antelopes
+were almost constantly in sight, gazing curiously from some slight
+elevation, and then bounding swiftly away with unrivaled grace of
+motion. Yet I could discover no crushed flowers to mark their track,
+nor, indeed, any destructive action of any wild foot or tooth whatever.
+
+The great yellow days circled by uncounted, while I drifted toward the
+north, observing the countless forms of life thronging about me, lying
+down almost anywhere on the approach of night. And what glorious
+botanical beds I had! Oftentimes on awaking I would find several new
+species leaning over me and looking me full in the face, so that my
+studies would begin before rising.
+
+About the first of May I turned eastward, crossing the San Joaquin
+River between the mouths of the Tuolumne and Merced, and by the time I
+had reached the Sierra foot-hills most of the vegetation had gone to
+seed and become as dry as hay.
+
+All the seasons of the great plain are warm or temperate, and
+bee-flowers are never wholly wanting; but the grand springtime—the
+annual resurrection—is governed by the rains, which usually set in
+about the middle of November or the beginning of December. Then the
+seeds, that for six months have lain on the ground dry and fresh as if
+they had been gathered into barns, at once unfold their treasured life.
+The general brown and purple of the ground, and the dead vegetation of
+the preceding year, give place to the green of mosses and liverworts
+and myriads of young leaves. Then one species after another comes into
+flower, gradually overspreading the green with yellow and purple, which
+lasts until May.
+
+The “rainy season” is by no means a gloomy, soggy period of constant
+cloudiness and rain. Perhaps nowhere else in North America, perhaps in
+the world, are the months of December, January, February, and March so
+full of bland, plant-building sunshine. Referring to my notes of the
+winter and spring of 1868-69, every day of which I spent out of doors,
+on that section of the plain lying between the Tuolumne and Merced
+rivers, I find that the first rain of the season fell on December 18th.
+January had only six rainy days—that is, days on which rain fell;
+February three, March five, April three, and May three, completing the
+so-called rainy season, which was about an average one. The ordinary
+rain-storm of this region is seldom very cold or violent. The winds,
+which in settled weather come from the northwest, veer round into the
+opposite direction, the sky fills gradually and evenly with one general
+cloud, from which, the rain falls steadily, often for days in
+succession, at a temperature of about 45° or 50°.
+
+More than seventy-five per cent. of all the rain of this season came
+from the northwest, down the coast over southeastern Alaska, British
+Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, though the local winds of these
+circular storms blow from the southeast. One magnificent local storm
+from the northwest fell on March 21. A massive, round-browed cloud came
+swelling and thundering over the flowery plain in most imposing
+majesty, its bossy front burning white and purple in the full blaze of
+the sun, while warm rain poured from its ample fountains like a
+cataract, beating down flowers and bees, and flooding the dry
+watercourses as suddenly as those of Nevada are flooded by the
+so-called “cloudbursts.” But in less than half an hour not a trace of
+the heavy, mountain-like cloud-structure was left in the sky, and the
+bees were on the wing, as if nothing more gratefully refreshing could
+have been sent them.
+
+By the end of January four species of plants were in flower, and five
+or six mosses had already adjusted their hoods and were in the prime of
+life; but the flowers were not sufficiently numerous as yet to affect
+greatly the general green of the young leaves. Violets made their
+appearance in the first week of February, and toward the end of this
+month the warmer portions of the plain were already golden with myriads
+of the flowers of rayed composite.
+
+This was the full springtime. The sunshine grew warmer and richer, new
+plants bloomed every day; the air became more tuneful with humming
+wings, and sweeter with the fragrance of the opening flowers. Ants and
+ground squirrels were getting ready for their summer work, rubbing
+their benumbed limbs, and sunning themselves on the husk-piles before
+their doors, and spiders were busy mending their old webs, or weaving
+new ones.
+
+In March, the vegetation was more than doubled in depth and color;
+claytonia, calandrinia, a large white gilia, and two nemophilas were in
+bloom, together with a host of yellow composite, tall enough now to
+bend in the wind and show wavering ripples of shade.
+
+In April, plant-life, as a whole, reached its greatest height, and the
+plain, over all its varied surface, was mantled with a close, furred
+plush of purple and golden corollas. By the end of this month, most of
+the species had ripened their seeds, but undecayed, still seemed to be
+in bloom from the numerous corolla-like involucres and whorls of chaffy
+scales of the composite. In May, the bees found in flower only a few
+deep-set liliaceous plants and eriogonums.
+
+June, July, August, and September is the season of rest and sleep,—a
+winter of dry heat,—followed in October by a second outburst of bloom
+at the very driest time of the year. Then, after the shrunken mass of
+leaves and stalks of the dead vegetation crinkle and turn to dust
+beneath the foot, as if it had been baked in an oven, _Hemizonia
+virgata_, a slender, unobtrusive little plant, from six inches to three
+feet high, suddenly makes its appearance in patches miles in extent,
+like a resurrection of the bloom of April. I have counted upward of
+3000 flowers, five eighths of an inch in diameter, on a single plant.
+Both its leaves and stems are so slender as to be nearly invisible, at
+a distance of a few yards, amid so showy a multitude of flowers. The
+ray and disk flowers are both yellow, the stamens purple, and the
+texture of the rays is rich and velvety, like the petals of garden
+pansies. The prevailing wind turns all the heads round to the
+southeast, so that in facing northwestward we have the flowers looking
+us in the face. In my estimation, this little plant, the last born of
+the brilliant host of compositae that glorify the plain, is the most
+interesting of all. It remains in flower until November, uniting with
+two or three species of wiry eriogonums, which continue the floral
+chain around December to the spring flowers of January. Thus, although
+the main bloom and honey season is only about three months long, the
+floral circle, however thin around some of the hot, rainless months, is
+never completely broken.
+
+How long the various species of wild bees have lived in this
+honey-garden, nobody knows; probably ever since the main body of the
+present flora gained possession of the land, toward the close of the
+glacial period. The first brown honey-bees brought to California are
+said to have arrived in San Francisco in March, 1853. A bee-keeper by
+the name of Shelton purchased a lot, consisting of twelve swarms, from
+some one at Aspinwall, who had brought them from New York. When landed
+at San Francisco, all the hives contained live bees, but they finally
+dwindled to one hive, which was taken to San José. The little
+immigrants flourished and multiplied in the bountiful pastures of the
+Santa Clara Valley, sending off three swarms the first season. The
+owner was killed shortly afterward, and in settling up his estate, two
+of the swarms were sold at auction for $105 and $110 respectively.
+Other importations were made, from time to time, by way of the Isthmus,
+and, though great pains were taken to insure success, about one half
+usually died on the way. Four swarms were brought safely across the
+plains in 1859, the hives being placed in the rear end of a wagon,
+which was stopped in the afternoon to allow the bees to fly and feed in
+the floweriest places that were within reach until dark, when the hives
+were closed.
+
+In 1855, two years after the time of the first arrivals from New York,
+a single swarm was brought over from San José, and let fly in the Great
+Central Plain. Bee-culture, however, has never gained much attention
+here, notwithstanding the extraordinary abundance of honey-bloom, and
+the high price of honey during the early years. A few hives are found
+here and there among settlers who chanced to have learned something
+about the business before coming to the State. But sheep, cattle,
+grain, and fruit raising are the chief industries, as they require less
+skill and care, while the profits thus far have been greater. In 1856
+honey sold here at from one and a half to two dollars per pound. Twelve
+years later the price had fallen to twelve and a half cents. In 1868 I
+sat down to dinner with a band of ravenous sheep-shearers at a ranch on
+the San Joaquin, where fifteen or twenty hives were kept, and our host
+advised us not to spare the large pan of honey he had placed on the
+table, as it was the cheapest article he had to offer. In all my walks,
+however, I have never come upon a regular bee-ranch in the Central
+Valley like those so common and so skilfully managed in the southern
+counties of the State. The few pounds of honey and wax produced are
+consumed at home, and are scarcely taken into account among the coarser
+products of the farm. The swarms that escape from their careless owners
+have a weary, perplexing time of it in seeking suitable homes. Most of
+them make their way to the foot-hills of the mountains, or to the trees
+that line the banks of the rivers, where some hollow log or trunk may
+be found. A friend of mine, while out hunting on the San Joaquin, came
+upon an old coon trap, hidden among some tall grass, near the edge of
+the river, upon which he sat down to rest. Shortly afterward his
+attention was attracted to a crowd of angry bees that were flying
+excitedly about his head, when he discovered that he was sitting upon
+their hive, which was found to contain more than 200 pounds of honey.
+Out in the broad, swampy delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin
+rivers, the little wanderers have been known to build their combs in a
+bunch of rushes, or stiff, wiry grass, only slightly protected from the
+weather, and in danger every spring of being carried away by floods.
+They have the advantage, however, of a vast extent of fresh pasture,
+accessible only to themselves.
+
+The present condition of the Grand Central Garden is very different
+from that we have sketched. About twenty years ago, when the gold
+placers had been pretty thoroughly exhausted, the attention of
+fortune-seekers—not home-seekers—was, in great part, turned away from
+the mines to the fertile plains, and many began experiments in a kind
+of restless, wild agriculture. A load of lumber would be hauled to some
+spot on the free wilderness, where water could be easily found, and a
+rude box-cabin built. Then a gang-plow was procured, and a dozen
+mustang ponies, worth ten or fifteen dollars apiece, and with these
+hundreds of acres were stirred as easily as if the land had been under
+cultivation for years, tough, perennial roots being almost wholly
+absent. Thus a ranch was established, and from these bare wooden huts,
+as centers of desolation, the wild flora vanished in ever-widening
+circles. But the arch destroyers are the shepherds, with their flocks
+of hoofed locusts, sweeping over the ground like a fire, and trampling
+down every rod that escapes the plow as completely as if the whole
+plain were a cottage garden-plot without a fence. But notwithstanding
+these destroyers, a thousand swarms of bees may be pastured here for
+every one now gathering honey. The greater portion is still covered
+every season with a repressed growth of bee-flowers, for most of the
+species are annuals, and many of them are not relished by sheep or
+cattle, while the rapidity of their growth enables them to develop and
+mature their seeds before any foot has time to crush them. The ground
+is, therefore, kept sweet, and the race is perpetuated, though only as
+a suggestive shadow of the magnificence of its wildness.
+
+The time will undoubtedly come when the entire area of this noble
+valley will be tilled like a garden, when the fertilizing waters of the
+mountains, now flowing to the sea, will be distributed to every acre,
+giving rise to prosperous towns, wealth, arts, etc. Then, I suppose,
+there will be few left, even among botanists, to deplore the vanished
+primeval flora. In the mean time, the pure waste going on—the wanton
+destruction of the innocents—is a sad sight to see, and the sun may
+well be pitied in being compelled to look on.
+
+The bee-pastures of the Coast Ranges last longer and are more varied
+than those of the great plain, on account of differences of soil and
+climate, moisture, and shade, etc. Some of the mountains are upward of
+4000 feet in height, and small streams, springs, oozy bogs, etc., occur
+in great abundance and variety in the wooded regions, while open parks,
+flooded with sunshine, and hill-girt valleys lying at different
+elevations, each with its own peculiar climate and exposure, possess
+the required conditions for the development of species and families of
+plants widely varied.
+
+Next the plain there is, first, a series of smooth hills, planted with
+a rich and showy vegetation that differs but little from that of the
+plain itself—as if the edge of the plain had been lifted and bent into
+flowing folds, with all its flowers in place, only toned down a little
+as to their luxuriance, and a few new species introduced, such as the
+hill lupines, mints, and gilias. The colors show finely when thus held
+to view on the slopes; patches of red, purple, blue, yellow, and white,
+blending around the edges, the whole appearing at a little distance
+like a map colored in sections.
+
+Above this lies the park and chaparral region, with oaks, mostly
+evergreen, planted wide apart, and blooming shrubs from three to ten
+feet high; manzanita and ceanothus of several species, mixed with
+rhamnus, cercis, pickeringia, cherry, amelanchier, and adenostoma, in
+shaggy, interlocking thickets, and many species of hosackia, clover,
+monardella, castilleia, etc., in the openings.
+
+The main ranges send out spurs somewhat parallel to their axes,
+inclosing level valleys, many of them quite extensive, and containing a
+great profusion of sun-loving bee-flowers in their wild state; but
+these are, in great part, already lost to the bees by cultivation.
+
+Nearer the coast are the giant forests of the redwoods, extending from
+near the Oregon line to Santa Cruz. Beneath the cool, deep shade of
+these majestic trees the ground is occupied by ferns, chiefly
+woodwardia and aspidiums, with only a few flowering plants—oxalis,
+trientalis, erythronium, fritillaria, smilax, and other shade-lovers.
+But all along the redwood belt there are sunny openings on hill-slopes
+looking to the south, where the giant trees stand back, and give the
+ground to the small sunflowers and the bees. Around the lofty redwood
+walls of these little bee-acres there is usually a fringe of Chestnut
+Oak, Laurel, and Madroño, the last of which is a surpassingly beautiful
+tree, and a great favorite with the bees. The trunks of the largest
+specimens are seven or eight feet thick, and about fifty feet high; the
+bark red and chocolate colored, the leaves plain, large, and glossy,
+like those of _Magnolia grandiflora_, while the flowers are
+yellowish-white, and urn-shaped, in well-proportioned panicles, from
+five to ten inches long. When in full bloom, a single tree seems to be
+visited at times by a whole hive of bees at once, and the deep hum of
+such a multitude makes the listener guess that more than the ordinary
+work of honey-winning must be going on.
+
+How perfectly enchanting and care-obliterating are these withdrawn
+gardens of the woods—long vistas opening to the sea—sunshine sifting
+and pouring upon the flowery ground in a tremulous, shifting mosaic, as
+the light-ways in the leafy wall open and close with the swaying
+breeze—shining leaves and flowers, birds and bees, mingling together in
+springtime harmony, and soothing fragrance exhaling from a thousand
+thousand fountains! In these balmy, dissolving days, when the deep
+heart-beats of Nature are felt thrilling rocks and trees and everything
+alike, common business and friends are happily forgotten, and even the
+natural honey-work of bees, and the care of birds for their young, and
+mothers for their children, seem slightly out of place.
+
+To the northward, in Humboldt and the adjacent counties, whole
+hillsides are covered with rhododendron, making a glorious melody of
+bee-bloom in the spring. And the Western azalea, hardly less flowery,
+grows in massy thickets three to eight feet high around the edges of
+groves and woods as far south as San Luis Obispo, usually accompanied
+by manzanita; while the valleys, with their varying moisture and shade,
+yield a rich variety of the smaller honey-flowers, such as mentha,
+lycopus, micromeria, audibertia, trichostema, and other mints; with
+vaccinium, wild strawberry, geranium, calais, and goldenrod; and in the
+cool glens along the stream-banks, where the shade of trees is not too
+deep, spiraea, dog-wood, heteromeles, and calycanthus, and many species
+of rubus form interlacing tangles, some portion of which continues in
+bloom for months.
+
+Though the coast region was the first to be invaded and settled by
+white men, it has suffered less from a bee point of view than either of
+the other main divisions, chiefly, no doubt, because of the unevenness
+of the surface, and because it is owned and protected instead of lying
+exposed to the flocks of the wandering “sheepmen.” These remarks apply
+more particularly to the north half of the coast. Farther south there
+is less moisture, less forest shade, and the honey flora is less
+varied.
+
+The Sierra region is the largest of the three main divisions of the
+bee-lands of the State, and the most regularly varied in its
+subdivisions, owing to their gradual rise from the level of the Central
+Plain to the alpine summits. The foot-hill region is about as dry and
+sunful, from the end of May until the setting in of the winter rains,
+as the plain. There are no shady forests, no damp glens, at all like
+those lying at the same elevations in the Coast Mountains. The social
+compositae of the plain, with a few added species, form the bulk of the
+herbaceous portion of the vegetation up to a height of 1500 feet or
+more, shaded lightly here and there with oaks and Sabine Pines, and
+interrupted by patches of ceanothus and buckeye. Above this, and just
+below the forest region, there is a dark, heath-like belt of chaparral,
+composed almost exclusively of _Adenostoma fasciculata_, a bush
+belonging to the rose family, from five to eight feet high, with small,
+round leaves in fascicles, and bearing a multitude of small white
+flowers in panicles on the ends of the upper branches. Where it occurs
+at all, it usually covers all the ground with a close, impenetrable
+growth, scarcely broken for miles.
+
+Up through the forest region, to a height of about 9000 feet above
+sea-level, there are ragged patches of manzanita, and five or six
+species of ceanothus, called deer-brush or California lilac. These are
+the most important of all the honey-bearing bushes of the Sierra.
+_Chamaebatia foliolosa_, a little shrub about a foot high, with flowers
+like the strawberry, makes handsome carpets beneath the pines, and
+seems to be a favorite with the bees; while pines themselves furnish
+unlimited quantities of pollen and honey-dew. The product of a single
+tree, ripening its pollen at the right time of year, would be
+sufficient for the wants of a whole hive. Along the streams there is a
+rich growth of lilies, larkspurs, pedicularis, castilleias, and clover.
+The alpine region contains the flowery glacier meadows, and countless
+small gardens in all sorts of places full of potentilla of several
+species, spraguea, ivesia, epilobium, and goldenrod, with beds of
+bryanthus and the charming cassiope covered with sweet bells. Even the
+tops of the mountains are blessed with flowers,—dwarf phlox,
+polemonium, ribes, hulsea, etc. I have seen wild bees and butterflies
+feeding at a height of 13,000 feet above the sea. Many, however, that
+go up these dangerous heights never come down again. Some, undoubtedly,
+perish in storms, and I have found thousands lying dead or benumbed on
+the surface of the glaciers, to which they had perhaps been attracted
+by the white glare, taking them for beds of bloom.
+
+From swarms that escaped their owners in the lowlands, the honey-bee is
+now generally distributed throughout the whole length of the Sierra, up
+to an elevation of 8000 feet above sea-level. At this height they
+flourish without care, though the snow every winter is deep. Even
+higher than this several bee-trees have been cut which contained over
+200 pounds of honey.
+
+The destructive action of sheep has not been so general on the mountain
+pastures as on those of the great plain, but in many places it has been
+more complete, owing to the more friable character of the soil, and its
+sloping position. The slant digging and down-raking action of hoofs on
+the steeper slopes of moraines has uprooted and buried many of the
+tender plants from year to year, without allowing them time to mature
+their seeds. The shrubs, too, are badly bitten, especially the various
+species of ceanothus. Fortunately, neither sheep nor cattle care to
+feed on the manzanita, spiraea, or adenostoma; and these fine
+honey-bushes are too stiff and tall, or grow in places too rough and
+inaccessible, to be trodden under foot. Also the cañon walls and
+gorges, which form so considerable a part of the area of the range,
+while inaccessible to domestic sheep, are well fringed with
+honey-shrubs, and contain thousands of lovely bee-gardens, lying hid in
+narrow side-cañons and recesses fenced with avalanche taluses, and on
+the top of flat, projecting headlands, where only bees would think to
+look for them.
+
+But, on the other hand, a great portion of the woody plants that escape
+the feet and teeth of the sheep are destroyed by the shepherds by means
+of running fires, which are set everywhere during the dry autumn for
+the purpose of burning off the old fallen trunks and underbrush, with a
+view to improving the pastures, and making more open ways for the
+flocks. These destructive sheep-fires sweep through nearly the entire
+forest belt of the range, from one extremity to the other, consuming
+not only the underbrush, but the young trees and seedlings on which the
+permanence of the forests depends; thus setting in motion a long train
+of evils which will certainly reach far beyond bees and beekeepers.
+
+[Illustration: WILD BEE GARDEN.]
+
+The plow has not yet invaded the forest region to any appreciable
+extent, neither has it accomplished much in the foot-hills. Thousands
+of bee-ranches might be established along the margin of the plain, and
+up to a height of 4000 feet, wherever water could be obtained. The
+climate at this elevation admits of the making of permanent homes, and
+by moving the hives to higher pastures as the lower pass out of bloom,
+the annual yield of honey would be nearly doubled. The foot-hill
+pastures, as we have seen, fail about the end of May, those of the
+chaparral belt and lower forests are in full bloom in June, those of
+the upper and alpine region in July, August, and September. In
+Scotland, after the best of the Lowland bloom is past, the bees are
+carried in carts to the Highlands, and set free on the heather hills.
+In France, too, and in Poland, they are carried from pasture to pasture
+among orchards and fields in the same way, and along the rivers in
+barges to collect the honey of the delightful vegetation of the banks.
+In Egypt they are taken far up the Nile, and floated slowly home again,
+gathering the honey-harvest of the various fields on the way, timing
+their movements in accord with the seasons. Were similar methods
+pursued in California the productive season would last nearly all the
+year.
+
+The average elevation of the north half of the Sierra is, as we have
+seen, considerably less than that of the south half, and small streams,
+with the bank and meadow gardens dependent upon them, are less
+abundant. Around the head waters of the Yuba, Feather, and Pitt rivers,
+the extensive tablelands of lava are sparsely planted with pines,
+through which the sunshine reaches the ground with little interruption.
+Here flourishes a scattered, tufted growth of golden applopappus,
+linosyris, bahia, wyetheia, arnica, artemisia, and similar plants; with
+manzanita, cherry, plum, and thorn in ragged patches on the cooler
+hill-slopes. At the extremities of the Great Central Plain, the Sierra
+and Coast Ranges curve around and lock together in a labyrinth of
+mountains and valleys, throughout which their floras are mingled,
+making at the north, with its temperate climate and copious rainfall, a
+perfect paradise for bees, though, strange to say, scarcely a single
+regular bee-ranch has yet been established in it.
+
+Of all the upper flower fields of the Sierra, Shasta is the most
+honeyful, and may yet surpass in fame the celebrated honey hills of
+Hybla and hearthy Hymettus. Regarding this noble mountain from a bee
+point of view, encircled by its many climates, and sweeping aloft from
+the torrid plain into the frosty azure, we find the first 5000 feet
+from the summit generally snow-clad, and therefore about as honeyless
+as the sea. The base of this arctic region is girdled by a belt of
+crumbling lava measuring about 1000 feet in vertical breadth, and is
+mostly free from snow in summer. Beautiful lichens enliven the faces of
+the cliffs with their bright colors, and in some of the warmer nooks
+there are a few tufts of alpine daisies, wall-flowers and pentstemons;
+but, notwithstanding these bloom freely in the late summer, the zone as
+a whole is almost as honeyless as the icy summit, and its lower edge
+may be taken as the honey-line. Immediately below this comes the forest
+zone, covered with a rich growth of conifers, chiefly Silver Firs, rich
+in pollen and honey-dew, and diversified with countless garden
+openings, many of them less than a hundred yards across. Next, in
+orderly succession, comes the great bee zone. Its area far surpasses
+that of the icy summit and both the other zones combined, for it goes
+sweeping majestically around the entire mountain, with a breadth of six
+or seven miles and a circumference of nearly a hundred miles.
+
+Shasta, as we have already seen, is a fire-mountain created by a
+succession of eruptions of ashes and molten lava, which, flowing over
+the lips of its several craters, grew outward and upward like the trunk
+of a knotty exogenous tree. Then followed a strange contrast. The
+glacial winter came on, loading the cooling mountain with ice, which
+flowed slowly outward in every direction, radiating from the summit in
+the form of one vast conical glacier—a down-crawling mantle of ice upon
+a fountain of smoldering fire, crushing and grinding for centuries its
+brown, flinty lavas with incessant activity, and thus degrading and
+remodeling the entire mountain. When, at length, the glacial period
+began to draw near its close, the ice-mantle was gradually melted off
+around the bottom, and, in receding and breaking into its present
+fragmentary condition, irregular rings and heaps of moraine matter were
+stored upon its flanks. The glacial erosion of most of the Shasta lavas
+produces detritus, composed of rough, sub-angular boulders of moderate
+size and of porous gravel and sand, which yields freely to the
+transporting power of running water. Magnificent floods from the ample
+fountains of ice and snow working with sublime energy upon this
+prepared glacial detritus, sorted it out and carried down immense
+quantities from the higher slopes, and reformed it in smooth,
+delta-like beds around the base; and it is these flood-beds joined
+together that now form the main honey-zone of the old volcano.
+
+Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, has Mother
+Nature accomplished her beneficent designs—now a flood of fire, now a
+flood of ice, now a flood of water; and at length an outburst of
+organic life, a milky way of snowy petals and wings, girdling the
+rugged mountain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams beating
+against its sides had broken into a foam of plant-bloom and bees, as
+sea-waves break and bloom on a rock shore.
+
+In this flowery wilderness the bees rove and revel, rejoicing in the
+bounty of the sun, clambering eagerly through bramble and hucklebloom,
+ringing the myriad bells of the manzanita, now humming aloft among
+polleny willows and firs, now down on the ashy ground among gilias and
+buttercups, and anon plunging deep into snowy banks of cherry and
+buckthorn. They consider the lilies and roll into them, and, like
+lilies, they toil not, for they are impelled by sun-power, as
+water-wheels by water-power; and when the one has plenty of
+high-pressure water, the other plenty of sunshine, they hum and quiver
+alike. Sauntering in the Shasta bee-lands in the sun-days of summer,
+one may readily infer the time of day from the comparative energy of
+bee-movements alone—drowsy and moderate in the cool of the morning,
+increasing in energy with the ascending sun, and, at high noon,
+thrilling and quivering in wild ecstasy, then gradually declining again
+to the stillness of night. In my excursions among the glaciers I
+occasionally meet bees that are hungry, like mountaineers who venture
+too far and remain too long above the bread-line; then they droop and
+wither like autumn leaves. The Shasta bees are perhaps better fed than
+any others in the Sierra. Their field-work is one perpetual feast; but,
+however exhilarating the sunshine or bountiful the supply of flowers,
+they are always dainty feeders. Humming-moths and hummingbirds seldom
+set foot upon a flower, but poise on the wing in front of it, and reach
+forward as if they were sucking through straws. But bees, though, as
+dainty as they, hug their favorite flowers with profound cordiality,
+and push their blunt, polleny faces against them, like babies on their
+mother’s bosom. And fondly, too, with eternal love, does Mother Nature
+clasp her small bee-babies, and suckle them, multitudes at once, on her
+warm Shasta breast.
+
+Besides the common honey-bee there are many other species here—fine
+mossy, burly fellows, who were nourished on the mountains thousands of
+sunny seasons before the advent of the domestic species. Among these
+are the bumblebees, mason-bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters.
+Butterflies, too, and moths of every size and pattern; some
+broad-winged like bats, flapping slowly, and sailing in easy curves;
+others like small, flying violets, shaking about loosely in short,
+crooked flights close to the flowers, feasting luxuriously night and
+day. Great numbers of deer also delight to dwell in the brushy portions
+of the bee-pastures.
+
+Bears, too, roam the sweet wilderness, their blunt, shaggy forms
+harmonizing well with the trees and tangled bushes, and with the bees,
+also, notwithstanding the disparity in size. They are fond of all good
+things, and enjoy them to the utmost, with but little troublesome
+discrimination—flowers and leaves as well as berries, and the bees
+themselves as well as their honey. Though the California bears have as
+yet had but little experience with honeybees, they often succeed in
+reaching their bountiful stores, and it seems doubtful whether bees
+themselves enjoy honey with so great a relish. By means of their
+powerful teeth and claws they can gnaw and tear open almost any hive
+conveniently accessible. Most honey-bees, however, in search of a home
+are wise enough to make choice of a hollow in a living tree, a
+considerable distance above the ground, when such places are to be had;
+then they are pretty secure, for though the smaller black and brown
+bears climb well, they are unable to break into strong hives while
+compelled to exert themselves to keep from falling, and at the same
+time to endure the stings of the fighting bees without having their
+paws free to rub them off. But woe to the black bumblebees discovered
+in their mossy nests in the ground! With a few strokes of their huge
+paws the bears uncover the entire establishment, and, before time is
+given for a general buzz, bees old and young, larvae, honey, stings,
+nest, and all are taken in one ravishing mouthful.
+
+Not the least influential of the agents concerned in the superior
+sweetness of the Shasta flora are its storms—storms I mean that are
+strictly local, bred and born on the mountain. The magical rapidity
+with which they are grown on the mountain-top, and bestow their charity
+in rain and snow, never fails to astonish the inexperienced lowlander.
+Often in calm, glowing days, while the bees are still on the wing, a
+storm-cloud may be seen far above in the pure ether, swelling its pearl
+bosses, and growing silently, like a plant. Presently a clear, ringing
+discharge of thunder is heard, followed by a rush of wind that comes
+sounding over the bending woods like the roar of the ocean, mingling
+raindrops, snow-flowers, honey-flowers, and bees in wild storm harmony.
+
+Still more impressive are the warm, reviving days of spring in the
+mountain pastures. The blood of the plants throbbing beneath the
+life-giving sunshine seems to be heard and felt. Plant growth goes on
+before our eyes, and every tree in the woods, and every bush and flower
+is seen as a hive of restless industry. The deeps of the sky are
+mottled with singing wings of every tone and color; clouds of brilliant
+chrysididae dancing and swirling in exquisite rhythm, golden-barred
+vespidae, dragon-flies, butterflies, grating cicadas, and jolly,
+rattling grasshoppers, fairly enameling the light.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.—WHITE SAGE.]
+
+On bright, crisp mornings a striking optical effect may frequently be
+observed from the shadows of the higher mountains while the sunbeams
+are pouring past overhead. Then every insect, no matter what may be its
+own proper color, burns white in the light. Gauzy-winged hymenoptera,
+moths, jet-black beetles, all are transfigured alike in pure, spiritual
+white, like snowflakes.
+
+In Southern California, where bee-culture has had so much skilful
+attention of late years, the pasturage is not more abundant, or more
+advantageously varied as to the number of its honey-plants and their
+distribution over mountain and plain, than that of many other portions
+of the State where the industrial currents flow in other channels. The
+famous White Sage (_Audibertia_), belonging to the mint family,
+flourishes here in all its glory, blooming in May, and yielding great
+quantities of clear, pale honey, which is greatly prized in every
+market it has yet reached. This species grows chiefly in the valleys
+and low hills. The Black Sage on the mountains is part of a dense,
+thorny chaparral, which is composed chiefly of adenostoma, ceanothus,
+manzanita, and cherry—not differing greatly from that of the southern
+portion of the Sierra, but more dense and continuous, and taller, and
+remaining longer in bloom. Stream-side gardens, so charming a feature
+of both the Sierra and Coast Mountains, are less numerous in Southern
+California, but they are exceedingly rich in honey-flowers, wherever
+found,—melilotus, columbine, collinsia, verbena, zauschneria, wild
+rose, honeysuckle, philadelphus, and lilies rising from the warm, moist
+dells in a very storm of exuberance. Wild buckwheat of many species is
+developed in abundance over the dry, sandy valleys and lower slopes of
+the mountains, toward the end of summer, and is, at this time, the main
+dependence of the bees, reinforced here and there by orange groves,
+alfalfa fields, and small home gardens.
+
+The main honey months, in ordinary seasons, are April, May, June, July,
+and August; while the other months are usually flowery enough to yield
+sufficient for the bees.
+
+According to Mr. J.T. Gordon, President of the Los Angeles County
+Bee-keepers’ Association, the first bees introduced into the county
+were a single hive, which cost $150 in San Francisco, and arrived in
+September, 1854.[1] In April, of the following year, this hive sent out
+two swarms, which were sold for $100 each. From this small beginning
+the bees gradually multiplied to about 3000 swarms in the year 1873. In
+1876 it was estimated that there were between 15,000 and 20,000 hives
+in the county, producing an annual yield of about 100 pounds to the
+hive—in some exceptional cases, a much greater yield.
+
+In San Diego County, at the beginning of the season of 1878, there were
+about 24,000 hives, and the shipments from the one port of San Diego
+for the same year, from July 17 to November 10, were 1071 barrels,
+15,544 cases, and nearly 90 tons. The largest bee-ranches have about a
+thousand hives, and are carefully and skilfully managed, every
+scientific appliance of merit being brought into use. There are few
+bee-keepers, however, who own half as many as this, or who give their
+undivided attention to the business. Orange culture, at present, is
+heavily overshadowing every other business.
+
+A good many of the so-called bee-ranches of Los Angeles and San Diego
+counties are still of the rudest pioneer kind imaginable. A man
+unsuccessful in everything else hears the interesting story of the
+profits and comforts of bee-keeping, and concludes to try it; he buys a
+few colonies, or gets them, from some overstocked ranch on shares,
+takes them back to the foot of some cañon, where the pasturage is
+fresh, squats on the land, with, or without, the permission of the
+owner, sets up his hives, makes a box-cabin for himself, scarcely
+bigger than a bee-hive, and awaits his fortune.
+
+Bees suffer sadly from famine during the dry years which occasionally
+occur in the southern and middle portions of the State. If the rainfall
+amounts only to three or four inches, instead of from twelve to twenty,
+as in ordinary seasons, then sheep and cattle die in thousands, and so
+do these small, winged cattle, unless they are carefully fed, or
+removed to other pastures. The year 1877 will long be remembered as
+exceptionally rainless and distressing. Scarcely a flower bloomed on
+the dry valleys away from the stream-sides, and not a single
+grain-field depending upon rain was reaped. The seed only sprouted,
+came up a little way, and withered. Horses, cattle, and sheep grew
+thinner day by day, nibbling at bushes and weeds, along the shallowing
+edges of streams, many of which were dried up altogether, for the first
+time since the settlement of the country.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE.
+CARDINAL FLOWER.]
+
+In the course of a trip I made during the summer of that year through
+Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles
+counties, the deplorable effects of the drought were everywhere
+visible—leafless fields, dead and dying cattle, dead bees, and
+half-dead people with dusty, doleful faces. Even the birds and
+squirrels were in distress, though their suffering was less painfully
+apparent than that of the poor cattle. These were falling one by one in
+slow, sure starvation along the banks of the hot, sluggish streams,
+while thousands of buzzards correspondingly fat were sailing above
+them, or standing gorged on the ground beneath the trees, waiting with
+easy faith for fresh carcasses. The quails, prudently considering the
+hard times, abandoned all thought of pairing. They were too poor to
+marry, and so continued in flocks all through the year without
+attempting to rear young. The ground-squirrels, though an exceptionally
+industrious and enterprising race, as every farmer knows, were hard
+pushed for a living; not a fresh leaf or seed was to be found save in
+the trees, whose bossy masses of dark green foliage presented a
+striking contrast to the ashen baldness of the ground beneath them. The
+squirrels, leaving their accustomed feeding-grounds, betook themselves
+to the leafy oaks to gnaw out the acorn stores of the provident
+woodpeckers, but the latter kept up a vigilant watch upon their
+movements. I noticed four woodpeckers in league against one squirrel,
+driving the poor fellow out of an oak that they claimed. He dodged
+round the knotty trunk from side to side, as nimbly as he could in his
+famished condition, only to find a sharp bill everywhere. But the fate
+of the bees that year seemed the saddest of all. In different portions
+of Los Angeles and San Diego counties, from one half to three fourths
+of them died of sheer starvation. Not less than 18,000 colonies
+perished in these two counties alone, while in the adjacent counties
+the death-rate was hardly less.
+
+[Illustration: WILD BUCKWHEAT.—A BEE RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS.]
+
+Even the colonies nearest to the mountains suffered this year, for the
+smaller vegetation on the foot-hills was affected by the drought almost
+as severely as that of the valleys and plains, and even the hardy,
+deep-rooted chaparral, the surest dependence of the bees, bloomed
+sparingly, while much of it was beyond reach. Every swarm could have
+been saved, however, by promptly supplying them with food when their
+own stores began to fail, and before they became enfeebled and
+discouraged; or by cutting roads back into the mountains, and taking
+them into the heart of the flowery chaparral. The Santa Lucia, San
+Rafael, San Gabriel, San Jacinto, and San Bernardino ranges are almost
+untouched as yet save by the wild bees. Some idea of their resources,
+and of the advantages and disadvantages they offer to bee-keepers, may
+be formed from an excursion that I made into the San Gabriel Range
+about the beginning of August of “the dry year.” This range, containing
+most of the characteristic features of the other ranges just mentioned,
+overlooks the Los Angeles vineyards and orange groves from the north,
+and is more rigidly inaccessible in the ordinary meaning of the word
+than any other that I ever attempted to penetrate. The slopes are
+exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot, and they are covered with
+thorny bushes from five to ten feet high. With the exception of little
+spots not visible in general views, the entire surface is covered with
+them, massed in close hedge growth, sweeping gracefully down into every
+gorge and hollow, and swelling over every ridge and summit in shaggy,
+ungovernable exuberance, offering more honey to the acre for half the
+year than the most crowded clover-field. But when beheld from the open
+San Gabriel Valley, beaten with dry sunshine, all that was seen of the
+range seemed to wear a forbidding aspect. From base to summit all
+seemed gray, barren, silent, its glorious chaparral appearing like dry
+moss creeping over its dull, wrinkled ridges and hollows.
+
+Setting out from Pasadena, I reached the foot of the range about
+sundown; and being weary and heated with my walk across the shadeless
+valley, concluded to camp for the night. After resting a few moments, I
+began to look about among the flood-boulders of Eaton Creek for a
+camp-ground, when I came upon a strange, dark-looking man who had been
+chopping cord-wood. He seemed surprised at seeing me, so I sat down
+with him on the live-oak log he had been cutting, and made haste to
+give a reason for my appearance in his solitude, explaining that I was
+anxious to find out something about the mountains, and meant to make my
+way up Eaton Creek next morning. Then he kindly invited me to camp with
+him, and led me to his little cabin, situated at the foot of the
+mountains, where a small spring oozes out of a bank overgrown with
+wild-rose bushes. After supper, when the daylight was gone, he
+explained that he was out of candles; so we sat in the dark, while he
+gave me a sketch of his life in a mixture of Spanish and English. He
+was born in Mexico, his father Irish, his mother Spanish. He had been a
+miner, rancher, prospector, hunter, etc., rambling always, and wearing
+his life away in mere waste; but now he was going to settle down. His
+past life, he said, was of “no account,” but the future was promising.
+He was going to “make money and marry a Spanish woman.” People mine
+here for water as for gold. He had been running a tunnel into a spur of
+the mountain back of his cabin. “My prospect is good,” he said, “and if
+I chance to strike a good, strong flow, I’ll soon be worth $5000 or
+$10,000. For that flat out there,” referring to a small, irregular
+patch of bouldery detritus, two or three acres in size, that had been
+deposited by Eaton Creek during some flood season,—“that flat is large
+enough for a nice orange-grove, and the bank behind the cabin will do
+for a vineyard, and after watering my own trees and vines I will have
+some water left to sell to my neighbors below me, down the valley. And
+then,” he continued, “I can keep bees, and make money that way, too,
+for the mountains above here are just full of honey in the summer-time,
+and one of my neighbors down here says that he will let me have a whole
+lot of hives, on shares, to start with. You see I’ve a good thing; I’m
+all right now.” All this prospective affluence in the sunken,
+boulder-choked flood-bed of a mountain-stream! Leaving the bees out of
+the count, most fortune-seekers would as soon think of settling on the
+summit of Mount Shasta. Next morning, wishing my hopeful entertainer
+good luck, I set out on my shaggy excursion.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT, SPANISH BAYONET.]
+
+About half an hour’s walk above the cabin, I came to “The Fall,” famous
+throughout the valley settlements as the finest yet discovered in the
+San Gabriel Mountains. It is a charming little thing, with a low, sweet
+voice, singing like a bird, as it pours from a notch in a short ledge,
+some thirty-five or forty feet into a round mirror-pool. The face of
+the cliff back of it, and on both sides, is smoothly covered and
+embossed with mosses, against which the white water shines out in showy
+relief, like a silver instrument in a velvet case. Hither come the San
+Gabriel lads and lassies, to gather ferns and dabble away their hot
+holidays in the cool water, glad to escape from their commonplace
+palm-gardens and orange-groves. The delicate maidenhair grows on
+fissured rocks within reach of the spray, while broad-leaved maples and
+sycamores cast soft, mellow shade over a rich profusion of bee-flowers,
+growing among boulders in front of the pool—the fall, the flowers, the
+bees, the ferny rocks, and leafy shade forming a charming little poem
+of wildness, the last of a series extending down the flowery slopes of
+Mount San Antonio through the rugged, foam-beaten bosses of the main
+Eaton Canon.
+
+From the base of the fall I followed the ridge that forms the western
+rim of the Eaton basin to the summit of one of the principal peaks,
+which is about 5000 feet above sea-level. Then, turning eastward, I
+crossed the middle of the basin, forcing a way over its many
+subordinate ridges and across its eastern rim, having to contend almost
+everywhere with the floweriest and most impenetrable growth of
+honey-bushes I had ever encountered since first my mountaineering
+began. Most of the Shasta chaparral is leafy nearly to the ground; here
+the main stems are naked for three or four feet, and interspiked with
+dead twigs, forming a stiff _chevaux de frise_ through which even the
+bears make their way with difficulty. I was compelled to creep for
+miles on all fours, and in following the bear-trails often found tufts
+of hair on the bushes where they had forced themselves through.
+
+For 100 feet or so above the fall the ascent was made possible only by
+tough cushions of club-moss that clung to the rock. Above this the
+ridge weathers away to a thin knife-blade for a few hundred yards, and
+thence to the summit of the range it carries a bristly mane of
+chaparral. Here and there small openings occur on rocky places,
+commanding fine views across the cultivated valley to the ocean. These
+I found by the tracks were favorite outlooks and resting-places for the
+wild animals—bears, wolves, foxes, wildcats, etc.—which abound here,
+and would have to be taken into account in the establishment of
+bee-ranches. In the deepest thickets I found wood-rat villages—groups
+of huts four to six feet high, built of sticks and leaves in rough,
+tapering piles, like musk-rat cabins. I noticed a good many bees, too,
+most of them wild. The tame honey-bees seemed languid and wing-weary,
+as if they had come all the way up from the flowerless valley.
+
+After reaching the summit I had time to make only a hasty survey of the
+basin, now glowing in the sunset gold, before hastening down into one
+of the tributary cañons in search, of water. Emerging from a
+particularly tedious breadth of chaparral, I found myself free and
+erect in a beautiful park-like grove of Mountain Live Oak, where the
+ground was planted with aspidiums and brier-roses, while the glossy
+foliage made a close canopy overhead, leaving the gray dividing trunks
+bare to show the beauty of their interlacing arches. The bottom of the
+cañon was dry where I first reached it, but a bunch of scarlet mimulus
+indicated water at no great distance, and I soon discovered about a
+bucketful in a hollow of the rock. This, however, was full of dead
+bees, wasps, beetles, and leaves, well steeped and simmered, and would,
+therefore, require boiling and filtering through fresh charcoal before
+it could be made available. Tracing the dry channel about a mile
+farther down to its junction with a larger tributary cañon, I at length
+discovered a lot of boulder pools, clear as crystal, brimming full, and
+linked together by glistening streamlets just strong enough to sing
+audibly. Flowers in full bloom adorned their margins, lilies ten feet
+high, larkspur, columbines, and luxuriant ferns, leaning and
+overarching in lavish abundance, while a noble old Live Oak spread its
+rugged arms over all. Here I camped, making my bed on smooth
+cobblestones.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-KEEPER’S CABIN.—BURRIELIA (ABOVE).—MADIA (BELOW).]
+
+Next day, in the channel of a tributary that heads on Mount San
+Antonio, I passed about fifteen or twenty gardens like the one in which
+I slept—lilies in every one of them, in the full pomp of bloom. My
+third camp was made near the middle of the general basin, at the head
+of a long system of cascades from ten to 200 feet high, one following
+the other in close succession down a rocky, inaccessible cañon, making
+a total descent of nearly 1700 feet. Above the cascades the main stream
+passes through a series of open, sunny levels, the largest of which are
+about an acre in size, where the wild bees and their companions were
+feasting on a showy growth of zauschneria, painted cups, and
+monardella; and gray squirrels were busy harvesting the burs of the
+Douglas Spruce, the only conifer I met in the basin.
+
+The eastern slopes of the basin are in every way similar to those we
+have described, and the same may be said of other portions of the
+range. From the highest summit, far as the eye could reach, the
+landscape was one vast bee-pasture, a rolling wilderness of
+honey-bloom, scarcely broken by bits of forest or the rocky outcrops of
+hilltops and ridges.
+
+Behind the San Bernardino Range lies the wild “sage-brush country,”
+bounded on the east by the Colorado River, and extending in a general
+northerly direction to Nevada and along the eastern base of the Sierra
+beyond Mono Lake.
+
+The greater portion of this immense region, including Owen’s Valley,
+Death Valley, and the Sink of the Mohave, the area of which is nearly
+one fifth that of the entire State, is usually regarded as a desert,
+not because of any lack in the soil, but for want of rain, and rivers
+available for irrigation. Very little of it, however, is desert in the
+eyes of a bee.
+
+Looking now over all the available pastures of California, it appears
+that the business of beekeeping is still in its infancy. Even in the
+more enterprising of the southern counties, where so vigorous a
+beginning has been made, less than a tenth of their honey resources
+have as yet been developed; while in the Great Plain, the Coast Ranges,
+the Sierra Nevada, and the northern region about Mount Shasta, the
+business can hardly be said to exist at all. What the limits of its
+developments in the future may be, with the advantages of cheaper
+transportation and the invention of better methods in general, it is
+not easy to guess. Nor, on the other hand, are we able to measure the
+influence on bee interests likely to follow the destruction of the
+forests, now rapidly falling before fire and the ax. As to the sheep
+evil, that can hardly become greater than it is at the present day. In
+short, notwithstanding the wide-spread deterioration and destruction of
+every kind already effected, California, with her incomparable climate
+and flora, is still, as far as I know, the best of all the bee-lands of
+the world.
+
+ [1] Fifteen hives of Italian bees were introduced into Los Angeles
+ County in 1855, and in 1876 they had increased to 500. The marked
+ superiority claimed for them over the common species is now attracting
+ considerable attention.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA ***
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Mountains of California, by John Muir</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Mountains of California</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: John Muir</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November 7, 2003 [eBook #10012]<br />
+[Most recently updated: July 15, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Beth Trapaga and PG Distributed Proofreaders</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="cover" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>The Mountains of California</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by John Muir</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">I THE SIERRA NEVADA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">II THE GLACIERS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">III THE SNOW</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">IV A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">V THE PASSES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">VI THE GLACIER LAKES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">VII THE GLACIER MEADOWS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII THE FORESTS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">IX THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">X A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">XI THE RIVER FLOODS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">XII SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">XIII THE WATER-OUZEL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">XIV THE WILD SHEEP</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">XV IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">XVI THE BEE-PASTURES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus01"></a>
+<img src="images/img01.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="HOOFED LOCUSTS" />
+<p class="caption">HOOFED LOCUSTS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<table summary="" >
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus01">HOOFED LOCUSTS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus02">MOUNT TAMALPAIS&mdash;NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus03">MAP OF THE SIERRA NEVADA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus04">MOUNT SHASTA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus05">MOUNT HOOD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus06">MAP OF THE GLACIER COUNTRY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus07">MOUNT RAINIER; NORTH PUYALLUP GLACIER FROM EAGLE CLIFF</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus08">KOLANA ROCK, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus09">GENERAL GRANT TREE, GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus10">MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus11">MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION BOUNDARY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus12">RANCHERIA FALLS, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus13">VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CAÑON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus14">LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus15">THE DEATH OF A LAKE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus16">SHADOW LAKE (MERCED LAKE), YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus17">VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus18">LAKE STARR KING</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus19">VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus20">EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus21">VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus22">NUT PINE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus23">THE GROVE FORM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus24">LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN CHARACTER OF WOODS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus25">SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus26">YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus27">FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus28">PINUS PONDEROSA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus29">SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus30">INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus31">FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus32">VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus33">SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA GLACIERS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus34">SEQUOIA GIGANTEA. VIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus35">MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAÑON&mdash;YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus36">VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus37">JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus38">STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus39">STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus40">GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus41">A DWARF PINE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus42">OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus43">PATE VALLEY, SHOWING THE OAKS. TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus44">TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE WHEN SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus45">SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus46">TRYING THE BOW</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus47">A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus48">YELLOW PINE AND LIBOCEDRUS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus49">BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus50">WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus51">ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus52">OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus53">THE OUZEL AT HOME</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus54">YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-COUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CAÑON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus55">SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus56">HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus57">HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus58">CROSSING A CAÑON STREAM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus59">WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus60">INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus61">A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus62">WILD BEE GARDEN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus63">IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.&mdash;WHITE SAGE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus64">A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE.&mdash;CARDINAL FLOWER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus65">WILD BUCKWHEAT.&mdash;A BEE-RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus66">A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT.&mdash;SPANISH BAYONET</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#illus67">A BEE-KEEPER&rsquo;S CABIN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I<br/>
+THE SIERRA NEVADA</h2>
+
+<p>
+Go where you may within the bounds of California, mountains are ever in sight,
+charming and glorifying every landscape. Yet so simple and massive is the
+topography of the State in general views, that the main central portion
+displays only one valley, and two chains of mountains which seem almost
+perfectly regular in trend and height: the Coast Range on the west side, the
+Sierra Nevada on the east. These two ranges coming together in curves on the
+north and south inclose a magnificent basin, with a level floor more than 400
+miles long, and from 35 to 60 miles wide. This is the grand Central Valley of
+California, the waters of which have only one outlet to the sea through the
+Golden Gate. But with this general simplicity of features there is great
+complexity of hidden detail. The Coast Range, rising as a grand green barrier
+against the ocean, from 2000 to 8000 feet high, is composed of innumerable
+forest-crowned spurs, ridges, and rolling hill-waves which inclose a multitude
+of smaller valleys; some looking out through long, forest-lined vistas to the
+sea; others, with but few trees, to the Central Valley; while a thousand others
+yet smaller are embosomed and concealed in mild, round-browed hills, each, with
+its own climate, soil, and productions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Making your way through the mazes of the Coast Range to the summit of any of
+the inner peaks or passes opposite San Francisco, in the clear springtime, the
+grandest and most telling of all California landscapes is outspread before you.
+At your feet lies the great Central Valley glowing golden in the sunshine,
+extending north and south farther than the eye can reach, one smooth, flowery,
+lake-like bed of fertile soil. Along its eastern margin rises the mighty
+Sierra, miles in height, reposing like a smooth, cumulous cloud in the sunny
+sky, and so gloriously colored, and so luminous, it seems to be not clothed
+with light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.
+Along the top, and extending a good way down, you see a pale, pearl-gray belt
+of snow; and below it a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the extension of
+the forests; and along the base of the range a broad belt of rose-purple and
+yellow, where lie the minor&rsquo;s gold-fields and the foot-hill gardens. All
+these colored belts blending smoothly make a wall of light ineffably fine, and
+as beautiful as a rainbow, yet firm as adamant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, from the summit
+of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or plowed as yet,
+was one furred, rich sheet of golden compositae, and the luminous wall of the
+mountains shone in all its glory. Then it seemed to me the Sierra should be
+called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten
+years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its
+glorious floods of light, seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks,
+the noonday radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the
+alpenglow, and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of
+irised spray, it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the
+most divinely beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Sierra is about 500 miles long, 70 miles wide, and from 7000 to nearly
+15,000 feet high. In general views no mark of man is visible on it, nor
+anything to suggest the richness of the life it cherishes, or the depth and
+grandeur of its sculpture. None of its magnificent forest-crowned ridges rises
+much above the general level to publish its wealth. No great valley or lake is
+seen, or river, or group of well-marked features of any kind, standing out in
+distinct pictures. Even the summit-peaks, so clear and high in the sky, seem
+comparatively smooth and featureless. Nevertheless, glaciers are still at work
+in the shadows of the peaks, and thousands of lakes and meadows shine and bloom
+beneath them, and the whole range is furrowed with cañons to a depth of from
+2000 to 5000 feet, in which once flowed majestic glaciers, and in which now
+flow and sing a band of beautiful rivers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though of such stupendous depth, these famous cañons are not raw, gloomy,
+jagged-walled gorges, savage and inaccessible. With rough passages here and
+there they still make delightful pathways for the mountaineer, conducting from
+the fertile lowlands to the highest icy fountains, as a kind of mountain
+streets full of charming life and light, graded and sculptured by the ancient
+glaciers, and presenting, throughout all their courses, a rich variety of novel
+and attractive scenery, the most attractive that has yet been discovered in the
+mountain-ranges of the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In many places, especially in the middle region of the western flank of the
+range, the main cañons widen into spacious valleys or parks, diversified like
+artificial landscape-gardens, with charming groves and meadows, and thickets of
+blooming bushes, while the lofty, retiring walls, infinitely varied in form and
+sculpture, are fringed with ferns, flowering-plants of many species, oaks, and
+evergreens, which find anchorage on a thousand narrow steps and benches; while
+the whole is enlivened and made glorious with rejoicing streams that come
+dancing and foaming over the sunny brows of the cliffs to join the shining
+river that flows in tranquil beauty down the middle of each one of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The walls of these park valleys of the Yosemite kind are made up of rocks
+mountains in size, partly separated from each other by narrow gorges and
+side-cañons; and they are so sheer in front, and so compactly built together on
+a level floor, that, comprehensively seen, the parks they inclose look like
+immense halls or temples lighted from above. Every rock seems to glow with
+life. Some lean back in majestic repose; others, absolutely sheer, or nearly
+so, for thousands of feet, advance their brows in thoughtful attitudes beyond
+their companions, giving welcome to storms and calms alike, seemingly conscious
+yet heedless of everything going on about them, awful in stern majesty, types
+of permanence, yet associated with beauty of the frailest and most fleeting
+forms; their feet set in pine-groves and gay emerald meadows, their brows in
+the sky; bathed in light, bathed in floods of singing water, while snow-clouds,
+avalanches, and the winds shine and surge and wreathe about them as the years
+go by, as if into these mountain mansions Nature had taken pains to gather her
+choicest treasures to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with
+her.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus02"></a>
+<img src="images/img02.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MOUNT TAMALPAIS" />
+<p class="caption">MOUNT TAMALPAIS&mdash;NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Here, too, in the middle region of deepest cañons are the grandest
+forest-trees, the Sequoia, king of conifers, the noble Sugar and Yellow Pines,
+Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, and the Silver Firs, each a giant of its kind,
+assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all other coniferous
+forests in the world, both in the number of its species and in the size and
+beauty of its trees. The winds flow in melody through their colossal spires,
+and they are vocal everywhere with the songs of birds and running water. Miles
+of fragrant ceanothus and manzanita bushes bloom beneath them, and lily gardens
+and meadows, and damp, ferny glens in endless variety of fragrance and color,
+compelling the admiration of every observer. Sweeping on over ridge and valley,
+these noble trees extend a continuous belt from end to end of the range, only
+slightly interrupted by sheer-walled cañons at intervals of about fifteen and
+twenty miles. Here the great burly brown bears delight to roam, harmonizing
+with the brown boles of the trees beneath which they feed. Deer, also, dwell
+here, and find food and shelter in the ceanothus tangles, with a multitude of
+smaller people. Above this region of giants, the trees grow smaller until the
+utmost limit of the timber line is reached on the stormy mountain-slopes at a
+height of from ten to twelve thousand feet above the sea, where the Dwarf Pine
+is so lowly and hard beset by storms and heavy snow, it is pressed into flat
+tangles, over the tops of which we may easily walk. Below the main forest belt
+the trees likewise diminish in size, frost and burning drought repressing and
+blasting alike.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus03"></a>
+<img src="images/img03.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MAP OF THE SIERRA NEVADA" />
+<p class="caption">MAP OF THE SIERRA NEVADA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The rose-purple zone along the base of the range comprehends nearly all the
+famous gold region of California. And here it was that miners from every
+country under the sun assembled in a wild, torrent-like rush to seek their
+fortunes. On the banks of every river, ravine, and gully they have left their
+marks. Every gravel- and boulder-bed has been desperately riddled over and over
+again. But in this region the pick and shovel, once wielded with savage
+enthusiasm, have been laid away, and only quartz-mining is now being carried on
+to any considerable extent. The zone in general is made up of low, tawny,
+waving foot-hills, roughened here and there with brush and trees, and
+outcropping masses of slate, colored gray and red with lichens. The smaller
+masses of slate, rising abruptly from the dry, grassy sod in leaning slabs,
+look like ancient tombstones in a deserted burying-ground. In early spring, say
+from February to April, the whole of this foot-hill belt is a paradise of bees
+and flowers. Refreshing rains then fall freely, birds are busy building their
+nests, and the sunshine is balmy and delightful. But by the end of May the
+soil, plants, and sky seem to have been baked in an oven. Most of the plants
+crumble to dust beneath the foot, and the ground is full of cracks; while the
+thirsty traveler gazes with eager longing through the burning glare to the
+snowy summits looming like hazy clouds in the distance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trees, mostly <i>Quercus Douglasii</i> and <i>Pinus Sabiniana</i>, thirty
+to forty feet high, with thin, pale-green foliage, stand far apart and cast but
+little shade. Lizards glide about on the rocks enjoying a constitution that no
+drought can dry, and ants in amazing numbers, whose tiny sparks of life seem to
+burn the brighter with the increasing heat, ramble industriously in long trains
+in search of food. Crows, ravens, magpies&mdash;friends in
+distress&mdash;gather on the ground beneath the best shade-trees, panting with
+drooping wings and bills wide open, scarce a note from any of them during the
+midday hours. Quails, too, seek the shade during the heat of the day about
+tepid pools in the channels of the larger mid-river streams. Rabbits scurry
+from thicket to thicket among the ceanothus bushes, and occasionally a
+long-eared hare is seen cantering gracefully across the wider openings. The
+nights are calm and dewless during the summer, and a thousand voices proclaim
+the abundance of life, notwithstanding the desolating effect of dry sunshine on
+the plants and larger animals. The hylas make a delightfully pure and tranquil
+music after sunset; and coyotes, the little, despised dogs of the wilderness,
+brave, hardy fellows, looking like withered wisps of hay, bark in chorus for
+hours. Mining-towns, most of them dead, and a few living ones with bright bits
+of cultivation about them, occur at long intervals along the belt, and cottages
+covered with climbing roses, in the midst of orange and peach orchards, and
+sweet-scented hay-fields in fertile flats where water for irrigation may be
+had. But they are mostly far apart, and make scarce any mark in general views.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every winter the High Sierra and the middle forest region get snow in glorious
+abundance, and even the foot-hills are at times whitened. Then all the range
+looks like a vast beveled wall of purest marble. The rough places are then made
+smooth, the death and decay of the year is covered gently and kindly, and the
+ground seems as clean as the sky. And though silent in its flight from the
+clouds, and when it is taking its place on rock, or tree, or grassy meadow, how
+soon the gentle snow finds a voice! Slipping from the heights, gathering in
+avalanches, it booms and roars like thunder, and makes a glorious show as it
+sweeps down the mountain-side, arrayed in long, silken streamers and wreathing,
+swirling films of crystal dust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The north half of the range is mostly covered with floods of lava, and dotted
+with volcanoes and craters, some of them recent and perfect in form, others in
+various stages of decay. The south half is composed of granite nearly from base
+to summit, while a considerable number of peaks, in the middle of the range,
+are capped with metamorphic slates, among which are Mounts Dana and Gibbs to
+the east of Yosemite Valley. Mount Whitney, the culminating point of the range
+near its southern extremity, lifts its helmet-shaped crest to a height of
+nearly 14,700 feet. Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a height
+of 14,440 feet at the northern extremity, and forms a noble landmark for all
+the surrounding region within a radius of a hundred miles. Residual masses of
+volcanic rocks occur throughout most of the granitic southern portion also, and
+a considerable number of old volcanoes on the flanks, especially along the
+eastern base of the range near Mono Lake and southward. But it is only to the
+northward that the entire range, from base to summit, is covered with lava.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the summit of Mount Whitney only granite is seen. Innumerable peaks and
+spires but little lower than its own storm-beaten crags rise in groups like
+forest-trees, in full view, segregated by cañons of tremendous depth and
+ruggedness. On Shasta nearly every feature in the vast view speaks of the old
+volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in Oregon, the icy volcanoes of Mount
+Pitt and the Three Sisters rise above the dark evergreen woods. Southward
+innumerable smaller craters and cones are distributed along the axis of the
+range and on each flank. Of these, Lassen&rsquo;s Butte is the highest, being
+nearly 11,000 feet above sea-level. Miles of its flanks are reeking and
+bubbling with hot springs, many of them so boisterous and sulphurous they seem
+over ready to become spouting geysers like those of the Yellowstone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Cinder Cone near marks the most recent volcanic eruption in the Sierra. It
+is a symmetrical truncated cone about 700 feet high, covered with gray cinders
+and ashes, and has a regular unchanged crater on its summit, in which a few
+small Two-leaved Pines are growing. These show that the age of the cone is not
+less than eighty years. It stands between two lakes, which a short time ago
+were one. Before the cone was built, a flood of rough vesicular lava was poured
+into the lake, cutting it in two, and, overflowing its banks, the fiery flood
+advanced into the pine-woods, overwhelming the trees in its way, the charred
+ends of some of which may still be seen projecting from beneath the snout of
+the lava-stream where it came to rest. Later still there was an eruption of
+ashes and loose obsidian cinders, probably from the same vent, which, besides
+forming the Cinder Cone, scattered a heavy shower over the surrounding woods
+for miles to a depth of from six inches to several feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The history of this last Sierra eruption is also preserved in the traditions of
+the Pitt River Indians. They tell of a fearful time of darkness, when the sky
+was black with ashes and smoke that threatened every living thing with death,
+and that when at length the sun appeared once more it was red like blood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Less recent craters in great numbers roughen the adjacent region; some of them
+with lakes in their throats, others overgrown with trees and flowers, Nature in
+these old hearths and firesides having literally given beauty for ashes. On the
+northwest side of Mount Shasta there is a subordinate cone about 3000 feet
+below the summit, which, has been active subsequent to the breaking up of the
+main ice-cap that once covered the mountain, as is shown by its comparatively
+unwasted crater and the streams of unglaciated lava radiating from it. The main
+summit is about a mile and a half in diameter, bounded by small crumbling peaks
+and ridges, among which we seek in vain for the outlines of the ancient crater.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These ruinous masses, and the deep glacial grooves that flute the sides of the
+mountain, show that it has been considerably lowered and wasted by ice; how
+much we have no sure means of knowing. Just below the extreme summit hot
+sulphurous gases and vapor issue from irregular fissures, mixed with spray
+derived from melting snow, the last feeble expression of the mighty force that
+built the mountain. Not in one great convulsion was Shasta given birth. The
+crags of the summit and the sections exposed by the glaciers down the sides
+display enough of its internal framework to prove that comparatively long
+periods of quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which
+the cooling lavas ceased to flow, and became permanent additions to the bulk of
+the growing mountain. With alternate haste and deliberation eruption succeeded
+eruption till the old volcano surpassed even its present sublime height.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus04"></a>
+<img src="images/img04.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MOUNT SHASTA" />
+<p class="caption">MOUNT SHASTA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Standing on the icy top of this, the grandest of all the fire-mountains of the
+Sierra, we can hardly fail to look forward to its next eruption. Gardens,
+vineyards, homes have been planted confidingly on the flanks of volcanoes
+which, after remaining steadfast for ages, have suddenly blazed into violent
+action, and poured forth overwhelming floods of fire. It is known that more
+than a thousand years of cool calm have intervened between violent eruptions.
+Like gigantic geysers spouting molten rock instead of water, volcanoes work and
+rest, and we have no sure means of knowing whether they are dead when still, or
+only sleeping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Along the western base of the range a telling series of sedimentary rocks
+containing the early history of the Sierra are now being studied. But leaving
+for the present these first chapters, we see that only a very short geological
+time ago, just before the coming on of that winter of winters called the
+glacial period, a vast deluge of molten rocks poured from many a chasm and
+crater on the flanks and summit of the range, filling lake basins and river
+channels, and obliterating nearly every existing feature on the northern
+portion. At length these all-destroying floods ceased to flow. But while the
+great volcanic cones built up along the axis still burned and smoked, the whole
+Sierra passed under the domain of ice and snow. Then over the bald,
+featureless, fire-blackened mountains, glaciers began to crawl, covering them
+from the summits to the sea with a mantle of ice; and then with infinite
+deliberation the work went on of sculpturing the range anew. These mighty
+agents of erosion, halting never through unnumbered centuries, crushed and
+ground the flinty lavas and granites beneath their crystal folds, wasting and
+building until in the fullness of time the Sierra was born again, brought to
+light nearly as we behold it today, with glaciers and snow-crushed pines at the
+top of the range, wheat-fields and orange-groves at the foot of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This change from icy darkness and death to life and beauty was slow, as we
+count time, and is still going on, north and south, over all the world wherever
+glaciers exist, whether in the form of distinct rivers, as in Switzerland,
+Norway, the mountains of Asia, and the Pacific Coast; or in continuous mantling
+folds, as in portions of Alaska, Greenland, Franz-Joseph-Land, Nova Zembla,
+Spitzbergen, and the lands about the South Pole. But in no country, as far as I
+know, may these majestic changes be studied to better advantage than in the
+plains and mountains of California.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Toward the close of the glacial period, when the snow-clouds became less
+fertile and the melting waste of sunshine became greater, the lower folds of
+the ice-sheet in California, discharging fleets of icebergs into the sea, began
+to shallow and recede from the lowlands, and then move slowly up the flanks of
+the Sierra in compliance with the changes of climate. The great white mantle on
+the mountains broke up into a series of glaciers more or less distinct and
+river-like, with many tributaries, and these again were melted and divided into
+still smaller glaciers, until now only a few of the smallest residual topmost
+branches of the grand system exist on the cool slopes of the summit peaks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Plants and animals, biding their time, closely followed the retiring ice,
+bestowing quick and joyous animation on the new-born landscapes. Pine-trees
+marched up the sun-warmed moraines in long, hopeful files, taking the ground
+and establishing themselves as soon as it was ready for them; brown-spiked
+sedges fringed the shores of the newborn lakes; young rivers roared in the
+abandoned channels of the glaciers; flowers bloomed around the feet of the
+great burnished domes,&mdash;while with quick fertility mellow beds of soil,
+settling and warming, offered food to multitudes of Nature&rsquo;s waiting
+children, great and small, animals as well as plants; mice, squirrels, marmots,
+deer, bears, elephants, etc. The ground burst into bloom with magical rapidity,
+and the young forests into bird-song: life in every form warming and sweetening
+and growing richer as the years passed away over the mighty Sierra so lately
+suggestive of death and consummate desolation only.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is hard without long and loving study to realize the magnitude of the work
+done on these mountains during the last glacial period by glaciers, which are
+only streams of closely compacted snow-crystals. Careful study of the phenomena
+presented goes to show that the pre-glacial condition of the range was
+comparatively simple: one vast wave of stone in which a thousand mountains,
+domes, cañons, ridges, etc., lay concealed. And in the development of these
+Nature chose for a tool not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split
+asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers
+noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and
+sea. Laboring harmoniously in united strength they crushed and ground and wore
+away the rocks in their march, making vast beds of soil, and at the same time
+developed and fashioned the landscapes into the delightful variety of hill and
+dale and lordly mountain that mortals call beauty. Perhaps more than a mile in
+average depth has the range been thus degraded during the last glacial
+period,&mdash;a quantity of mechanical work almost inconceivably great. And our
+admiration must be excited again and again as we toil and study and learn that
+this vast job of rockwork, so far-reaching in its influences, was done by
+agents so fragile and small as are these flowers of the mountain clouds. Strong
+only by force of numbers, they carried away entire mountains, particle by
+particle, block by block, and cast them into the sea; sculptured, fashioned,
+modeled all the range, and developed its predestined beauty. All these new
+Sierra landscapes were evidently predestined, for the physical structure of the
+rocks on which the features of the scenery depend was acquired while they lay
+at least a mile deep below the pre-glacial surface. And it was while these
+features were taking form in the depths of the range, the particles of the
+rocks marching to their appointed places in the dark with reference to the
+coming beauty, that the particles of icy vapor in the sky marching to the same
+music assembled to bring them to the light. Then, after their grand task was
+done, these bands of snow-flowers, these mighty glaciers, were melted and
+removed as if of no more importance than dew destined to last but an hour. Few,
+however, of Nature&rsquo;s agents have left monuments so noble and enduring as
+they. The great granite domes a mile high, the cañons as deep, the noble peaks,
+the Yosemite valleys, these, and indeed nearly all other features of the Sierra
+scenery, are glacier monuments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Contemplating the works of these flowers of the sky, one may easily fancy them
+endowed with life: messengers sent down to work in the mountain mines on
+errands of divine love. Silently flying through the darkened air, swirling,
+glinting, to their appointed places, they seem to have taken counsel together,
+saying, &ldquo;Come, we are feeble; let us help one another. We are many, and
+together we will be strong. Marching in close, deep ranks, let us roll away the
+stones from these mountain sepulchers, and set the landscapes free. Let us
+uncover these clustering domes. Here let us carve a lake basin; there, a
+Yosemite Valley; here, a channel for a river with fluted steps and brows for
+the plunge of songful cataracts. Yonder let us spread broad sheets of soil,
+that man and beast may be fed; and here pile trains of boulders for pines and
+giant Sequoias. Here make ground for a meadow; there, for a garden and grove,
+making it smooth and fine for small daisies and violets and beds of heathy
+bryanthus, spicing it well with crystals, garnet feldspar, and zircon.&rdquo;
+Thus and so on it has oftentimes seemed to me sang and planned and labored the
+hearty snow-flower crusaders; and nothing that I can write can possibly
+exaggerate the grandeur and beauty of their work. Like morning mist they have
+vanished in sunshine, all save the few small companies that still linger on the
+coolest mountainsides, and, as residual glaciers, are still busily at work
+completing the last of the lake basins, the last beds of soil, and the
+sculpture of some of the highest peaks.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus05"></a>
+<img src="images/img05.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MOUNT HOOD" />
+<p class="caption">MOUNT HOOD</p>
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II<br/>
+THE GLACIERS</h2>
+
+<p>
+Of the small residual glaciers mentioned in the preceding chapter, I have found
+sixty-five in that portion of the range lying between latitude 36° 30&#x2032;
+and 39°. They occur singly or in small groups on the north sides of the peaks
+of the High Sierra, sheltered beneath broad frosty shadows, in amphitheaters of
+their own making, where the snow, shooting down from the surrounding heights in
+avalanches, is most abundant. Over two thirds of the entire number lie between
+latitude 37° and 38°, and form the highest fountains of the San Joaquin,
+Merced, Tuolumne, and Owen&rsquo;s rivers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The glaciers of Switzerland, like those of the Sierra, are mere wasting
+remnants of mighty ice-floods that once filled the great valleys and poured
+into the sea. So, also, are those of Norway, Asia, and South America. Even the
+grand continuous mantles of ice that still cover Greenland, Spitsbergen, Nova
+Zembla, Franz-Joseph-Land, parts of Alaska, and the south polar region are
+shallowing and shrinking. Every glacier in the world is smaller than it once
+was. All the world is growing warmer, or the crop of snow-flowers is
+diminishing. But in contemplating the condition of the glaciers of the world,
+we must bear in mind while trying to account for the changes going on that the
+same sunshine that wastes them builds them. Every glacier records the
+expenditure of an enormous amount of sun-heat in lifting the vapor for the snow
+of which it is made from the ocean to the mountains, as Tyndall strikingly
+shows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The number of glaciers in the Alps, according to the Schlagintweit brothers, is
+1100, of which 100 may be regarded as primary, and the total area of ice, snow,
+and <i>névé</i> is estimated at 1177 square miles, or an average for each
+glacier of little more than one square mile. On the same authority, the average
+height above sea-level at which they melt is about 7414 feet. The Grindelwald
+glacier descends below 4000 feet, and one of the Mont Blanc glaciers reaches
+nearly as low a point. One of the largest of the Himalaya glaciers on the head
+waters of the Ganges does not, according to Captain Hodgson, descend below
+12,914 feet. The largest of the Sierra glaciers on Mount Shasta descends to
+within 9500 feet of the level of the sea, which, as far as I have observed, is
+the lowest point reached by any glacier within the bounds of California, the
+average height of all being not far from 11,000 feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The changes that have taken place in the glacial conditions of the Sierra from
+the time of greatest extension is well illustrated by the series of glaciers of
+every size and form extending along the mountains of the coast to Alaska. A
+general exploration of this instructive region shows that to the north of
+California, through Oregon and Washington, groups of active glaciers still
+exist on all the high volcanic cones of the Cascade Range,&mdash;Mount Pitt,
+the Three Sisters, Mounts Jefferson, Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier, Baker,
+and others,&mdash;some of them of considerable size, though none of them
+approach the sea. Of these mountains Rainier, in Washington, is the highest and
+iciest. Its dome-like summit, between 14,000 and 15,000 feet high, is capped
+with ice, and eight glaciers, seven to twelve miles long, radiate from it as a
+center, and form the sources of the principal streams of the State. The
+lowest-descending of this fine group flows through beautiful forests to within
+3500 feet of the sea-level, and sends forth a river laden with glacier mud and
+sand. On through British Columbia and southeastern Alaska the broad, sustained
+mountain-chain, extending along the coast, is generally glacier-bearing. The
+upper branches of nearly all the main cañons and fiords are occupied by
+glaciers, which gradually increase in size, and descend lower until the high
+region between Mount Fairweather and Mount St. Elias is reached, where a
+considerable number discharge into the waters of the ocean. This is
+preëminently the ice-land of Alaska and of the entire Pacific Coast.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus06"></a>
+<img src="images/img06.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MAP OF THE GLACIER COUNTRY" />
+<p class="caption">MAP OF THE GLACIER COUNTRY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Northward from here the glaciers gradually diminish in size and thickness, and
+melt at higher levels. In Prince William Sound and Cook&rsquo;s Inlet many fine
+glaciers are displayed, pouring from the surrounding mountains; but to the
+north of latitude 62° few, if any, glaciers remain, the ground being mostly low
+and the snowfall light. Between latitude 56° and 60° there are probably more
+than 5000 glaciers, not counting the smallest. Hundreds of the largest size
+descend through the forests to the level of the sea, or near it, though as far
+as my own observations have reached, after a pretty thorough examination of the
+region, not more than twenty-five discharge icebergs into the sea. All the long
+high-walled fiords into which these great glaciers of the first class flow are
+of course crowded with icebergs of every conceivable form, which are detached
+with thundering noise at intervals of a few minutes from an imposing ice-wall
+that is thrust forward into deep water. But these Pacific Coast icebergs are
+small as compared with those of Greenland and the Antarctic region, and only a
+few of them escape from the intricate system of channels, with which this
+portion of the coast is fringed, into the open sea. Nearly all of them are
+swashed and drifted by wind and tide back and forth in the fiords until finally
+melted by the ocean water, the sunshine, the warm winds, and the copious rains
+of summer. Only one glacier on the coast, observed by Prof. Russell, discharges
+its bergs directly into the open sea, at Icy Cape, opposite Mount St. Elias.
+The southernmost of the glaciers that reach the sea occupies a narrow,
+picturesque fiord about twenty miles to the northwest of the mouth of the
+Stikeen River, in latitude 56° 50&#x2032;. The fiord is called by the natives
+&ldquo;Hutli,&rdquo; or Thunder Bay, from the noise made by the discharge of
+the icebergs. About one degree farther north there are four of these complete
+glaciers, discharging at the heads of the long arms of Holkam Bay. At the head
+of the Tahkoo Inlet, still farther north, there is one; and at the head and
+around the sides of Glacier Bay, trending in a general northerly direction from
+Cross Sound in latitude 58° to 59°, there are seven of these complete glaciers
+pouring bergs into the bay and its branches, and keeping up an eternal
+thundering. The largest of this group, the Muir, has upward of 200 tributaries,
+and a width below the confluence of the main tributaries of about twenty-five
+miles. Between the west side of this icy bay and the ocean all the ground, high
+and low, excepting the peaks of the Fairweather Range, is covered with a mantle
+of ice from 1000 to probably 3000 feet thick, which discharges by many distinct
+mouths.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus07"></a>
+<img src="images/img07.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MOUNT RAINIER" />
+<p class="caption">MOUNT RAINIER; NORTH PUYALLUP GLACIER FROM EAGLE CLIFF</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+This fragmentary ice-sheet, and the immense glaciers about Mount St. Elias,
+together with the multitude of separate river-like glaciers that load the
+slopes of the coast mountains, evidently once formed part of a continuous
+ice-sheet that flowed over all the region hereabouts, and only a comparatively
+short time ago extended as far southward as the mouth of the Strait of Juan de
+Fuca, probably farther. All the islands of the Alexander Archipelago, as well
+as the headlands and promontories of the mainland, display telling traces of
+this great mantle that are still fresh and unmistakable. They all have the
+forms of the greatest strength with reference to the action of a vast rigid
+press of oversweeping ice from the north and northwest, and their surfaces have
+a smooth, rounded, overrubbed appearance, generally free from angles. The
+intricate labyrinth of canals, channels, straits, passages, sounds, narrows,
+etc. between the islands, and extending into the mainland, of course manifest
+in their forms and trends and general characteristics the same subordination to
+the grinding action of universal glaciation as to their origin, and differ from
+the islands and banks of the fiords only in being portions of the pre-glacial
+margin of the continent more deeply eroded, and therefore covered by the ocean
+waters which flowed into them as the ice was melted out of them. The formation
+and extension of fiords in this manner is still going on, and may be witnessed
+in many places in Glacier Bay, Yakutat Bay, and adjacent regions. That the
+domain of the sea is being extended over the land by the wearing away of its
+shores, is well known, but in these icy regions of Alaska, and even as far
+south as Vancouver Island, the coast rocks have been so short a time exposed to
+wave-action they are but little wasted as yet. In these regions the extension
+of the sea effected by its own action in post-glacial time is scarcely
+appreciable as compared with that effected by ice-action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Traces of the vanished glaciers made during the period of greater extension
+abound on the Sierra as far south as latitude 36°. Even the polished rock
+surfaces, the most evanescent of glacial records, are still found in a
+wonderfully perfect state of preservation on the upper half of the middle
+portion of the range, and form the most striking of all the glacial phenomena.
+They occur in large irregular patches in the summit and middle regions, and
+though they have been subjected to the action of the weather with its corroding
+storms for thousands of years, their mechanical excellence is such that they
+still reflect the sunbeams like glass, and attract the attention of every
+observer. The attention of the mountaineer is seldom arrested by moraines,
+however regular and high they may be, or by cañons, however deep, or by rocks,
+however noble in form and sculpture; but he stoops and rubs his hands
+admiringly on the shining surfaces and trios hard to account for their
+mysterious smoothness. He has seen the snow descending in avalanches, but
+concludes this cannot be the work of snow, for he finds it where no avalanches
+occur. Nor can water have done it, for he sees this smoothness glowing on the
+sides and tops of the highest domes. Only the winds of all the agents he knows
+seem capable of flowing in the directions indicated by the scoring. Indians,
+usually so little curious about geological phenomena, have come to me
+occasionally and asked me, &ldquo;What makeum the ground so smooth at Lake
+Tenaya?&rdquo; Even horses and dogs gaze wonderingly at the strange brightness
+of the ground, and smell the polished spaces and place their feet cautiously on
+them when they come to them for the first time, as if afraid of sinking. The
+most perfect of the polished pavements and walls lie at an elevation of from
+7000 to 9000 feet above the sea, where the rock is compact silicious granite.
+Small dim patches may be found as low as 3000 feet on the driest and most
+enduring portions of sheer walls with a southern exposure, and on compact
+swelling bosses partially protected from rain by a covering of large boulders.
+On the north half of the range the striated and polished surfaces are less
+common, not only because this part of the chain is lower, but because the
+surface rocks are chiefly porous lavas subject to comparatively rapid waste.
+The ancient moraines also, though well preserved on most of the south half of
+the range, are nearly obliterated to the northward, but then material is found
+scattered and disintegrated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A similar blurred condition of the superficial records of glacial action
+obtains throughout most of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska,
+due in great part to the action of excessive moisture. Even in southeastern
+Alaska, where the most extensive glaciers on the continent are, the more
+evanescent of the traces of their former greater extension, though
+comparatively recent, are more obscure than those of the ancient California
+glaciers whore the climate is drier and the rocks more resisting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These general views of the glaciers of the Pacific Coast will enable my readers
+to see something of the changes that have taken place in California, and will
+throw light on the residual glaciers of the High Sierra.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Prior to the autumn of 1871 the glaciers of the Sierra were unknown. In October
+of that year I discovered the Black Mountain Glacier in a shadowy amphitheater
+between Black and Rod Mountains, two of the peaks of the Merced group. This
+group is the highest portion of a spur that straggles out from the main axis of
+the range in the direction of Yosemite Valley. At the time of this interesting
+discovery I was exploring the <i>névé</i> amphitheaters of the group, and
+tracing the courses of the ancient glaciers that once poured from its ample
+fountains through the Illilouette Basin and the Yosemite Valley, not expecting
+to find any active glaciers so far south in the land of sunshine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beginning on the northwestern extremity of the group, I explored the chief
+tributary basins in succession, their moraines, roches moutonnées, and splendid
+glacier pavements, taking them in regular succession without any reference to
+the time consumed in their study. The monuments of the tributary that poured
+its ice from between Red and Black Mountains I found to be the most interesting
+of them all; and when I saw its magnificent moraines extending in majestic
+curves from the spacious amphitheater between the mountains, I was exhilarated
+with the work that lay before me. It was one of the golden days of the Sierra
+Indian summer, when the rich sunshine glorifies every landscape however rocky
+and cold, and suggests anything rather than glaciers. The path of the vanished
+glacier was warm now, and shone in many places as if washed with silver. The
+tall pines growing on the moraines stood transfigured in the glowing light, the
+poplar groves on the levels of the basin were masses of orange-yellow, and the
+late-blooming goldenrods added gold to gold. Pushing on over my rosy glacial
+highway, I passed lake after lake set in solid basins of granite, and many a
+thicket and meadow watered by a stream that issues from the amphitheater and
+links the lakes together; now wading through plushy bogs knee-deep in yellow
+and purple sphagnum; now passing over bare rock. The main lateral moraines that
+bounded the view on either hand are from 100 to nearly 200 feet high, and about
+as regular as artificial embankments, and covered with a superb growth of
+Silver Fir and Pine. But this garden and forest luxuriance was speedily left
+behind. The trees were dwarfed as I ascended; patches of the alpine bryanthus
+and cassiope began to appear, and arctic willows pressed into flat carpets by
+the winter snow. The lakelets, which a few miles down the valley were so richly
+embroidered with flowery meadows, had here, at an elevation of 10,000 feet,
+only small brown mats of carex, leaving bare rocks around more than half their
+shores. Yet amid this alpine suppression the Mountain Pine bravely tossed his
+storm-beaten branches on the ledges and buttresses of Red Mountain, some
+specimens being over 100 feet high, and 24 feet in circumference, seemingly as
+fresh and vigorous as the giants of the lower zones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Evening came on just as I got fairly within the portal of the main
+amphitheater. It is about a mile wide, and a little less than two miles long.
+The crumbling spurs and battlements of Red Mountain bound it on the north, the
+somber, rudely sculptured precipices of Black Mountain on the south, and a
+hacked, splintery <i>col</i>, curving around from mountain to mountain, shuts
+it in on the east.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I chose a camping-ground on the brink of one of the lakes where a thicket of
+Hemlock Spruce sheltered me from the night wind. Then, after making a
+tin-cupful of tea, I sat by my camp-fire reflecting on the grandeur and
+significance of the glacial records I had seen. As the night advanced the
+mighty rock walls of my mountain mansion seemed to come nearer, while the
+starry sky in glorious brightness stretched across like a ceiling from wall to
+wall, and fitted closely down into all the spiky irregularities of the summits.
+Then, after a long fireside rest and a glance at my note-book, I cut a few
+leafy branches for a bed, and fell into the clear, death-like sleep of the
+tired mountaineer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Early next morning I set out to trace the grand old glacier that had done so
+much for the beauty of the Yosemite region back to its farthest fountains,
+enjoying the charm that every explorer feels in Nature&rsquo;s untrodden
+wildernesses. The voices of the mountains were still asleep. The wind scarce
+stirred the pine-needles. The sun was up, but it was yet too cold for the birds
+and the few burrowing animals that dwell here. Only the stream, cascading from
+pool to pool, seemed to be wholly awake. Yet the spirit of the opening day
+called to action. The sunbeams came streaming gloriously through the jagged
+openings of the <i>col</i>, glancing on the burnished pavements and lighting
+the silvery lakes, while every sun-touched rock burned white on its edges like
+melting iron in a furnace. Passing round the north shore of my camp lake I
+followed the central stream past many cascades from lakelet to lakelet. The
+scenery became more rigidly arctic, the Dwarf Pines and Hemlocks disappeared,
+and the stream was bordered with icicles. As the sun rose higher rocks were
+loosened on shattered portions of the cliffs, and came down in rattling
+avalanches, echoing wildly from crag to crag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The main lateral moraines that extend from the jaws of the amphitheater into
+the Illilouette Basin are continued in straggling masses along the walls of the
+amphitheater, while separate boulders, hundreds of tons in weight, are left
+stranded here and there out in the middle of the channel. Here, also, I
+observed a series of small terminal moraines ranged along the south wall of the
+amphitheater, corresponding in size and form with the shadows cast by the
+highest portions. The meaning of this correspondence between moraines and
+shadows was afterward made plain. Tracing the stream back to the last of its
+chain of lakelets, I noticed a deposit of fine gray mud on the bottom except
+where the force of the entering current had prevented its settling. It looked
+like the mud worn from a grindstone, and I at once suspected its glacial
+origin, for the stream that was carrying it came gurgling out of the base of a
+raw moraine that seemed in process of formation. Not a plant or weather-stain
+was visible on its rough, unsettled surface. It is from 60 to over 100 feet
+high, and plunges forward at an angle of 38°. Cautiously picking my way, I
+gained the top of the moraine and was delighted to see a small but well
+characterized glacier swooping down from the gloomy precipices of Black
+Mountain in a finely graduated curve to the moraine on which I stood. The
+compact ice appeared on all the lower portions of the glacier, though gray with
+dirt and stones embedded in it. Farther up the ice disappeared beneath coarse
+granulated snow. The surface of the glacier was further characterized by dirt
+bands and the outcropping edges of the blue veins, showing the laminated
+structure of the ice. The uppermost crevasse, or &ldquo;bergschrund,&rdquo;
+where the <i>névé</i> was attached to the mountain, was from 12 to 14 feet
+wide, and was bridged in a few places by the remains of snow avalanches.
+Creeping along the edge of the schrund, holding on with benumbed fingers, I
+discovered clear sections where the bedded structure was beautifully revealed.
+The surface snow, though sprinkled with stones shot down from the cliffs, was
+in some places almost pure, gradually becoming crystalline and changing to
+whitish porous ice of different shades of color, and this again changing at a
+depth of 20 or 30 feet to blue ice, some of the ribbon-like bands of which were
+nearly pure, and blended with the paler bands in the most gradual and delicate
+manner imaginable. A series of rugged zigzags enabled me to make my way down
+into the weird under-world of the crevasse. Its chambered hollows were hung
+with a multitude of clustered icicles, amid which pale, subdued light pulsed
+and shimmered with indescribable loveliness. Water dripped and tinkled
+overhead, and from far below came strange, solemn murmurings from currents that
+were feeling their way through veins and fissures in the dark. The chambers of
+a glacier are perfectly enchanting, notwithstanding one feels out of place in
+their frosty beauty. I was soon cold in my shirt-sleeves, and the leaning wall
+threatened to engulf me; yet it was hard to leave the delicious music of the
+water and the lovely light. Coming again to the surface, I noticed boulders of
+every size on their journeys to the terminal moraine&mdash;journeys of more
+than a hundred years, without a single stop, night or day, winter or summer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun gave birth to a network of sweet-voiced rills that ran gracefully down
+the glacier, curling and swirling in their shining channels, and cutting clear
+sections through the porous surface-ice into the solid blue, where the
+structure of the glacier was beautifully illustrated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The series of small terminal moraines which I had observed in the morning,
+along the south wall of the amphitheater, correspond in every way with the
+moraine of this glacier, and their distribution with reference to shadows was
+now understood. When the climatic changes came on that caused the melting and
+retreat of the main glacier that filled the amphitheater, a series of residual
+glaciers were left in the cliff shadows, under the protection of which they
+lingered, until they formed the moraines we are studying. Then, as the snow
+became still less abundant, all of them vanished in succession, except the one
+just described; and the cause of its longer life is sufficiently apparent in
+the greater area of snow-basin it drains, and its more perfect protection from
+wasting sunshine. How much longer this little glacier will last depends, of
+course, on the amount of snow it receives from year to year, as compared with
+melting waste.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this discovery, I made excursions over all the High Sierra, pushing my
+explorations summer after summer, and discovered that what at first sight in
+the distance looked like extensive snow-fields, wore in great part glaciers,
+busily at work completing the sculpture of the summit-peaks so grandly blocked
+out by their giant predecessors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On August 21, I set a series of stakes in the Maclure Glacier, near Mount
+Lyell, and found its rate of motion to be little more than an inch a day in the
+middle, showing a great contrast to the Muir Glacier in Alaska, which, near the
+front, flows at a rate of from five to ten feet in twenty-four hours. Mount
+Shasta has three glaciers, but Mount Whitney, although it is the highest
+mountain in the range, does not now cherish a single glacier. Small patches of
+lasting snow and ice occur on its northern slopes, but they are shallow, and
+present no well marked evidence of glacial motion. Its sides, however, are
+scored and polished in many places by the action of its ancient glaciers that
+flowed east and west as tributaries of the great glaciers that once filled the
+valleys of the Kern and Owen&rsquo;s rivers.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III<br/>
+THE SNOW</h2>
+
+<p>
+The first snow that whitens the Sierra, usually falls about the end of October
+or early in November, to a depth of a few inches, after months of the most
+charming Indian summer weather imaginable. But in a few days, this light
+covering mostly melts from the slopes exposed to the sun and causes but little
+apprehension on the part of mountaineers who may be lingering among the high
+peaks at this time. The first general winter storm that yields snow that is to
+form a lasting portion of the season&rsquo;s supply, seldom breaks on the
+mountains before the end of November. Then, warned by the sky, cautions
+mountaineers, together with the wild sheep, deer, and most of the birds and
+bears, make haste to the lowlands or foot-hills; and burrowing marmots,
+mountain beavers, wood-rats, and such people go into winter quarters, some of
+them not again to see the light of day until the general awakening and
+resurrection of the spring in June or July. The first heavy fall is usually
+from about two to four feet in depth. Then, with intervals of splendid
+sunshine, storm succeeds storm, heaping snow on snow, until thirty to fifty
+feet has fallen. But on account of its settling and compacting, and the almost
+constant waste from melting and evaporation, the average depth actually found
+at any time seldom exceeds ten feet in the forest region, or fifteen feet along
+the slopes of the summit peaks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even during the coldest weather evaporation never wholly ceases, and the
+sunshine that abounds between the storms is sufficiently powerful to melt the
+surface more or less through all the winter months. Waste from melting also
+goes on to some extent on the bottom from heat stored up in the rocks, and
+given off slowly to the snow in contact with them, as is shown by the rising of
+the streams on all the higher regions after the first snowfall, and their
+steady sustained flow all winter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The greater portion of the snow deposited around the lofty summits of the range
+falls in small crisp flakes and broken crystals, or, when accompanied by strong
+winds and low temperature, the crystals, instead of being locked together in
+their fall to form tufted flakes, are beaten and broken into meal and fine
+dust. But down in the forest region the greater portion comes gently to the
+ground, light and feathery, some of the flakes in mild weather being nearly an
+inch in diameter, and it is evenly distributed and kept from drifting to any
+great extent by the shelter afforded by the large trees. Every tree during the
+progress of gentle storms is loaded with, fairy bloom at the coldest and
+darkest time of year, bending the branches, and hushing every singing needle.
+But as soon as the storm is over, and the sun shines, the snow at once begins
+to shift and settle and fall from the branches in miniature avalanches, and the
+white forest soon becomes green again. The snow on the ground also settles and
+thaws every bright day, and freezes at night, until it becomes coarsely
+granulated, and loses every trace of its rayed crystalline structure, and then
+a man may walk firmly over its frozen surface as if on ice. The forest region
+up to an elevation of 7000 feet is usually in great part free from snow in
+June, but at this time the higher regions are still heavy-laden, and are not
+touched by spring weather to any considerable extent before the middle or end
+of July.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the most striking effects of the snow on the mountains is the burial of
+the rivers and small lakes.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+As the snow fa&rsquo;s in the river<br/>
+A moment white, then lost forever,
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+sang Burns, in illustrating the fleeting character of human pleasure. The first
+snowflakes that fall into the Sierra rivers vanish thus suddenly; but in great
+storms, when the temperature is low, the abundance of the snow at length chills
+the water nearly to the freezing-point, and then, of course, it ceases to melt
+and consume the snow so suddenly. The falling flakes and crystals form,
+cloud-like masses of blue sludge, which are swept forward with the current and
+carried down to warmer climates many miles distant, while some are lodged
+against logs and rocks and projecting points of the banks, and last for days,
+piled high above the level of the water, and show white again, instead of being
+at once &ldquo;lost forever,&rdquo; while the rivers themselves are at length
+lost for months during the snowy period. The snow is first built out from the
+banks in bossy, over-curling drifts, compacting and cementing until the streams
+are spanned. They then flow in the dark beneath a continuous covering across
+the snowy zone, which is about thirty miles wide. All the Sierra rivers and
+their tributaries in these high regions are thus lost every winter, as if
+another glacial period had come on. Not a drop of running water is to be seen
+excepting at a few points where large falls occur, though the rush and rumble
+of the heavier currents may still be heard. Toward spring, when the weather is
+warm during the day and frosty at night, repeated thawing and freezing and new
+layers of snow render the bridging-masses dense and firm, so that one may
+safely walk across the streams, or even lead a horse across them without danger
+of falling through. In June the thinnest parts of the winter ceiling, and those
+most exposed to sunshine, begin to give way, forming dark, rugged-edged,
+pit-like sinks, at the bottom of which the rushing water may be seen. At the
+end of June only here and there may the mountaineer find a secure snow-bridge.
+The most lasting of the winter bridges, thawing from below as well as from
+above, because of warm currents of air passing through the tunnels, are
+strikingly arched and sculptured; and by the occasional freezing of the oozing,
+dripping water of the ceiling they become brightly and picturesquely icy. In
+some of the reaches, where there is a free margin, we may walk through them.
+Small skylights appearing here and there, these tunnels are not very dark. The
+roaring river fills all the arching way with impressively loud reverberating
+music, which is sweetened at times by the ouzel, a bird that is not afraid to
+go wherever a stream may go, and to sing wherever a stream sings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the small alpine pools and lakelets are in like manner obliterated from the
+winter landscapes, either by being first frozen and then covered by snow, or by
+being filled in by avalanches. The first avalanche of the season shot into a
+lake basin may perhaps find the surface frozen. Then there is a grand crashing
+of breaking ice and dashing of waves mingled with the low, deep booming of the
+avalanche. Detached masses of the invading snow, mixed with fragments of ice,
+drift about in sludgy, island-like heaps, while the main body of it forms a
+talus with its base wholly or in part resting on the bottom of the basin, as
+controlled by its depth and the size of the avalanche. The next avalanche, of
+course, encroaches still farther, and so on with each in succession until the
+entire basin may be filled and its water sponged up or displaced. This huge
+mass of sludge, more or less mixed with sand, stones, and perhaps timber, is
+frozen to a considerable depth, and much sun-heat is required to thaw it. Some
+of these unfortunate lakelets are not clear of ice and snow until near the end
+of summer. Others are never quite free, opening only on the side opposite the
+entrance of the avalanches. Some show only a narrow crescent of water lying
+between the shore and sheer bluffs of icy compacted snow, masses of which
+breaking off float in front like icebergs in a miniature Arctic Ocean, while
+the avalanche heaps leaning back against the mountains look like small
+glaciers. The frontal cliffs are in some instances quite picturesque, and with
+the berg-dotted waters in front of them lighted with sunshine are exceedingly
+beautiful. It often happens that while one side of a lake basin is hopelessly
+snow-buried and frozen, the other, enjoying sunshine, is adorned with beautiful
+flower-gardens. Some of the smaller lakes are extinguished in an instant by a
+heavy avalanche either of rocks or snow. The rolling, sliding, ponderous mass
+entering on one side sweeps across the bottom and up the opposite side,
+displacing the water and even scraping the basin clean, and shoving the
+accumulated rocks and sediments up the farther bank and taking full possession.
+The dislodged water is in part absorbed, but most of it is sent around the
+front of the avalanche and down the channel of the outlet, roaring and hurrying
+as if frightened and glad to escape.
+</p>
+
+<h4>SNOW-BANNERS</h4>
+
+<p>
+The most magnificent storm phenomenon I ever saw, surpassing in showy grandeur
+the most imposing effects of clouds, floods, or avalanches, was the peaks of
+the High Sierra, back of Yosemite Valley, decorated with snow-banners. Many of
+the starry snow-flowers, out of which these banners are made, fall before they
+are ripe, while most of those that do attain perfect development as six-rayed
+crystals glint and chafe against one another in their fall through the frosty
+air, and are broken into fragments. This dry fragmentary snow is still further
+prepared for the formation of banners by the action of the wind. For, instead
+of finding rest at once, like the snow which falls into the tranquil depths of
+the forests, it is rolled over and over, beaten against rock-ridges, and
+swirled in pits and hollows, like boulders, pebbles, and sand in the pot-holes
+of a river, until finally the delicate angles of the crystals are worn off, and
+the whole mass is reduced to dust. And whenever storm-winds find this prepared
+snow-dust in a loose condition on exposed slopes, where there is a free upward
+sweep to leeward, it is tossed back into the sky, and borne onward from peak to
+peak in the form of banners or cloudy drifts, according to the velocity of the
+wind and the conformation of the slopes up or around which it is driven. While
+thus flying through the air, a small portion makes good its escape, and remains
+in the sky as vapor. But far the greater part, after being driven into the sky
+again and again, is at length locked fast in bossy drifts, or in the wombs of
+glaciers, some of it to remain silent and rigid for centuries before it is
+finally melted and sent singing down the mountainsides to the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet, notwithstanding the abundance of winter snow-dust in the mountains, and
+the frequency of high winds, and the length of time the dust remains loose and
+exposed to their action, the occurrence of well-formed banners is, for causes
+we shall hereafter note, comparatively rare. I have seen only one display of
+this kind that seemed in every way perfect. This was in the winter of 1873,
+when the snow-laden summits were swept by a wild &ldquo;norther.&rdquo; I
+happened at the time to be wintering in Yosemite Valley, that sublime Sierra
+temple where every day one may see the grandest sights. Yet even here the wild
+gala-day of the north wind seemed surpassingly glorious. I was awakened in the
+morning by the rocking of my cabin and the beating of pine-burs on the roof.
+Detached torrents and avalanches from the main wind-flood overhead were rushing
+wildly down the narrow side cañons, and over the precipitous walls, with loud
+resounding roar, rousing the pines to enthusiastic action, and making the whole
+valley vibrate as though it were an instrument being played.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But afar on the lofty exposed peaks of the range standing so high in the sky,
+the storm was expressing itself in still grander characters, which I was soon
+to see in all their glory. I had long been anxious to study some points in the
+structure of the ice-cone that is formed every winter at the foot of the upper
+Yosemite fall, but the blinding spray by which it is invested had hitherto
+prevented me from making a sufficiently near approach. This morning the entire
+body of the fall was torn into gauzy shreds, and blown horizontally along the
+face of the cliff, leaving the cone dry; and while making my way to the top of
+an overlooking ledge to seize so favorable an opportunity to examine the
+interior of the cone, the peaks of the Merced group came in sight over the
+shoulder of the South Dome, each waving a resplendent banner against the blue
+sky, as regular in form, and as firm in texture, as if woven of fine silk. So
+rare and splendid a phenomenon, of course, overbore all other considerations,
+and I at once let the ice-cone go, and began to force my way out of the valley
+to some dome or ridge sufficiently lofty to command a general view of the main
+summits, feeling assured that I should find them bannered still more
+gloriously; nor was I in the least disappointed. Indian Cañon, through which I
+climbed, was choked with snow that had been shot down in avalanches from the
+high cliffs on either side, rendering the ascent difficult; but inspired by the
+roaring storm, the tedious wallowing brought no fatigue, and in four hours I
+gained the top of a ridge above the valley, 8000 feet high. And there in bold
+relief, like a clear painting, appeared a most imposing scene. Innumerable
+peaks, black and sharp, rose grandly into the dark blue sky, their bases set in
+solid white, their sides streaked and splashed with snow, like ocean rocks with
+foam; and from every summit, all free and unconfused, was streaming a beautiful
+silky silvery banner, from half a mile to a mile in length, slender at the
+point of attachment, then widening gradually as it extended from the peak until
+it was about 1000 or 1500 feet in breadth, as near as I could estimate. The
+cluster of peaks called the &ldquo;Crown of the Sierra,&rdquo; at the head of
+the Merced and Tuolumne rivers,&mdash;Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Conness, Lyell,
+Maclure, Ritter, with their nameless compeers,&mdash;each had its own refulgent
+banner, waving with a clearly visible motion in the sunglow, and there was not
+a single cloud in the sky to mar their simple grandeur. Fancy yourself standing
+on this Yosemite ridge looking eastward. You notice a strange garish glitter in
+the air. The gale drives wildly overhead with a fierce, tempestuous roar, but
+its violence is not felt, for you are looking through a sheltered opening in
+the woods as through a window. There, in the immediate foreground of your
+picture, rises a majestic forest of Silver Fir blooming in eternal freshness,
+the foliage yellow-green, and the snow beneath the trees strewn with their
+beautiful plumes, plucked off by the wind. Beyond, and extending over all the
+middle ground, are somber swaths of pine, interrupted by huge swelling ridges
+and domes; and just beyond the dark forest you see the monarchs of the High
+Sierra waving their magnificent banners. They are twenty miles away, but you
+would not wish them nearer, for every feature is distinct, and the whole
+glorious show is seen in its right proportions. After this general view, mark
+how sharply the dark snowless ribs and buttresses and summits of the peaks are
+defined, excepting the portions veiled by the banners, and how delicately their
+sides are streaked with snow, where it has come to rest in narrow flutings and
+gorges. Mark, too, how grandly the banners wave as the wind is deflected
+against their sides, and how trimly each is attached to the very summit of its
+peak, like a streamer at a masthead; how smooth and silky they are in texture,
+and how finely their fading fringes are penciled on the azure sky. See how
+dense and opaque they are at the point of attachment, and how filmy and
+translucent toward the end, so that the peaks back of them are seen dimly, as
+though you were looking through ground glass. Yet again observe how some of the
+longest, belonging to the loftiest summits, stream perfectly free all the way
+across intervening notches and passes from peak to peak, while others overlap
+and partly hide each other. And consider how keenly every particle of this
+wondrous cloth of snow is flashing out jets of light. These are the main
+features of the beautiful and terrible picture as seen from the forest window;
+and it would still be surpassingly glorious were the fore- and middle-grounds
+obliterated altogether, leaving only the black peaks, the white banners, and
+the blue sky.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus08"></a>
+<img src="images/img08.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="KOLANA ROCK" />
+<p class="caption">KOLANA ROCK, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Glancing now in a general way at the formation of snow-banners, we find that
+the main causes of the wondrous beauty and perfection of those we have been
+contemplating were the favorable direction and great force of the wind, the
+abundance of snow-dust, and the peculiar conformation of the slopes of the
+peaks. It is essential not only that the wind should move with great velocity
+and steadiness to supply a sufficiently copious and continuous stream of
+snow-dust, but that it should come from the north. No perfect banner is ever
+hung on the Sierra peaks by a south wind. Had the gale that day blown from the
+south, leaving other conditions unchanged, only a dull, confused, fog-like
+drift would have been produced; for the snow, instead of being spouted up over
+the tops of the peaks in concentrated currents to be drawn out as streamers,
+would have been shed off around the sides, and piled down into the glacier
+wombs. The cause of the concentrated action of the north wind is found in the
+peculiar form of the north sides of the peaks, where the amphitheaters of the
+residual glaciers are. In general the south sides are convex and irregular,
+while the north sides are concave both in their vertical and horizontal
+sections; the wind in ascending these curves converges toward the summits,
+carrying the snow in concentrating currents with it, shooting it almost
+straight up into the air above the peaks, from which it is then carried away in
+a horizontal direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This difference in form between the north and south sides of the peaks was
+almost wholly produced by the difference in the kind and quantity of the
+glaciation to which they have been subjected, the north sides having been
+hollowed by residual shadow-glaciers of a form that never existed on the
+sun-beaten sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It appears, therefore, that shadows in great part determine not only the forms
+of lofty icy mountains, but also those of the snow-banners that the wild winds
+hang on them.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV<br/>
+A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA</h2>
+
+<p>
+Early one bright morning in the middle of Indian summer, while the glacier
+meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from the foot of Mount
+Lyell, on my way down to Yosemite Valley, to replenish my exhausted store of
+bread and tea. I had spent the past summer, as many preceding ones, exploring
+the glaciers that lie on the head waters of the San Joaquin, Tuolumne, Merced,
+and Owen&rsquo;s rivers; measuring and studying their movements, trends,
+crevasses, moraines, etc., and the part they had played during the period of
+their greater extension in the creation and development of the landscapes of
+this alpine wonderland. The time for this kind of work was nearly over for the
+year, and I began to look forward with delight to the approaching winter with
+its wondrous storms, when I would be warmly snow-bound in my Yosemite cabin
+with plenty of bread and books; but a tinge of regret came on when I considered
+that possibly I might not see this favorite region again until the next summer,
+excepting distant views from the heights about the Yosemite walls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To artists, few portions of the High Sierra are, strictly speaking,
+picturesque. The whole massive uplift of the range is one great picture, not
+clearly divisible into smaller ones; differing much in this respect from the
+older, and what may be called, riper mountains of the Coast Range. All the
+landscapes of the Sierra, as we have seen, were born again, remodeled from base
+to summit by the developing ice-floods of the last glacial winter. But all
+those new landscapes were not brought forth simultaneously; some of the
+highest, where the ice lingered longest, are tens of centuries younger than
+those of the warmer regions below them. In general, the younger the
+mountain-landscapes,&mdash;younger, I mean, with reference to the time of their
+emergence from the ice of the glacial period,&mdash;the less separable are they
+into artistic bits capable of being made into warm, sympathetic, lovable
+pictures with appreciable humanity in them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, however, on the head waters of the Tuolumne, is a group of wild peaks on
+which the geologist may say that the sun has but just begun to shine, which is
+yet in a high degree picturesque, and in its main features so regular and
+evenly balanced as almost to appear conventional&mdash;one somber cluster of
+snow-laden peaks with gray pine-fringed granite bosses braided around its base,
+the whole surging free into the sky from the head of a magnificent valley,
+whose lofty walls are beveled away on both sides so as to embrace it all
+without admitting anything not strictly belonging to it. The foreground was now
+aflame with autumn colors, brown and purple and gold, ripe in the mellow
+sunshine; contrasting brightly with the deep, cobalt blue of the sky, and the
+black and gray, and pure, spiritual white of the rocks and glaciers. Down
+through the midst, the young Tuolumne was seen pouring from its crystal
+fountains, now resting in glassy pools as if changing back again into ice, now
+leaping in white cascades as if turning to snow; gliding right and left between
+granite bosses, then sweeping on through the smooth, meadowy levels of the
+valley, swaying pensively from side to side with calm, stately gestures past
+dipping willows and sedges, and around groves of arrowy pine; and throughout
+its whole eventful course, whether flowing fast or slow, singing loud or low,
+ever filling the landscape with spiritual animation, and manifesting the
+grandeur of its sources in every movement and tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pursuing my lonely way down the valley, I turned again and again to gaze on the
+glorious picture, throwing up my arms to inclose it as in a frame. After long
+ages of growth in the darkness beneath the glaciers, through sunshine and
+storms, it seemed now to be ready and waiting for the elected artist, like
+yellow wheat for the reaper; and I could not help wishing that I might carry
+colors and brushes with me on my travels, and learn to paint. In the mean time
+I had to be content with photographs on my mind and sketches in my note-books.
+At length, after I had rounded a precipitous headland that puts out from the
+west wall of the valley, every peak vanished from sight, and I pushed rapidly
+along the frozen meadows, over the divide between the waters of the Merced and
+Tuolumne, and down through the forests that clothe the slopes of Cloud&rsquo;s
+Rest, arriving in Yosemite in due time&mdash;which, with me, is <i>any</i>
+time. And, strange to say, among the first people I met here were two artists
+who, with letters of introduction, were awaiting my return. They inquired
+whether in the course of my explorations in the adjacent mountains I had ever
+come upon a landscape suitable for a large painting; whereupon I began a
+description of the one that had so lately excited my admiration. Then, as I
+went on further and further into details, their faces began to glow, and I
+offered to guide them to it, while they declared that they would gladly follow,
+far or near, whithersoever I could spare the time to lead them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since storms might come breaking down through the fine weather at any time,
+burying the colors in snow, and cutting off the artists&rsquo; retreat, I
+advised getting ready at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I led them out of the valley by the Vernal and Nevada Falls, thence over the
+main dividing ridge to the Big Tuolumne Meadows, by the old Mono trail, and
+thence along the upper Tuolumne River to its head. This was my
+companions&rsquo; first excursion into the High Sierra, and as I was almost
+always alone in my mountaineering, the way that the fresh beauty was reflected
+in their faces made for me a novel and interesting study. They naturally were
+affected most of all by the colors&mdash;the intense azure of the sky, the
+purplish grays of the granite, the red and browns of dry meadows, and the
+translucent purple and crimson of huckleberry bogs; the flaming yellow of aspen
+groves, the silvery flashing of the streams, and the bright green and blue of
+the glacier lakes. But the general expression of the scenery&mdash;rocky and
+savage&mdash;seemed sadly disappointing; and as they threaded the forest from
+ridge to ridge, eagerly scanning the landscapes as they were unfolded, they
+said: &ldquo;All this is huge and sublime, but we see nothing as yet at all
+available for effective pictures. Art is long, and art is limited, you know;
+and here are foregrounds, middle-grounds, backgrounds, all alike; bare
+rock-waves, woods, groves, diminutive flecks of meadow, and strips of
+glittering water.&rdquo; &ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;only bide
+a wee, and I will show you something you will like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, toward the end of the second day, the Sierra Crown began to come
+into view, and when we had fairly rounded the projecting headland before
+mentioned, the whole picture stood revealed in the flush of the alpenglow.
+Their enthusiasm was excited beyond bounds, and the more impulsive of the two,
+a young Scotchman, dashed ahead, shouting and gesticulating and tossing his
+arms in the air like a madman. Here, at last, was a typical alpine landscape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After feasting awhile on the view, I proceeded to make camp in a sheltered
+grove a little way back from the meadow, where pine-boughs could be obtained
+for beds, and where there was plenty of dry wood for fires, while the artists
+ran here and there, along the river-bends and up the sides of the cañon,
+choosing foregrounds for sketches. After dark, when our tea was made and a
+rousing fire had been built, we began to make our plans. They decided to remain
+several days, at the least, while I concluded to make an excursion in the mean
+time to the untouched summit of Ritter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was now about the middle of October, the springtime of snow-flowers. The
+first winter-clouds had already bloomed, and the peaks were strewn with fresh
+crystals, without, however, affecting the climbing to any dangerous extent. And
+as the weather was still profoundly calm, and the distance to the foot of the
+mountain only a little more than a day, I felt that I was running no great risk
+of being storm-bound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mount Ritter is king of the mountains of the middle portion of the High Sierra,
+as Shasta of the north and Whitney of the south sections. Moreover, as far as I
+know, it had never been climbed. I had explored the adjacent wilderness summer
+after summer, but my studies thus far had never drawn me to the top of it. Its
+height above sea-level is about 13,300 feet, and it is fenced round by steeply
+inclined glaciers, and cañons of tremendous depth and ruggedness, which render
+it almost inaccessible. But difficulties of this kind only exhilarate the
+mountaineer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning, the artists went heartily to their work and I to mine. Former
+experiences had given good reason to know that passionate storms, invisible as
+yet, might be brooding in the calm sun-gold; therefore, before bidding
+farewell, I warned the artists not to be alarmed should I fail to appear before
+a week or ten days, and advised them, in case a snow-storm should set in, to
+keep up big fires and shelter themselves as best they could, and on no account
+to become frightened and attempt to seek their way back to Yosemite alone
+through the drifts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My general plan was simply this: to scale the cañon, wall, cross over to the
+eastern flank of the range, and then make my way southward to the northern
+spurs of Mount Ritter in compliance with the intervening topography; for to
+push on directly southward from camp through the innumerable peaks and
+pinnacles that adorn this portion of the axis of the range, however
+interesting, would take too much time, besides being extremely difficult and
+dangerous at this time of year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All my first day was pure pleasure; simply mountaineering indulgence, crossing
+the dry pathways of the ancient glaciers, tracing happy streams, and learning
+the habits of the birds and marmots in the groves and rocks. Before I had gone
+a mile from camp, I came to the foot of a white cascade that beats its way down
+a rugged gorge in the cañon wall, from a height of about nine hundred feet, and
+pours its throbbing waters into the Tuolumne. I was acquainted with its
+fountains, which, fortunately, lay in my course. What a fine traveling
+companion it proved to be, what songs it sang, and how passionately it told the
+mountain&rsquo;s own joy! Gladly I climbed along its dashing border, absorbing
+its divine music, and bathing from time to time in waftings of irised spray.
+Climbing higher, higher, now beauty came streaming on the sight: painted
+meadows, late-blooming gardens, peaks of rare architecture, lakes here and
+there, shining like silver, and glimpses of the forested middle region and the
+yellow lowlands far in the west. Beyond the range I saw the so-called Mono
+Desert, lying dreamily silent in thick purple light&mdash;a desert of heavy
+sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished granite. Here the waters
+divide, shouting in glorious enthusiasm, and falling eastward to vanish in the
+volcanic sands and dry sky of the Great Basin, or westward to the Great Valley
+of California, and thence through the Bay of San Francisco and the Golden Gate
+to the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Passing a little way down over the summit until I had reached an elevation of
+about 10,000 feet, I pushed on southward toward a group of savage peaks that
+stand guard about Ritter on the north and west, groping my way, and dealing
+instinctively with every obstacle as it presented itself. Here a huge gorge
+would be found cutting across my path, along the dizzy edge of which I
+scrambled until some less precipitous point was discovered where I might safely
+venture to the bottom and then, selecting some feasible portion of the opposite
+wall, reascend with the same slow caution. Massive, flat-topped spurs alternate
+with the gorges, plunging abruptly from the shoulders of the snowy peaks, and
+planting their feet in the warm desert. These were everywhere marked and
+adorned with characteristic sculptures of the ancient glaciers that swept over
+this entire region like one vast ice-wind, and the polished surfaces produced
+by the ponderous flood are still so perfectly preserved that in many places the
+sunlight reflected from them is about as trying to the eyes as sheets of snow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+God&rsquo;s glacial-mills grind slowly, but they have been kept in motion long
+enough in California to grind sufficient soil for a glorious abundance of life,
+though most of the grist has been carried to the lowlands, leaving these high
+regions comparatively lean and bare; while the post-glacial agents of erosion
+have not yet furnished sufficient available food over the general surface for
+more than a few tufts of the hardiest plants, chiefly carices and eriogonae.
+And it is interesting to learn in this connection that the sparseness and
+repressed character of the vegetation at this height is caused more by want of
+soil than by harshness of climate; for, here and there, in sheltered hollows
+(countersunk beneath the general surface) into which a few rods of well-ground
+moraine chips have been dumped, we find groves of spruce and pine thirty to
+forty feet high, trimmed around the edges with willow and huckleberry bushes,
+and oftentimes still further by an outer ring of tall grasses, bright with
+lupines, larkspurs, and showy columbines, suggesting a climate by no means
+repressingly severe. All the streams, too, and the pools at this elevation are
+furnished with little gardens wherever soil can be made to lie, which, though
+making scarce any show at a distance, constitute charming surprises to the
+appreciative observer. In these bits of leanness a few birds find grateful
+homes. Having no acquaintance with man, they fear no ill, and flock curiously
+about the stranger, almost allowing themselves to be taken in the hand. In so
+wild and so beautiful a region was spent my first day, every sight and sound
+inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his
+individuality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now came the solemn, silent evening. Long, blue, spiky shadows crept out across
+the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually
+deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh
+crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me one of the most impressive of
+all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light,
+the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood
+hushed and waiting like devout worshipers. Just before the alpenglow began to
+fade, two crimson clouds came streaming across the summit like wings of flame,
+rendering the sublime scene yet more impressive; then came darkness and the
+stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Icy Ritter was still miles away, but I could proceed no farther that night. I
+found a good campground on the rim of a glacier basin about 11,000 feet above
+the sea. A small lake nestles in the bottom of it, from which I got water for
+my tea, and a storm-beaten thicket near by furnished abundance of resiny
+fire-wood. Somber peaks, hacked and shattered, circled half-way around the
+horizon, wearing a savage aspect in the gloaming, and a waterfall chanted
+solemnly across the lake on its way down from the foot of a glacier. The fall
+and the lake and the glacier were almost equally bare; while the scraggy pines
+anchored in the rock-fissures were so dwarfed and shorn by storm-winds that you
+might walk over their tops. In tone and aspect the scene was one of the most
+desolate I ever beheld. But the darkest scriptures of the mountains are
+illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to make themselves felt
+when one is alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I made my bed in a nook of the pine-thicket, where the branches were pressed
+and crinkled overhead like a roof, and bent down around the sides. These are
+the best bedchambers the high mountains afford&mdash;snug as squirrel-nests,
+well ventilated, full of spicy odors, and with plenty of wind-played needles to
+sing one asleep. I little expected company, but, creeping in through a low
+side-door, I found five or six birds nestling among the tassels. The night-wind
+began to blow soon after dark; at first only a gentle breathing, but increasing
+toward midnight to a rough gale that fell upon my leafy roof in ragged surges
+like a cascade, bearing wild sounds from the crags overhead. The waterfall sang
+in chorus, filling the old ice-fountain with its solemn roar, and seeming to
+increase in power as the night advanced&mdash;fit voice for such a landscape. I
+had to creep out many times to the fire during the night, for it was biting
+cold and I had no blankets. Gladly I welcomed the morning star.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dawn in the dry, wavering air of the desert was glorious. Everything
+encouraged my undertaking and betokened success. There was no cloud in the sky,
+no storm-tone in the wind. Breakfast of bread and tea was soon made. I fastened
+a hard, durable crust to my belt by way of provision, in case I should be
+compelled to pass a night on the mountain-top; then, securing the remainder of
+my little stock against wolves and wood-rats, I set forth free and hopeful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this alone is
+worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The highest peaks
+burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the lower peaks and spires
+caught the glow, and long lances of light, streaming through many a notch and
+pass, fell thick on the frozen meadows. The majestic form of Ritter was full in
+sight, and I pushed rapidly on over rounded rock-bosses and pavements, my
+iron-shod shoes making a clanking sound, suddenly hushed now and then in rugs
+of bryanthus, and sedgy lake-margins soft as moss. Here, too, in this so-called
+&ldquo;land of desolation,&rdquo; I met cassiope, growing in fringes among the
+battered rocks. Her blossoms had faded long ago, but they were still clinging
+with happy memories to the evergreen sprays, and still so beautiful as to
+thrill every fiber of one&rsquo;s being. Winter and summer, you may hear her
+voice, the low, sweet melody of her purple bells. No evangel among all the
+mountain plants speaks Nature&rsquo;s love more plainly than cassiope. Where
+she dwells, the redemption of the coldest solitude is complete. The very rocks
+and glaciers seem to feel her presence, and become imbued with her own fountain
+sweetness. All things were warming and awakening. Frozen rills began to flow,
+the marmots came out of their nests in boulder-piles and climbed sunny rocks to
+bask, and the dun-headed sparrows were flitting about seeking their breakfasts.
+The lakes seen from every ridge-top were brilliantly rippled and spangled,
+shimmering like the thickets of the low Dwarf Pines. The rocks, too, seemed
+responsive to the vital heat&mdash;rock-crystals and snow-crystals thrilling
+alike. I strode on exhilarated, as if never more to feel fatigue, limbs moving
+of themselves, every sense unfolding like the thawing flowers, to take part in
+the new day harmony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All along my course thus far, excepting when down in the cañons, the landscapes
+were mostly open to me, and expansive, at least on one side. On the left were
+the purple plains of Mono, reposing dreamily and warm; on the right, the near
+peaks springing keenly into the thin sky with more and more impressive
+sublimity. But these larger views were at length lost. Rugged spurs, and
+moraines, and huge, projecting buttresses began to shut me in. Every feature
+became more rigidly alpine, without, however, producing any chilling effect;
+for going to the mountains is like going home. We always find that the
+strangest objects in these fountain wilds are in some degree familiar, and we
+look upon them with a vague sense of having seen them before.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus09"></a>
+<img src="images/img09.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="GENERAL GRANT TREE" />
+<p class="caption">GENERAL GRANT TREE, GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+On the southern shore of a frozen lake, I encountered an extensive field of
+hard, granular snow, up which I scampered in fine tone, intending to follow it
+to its head, and cross the rocky spur against which it leans, hoping thus to
+come direct upon the base of the main Ritter peak. The surface was pitted with
+oval hollows, made by stones and drifted pine-needles that had melted
+themselves into the mass by the radiation of absorbed sun-heat. These afforded
+good footholds, but the surface curved more and more steeply at the head, and
+the pits became shallower and less abundant, until I found myself in danger of
+being shed off like avalanching snow. I persisted, however, creeping on all
+fours, and shuffling up the smoothest places on my back, as I had often done on
+burnished granite, until, after slipping several times, I was compelled to
+retrace my course to the bottom, and make my way around the west end of the
+lake, and thence up to the summit of the divide between the head waters of Rush
+Creek and the northernmost tributaries of the San Joaquin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arriving on the summit of this dividing crest, one of the most exciting pieces
+of pure wilderness was disclosed that I ever discovered in all my
+mountaineering. There, immediately in front, loomed the majestic mass of Mount
+Ritter, with a glacier swooping down its face nearly to my feet, then curving
+westward and pouring its frozen flood into a dark blue lake, whose shores were
+bound with precipices of crystalline snow; while a deep chasm drawn between the
+divide and the glacier separated the massive picture from everything else. I
+could see only the one sublime mountain, the one glacier, the one lake; the
+whole veiled with one blue shadow&mdash;rock, ice, and water close together
+without a single leaf or sign of life. After gazing spellbound, I began
+instinctively to scrutinize every notch and gorge and weathered buttress of the
+mountain, with reference to making the ascent. The entire front above the
+glacier appeared as one tremendous precipice, slightly receding at the top, and
+bristling with spires and pinnacles set above one another in formidable array.
+Massive lichen-stained battlements stood forward here and there, hacked at the
+top with angular notches, and separated by frosty gullies and recesses that
+have been veiled in shadow ever since their creation; while to right and left,
+as far as I could see, were huge, crumbling buttresses, offering no hope to the
+climber. The head of the glacier sends up a few finger-like branches through
+narrow <i>couloirs</i>; but these seemed too steep and short to be available,
+especially as I had no ax with which to cut steps, and the numerous
+narrow-throated gullies down which stones and snow are avalanched seemed
+hopelessly steep, besides being interrupted by vertical cliffs; while the whole
+front was rendered still more terribly forbidding by the chill shadow and the
+gloomy blackness of the rocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Descending the divide in a hesitating mood, I picked my way across the yawning
+chasm at the foot, and climbed out upon the glacier. There were no meadows now
+to cheer with their brave colors, nor could I hear the dun-headed sparrows,
+whose cheery notes so often relieve the silence of our highest mountains. The
+only sounds were the gurgling of small rills down in the veins and crevasses of
+the glacier, and now and then the rattling report of falling stones, with the
+echoes they shot out into the crisp air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could not distinctly hope to reach the summit from this side, yet I moved on
+across the glacier as if driven by fate. Contending with myself, the season is
+too far spent, I said, and even should I be successful, I might be storm-bound
+on the mountain; and in the cloud-darkness, with the cliffs and crevasses
+covered with snow, how could I escape? No; I must wait till next summer. I
+would only approach the mountain now, and inspect it, creep about its flanks,
+learn what I could of its history, holding myself ready to flee on the approach
+of the first storm-cloud. But we little know until tried how much of the
+uncontrollable there is in us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and up
+dangerous heights, let the judgment forbid as it may.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I succeeded in gaining the foot of the cliff on the eastern extremity of the
+glacier, and there discovered the mouth of a narrow avalanche gully, through
+which I began to climb, intending to follow it as far as possible, and at least
+obtain some fine wild views for my pains. Its general course is oblique to the
+plane of the mountain-face, and the metamorphic slates of which the mountain is
+built are cut by cleavage planes in such a way that they weather off in angular
+blocks, giving rise to irregular steps that greatly facilitate climbing on the
+sheer places. I thus made my way into a wilderness of crumbling spires and
+battlements, built together in bewildering combinations, and glazed in many
+places with a thin coating of ice, which I had to hammer off with stones. The
+situation was becoming gradually more perilous; but, having passed several
+dangerous spots, I dared not think of descending; for, so steep was the entire
+ascent, one would inevitably fall to the glacier in case a single misstep were
+made. Knowing, therefore, the tried danger beneath, I became all the more
+anxious concerning the developments to be made above, and began to be conscious
+of a vague foreboding of what actually befell; not that I was given to fear,
+but rather because my instincts, usually so positive and true, seemed vitiated
+in some way, and were leading me astray. At length, after attaining an
+elevation of about 12,800 feet, I found myself at the foot of a sheer drop in
+the bed of the avalanche channel I was tracing, which seemed absolutely to bar
+further progress. It was only about forty-five or fifty feet high, and somewhat
+roughened by fissures and projections; but these seemed so slight and insecure,
+as footholds, that I tried hard to avoid the precipice altogether, by scaling
+the wall of the channel on either side. But, though less steep, the walls were
+smoother than the obstructing rock, and repeated efforts only showed that I
+must either go right ahead or turn back. The tried dangers beneath seemed even
+greater than that of the cliff in front; therefore, after scanning its face
+again and again, I began to scale it, picking my holds with intense caution.
+After gaining a point about halfway to the top, I was suddenly brought to a
+dead stop, with arms outspread, clinging close to the face of the rock, unable
+to move hand or foot either up or down. My doom appeared fixed. I <i>must</i>
+fall. There would be a moment of bewilderment, and then a lifeless rumble down
+the one general precipice to the glacier below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When this final danger flashed upon me, I became nerve-shaken for the first
+time since setting foot on the mountains, and my mind seemed to fill with a
+stifling smoke. But this terrible eclipse lasted only a moment, when life
+blazed forth again with preternatural clearness. I seemed suddenly to become
+possessed of a new sense. The other self, bygone experiences, Instinct, or
+Guardian Angel,&mdash;call it what you will,&mdash;came forward and assumed
+control. Then my trembling muscles became firm again, every rift and flaw in
+the rock was seen as through a microscope, and my limbs moved with a
+positiveness and precision with which I seemed to have nothing at all to do.
+Had I been borne aloft upon wings, my deliverance could not have been more
+complete.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Above this memorable spot, the face of the mountain is still more savagely
+hacked and torn. It is a maze of yawning chasms and gullies, in the angles of
+which rise beetling crags and piles of detached boulders that seem to have been
+gotten ready to be launched below. But the strange influx of strength I had
+received seemed inexhaustible. I found a way without effort, and soon stood
+upon the topmost crag in the blessed light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How truly glorious the landscape circled around this noble summit!&mdash;giant
+mountains, valleys innumerable, glaciers and meadows, rivers and lakes, with
+the wide blue sky bent tenderly over them all. But in my first hour of freedom
+from that terrible shadow, the sunlight in which I was laving seemed all in
+all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking southward along the axis of the range, the eye is first caught by a row
+of exceedingly sharp and slender spires, which rise openly to a height of about
+a thousand feet, above a series of short, residual glaciers that lean back
+against their bases; their fantastic sculpture and the unrelieved sharpness
+with which they spring out of the ice rendering them peculiarly wild and
+striking. These are &ldquo;The Minarets.&rdquo; Beyond them you behold a
+sublime wilderness of mountains, their snowy summits towering together in
+crowded abundance, peak beyond peak, swelling higher, higher as they sweep on
+southward, until the culminating point of the range is reached on Mount
+Whitney, near the head of the Kern River, at an elevation of nearly 14,700 feet
+above the level of the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Westward, the general flank of the range is seen flowing sublimely away from
+the sharp summits, in smooth undulations; a sea of huge gray granite waves
+dotted with lakes and meadows, and fluted with stupendous cañons that grow
+steadily deeper as they recede in the distance. Below this gray region lies the
+dark forest zone, broken here and there by upswelling ridges and domes; and yet
+beyond lies a yellow, hazy belt, marking the broad plain of the San Joaquin,
+bounded on its farther side by the blue mountains of the coast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Turning now to the northward, there in the immediate foreground is the glorious
+Sierra Crown, with Cathedral Peak, a temple of marvelous architecture, a few
+degrees to the left of it; the gray, massive form of Mammoth Mountain to the
+right; while Mounts Ord, Gibbs, Dana, Conness, Tower Peak, Castle Peak, Silver
+Mountain, and a host of noble companions, as yet nameless, make a sublime show
+along the axis of the range.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eastward, the whole region seems a land of desolation covered with beautiful
+light. The torrid volcanic basin of Mono, with its one bare lake fourteen miles
+long; Owen&rsquo;s Valley and the broad lava table-land at its head, dotted
+with craters, and the massive Inyo Range, rivaling even the Sierra in height;
+these are spread, map-like, beneath you, with countless ranges beyond, passing
+and overlapping one another and fading on the glowing horizon.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus10"></a>
+<img src="images/img10.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY" />
+<p class="caption">MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+At a distance of less than 3000 feet below the summit of Mount Ritter you may
+find tributaries of the San Joaquin and Owen&rsquo;s rivers, bursting forth
+from the ice and snow of the glaciers that load its flanks; while a little to
+the north of here are found the highest affluents of the Tuolumne and Merced.
+Thus, the fountains of four of the principal rivers of California are within a
+radius of four or five miles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lakes are seen gleaming in all sorts of places,&mdash;round, or oval, or
+square, like very mirrors; others narrow and sinuous, drawn close around the
+peaks like silver zones, the highest reflecting only rocks, snow, and the sky.
+But neither these nor the glaciers, nor the bits of brown meadow and moorland
+that occur here and there, are large enough to make any marked impression upon
+the mighty wilderness of mountains. The eye, rejoicing in its freedom, roves
+about the vast expanse, yet returns again and again to the fountain peaks.
+Perhaps some one of the multitude excites special attention, some gigantic
+castle with turret and battlement, or some Gothic cathedral more abundantly
+spired than Milan&rsquo;s. But, generally, when looking for the first time from
+an all-embracing standpoint like this, the inexperienced observer is oppressed
+by the incomprehensible grandeur, variety, and abundance of the mountains
+rising shoulder to shoulder beyond the reach of vision; and it is only after
+they have been studied one by one, long and lovingly, that their far-reaching
+harmonies become manifest. Then, penetrate the wilderness where you may, the
+main telling features, to which all the surrounding topography is subordinate,
+are quickly perceived, and the most complicated clusters of peaks stand
+revealed harmoniously correlated and fashioned like works of art&mdash;eloquent
+monuments of the ancient ice-rivers that brought them into relief from the
+general mass of the range. The cañons, too, some of them a mile deep, mazing
+wildly through the mighty host of mountains, however lawless and ungovernable
+at first sight they appear, are at length recognized as the necessary effects
+of causes which followed each other in harmonious sequence&mdash;Nature&rsquo;s
+poems carved on tables of stone&mdash;the simplest and most emphatic of her
+glacial compositions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Could we have been here to observe during the glacial period, we should have
+overlooked a wrinkled ocean of ice as continuous as that now covering the
+landscapes of Greenland; filling every valley and cañon with only the tops of
+the fountain peaks rising darkly above the rock-encumbered ice-waves like
+islets in a stormy sea&mdash;those islets the only hints of the glorious
+landscapes now smiling in the sun. Standing here in the deep, brooding silence
+all the wilderness seems motionless, as if the work of creation were done. But
+in the midst of this outer steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and
+change. Ever and anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These
+cliff-bound glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water
+and grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite shores
+and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young rivers is
+fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to the plains. Here are
+the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here more simply than elsewhere
+is the eternal flux of nature manifested. Ice changing to water, lakes to
+meadows, and mountains to plains. And while we thus contemplate Nature&rsquo;s
+methods of landscape creation, and, reading the records she has carved on the
+rocks, reconstruct, however imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also
+learn that as these we now behold have succeeded those of the pre-glacial age,
+so they in turn are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others yet
+unborn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in the midst of these fine lessons and landscapes, I had to remember that
+the sun was wheeling far to the west, while a new way down the mountain had to
+be discovered to some point on the timber line where I could have a fire; for I
+had not even burdened myself with a coat. I first scanned the western spurs,
+hoping some way might appear through which I might reach the northern glacier,
+and cross its snout; or pass around the lake into which it flows, and thus
+strike my morning track. This route was soon sufficiently unfolded to show
+that, if practicable at all, it would require so much time that reaching camp
+that night would be out of the question. I therefore scrambled back eastward,
+descending the southern slopes obliquely at the same time. Here the crags
+seemed less formidable, and the head of a glacier that flows northeast came in
+sight, which I determined to follow as far as possible, hoping thus to make my
+way to the foot of the peak on the east side, and thence across the intervening
+cañons and ridges to camp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The inclination of the glacier is quite moderate at the head, and, as the sun
+had softened the <i>névé</i>, I made safe and rapid progress, running and
+sliding, and keeping up a sharp outlook for crevasses. About half a mile from
+the head, there is an ice-cascade, where the glacier pours over a sharp
+declivity and is shattered into massive blocks separated by deep, blue
+fissures. To thread my way through the slippery mazes of this crevassed portion
+seemed impossible, and I endeavored to avoid it by climbing off to the shoulder
+of the mountain. But the slopes rapidly steepened and at length fell away in
+sheer precipices, compelling a return to the ice. Fortunately, the day had been
+warm enough to loosen the ice-crystals so as to admit of hollows being dug in
+the rotten portions of the blocks, thus enabling me to pick my way with far
+less difficulty than I had anticipated. Continuing down over the snout, and
+along the left lateral moraine, was only a confident saunter, showing that the
+ascent of the mountain by way of this glacier is easy, provided one is armed
+with an ax to cut steps here and there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lower end of the glacier was beautifully waved and barred by the
+outcropping edges of the bedded ice-layers which represent the annual
+snowfalls, and to some extent the irregularities of structure caused by the
+weathering of the walls of crevasses, and by separate snowfalls which have been
+followed by rain, hail, thawing and freezing, etc. Small rills were gliding and
+swirling over the melting surface with a smooth, oily appearance, in channels
+of pure ice&mdash;their quick, compliant movements contrasting most
+impressively with the rigid, invisible flow of the glacier itself, on whose
+back they all were riding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Night drew near before I reached the eastern base of the mountain, and my camp
+lay many a rugged mile to the north; but ultimate success was assured. It was
+now only a matter of endurance and ordinary mountain-craft. The sunset was, if
+possible, yet more beautiful than that of the day before. The Mono landscape
+seemed to be fairly saturated with warm, purple light. The peaks marshaled
+along the summit were in shadow, but through every notch and pass streamed
+vivid sun-fire, soothing and irradiating their rough, black angles, while
+companies of small, luminous clouds hovered above them like very angels of
+light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Darkness came on, but I found my way by the trends of the cañons and the peaks
+projected against the sky. All excitement died with the light, and then I was
+weary. But the joyful sound of the waterfall across the lake was heard at last,
+and soon the stars were seen reflected in the lake itself. Taking my bearings
+from these, I discovered the little pine thicket in which my nest was, and then
+I had a rest such as only a tired mountaineer may enjoy. After lying loose and
+lost for awhile, I made a sunrise fire, went down to the lake, dashed water on
+my head, and dipped a cupful for tea. The revival brought about by bread and
+tea was as complete as the exhaustion from excessive enjoyment and toil. Then I
+crept beneath the pine-tassels to bed. The wind was frosty and the fire burned
+low, but my sleep was none the less sound, and the evening constellations had
+swept far to the west before I awoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After thawing and resting in the morning sunshine, I sauntered home,&mdash;that
+is, back to the Tuolumne camp,&mdash;bearing away toward a cluster of peaks
+that hold the fountain snows of one of the north tributaries of Rush Creek.
+Here I discovered a group of beautiful glacier lakes, nestled together in a
+grand amphitheater. Toward evening, I crossed the divide separating the Mono
+waters from those of the Tuolumne, and entered the glacier basin that now holds
+the fountain snows of the stream that forms the upper Tuolumne cascades. This
+stream I traced down through its many dells and gorges, meadows and bogs,
+reaching the brink of the main Tuolumne at dusk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A loud whoop for the artists was answered again and again. Their camp-fire came
+in sight, and half an hour afterward I was with them. They seemed unreasonably
+glad to see me. I had been absent only three days; nevertheless, though the
+weather was fine, they had already been weighing chances as to whether I would
+ever return, and trying to decide whether they should wait longer or begin to
+seek their way back to the lowlands. Now their curious troubles were over. They
+packed their precious sketches, and next morning we set out homeward bound, and
+in two days entered the Yosemite Valley from the north by way of Indian Cañon.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V<br/>
+THE PASSES</h2>
+
+<p>
+The sustained grandeur of the High Sierra is strikingly illustrated by the
+great height of the passes. Between latitude 36° 20&#x2032; and 38° the lowest
+pass, gap, gorge, or notch of any kind cutting across the axis of the range, as
+far as I have discovered, exceeds 9000 feet in height above the level of the
+sea; while the average height of all that are in use, either by Indians or
+whites, is perhaps not less than 11,000 feet, and not one of these is a
+carriage-pass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farther north a carriage-road has been constructed through what is known as the
+Sonora Pass, on the head waters of the Stanislaus and Walker&rsquo;s rivers,
+the summit of which is about 10,000 feet above the sea. Substantial wagon-roads
+have also been built through the Carson and Johnson passes, near the head of
+Lake Tahoe, over which immense quantities of freight were hauled from
+California to the mining regions of Nevada, before the construction of the
+Central Pacific Railroad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still farther north, a considerable number of comparatively low passes occur,
+some of which are accessible to wheeled vehicles, and through these rugged
+defiles during the exciting years of the gold period long emigrant-trains with
+foot-sore cattle wearily toiled. After the toil-worn adventurers had escaped a
+thousand dangers and had crawled thousands of miles across the plains the snowy
+Sierra at last loomed in sight, the eastern wall of the land of gold. And as
+with shaded eyes they gazed through the tremulous haze of the desert, with what
+joy must they have descried the pass through which they were to enter the
+better land of their hopes and dreams!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Between the Sonora Pass and the southern extremity of the High Sierra, a
+distance of nearly 160 miles, there are only five passes through which trails
+conduct from one side of the range to the other. These are barely practicable
+for animals; a pass in these regions meaning simply any notch or cañon through
+which one may, by the exercise of unlimited patience, make out to lead a mule,
+or a sure-footed mustang; animals that can slide or jump as well as walk. Only
+three of the five passes may be said to be in use, viz.: the Kearsarge, Mono,
+and Virginia Creek; the tracks leading through the others being only obscure
+Indian trails, not graded in the least, and scarcely traceable by white men;
+for much of the way is over solid rock and earthquake avalanche taluses, where
+the unshod ponies of the Indians leave no appreciable sign. Only skilled
+mountaineers are able to detect the marks that serve to guide the Indians, such
+as slight abrasions of the looser rocks, the displacement of stones here and
+there, and bent bushes and weeds. A general knowledge of the topography is,
+then, the main guide, enabling one to determine where the trail ought to
+go&mdash;<i>must</i> go. One of these Indian trails crosses the range by a
+nameless pass between the head waters of the south and middle forks of the San
+Joaquin, the other between the north and middle forks of the same river, just
+to the south of &ldquo;The Minarets&rdquo;; this last being about 9000 feet
+high, is the lowest of the five. The Kearsarge is the highest, crossing the
+summit near the head of the south fork of King&rsquo;s River, about eight miles
+to the north of Mount Tyndall, through the midst of the most stupendous
+rock-scenery. The summit of this pass is over 12,000 feet above sea-level;
+nevertheless, it is one of the safest of the five, and is used every summer,
+from July to October or November, by hunters, prospectors, and stock-owners,
+and to some extent by enterprising pleasure-seekers also. For, besides the
+surpassing grandeur of the scenery about the summit, the trail, in ascending
+the western flank of the range, conducts through a grove of the giant Sequoias,
+and through the magnificent Yosemite Valley of the south fork of King&rsquo;s
+River. This is, perhaps, the highest traveled pass on the North American
+continent.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus11"></a>
+<img src="images/img11.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION BOUNDARY" />
+<p class="caption">MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION BOUNDARY.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Mono Pass lies to the east of Yosemite Valley, at the head of one of the
+tributaries of the south fork of the Tuolumne. This is the best known and most
+extensively traveled of all that exist in the High Sierra. A trail was made
+through it about the time of the Mono gold excitement, in the year 1858, by
+adventurous miners and prospectors&mdash;men who would build a trail down the
+throat of darkest Erebus on the way to gold. Though more than a thousand feet
+lower than the Kearsarge, it is scarcely less sublime in rock-scenery, while in
+snowy, falling water it far surpasses it. Being so favorably situated for the
+stream of Yosemite travel, the more adventurous tourists cross over through
+this glorious gateway to the volcanic region around Mono Lake. It has therefore
+gained a name and fame above every other pass in the range. According to the
+few barometrical observations made upon it, its highest point is 10,765 feet
+above the sea. The other pass of the five we have been considering is somewhat
+lower, and crosses the axis of the range a few miles to the north of the Mono
+Pass, at the head of the southernmost tributary of Walker&rsquo;s River. It is
+used chiefly by roaming bands of the Pah Ute Indians and
+&ldquo;sheepmen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, leaving wheels and animals out of the question, the free mountaineer with
+a sack of bread on his shoulders and an ax to cut steps in ice and frozen snow
+can make his way across the range almost everywhere, and at any time of year
+when the weather is calm. To him nearly every notch between the peaks is a
+pass, though much patient step-cutting is at times required up and down steeply
+inclined glaciers, with cautious climbing over precipices that at first sight
+would seem hopelessly inaccessible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In pursuing my studies, I have crossed from side to side of the range at
+intervals of a few miles all along the highest portion of the chain, with far
+less real danger than one would naturally count on. And what fine wildness was
+thus revealed&mdash;storms and avalanches, lakes and waterfalls, gardens and
+meadows, and interesting animals&mdash;only those will ever know who give the
+freest and most buoyant portion of their lives to climbing and seeing for
+themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To the timid traveler, fresh from the sedimentary levels of the lowlands, these
+highways, however picturesque and grand, seem terribly forbidding&mdash;cold,
+dead, gloomy gashes in the bones of the mountains, and of all Nature&rsquo;s
+ways the ones to be most cautiously avoided. Yet they are full of the finest
+and most telling examples of Nature&rsquo;s love; and though hard to travel,
+none are safer. For they lead through regions that lie far above the ordinary
+haunts of the devil, and of the pestilence that walks in darkness. True, there
+are innumerable places where the careless step will be the last step; and a
+rock falling from the cliffs may crush without warning like lightning from the
+sky; but what then! Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the
+lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine,
+places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few
+places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try
+the mountain-passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you
+free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the
+sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate
+they kill, they cure a thousand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the passes make their steepest ascents on the eastern flank. On this side
+the average rise is not far from a thousand feet to the mile, while on the west
+it is about two hundred feet. Another marked difference between the eastern and
+western portions of the passes is that the former begin at the very foot of the
+range, while the latter can hardly be said to begin lower than an elevation of
+from seven to ten thousand feet. Approaching the range from the gray levels of
+Mono and Owen&rsquo;s Valley on the east, the traveler sees before him the
+steep, short passes in full view, fenced in by rugged spurs that come plunging
+down from the shoulders of the peaks on either side, the courses of the more
+direct being disclosed from top to bottom without interruption. But from the
+west one sees nothing of the way he may be seeking until near the summit, after
+days have been spent in threading the forests growing on the main dividing
+ridges between the river cañons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is interesting to observe how surely the alp-crossing animals of every kind
+fall into the same trails. The more rugged and inaccessible the general
+character of the topography of any particular region, the more surely will the
+trails of white men, Indians, bears, wild sheep, etc., be found converging into
+the best passes. The Indians of the western slope venture cautiously over the
+passes in settled weather to attend dances, and obtain loads of pine-nuts and
+the larvae of a small fly that breeds in Mono and Owen&rsquo;s lakes, which,
+when dried, forms an important article of food; while the Pah Utes cross over
+from the east to hunt the deer and obtain supplies of acorns; and it is truly
+astonishing to see what immense loads the haggard old squaws make out to carry
+bare-footed through these rough passes, oftentimes for a distance of sixty or
+seventy miles. They are always accompanied by the men, who stride on,
+unburdened and erect, a little in advance, kindly stooping at difficult places
+to pile stepping-stones for their patient, pack-animal wives, just as they
+would prepare the way for their ponies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bears evince great sagacity as mountaineers, but although they are tireless and
+enterprising travelers they seldom cross the range. I have several times
+tracked them through the Mono Pass, but only in late years, after cattle and
+sheep had passed that way, when they doubtless were following to feed on the
+stragglers and on those that had been killed by falling over the rocks. Even
+the wild sheep, the best mountaineers of all, choose regular passes in making
+journeys across the summits. Deer seldom cross the range in either direction. I
+have never yet observed a single specimen of the mule-deer of the Great Basin
+west of the summit, and rarely one of the black-tailed species on the eastern
+slope, notwithstanding many of the latter ascend the range nearly to the summit
+every summer, to feed in the wild gardens and bring forth their young.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The glaciers are the pass-makers, and it is by them that the courses of all
+mountaineers are predestined. Without exception every pass in the Sierra was
+created by them without the slightest aid or predetermining guidance from any
+of the cataclysmic agents. I have seen elaborate statements of the amount of
+drilling and blasting accomplished in the construction of the railroad across
+the Sierra, above Donner Lake; but for every pound of rock moved in this way,
+the glaciers which descended east and west through this same pass, crushed and
+carried away more than a hundred tons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The so-called practicable road-passes are simply those portions of the range
+more degraded by glacial action than the adjacent portions, and degraded in
+such a way as to leave the summits rounded, instead of sharp; while the peaks,
+from the superior strength and hardness of their rocks, or from more favorable
+position, having suffered less degradation, are left towering above the passes
+as if they had been heaved into the sky by some force acting from beneath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scenery of all the passes, especially at the head, is of the wildest and
+grandest description,&mdash;lofty peaks massed together and laden around their
+bases with ice and snow; chains of glacier lakes; cascading streams in endless
+variety, with glorious views, westward over a sea of rocks and woods, and
+eastward over strange ashy plains, volcanoes, and the dry, dead-looking ranges
+of the Great Basin. Every pass, however, possesses treasures of beauty all its
+own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having thus in a general way indicated the height, leading features, and
+distribution of the principal passes, I will now endeavor to describe the Mono
+Pass in particular, which may, I think, be regarded as a fair example of the
+higher alpine passes in general.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The main portion of the Mono Pass is formed by Bloody Cañon, which begins at
+the summit of the range, and runs in a general east-northeasterly direction to
+the edge of the Mono Plain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first white men who forced a way through its somber depths were, as we have
+seen, eager gold-seekers. But the cañon was known and traveled as a pass by the
+Indians and mountain animals long before its discovery by white men, as is
+shown by the numerous tributary trails which come into it from every direction.
+Its name accords well with the character of the &ldquo;early times&rdquo; in
+California, and may perhaps have been suggested by the predominant color of the
+metamorphic slates in which it is in great part eroded; or more probably by
+blood-stains made by the unfortunate animals which were compelled to slip and
+shuffle awkwardly over its rough, cutting rocks. I have never known an animal,
+either mule or horse, to make its way through the cañon, either in going up or
+down, without losing more or less blood from wounds on the legs. Occasionally
+one is killed outright&mdash;falling headlong and rolling over precipices like
+a boulder. But such accidents are rarer than from the terrible appearance of
+the trail one would be led to expect; the more experienced when driven loose
+find their way over the dangerous places with a caution and sagacity that is
+truly wonderful. During the gold excitement it was at times a matter of
+considerable pecuniary importance to force a way through the cañon with
+pack-trains early in the spring while it was yet heavily blocked with snow; and
+then the mules with their loads had sometimes to be let down over the steepest
+drifts and avalanche beds by means of ropes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A good bridle-path leads from Yosemite through many a grove and meadow up to
+the head of the cañon, a distance of about thirty miles. Here the scenery
+undergoes a sudden and startling condensation. Mountains, red, gray, and black,
+rise close at hand on the right, whitened around their bases with banks of
+enduring snow; on the left swells the huge red mass of Mount Gibbs, while in
+front the eye wanders down the shadowy cañon, and out on the warm plain of
+Mono, where the lake is seen gleaming like a burnished metallic disk, with
+clusters of lofty volcanic cones to the south of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When at length we enter the mountain gateway, the somber rocks seem aware of
+our presence, and seem to come thronging closer about us. Happily the ouzel and
+the old familiar robin are here to sing us welcome, and azure daisies beam with
+trustfulness and sympathy, enabling us to feel something of Nature&rsquo;s love
+even here, beneath the gaze of her coldest rocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The effect of this expressive outspokenness on the part of the cañon-rocks is
+greatly enhanced by the quiet aspect of the alpine meadows through which we
+pass just before entering the narrow gateway. The forests in which they lie,
+and the mountain-tops rising beyond them, seem quiet and tranquil. We catch
+their restful spirit, yield to the soothing influences of the sunshine, and
+saunter dreamily on through flowers and bees, scarce touched by a definite
+thought; then suddenly we find ourselves in the shadowy cañon, closeted with
+Nature in one of her wildest strongholds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the first bewildering impression begins to wear off, we perceive that it
+is not altogether terrible; for besides the reassuring birds and flowers we
+discover a chain of shining lakelets hanging down from the very summit of the
+pass, and linked together by a silvery stream. The highest are set in bleak,
+rough bowls, scantily fringed with brown and yellow sedges. Winter storms blow
+snow through the cañon in blinding drifts, and avalanches shoot from the
+heights. Then are these sparkling tarns filled and buried, leaving not a hint
+of their existence. In June and July they begin to blink and thaw out like
+sleepy eyes, the carices thrust up their short brown spikes, the daisies bloom
+in turn, and the most profoundly buried of them all is at length warmed and
+summered as if winter were only a dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Red Lake is the lowest of the chain, and also the largest. It seems rather dull
+and forbidding at first sight, lying motionless in its deep, dark bed. The
+cañon wall rises sheer from the water&rsquo;s edge on the south, but on the
+opposite side there is sufficient space and sunshine for a sedgy daisy garden,
+the center of which is brilliantly lighted with lilies, castilleias, larkspurs,
+and columbines, sheltered from the wind by leafy willows, and forming a most
+joyful outburst of plant-life keenly emphasized by the chill baldness of the
+onlooking cliffs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After indulging here in a dozing, shimmering lake-rest, the happy stream sets
+forth again, warbling and trilling like an ouzel, ever delightfully confiding,
+no matter how dark the way; leaping, gliding, hither, thither, clear or
+foaming: manifesting the beauty of its wildness in every sound and gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of its most beautiful developments is the Diamond Cascade, situated a short
+distance below Red Lake. Here the tense, crystalline water is first dashed into
+coarse, granular spray mixed with dusty foam, and then divided into a diamond
+pattern by following the diagonal cleavage-joints that intersect the face of
+the precipice over which it pours. Viewed in front, it resembles a strip of
+embroidery of definite pattern, varying through the seasons with the
+temperature and the volume of water. Scarce a flower may be seen along its
+snowy border. A few bent pines look on from a distance, and small fringes of
+cassiope and rock-ferns are growing in fissures near the head, but these are so
+lowly and undemonstrative that only the attentive observer will be likely to
+notice them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the north wall of the cañon, a little below the Diamond Cascade, a
+glittering side stream makes its appearance, seeming to leap directly out of
+the sky. It first resembles a crinkled ribbon of silver hanging loosely down
+the wall, but grows wider as it descends, and dashes the dull rock with foam. A
+long rough talus curves up against this part of the cliff, overgrown with
+snow-pressed willows, in which the fall disappears with many an eager surge and
+swirl and plashing leap, finally beating its way down to its confluence with
+the main cañon stream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Below this point the climate is no longer arctic. Butterflies become larger and
+more abundant, grasses with imposing spread of panicle wave above your
+shoulders, and the summery drone of the bumblebee thickens the air. The Dwarf
+Pine, the tree-mountaineer that climbs highest and braves the coldest blasts,
+is found scattered in storm-beaten clumps from the summit of the pass about
+half-way down the cañon. Here it is succeeded by the hardy Two-leaved Pine,
+which is speedily joined by the taller Yellow and Mountain Pines. These, with
+the burly juniper, and shimmering aspen, rapidly grow larger as the sunshine
+becomes richer, forming groves that block the view; or they stand more apart
+here and there in picturesque groups, that make beautiful and obvious harmony
+with the rocks and with one another. Blooming underbrush becomes
+abundant,&mdash;azalea, spiraea, and the brier-rose weaving fringes for the
+streams, and shaggy rugs to relieve the stern, unflinching rock-bosses.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus12"></a>
+<img src="images/img12.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="RANCHERIA FALLS" />
+<p class="caption">RANCHERIA FALLS, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Through this delightful wilderness, Cañon Creek roves without any constraining
+channel, throbbing and wavering; now in sunshine, now in thoughtful shade;
+falling, swirling, flashing from side to side in weariless exuberance of
+energy. A glorious milky way of cascades is thus developed, of which Bower
+Cascade, though one of the smallest, is perhaps the most beautiful of them all.
+It is situated in the lower region of the pass, just where the sunshine begins
+to mellow between the cold and warm climates. Here the glad creek, grown strong
+with tribute gathered from many a snowy fountain on the heights, sings richer
+strains, and becomes more human and lovable at every step. Now you may by its
+side find the rose and homely yarrow, and small meadows full of bees and
+clover. At the head of a low-browed rock, luxuriant dogwood bushes and willows
+arch over from bank to bank, embowering the stream with their leafy branches;
+and drooping plumes, kept in motion by the current, fringe the brow of the
+cascade in front. From this leafy covert the stream leaps out into the light in
+a fluted curve thick sown with sparkling crystals, and falls into a pool filled
+with brown boulders, out of which it creeps gray with foam-bells and disappears
+in a tangle of verdure like that from which it came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hence, to the foot of the cañon, the metamorphic slates give place to granite,
+whose nobler sculpture calls forth expressions of corresponding beauty from the
+stream in passing over it,&mdash;bright trills of rapids, booming notes of
+falls, solemn hushes of smooth-gliding sheets, all chanting and blending in
+glorious harmony. When, at length, its impetuous alpine life is done, it slips
+through a meadow with scarce an audible whisper, and falls asleep in Moraine
+Lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This water-bed is one of the finest I ever saw. Evergreens wave soothingly
+about it, and the breath of flowers floats over it like incense. Here our
+blessed stream rests from its rocky wanderings, all its mountaineering
+done,&mdash;no more foaming rock-leaping, no more wild, exulting song. It falls
+into a smooth, glassy sleep, stirred only by the night-wind, which, coming down
+the cañon, makes it croon and mutter in ripples along its broidered shores.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaving the lake, it glides quietly through the rushes, destined never more to
+touch the living rock. Henceforth its path lies through ancient moraines and
+reaches of ashy sage-plain, which nowhere afford rocks suitable for the
+development of cascades or sheer falls. Yet this beauty of maturity, though
+less striking, is of a still higher order, enticing us lovingly on through
+gentian meadows and groves of rustling aspen to Lake Mono, where, spirit-like,
+our happy stream vanishes in vapor, and floats free again in the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bloody Cañon, like every other in the Sierra, was recently occupied by a
+glacier, which derived its fountain snows from the adjacent summits, and
+descended into Mono Lake, at a time when its waters stood at a much higher
+level than now. The principal characters in which the history of the ancient
+glaciers is preserved are displayed here in marvelous freshness and simplicity,
+furnishing the student with extraordinary advantages for the acquisition of
+knowledge of this sort. The most striking passages are polished and striated
+surfaces, which in many places reflect the rays of the sun like smooth water.
+The dam of Red Lake is an elegantly modeled rib of metamorphic slate, brought
+into relief because of its superior strength, and because of the greater
+intensity of the glacial erosion of the rock immediately above it, caused by a
+steeply inclined tributary glacier, which entered the main trunk with a heavy
+down-thrust at the head of the lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moraine Lake furnishes an equally interesting example of a basin formed wholly,
+or in part, by a terminal moraine dam curved across the path of a stream
+between two lateral moraines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Moraine Lake the cañon proper terminates, although apparently continued by
+the two lateral moraines of the vanished glacier. These moraines are about 300
+feet high, and extend unbrokenly from the sides of the cañon into the plain, a
+distance of about five miles, curving and tapering in beautiful lines. Their
+sunward sides are gardens, their shady sides are groves; the former devoted
+chiefly to eriogonae, compositae, and graminae; a square rod containing five or
+six profusely flowered eriogonums of several species, about the same number of
+bahia and linosyris, and a few grass tufts; each species being planted trimly
+apart, with bare gravel between, as if cultivated artificially.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My first visit to Bloody Cañon was made in the summer of 1869, under
+circumstances well calculated to heighten the impressions that are the peculiar
+offspring of mountains. I came from the blooming tangles of Florida, and waded
+out into the plant-gold of the great valley of California, when its flora was
+as yet untrodden. Never before had I beheld congregations of social flowers
+half so extensive or half so glorious. Golden composite covered all the ground
+from the Coast Range to the Sierra like a stratum of curdled sunshine, in which
+I reveled for weeks, watching the rising and setting of their innumerable suns;
+then I gave myself up to be borne forward on the crest of the summer wave that
+sweeps annually up the Sierra and spends itself on the snowy summits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the Big Tuolumne Meadows I remained more than a month, sketching,
+botanizing, and climbing among the surrounding mountains. The mountaineer with
+whom I then happened to be camping was one of those remarkable men one so
+frequently meets in California, the hard angles and bosses of whose characters
+have been brought into relief by the grinding excitements of the gold period,
+until they resemble glacial landscapes. But at this late day, my friend&rsquo;s
+activities had subsided, and his craving for rest caused him to become a gentle
+shepherd and literally to lie down with the lamb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Recognizing the unsatisfiable longings of my Scotch Highland instincts, he
+threw out some hints concerning Bloody Cañon, and advised me to explore it.
+&ldquo;I have never seen it myself,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for I never was so
+unfortunate as to pass that way. But I have heard many a strange story about
+it, and I warrant you will at least find it wild enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then of course I made haste to see it. Early next morning I made up a bundle of
+bread, tied my note-book to my belt, and strode away in the bracing air, full
+of eager, indefinite hope. The plushy lawns that lay in my path served to
+soothe my morning haste. The sod in many places was starred with daisies and
+blue gentians, over which I lingered. I traced the paths of the ancient
+glaciers over many a shining pavement, and marked the gaps in the upper forests
+that told the power of the winter avalanches. Climbing higher, I saw for the
+first time the gradual dwarfing of the pines in compliance with climate, and on
+the summit discovered creeping mats of the arctic willow overgrown with silky
+catkins, and patches of the dwarf vaccinium with its round flowers sprinkled in
+the grass like purple hail; while in every direction the landscape stretched
+sublimely away in fresh wildness&mdash;a manuscript written by the hand of
+Nature alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, as I entered the pass, the huge rocks began to close around in all
+their wild, mysterious impressiveness, when suddenly, as I was gazing eagerly
+about me, a drove of gray hairy beings came in sight, lumbering toward me with
+a kind of boneless, wallowing motion like bears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I never turn back, though often so inclined, and in this particular instance,
+amid such surroundings, everything seemed singularly unfavorable for the calm
+acceptance of so grim a company. Suppressing my fears, I soon discovered that
+although as hairy as bears and as crooked as summit pines, the strange
+creatures were sufficiently erect to belong to our own species. They proved to
+be nothing more formidable than Mono Indians dressed in the skins of
+sage-rabbits. Both the men and the women begged persistently for whisky and
+tobacco, and seemed so accustomed to denials that I found it impossible to
+convince them that I had none to give. Excepting the names of these two
+products of civilization, they seemed to understand not a word of English; but
+I afterward learned that they were on their way to Yosemite Valley to feast
+awhile on trout and procure a load of acorns to carry back through the pass to
+their huts on the shore of Mono Lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Occasionally a good countenance may be seen among the Mono Indians, but these,
+the first specimens I had seen, were mostly ugly, and some of them altogether
+hideous. The dirt on their faces was fairly stratified, and seemed so ancient
+and so undisturbed it might almost possess a geological significance. The older
+faces were, moreover, strangely blurred and divided into sections by furrows
+that looked like the cleavage-joints of rocks, suggesting exposure on the
+mountains in a castaway condition for ages. Somehow they seemed to have no
+right place in the landscape, and I was glad to see them fading out of sight
+down the pass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then came evening, and the somber cliffs were inspired with the ineffable
+beauty of the alpenglow. A solemn calm fell upon everything. All the lower
+portion of the cañon was in gloaming shadow, and I crept into a hollow near one
+of the upper lakelets to smooth the ground in a sheltered nook for a bed. When
+the short twilight faded, I kindled a sunny fire, made a cup of tea, and lay
+down to rest and look at the stars. Soon the night-wind began to flow and pour
+in torrents among the jagged peaks, mingling strange tones with those of the
+waterfalls sounding far below; and as I drifted toward sleep I began to
+experience an uncomfortable feeling of nearness to the furred Monos. Then the
+full moon looked down over the edge of the cañon wall, her countenance
+seemingly filled with intense concern, and apparently so near as to produce a
+startling effect as if she had entered my bedroom, forgetting all the world, to
+gaze on me alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The night was full of strange sounds, and I gladly welcomed the morning.
+Breakfast was soon done, and I set forth in the exhilarating freshness of the
+new day, rejoicing in the abundance of pure wildness so close about me. The
+stupendous rocks, hacked and scarred with centuries of storms, stood sharply
+out in the thin early light, while down in the bottom of the cañon grooved and
+polished bosses heaved and glistened like swelling sea-waves, telling a grand
+old story of the ancient glacier that poured its crushing floods above them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here for the first time I met the arctic daisies in all their perfection of
+purity and spirituality,&mdash;gentle mountaineers face to face with the stormy
+sky, kept safe and warm by a thousand miracles. I leaped lightly from rock to
+rock, glorying in the eternal freshness and sufficiency of Nature, and in the
+ineffable tenderness with which she nurtures her mountain darlings in the very
+fountains of storms. Fresh beauty appeared at every step, delicate rock-ferns,
+and groups of the fairest flowers. Now another lake came to view, now a
+waterfall. Never fell light in brighter spangles, never fell water in whiter
+foam. I seemed to float through the cañon enchanted, feeling nothing of its
+roughness, and was out in the Mono levels before I was aware.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking back from the shore of Moraine Lake, my morning ramble seemed all a
+dream. There curved Bloody Cañon, a mere glacial furrow 2000 feet deep, with
+smooth rocks projecting from the sides and braided together in the middle, like
+bulging, swelling muscles. Here the lilies were higher than my head, and the
+sunshine was warm enough for palms. Yet the snow around the arctic willows was
+plainly visible only four miles away, and between were narrow specimen zones of
+all the principal climates of the globe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the bank of a small brook that comes gurgling down the side of the left
+lateral moraine, I found a camp-fire still burning, which no doubt belonged to
+the gray Indians I had met on the summit, and I listened instinctively and
+moved cautiously forward, half expecting to see some of their grim faces
+peering out of the bushes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Passing on toward the open plain, I noticed three well-defined terminal
+moraines curved gracefully across the cañon stream, and joined by long splices
+to the two noble laterals. These mark the halting-places of the vanished
+glacier when it was retreating into its summit shadows on the breaking-up of
+the glacial winter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five miles below the foot of Moraine Lake, just where the lateral moraines lose
+themselves in the plain, there was a field of wild rye, growing in magnificent
+waving bunches six to eight feet high, bearing heads from six to twelve inches
+long. Rubbing out some of the grains, I found them about five eighths of an
+inch long, dark-colored, and sweet. Indian women were gathering it in baskets,
+bending down large handfuls, beating it out, and fanning it in the wind. They
+were quite picturesque, coming through the rye, as one caught glimpses of them
+here and there, in winding lanes and openings, with splendid tufts arching
+above their heads, while their incessant chat and laughter showed their
+heedless joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like the rye-field, I found the so-called desert of Mono blooming in a high
+state of natural cultivation with the wild rose, cherry, aster, and the
+delicate abronia; also innumerable gilias, phloxes, poppies, and
+bush-compositae. I observed their gestures and the various expressions of their
+corollas, inquiring how they could be so fresh and beautiful out in this
+volcanic desert. They told as happy a life as any plant-company I ever met, and
+seemed to enjoy even the hot sand and the wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the vegetation of the pass has been in great part destroyed, and the same
+may be said of all the more accessible passes throughout the range. Immense
+numbers of starving sheep and cattle have been driven through them into Nevada,
+trampling the wild gardens and meadows almost out of existence. The lofty walls
+are untouched by any foot, and the falls sing on unchanged; but the sight of
+crushed flowers and stripped, bitten bushes goes far toward destroying the
+charm of wildness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cañon should be seen in winter. A good, strong traveler, who knows the way
+and the weather, might easily make a safe excursion through it from Yosemite
+Valley on snow-shoes during some tranquil time, when the storms are hushed. The
+lakes and falls would be buried then; but so, also, would be the traces of
+destructive feet, while the views of the mountains in their winter garb, and
+the ride at lightning speed down the pass between the snowy walls, would be
+truly glorious.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus13"></a>
+<img src="images/img13.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CAÑON" />
+<p class="caption">VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CAÑON.</p>
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI<br/>
+THE GLACIER LAKES</h2>
+
+<p>
+Among the many unlooked-for treasures that are bound up and hidden away in the
+depths of Sierra solitudes, none more surely charm and surprise all kinds of
+travelers than the glacier lakes. The forests and the glaciers and the snowy
+fountains of the streams advertise their wealth in a more or less telling
+manner even in the distance, but nothing is seen of the lakes until we have
+climbed above them. All the upper branches of the rivers are fairly laden with
+lakes, like orchard trees with fruit. They lie embosomed in the deep woods,
+down in the grovy bottoms of cañons, high on bald tablelands, and around the
+feet of the icy peaks, mirroring back their wild beauty over and over again.
+Some conception of their lavish abundance may be made from the fact that, from
+one standpoint on the summit of Red Mountain, a day&rsquo;s journey to the east
+of Yosemite Valley, no fewer than forty-two are displayed within a radius of
+ten miles. The whole number in the Sierra can hardly be less than fifteen
+hundred, not counting the smaller pools and tarns, which are innumerable.
+Perhaps two thirds or more lie on the western flank of the range, and all are
+restricted to the alpine and subalpine regions. At the close of the last
+glacial period, the middle and foot-hill regions also abounded in lakes, all of
+which have long since vanished as completely as the magnificent ancient
+glaciers that brought them into existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though the eastern flank of the range is excessively steep, we find lakes
+pretty regularly distributed throughout even the most precipitous portions.
+They are mostly found in the upper branches of the cañons, and in the glacial
+amphitheaters around the peaks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Occasionally long, narrow specimens occur upon the steep sides of dividing
+ridges, their basins swung lengthwise like hammocks, and very rarely one is
+found lying so exactly on the summit of the range at the head of some pass that
+its waters are discharged down both flanks when the snow is melting fast. But,
+however situated, they soon cease to form surprises to the studious
+mountaineer; for, like all the love-work of Nature, they are harmoniously
+related to one another, and to all the other features of the mountains. It is
+easy, therefore, to find the bright lake-eyes in the roughest and most
+ungovernable-looking topography of any landscape countenance. Even in the lower
+regions, where they have been closed for many a century, their rocky orbits are
+still discernible, filled in with the detritus of flood and avalanche. A
+beautiful system of grouping in correspondence with the glacial fountains is
+soon perceived; also their extension in the direction of the trends of the
+ancient glaciers; and in general their dependence as to form, size, and
+position upon the character of the rocks in which their basins have been
+eroded, and the quantity and direction of application of the glacial force
+expended upon each basin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the upper cañons we usually find them in pretty regular succession, strung
+together like beads on the bright ribbons of their feeding-streams, which pour,
+white and gray with foam and spray, from one to the other, their perfect mirror
+stillness making impressive contrasts with the grand blare and glare of the
+connecting cataracts. In Lake Hollow, on the north side of the Hoffman spur,
+immediately above the great Tuolumne cañon, there are ten lovely lakelets lying
+near together in one general hollow, like eggs in a nest. Seen from above, in a
+general view, feathered with Hemlock Spruce, and fringed with sedge, they seem
+to me the most singularly beautiful and interestingly located lake-cluster I
+have ever yet discovered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lake Tahoe, 22 miles long by about 10 wide, and from 500 to over 1600 feet in
+depth, is the largest of all the Sierra lakes. It lies just beyond the northern
+limit of the higher portion of the range between the main axis and a spur that
+puts out on the east side from near the head of the Carson River. Its forested
+shores go curving in and out around many an emerald bay and pine-crowned
+promontory, and its waters are everywhere as keenly pure as any to be found
+among the highest mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Donner Lake, rendered memorable by the terrible fate of the Donner party, is
+about three miles long, and lies about ten miles to the north of Tahoe, at the
+head of one of the tributaries of the Truckee. A few miles farther north lies
+Lake Independence, about the same size as Donner. But far the greater number of
+the lakes lie much higher and are quite small, few of them exceeding a mile in
+length, most of them less than half a mile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Along the lower edge of the lake-belt, the smallest have disappeared by the
+filling-in of their basins, leaving only those of considerable size. But all
+along the upper freshly glaciated margin of the lake-bearing zone, every
+hollow, however small, lying within reach of any portion of the close network
+of streams, contains a bright, brimming pool; so that the landscape viewed from
+the mountain-tops seems to be sown broadcast with them. Many of the larger
+lakes are encircled with smaller ones like central gems girdled with sparkling
+brilliants. In general, however, there is no marked dividing line as to size.
+In order, therefore, to prevent confusion, I would state here that in giving
+numbers, I include none less than 500 yards in circumference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the basin of the Merced River, I counted 131, of which 111 are upon the
+tributaries that fall so grandly into Yosemite Valley. Pohono Creek, which
+forms the fall of that name, takes its rise in a beautiful lake, lying beneath
+the shadow of a lofty granite spur that puts out from Buena Vista peak. This is
+now the only lake left in the whole Pohono Basin. The Illilouette has sixteen,
+the Nevada no fewer than sixty-seven, the Tenaya eight, Hoffmann Creek five,
+and Yosemite Creek fourteen. There are but two other lake-bearing affluents of
+the Merced, viz., the South Fork with fifteen, and Cascade Creek with five,
+both of which unite with the main trunk below Yosemite.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus14"></a>
+<img src="images/img14.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS" />
+<p class="caption">LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Merced River, as a whole, is remarkably like an elm-tree, and it requires
+but little effort on the part of the imagination to picture it standing
+upright, with all its lakes hanging upon its spreading branches, the topmost
+eighty miles in height. Now add all the other lake-bearing rivers of the
+Sierra, each in its place, and you will have a truly glorious
+spectacle,&mdash;an avenue the length and width of the range; the long,
+slender, gray shafts of the main trunks, the milky way of arching branches, and
+the silvery lakes, all clearly defined and shining on the sky. How excitedly
+such an addition to the scenery would be gazed at! Yet these lakeful rivers are
+still more excitingly beautiful and impressive in their natural positions to
+those who have the eyes to see them as they lie imbedded in their meadows and
+forests and glacier-sculptured rocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When a mountain lake is born,&mdash;when, like a young eye, it first opens to
+the light,&mdash;it is an irregular, expressionless crescent, inclosed in banks
+of rock and ice,&mdash;bare, glaciated rock on the lower side, the rugged snout
+of a glacier on the upper. In this condition it remains for many a year, until
+at length, toward the end of some auspicious cluster of seasons, the glacier
+recedes beyond the upper margin of the basin, leaving it open from shore to
+shore for the first time, thousands of years after its conception beneath the
+glacier that excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in
+its pure depths; the winds ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun fills it with
+throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless
+shores,&mdash;sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at night its only
+flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier
+continues to recede, and numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself,
+bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, giving rise to margin-rings
+and plats of soil. To these fresh soil-beds come many a waiting plant. First, a
+hardy carex with arching leaves and a spike of brown flowers; then, as the
+seasons grow warmer, and the soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take
+their appointed places, and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies,
+dodecatheons, violets, honeyworts, and many a lowly moss. Shrubs also hasten in
+time to the new gardens,&mdash;kalmia with its glossy leaves and purple
+flowers, the arctic willow, making soft woven carpets, together with the heathy
+bryanthus and cassiope, the fairest and dearest of them all. Insects now enrich
+the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed by the ouzel, which
+is the first bird to visit a glacier lake, as the sedge is the first of plants.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the young lake grows in beauty, becoming more and more humanly lovable from
+century to century. Groves of aspen spring up, and hardy pines, and the Hemlock
+Spruce, until it is richly overshadowed and embowered. But while its shores are
+being enriched, the soil-beds creep out with incessant growth, contracting its
+area, while the lighter mud-particles deposited on the bottom cause it to grow
+constantly shallower, until at length the last remnant of the lake
+vanishes,&mdash;closed forever in ripe and natural old age. And now its
+feeding-stream goes winding on without halting through the new gardens and
+groves that have taken its place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The length of the life of any lake depends ordinarily upon the capacity of its
+basin, as compared with the carrying power of the streams that flow into it,
+the character of the rocks over which these streams flow, and the relative
+position of the lake toward other lakes. In a series whose basins lie in the
+same cañon, and are fed by one and the same main stream, the uppermost will, of
+course, vanish first unless some other lake-filling agent comes in to modify
+the result; because at first it receives nearly all of the sediments that the
+stream brings down, only the finest of the mud-particles being carried through
+the highest of the series to the next below. Then the next higher, and the next
+would be successively filled, and the lowest would be the last to vanish. But
+this simplicity as to duration is broken in upon in various ways, chiefly
+through the action of side-streams that enter the lower lakes direct. For,
+notwithstanding many of these side tributaries are quite short, and, during
+late summer, feeble, they all become powerful torrents in springtime when the
+snow is melting, and carry not only sand and pine-needles, but large trunks and
+boulders tons in weight, sweeping them down their steeply inclined channels and
+into the lake basins with astounding energy. Many of these side affluents also
+have the advantage of access to the main lateral moraines of the vanished
+glacier that occupied the cañon, and upon these they draw for lake-filling
+material, while the main trunk stream flows mostly over clean glacier
+pavements, where but little moraine matter is ever left for them to carry. Thus
+a small rapid stream with abundance of loose transportable material within its
+reach may fill up an extensive basin in a few centuries, while a large
+perennial trunk stream, flowing over clean, enduring pavements, though
+ordinarily a hundred times larger, may not fill a smaller basin in thousands of
+years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The comparative influence of great and small streams as lake-fillers is
+strikingly illustrated in Yosemite Valley, through which the Merced flows. The
+bottom of the valley is now composed of level meadow-lands and dry, sloping
+soil-beds planted with oak and pine, but it was once a lake stretching from
+wall to wall and nearly from one end of the valley to the other, forming one of
+the most beautiful cliff-bound sheets of water that ever existed in the Sierra.
+And though never perhaps seen by human eye, it was but yesterday, geologically
+speaking, since it disappeared, and the traces of its existence are still so
+fresh, it may easily be restored to the eye of imagination and viewed in all
+its grandeur, about as truly and vividly as if actually before us. Now we find
+that the detritus which fills this magnificent basin was not brought down from
+the distant mountains by the main streams that converge here to form the river,
+however powerful and available for the purpose at first sight they appear; but
+almost wholly by the small local tributaries, such as those of Indian Cañon,
+the Sentinel, and the Three Brothers, and by a few small residual glaciers
+which lingered in the shadows of the walls long after the main trunk glacier
+had receded beyond the head of the valley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had the glaciers that once covered the range been melted at once, leaving the
+entire surface bare from top to bottom simultaneously, then of course all the
+lakes would have come into existence at the same time, and the highest, other
+circumstances being equal, would, as we have seen, be the first to vanish. But
+because they melted gradually from the foot of the range upward, the lower
+lakes were the first to see the light and the first to be obliterated.
+Therefore, instead of finding the lakes of the present day at the foot of the
+range, we find them at the top. Most of the lower lakes vanished thousands of
+years before those now brightening the alpine landscapes were born. And in
+general, owing to the deliberation of the upward retreat of the glaciers, the
+lowest of the existing lakes are also the oldest, a gradual transition being
+apparent throughout the entire belt, from the older, forested, meadow-rimmed
+and contracted forms all the way up to those that are new born, lying bare and
+meadowless among the highest peaks.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus15"></a>
+<img src="images/img15.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="THE DEATH OF A LAKE" />
+<p class="caption">THE DEATH OF A LAKE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+A few small lakes unfortunately situated are extinguished suddenly by a single
+swoop of an avalanche, carrying down immense numbers of trees, together with
+the soil they were growing upon. Others are obliterated by land-slips,
+earthquake taluses, etc., but these lake-deaths compared with those resulting
+from the deliberate and incessant deposition of sediments, may be termed
+accidental. Their fate is like that of trees struck by lightning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lake-line is of course still rising, its present elevation being about 8000
+feet above sea-level; somewhat higher than this toward the southern extremity
+of the range, lower toward the northern, on account of the difference in time
+of the withdrawal of the glaciers, due to difference in climate. Specimens
+occur here and there considerably below this limit, in basins specially
+protected from inwashing detritus, or exceptional in size. These, however, are
+not sufficiently numerous to make any marked irregularity in the line. The
+highest I have yet found lies at an elevation of about 12,000 feet, in a
+glacier womb, at the foot of one of the highest of the summit peaks, a few
+miles to the north of Mount Hitter. The basins of perhaps twenty-five or thirty
+are still in process of formation beneath the few lingering glaciers, but by
+the time they are born, an equal or greater number will probably have died.
+Since the beginning of the close of the ice-period the whole number in the
+range has perhaps never been greater than at present.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A rough approximation to the average duration of these mountain lakes may be
+made from data already suggested, but I cannot stop here to present the subject
+in detail. I must also forego, in the mean time, the pleasure of a full
+discussion of the interesting question of lake-basin formation, for which fine,
+clear, demonstrative material abounds in these mountains. In addition to what
+has been already given on the subject, I will only make this one statement.
+Every lake in the Sierra is a glacier lake. Their basins were not merely
+remodeled and scoured out by this mighty agent, but in the first place were
+eroded from the solid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I must now make haste to give some nearer views of representative specimens
+lying at different elevations on the main lake-belt, confining myself to
+descriptions of the features most characteristic of each.
+</p>
+
+<h4>SHADOW LAKE</h4>
+
+<p>
+This is a fine specimen of the oldest and lowest of the existing lakes. It lies
+about eight miles above Yosemite Valley, on the main branch of the Merced, at
+an elevation of about 7350 feet above the sea; and is everywhere so securely
+cliff-bound that without artificial trails only wild animals can get down to
+its rocky shores from any direction. Its original length was about a mile and a
+half; now it is only half a mile in length by about a fourth of a mile in
+width, and over the lowest portion of the basin ninety-eight feet deep. Its
+crystal waters are clasped around on the north and south by majestic granite
+walls sculptured in true Yosemitic style into domes, gables, and battlemented
+headlands, which on the south come plunging down sheer into deep water, from a
+height of from 1500 to 2000 feet. The South Lyell glacier eroded this
+magnificent basin out of solid porphyritic granite while forcing its way
+westward from the summit fountains toward Yosemite, and the exposed rocks
+around the shores, and the projecting bosses of the walls, ground and burnished
+beneath the vast ice-flood, still glow with silvery radiance, notwithstanding
+the innumerable corroding storms that have fallen upon them. The general
+conformation of the basin, as well as the moraines laid along the top of the
+walls, and the grooves and scratches on the bottom and sides, indicate in the
+most unmistakable manner the direction pursued by this mighty ice-river, its
+great depth, and the tremendous energy it exerted in thrusting itself into and
+out of the basin; bearing down with superior pressure upon this portion of its
+channel, because of the greater declivity, consequently eroding it deeper than
+the other portions about it, and producing the lake-bowl as the necessary
+result.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With these magnificent ice-characters so vividly before us it is not easy to
+realize that the old glacier that made them vanished tens of centuries ago;
+for, excepting the vegetation that has sprung up, and the changes effected by
+an earthquake that hurled rock-avalanches from the weaker headlands, the basin
+as a whole presents the same appearance that it did when first brought to
+light. The lake itself, however, has undergone marked changes; one sees at a
+glance that it is growing old. More than two thirds of its original area is now
+dry land, covered with meadow-grasses and groves of pine and fir, and the level
+bed of alluvium stretching across from wall to wall at the head is evidently
+growing out all along its lakeward margin, and will at length close the lake
+forever.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus16"></a>
+<img src="images/img16.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SHADOW LAKE (MERCED LAKE), YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK" />
+<p class="caption">SHADOW LAKE (MERCED LAKE), YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Every lover of fine wildness would delight to saunter on a summer day through
+the flowery groves now occupying the filled-up portion of the basin. The
+curving shore is clearly traced by a ribbon of white sand upon which the
+ripples play; then comes a belt of broad-leafed sedges, interrupted here and
+there by impenetrable tangles of willows; beyond this there are groves of
+trembling aspen; then a dark, shadowy belt of Two-leaved Pine, with here and
+there a round carex meadow ensconced nest-like in its midst; and lastly, a
+narrow outer margin of majestic Silver Fir 200 feet high. The ground beneath
+the trees is covered with a luxuriant crop of grasses, chiefly triticum,
+bromus, and calamagrostis, with purple spikes and panicles arching to
+one&rsquo;s shoulders; while the open meadow patches glow throughout the summer
+with showy flowers,&mdash;heleniums, goldenrods, erigerons, lupines,
+castilleias, and lilies, and form favorite hiding and feeding-grounds for bears
+and deer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rugged south wall is feathered darkly along the top with an imposing array
+of spirey Silver Firs, while the rifted precipices all the way down to the
+water&rsquo;s edge are adorned with picturesque old junipers, their
+cinnamon-colored bark showing finely upon the neutral gray of the granite.
+These, with a few venturesome Dwarf Pines and Spruces, lean out over fissured
+ribs and tablets, or stand erect back in shadowy niches, in an indescribably
+wild and fearless manner. Moreover, the white-flowered Douglas spiraea and
+dwarf evergreen oak form graceful fringes along the narrower seams, wherever
+the slightest hold can be effected. Rock-ferns, too, are here, such as
+allosorus, pellaea, and cheilanthes, making handsome rosettes on the drier
+fissures; and the delicate maidenhair, cistoperis, and woodsia hide back in
+mossy grottoes, moistened by some trickling rill; and then the orange
+wall-flower holds up its showy panicles here and there in the sunshine, and
+bahia makes bosses of gold. But, notwithstanding all this plant beauty, the
+general impression in looking across the lake is of stern, unflinching
+rockiness; the ferns and flowers are scarcely seen, and not one fiftieth of the
+whole surface is screened with plant life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sunnier north wall is more varied in sculpture, but the general tone is the
+same. A few headlands, flat-topped and soil-covered, support clumps of cedar
+and pine; and up-curving tangles of chinquapin and live-oak, growing on rough
+earthquake taluses, girdle their bases. Small streams come cascading down
+between them, their foaming margins brightened with gay primulas, gilias, and
+mimuluses. And close along the shore on this side there is a strip of rocky
+meadow enameled with buttercups, daisies, and white violets, and the
+purple-topped grasses out on its beveled border dip their leaves into the
+water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lower edge of the basin is a dam-like swell of solid granite, heavily
+abraded by the old glacier, but scarce at all cut into as yet by the outflowing
+stream, though it has flowed on unceasingly since the lake came into existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as the stream is fairly over the lake-lip it breaks into cascades,
+never for a moment halting, and scarce abating one jot of its glad energy,
+until it reaches the next filled-up basin, a mile below. Then swirling and
+curving drowsily through meadow and grove, it breaks forth anew into gray
+rapids and falls, leaping and gliding in glorious exuberance of wild bound and
+dance down into another and yet another filled-up lake basin. Then, after a
+long rest in the levels of Little Yosemite, it makes its grandest display in
+the famous Nevada Fall. Out of the clouds of spray at the foot of the fall the
+battered, roaring river gropes its way, makes another mile of cascades and
+rapids, rests a moment in Emerald Pool, then plunges over the grand cliff of
+the Vernal Fall, and goes thundering and chafing down a boulder-choked gorge of
+tremendous depth and wildness into the tranquil reaches of the old Yosemite
+lake basin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The color-beauty about Shadow Lake during the Indian summer is much richer than
+one could hope to find in so young and so glacial a wilderness. Almost every
+leaf is tinted then, and the golden-rods are in bloom; but most of the color is
+given by the ripe grasses, willows, and aspens. At the foot of the lake you
+stand in a trembling aspen grove, every leaf painted like a butterfly, and away
+to right and left round the shores sweeps a curving ribbon of meadow, red and
+brown dotted with pale yellow, shading off here and there into hazy purple. The
+walls, too, are dashed with bits of bright color that gleam out on the neutral
+granite gray. But neither the walls, nor the margin meadow, nor yet the gay,
+fluttering grove in which you stand, nor the lake itself, flashing with
+spangles, can long hold your attention; for at the head of the lake there is a
+gorgeous mass of orange-yellow, belonging to the main aspen belt of the basin,
+which seems the very fountain whence all the color below it had flowed, and
+here your eye is filled and fixed. This glorious mass is about thirty feet
+high, and extends across the basin nearly from wall to wall. Rich bosses of
+willow flame in front of it, and from the base of these the brown meadow comes
+forward to the water&rsquo;s edge, the whole being relieved against the
+unyielding green of the coniferae, while thick sun-gold is poured over all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During these blessed color-days no cloud darkens the sky, the winds are gentle,
+and the landscape rests, hushed everywhere, and indescribably impressive. A few
+ducks are usually seen sailing on the lake, apparently more for pleasure than
+anything else, and the ouzels at the head of the rapids sing always; while
+robins, grosbeaks, and the Douglas squirrels are busy in the groves, making
+delightful company, and intensifying the feeling of grateful sequestration
+without ruffling the deep, hushed calm and peace.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus17"></a>
+<img src="images/img17.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY" />
+<p class="caption">VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+This autumnal mellowness usually lasts until the end of November. Then come
+days of quite another kind. The winter clouds grow, and bloom, and shed their
+starry crystals on every leaf and rock, and all the colors vanish like a
+sunset. The deer gather and hasten down their well-known trails, fearful of
+being snow-bound. Storm succeeds storm, heaping snow on the cliffs and meadows,
+and bending the slender pines to the ground in wide arches, one over the other,
+clustering and interlacing like lodged wheat. Avalanches rush and boom from the
+shelving heights, piling immense heaps upon the frozen lake, and all the summer
+glory is buried and lost. Yet in the midst of this hearty winter the sun shines
+warm at times, calling the Douglas squirrel to frisk in the snowy pines and
+seek out his hidden stores; and the weather is never so severe as to drive away
+the grouse and little nut-hatches and chickadees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Toward May, the lake begins to open. The hot sun sends down innumerable streams
+over the cliffs, streaking them round and round with foam. The snow slowly
+vanishes, and the meadows show tintings of green. Then spring comes on apace;
+flowers and flies enrich the air and the sod, and the deer come back to the
+upper groves like birds to an old nest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I first discovered this charming lake in the autumn of 1872, while on my way to
+the glaciers at the head of the river. It was rejoicing then in its gayest
+colors, untrodden, hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold. Year
+after year I walked its shores without discovering any other trace of humanity
+than the remains of an Indian camp-fire, and the thigh-bones of a deer that had
+been broken to get at the marrow. It lies out of the regular ways of Indians,
+who love to hunt in more accessible fields adjacent to trails. Their knowledge
+of deer-haunts had probably enticed them here some hunger-time when they wished
+to make sure of a feast; for hunting in this lake-hollow is like hunting in a
+fenced park. I had told the beauty of Shadow Lake only to a few friends,
+fearing it might come to be trampled and &ldquo;improved&rdquo; like Yosemite.
+On my last visit, as I was sauntering along the shore on the strip of sand
+between the water and sod, reading the tracks of the wild animals that live
+here, I was startled by a human track, which I at once saw belonged to some
+shepherd; for each step was turned out 35° or 40° from the general course
+pursued, and was also run over in an uncertain sprawling fashion at the heel,
+while a row of round dots on the right indicated the staff that shepherds
+carry. None but a shepherd could make such a track, and after tracing it a few
+minutes I began to fear that he might be seeking pasturage; for what else could
+he be seeking? Returning from the glaciers shortly afterward, nay worst fears
+were realized. A trail had been made down the mountain-side from the north, and
+all the gardens and meadows were destroyed by a horde of hoofed locusts, as if
+swept by a fire. The money-changers were in the temple.
+</p>
+
+<h4>ORANGE LAKE</h4>
+
+<p>
+Besides these larger cañon lakes, fed by the main cañon streams, there are many
+smaller ones lying aloft on the top of rock benches, entirely independent of
+the general drainage channels, and of course drawing their supplies from a very
+limited area. Notwithstanding they are mostly small and shallow, owing to their
+immunity from avalanche detritus and the inwashings of powerful streams, they
+often endure longer than others many times larger but less favorably situated.
+When very shallow they become dry toward the end of summer; but because their
+basins are ground out of seamless stone they suffer no loss save from
+evaporation alone; and the great depth of snow that falls, lasting into June,
+makes their dry season short in any case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Orange Lake is a fair illustration of this bench form. It lies in the middle of
+a beautiful glacial pavement near the lower margin of the lake-line, about a
+mile and a half to the northwest of Shadow Lake. It is only about 100 yards in
+circumference. Next the water there is a girdle of carices with wide
+overarching leaves, then in regular order a shaggy ruff of huckleberry bushes,
+a zone of willows with here and there a bush of the Mountain Ash, then a zone
+of aspens with a few pines around the outside. These zones are of course
+concentric, and together form a wall beyond which the naked ice-burnished
+granite stretches away in every direction, leaving it conspicuously relieved,
+like a bunch of palms in a desert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In autumn, when the colors are ripe, the whole circular grove, at a little
+distance, looks like a big handful of flowers set in a cup to be kept
+fresh&mdash;a tuft of goldenrods. Its feeding-streams are exceedingly
+beautiful, notwithstanding their inconstancy and extreme shallowness. They have
+no channel whatever, and consequently are left free to spread in thin sheets
+upon the shining granite and wander at will. In many places the current is less
+than a fourth of an inch deep, and flows with so little friction it is scarcely
+visible. Sometimes there is not a single foam-bell, or drifting pine-needle, or
+irregularity of any sort to manifest its motion. Yet when observed narrowly it
+is seen to form a web of gliding lacework exquisitely woven, giving beautiful
+reflections from its minute curving ripples and eddies, and differing from the
+water-laces of large cascades in being everywhere transparent. In spring, when
+the snow is melting, the lake-bowl is brimming full, and sends forth quite a
+large stream that slips glassily for 200 yards or so, until it comes to an
+almost vertical precipice 800 feet high, down which it plunges in a fine
+cataract; then it gathers its scattered waters and goes smoothly over folds of
+gently dipping granite to its confluence with the main cañon stream. During the
+greater portion of the year, however, not a single water sound will you hear
+either at head or foot of the lake, not oven the whispered lappings of
+ripple-waves along the shore; for the winds are fenced out. But the deep
+mountain silence is sweetened now and then by birds that stop here to rest and
+drink on their way across the cañon.
+</p>
+
+<h4>LAKE STARR KING</h4>
+
+<p>
+A beautiful variety of the bench-top lakes occurs just where the great lateral
+moraines of the main glaciers have been shoved forward in outswelling
+concentric rings by small residual tributary glaciers. Instead of being
+encompassed by a narrow ring of trees like Orange Lake, these lie embosomed in
+dense moraine woods, so dense that in seeking them you may pass them by again
+and again, although you may know nearly where they lie concealed.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus18"></a>
+<img src="images/img18.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="LAKE STARR KING" />
+<p class="caption">LAKE STARR KING.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Lake Starr King, lying to the north of the cone of that name, above the Little
+Yosemite Valley, is a fine specimen of this variety. The ouzels pass it by, and
+so do the ducks; they could hardly get into it if they would, without plumping
+straight down inside the circling trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet these isolated gems, lying like fallen fruit detached from the branches,
+are not altogether without inhabitants and joyous, animating visitors. Of
+course fishes cannot get into them, and this is generally true of nearly every
+glacier lake in the range, but they are all well stocked with happy frogs. How
+did the frogs get into them in the first place? Perhaps their sticky spawn was
+carried in on the feet of ducks or other birds, else their progenitors must
+have made some exciting excursions through the woods and up the sides of the
+cañons. Down in the still, pure depths of these hidden lakelets you may also
+find the larvae of innumerable insects and a great variety of beetles, while
+the air above them is thick with humming wings, through the midst of which
+fly-catchers are constantly darting. And in autumn, when the huckleberries are
+ripe, bands of robins and grosbeaks come to feast, forming altogether
+delightful little byworlds for the naturalist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pushing our way upward toward the axis of the range, we find lakes in greater
+and greater abundance, and more youthful in aspect. At an elevation of about
+9000 feet above sea-level they seem to have arrived at middle age,&mdash;that
+is, their basins seem to be about half filled with alluvium. Broad sheets of
+meadow-land are seen extending into them, imperfect and boggy in many places
+and more nearly level than those of the older lakes below them, and the
+vegetation of their shores is of course more alpine. Kalmia, lodum, and
+cassiope fringe the meadow rocks, while the luxuriant, waving groves, so
+characteristic of the lower lakes, are represented only by clumps of the Dwarf
+Pine and Hemlock Spruce. These, however, are oftentimes very picturesquely
+grouped on rocky headlands around the outer rim of the meadows, or with still
+more striking effect crown some rocky islet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreover, from causes that we cannot stop here to explain, the cliffs about
+these middle-aged lakes are seldom of the massive Yosemite type, but are more
+broken, and less sheer, and they usually stand back, leaving the shores
+comparatively free; while the few precipitous rocks that do come forward and
+plunge directly into deep water are seldom more than three or four hundred feet
+high.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have never yet met ducks in any of the lakes of this kind, but the ouzel is
+never wanting where the feeding-streams are perennial. Wild sheep and deer may
+occasionally be seen on the meadows, and very rarely a bear. One might camp on
+the rugged shores of these bright fountains for weeks, without meeting any
+animal larger than the marmots that burrow beneath glacier boulders along the
+edges of the meadows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The highest and youngest of all the lakes lie nestled in glacier wombs. At
+first sight, they seem pictures of pure bloodless desolation, miniature arctic
+seas, bound in perpetual ice and snow, and overshadowed by harsh, gloomy,
+crumbling precipices. Their waters are keen ultramarine blue in the deepest
+parts, lively grass-green toward the shore shallows and around the edges of the
+small bergs usually floating about in them. A few hardy sedges, frost-pinched
+every night, are occasionally found making soft sods along the sun-touched
+portions of their shores, and when their northern banks slope openly to the
+south, and are soil-covered, no matter how coarsely, they are sure to be
+brightened with flowers. One lake in particular now comes to mind which
+illustrates the floweriness of the sun-touched banks of these icy gems. Close
+up under the shadow of the Sierra Matterhorn, on the eastern slope of the
+range, lies one of the iciest of these glacier lakes at an elevation of about
+12,000 feet. A short, ragged-edged glacier crawls into it from the south, and
+on the opposite side it is embanked and dammed by a series of concentric
+terminal moraines, made by the glacier when it entirely filled the basin. Half
+a mile below lies a second lake, at a height of 11,500 feet, about as cold and
+as pure as a snow-crystal. The waters of the first come gurgling down into it
+over and through the moraine dam, while a second stream pours into it direct
+from a glacier that lies to the southeast. Sheer precipices of crystalline snow
+rise out of deep water on the south, keeping perpetual winter on that side, but
+there is a fine summery spot on the other, notwithstanding the lake is only
+about 300 yards wide. Here, on August 25, 1873, I found a charming company of
+flowers, not pinched, crouching dwarfs, scarce able to look up, but warm and
+juicy, standing erect in rich cheery color and bloom. On a narrow strip of
+shingle, close to the water&rsquo;s edge, there were a few tufts of carex gone
+to seed; and a little way back up the rocky bank at the foot of a crumbling
+wall so inclined as to absorb and radiate as well as reflect a considerable
+quantity of sun-heat, was the garden, containing a thrifty thicket of Cowania
+covered with large yellow flowers; several bushes of the alpine ribes with
+berries nearly ripe and wildly acid; a few handsome grasses belonging to two
+distinct species, and one goldenrod; a few hairy lupines and radiant spragueas,
+whose blue and rose-colored flowers were set off to fine advantage amid green
+carices; and along a narrow seam in the very warmest angle of the wall a
+perfectly gorgeous fringe of <i>Epilobium obcordatum</i> with flowers an inch
+wide, crowded together in lavish profusion, and colored as royal a purple as
+ever was worn by any high-bred plant of the tropics; and best of all, and
+greatest of all, a noble thistle in full bloom, standing erect, head and
+shoulders above his companions, and thrusting out his lances in sturdy vigor as
+if growing on a Scottish brae. All this brave warm bloom among the raw stones,
+right in the face of the onlooking glaciers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As far as I have been able to find out, these upper lakes are snow-buried in
+winter to a depth of about thirty-five or forty feet, and those most exposed to
+avalanches, to a depth of even a hundred feet or more. These last are, of
+course, nearly lost to the landscape. Some remain buried for years, when the
+snowfall is exceptionally great, and many open only on one side late in the
+season. The snow of the closed side is composed of coarse granules compacted
+and frozen into a firm, faintly stratified mass, like the <i>névé</i> of a
+glacier. The lapping waves of the open portion gradually undermine and cause it
+to break off in large masses like icebergs, which gives rise to a precipitous
+front like the discharging wall of a glacier entering the sea. The play of the
+lights among the crystal angles of these snow-cliffs, the pearly white of the
+outswelling bosses, the bergs drifting in front, aglow in the sun and edged
+with green water, and the deep blue disk of the lake itself extending to your
+feet,&mdash;this forms a picture that enriches all your afterlife, and is never
+forgotten. But however perfect the season and the day, the cold incompleteness
+of these young lakes is always keenly felt. We approach them with a kind of
+mean caution, and steal unconfidingly around their crystal shores, dashed and
+ill at ease, as if expecting to hear some forbidding voice. But the love-songs
+of the ouzels and the love-looks of the daisies gradually reassure us, and
+manifest the warm fountain humanity that pervades the coldest and most solitary
+of them all.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII<br/>
+THE GLACIER MEADOWS</h2>
+
+<p>
+After the lakes on the High Sierra come the glacier meadows. They are smooth,
+level, silky lawns, lying embedded in the upper forests, on the floors of the
+valleys, and along the broad backs of the main dividing ridges, at a height of
+about 8000 to 9500 feet above the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They are nearly as level as the lakes whose places they have taken, and present
+a dry, even surface free from rock-heaps, mossy bogginess, and the frowsy
+roughness of rank, coarse-leaved, weedy, and shrubby vegetation. The sod is
+close and fine, and so complete that you cannot see the ground; and at the same
+time so brightly enameled with flowers and butterflies that it may well be
+called a garden-meadow, or meadow-garden; for the plushy sod is in many places
+so crowded with gentians, daisies, ivesias, and various species of orthocarpus
+that the grass is scarcely noticeable, while in others the flowers are only
+pricked in here and there singly, or in small ornamental rosettes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most influential of the grasses composing the sod is a delicate
+calamagrostis with fine filiform leaves, and loose, airy panicles that seem to
+float above the flowery lawn like a purple mist. But, write as I may, I cannot
+give anything like an adequate idea of the exquisite beauty of these mountain
+carpets as they lie smoothly outspread in the savage wilderness. What words are
+fine enough to picture them I to what shall we liken them? The flowery levels
+of the prairies of the old West, the luxuriant savannahs of the South, and the
+finest of cultivated meadows are coarse in comparison. One may at first sight
+compare them with the carefully tended lawns of pleasure-grounds; for they are
+as free from weeds as they, and as smooth, but here the likeness ends; for
+these wild lawns, with all their exquisite fineness, have no trace of that
+painful, licked, snipped, repressed appearance that pleasure-ground lawns are
+apt to have even when viewed at a distance. And, not to mention the flowers
+with which they are brightened, their grasses are very much finer both in color
+and texture, and instead of lying flat and motionless, matted together like a
+dead green cloth, they respond to the touches of every breeze, rejoicing in
+pure wildness, blooming and fruiting in the vital light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Glacier meadows abound throughout all the alpine and subalpine regions of the
+Sierra in still greater numbers than the lakes. Probably from 2500 to 3000
+exist between latitude 36° 30&#x2032; and 39°, distributed, of course, like the
+lakes, in concordance with all the other glacial features of the landscape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the head waters of the rivers there are what are called &ldquo;Big
+Meadows,&rdquo; usually about from five to ten miles long. These occupy the
+basins of the ancient ice-seas, where many tributary glaciers came together to
+form the grand trunks. Most, however, are quite small, averaging perhaps but
+little more than three fourths of a mile in length.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the very finest of the thousands I have enjoyed lies hidden in an
+extensive forest of the Two-leaved Pine, on the edge of the basin of the
+ancient Tuolumne Mer de Glace, about eight miles to the west of Mount Dana.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Imagine yourself at the Tuolumne Soda Springs on the bank of the river, a
+day&rsquo;s journey above Yosemite Valley. You set off northward through a
+forest that stretches away indefinitely before you, seemingly unbroken by
+openings of any kind. As soon as you are fairly into the woods, the gray
+mountain-peaks, with their snowy gorges and hollows, are lost to view. The
+ground is littered with fallen trunks that lie crossed and recrossed like
+storm-lodged wheat; and besides this close forest of pines, the rich moraine
+soil supports a luxuriant growth of ribbon-leaved grasses&mdash;bromus,
+triticum, calamagrostis, agrostis, etc., which rear their handsome spikes and
+panicles above your waist. Making your way through the fertile
+wilderness,&mdash;finding lively bits of interest now and then in the squirrels
+and Clark crows, and perchance in a deer or bear,&mdash;after the lapse of an
+hour or two vertical bars of sunshine are seen ahead between the brown shafts
+of the pines, showing that you are approaching an open space, and then you
+suddenly emerge from the forest shadows upon a delightful purple lawn lying
+smooth and free in the light like a lake. This is a glacier meadow. It is about
+a mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile wide. The trees come pressing
+forward all around in close serried ranks, planting their feet exactly on its
+margin, and holding themselves erect, strict and orderly like soldiers on
+parade; thus bounding the meadow with exquisite precision, yet with free
+curving lines such as Nature alone can draw. With inexpressible delight you
+wade out into the grassy sun-lake, feeling yourself contained in one of
+Nature&rsquo;s most sacred chambers, withdrawn from the sterner influences of
+the mountains, secure from all intrusion, secure from yourself, free in the
+universal beauty. And notwithstanding the scene is so impressively spiritual,
+and you seem dissolved in it, yet everything about you is beating with warm,
+terrestrial, human love and life delightfully substantial and familiar. The
+resiny pines are types of health and steadfastness; the robins feeding on the
+sod belong to the same species you have known since childhood; and surely these
+daisies, larkspurs, and goldenrods are the very friend-flowers of the old home
+garden. Bees hum as in a harvest noon, butterflies waver above the flowers, and
+like them you lave in the vital sunshine, too richly and homogeneously
+joy-filled to be capable of partial thought. You are all eye, sifted through
+and through with light and beauty. Sauntering along the brook that meanders
+silently through the meadow from the east, special flowers call you back to
+discriminating consciousness. The sod comes curving down to the water&rsquo;s
+edge, forming bossy outswelling banks, and in some places overlapping
+countersunk boulders and forming bridges. Here you find mats of the curious
+dwarf willow scarce an inch high, yet sending up a multitude of gray silky
+catkins, illumined here and there with, the purple cups and bells of bryanthus
+and vaccinium.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Go where you may, you everywhere find the lawn divinely beautiful, as if Nature
+had fingered and adjusted every plant this very day. The floating grass
+panicles are scarcely felt in brushing through their midst, so flue are they,
+and none of the flowers have tall or rigid stalks. In the brightest places you
+find three species of gentians with different shades of blue, daisies pure as
+the sky, silky leaved ivesias with warm yellow flowers, several species of
+orthocarpus with blunt, bossy spikes, red and purple and yellow; the alpine
+goldenrod, pentstemon, and clover, fragrant and honeyful, with their colors
+massed and blended. Parting the grasses and looking more closely you may trace
+the branching of their shining stems, and note the marvelous beauty of their
+mist of flowers, the glumes and pales exquisitely penciled, the yellow dangling
+stamens, and feathery pistils. Beneath the lowest leaves you discover a fairy
+realm of mosses,&mdash;hypnum, dicranum, polytriclium, and many
+others,&mdash;their precious spore-cups poised daintily on polished shafts,
+curiously hooded, or open, showing the richly ornate peristomas worn like royal
+crowns. Creeping liverworts are here also in abundance, and several rare
+species of fungi, exceedingly small, and frail, and delicate, as if made only
+for beauty. Caterpillars, black beetles, and ants roam the wilds of this lower
+world, making their way through miniature groves and thickets like bears in a
+thick wood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And how rich, too, is the life of the sunny air! Every leaf and flower seems to
+have its winged representative overhead. Dragon-flies shoot in vigorous zigzags
+through the dancing swarms, and a rich profusion of butterflies&mdash;the
+leguminosae of insects&mdash;make a fine addition to the general show. Many of
+these last are comparatively small at this elevation, and as yet almost unknown
+to science; but every now and then a familiar vanessa or papilio comes sailing
+past. Humming-birds, too, are quite common here, and the robin is always found
+along the margin of the stream, or out in the shallowest portions of the sod,
+and sometimes the grouse and mountain quail, with their broods of precious
+fluffy chickens. Swallows skim the grassy lake from end to end, fly-catchers
+come and go in fitful flights from the tops of dead spars, while woodpeckers
+swing across from side to side in graceful festoon curves,&mdash;birds,
+insects, and flowers all in their own way telling a deep summer joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The influences of pure nature seem to be so little known as yet, that it is
+generally supposed that complete pleasure of this kind, permeating one&rsquo;s
+very flesh and bones, unfits the student for scientific pursuits in which cool
+judgment and observation are required. But the effect is just the opposite.
+Instead of producing a dissipated condition, the mind is fertilized and
+stimulated and developed like sun-fed plants. All that we have seen here
+enables us to see with surer vision the fountains among the summit-peaks to the
+east whence flowed the glaciers that ground soil for the surrounding forest;
+and down at the foot of the meadow the moraine which formed the dam which gave
+rise to the lake that occupied this basin before the meadow was made; and
+around the margin the stones that were shoved back and piled up into a rude
+wall by the expansion of the lake ice during long bygone winters; and along the
+sides of the streams the slight hollows of the meadow which mark those portions
+of the old lake that were the last to vanish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I would fain ask my readers to linger awhile in this fertile wilderness, to
+trace its history from its earliest glacial beginnings, and learn what we may
+of its wild inhabitants and visitors. How happy the birds are all summer and
+some of them all winter; how the pouched marmots drive tunnels under the snow,
+and how fine and brave a life the slandered coyote lives here, and the deer and
+bears! But, knowing well the difference between reading and seeing, I will only
+ask attention to some brief sketches of its varying aspects as they are
+presented throughout the more marked seasons of the year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The summer life we have been depicting lasts with but little abatement until
+October, when the night frosts begin to sting, bronzing the grasses, and
+ripening the leaves of the creeping heathworts along the banks of the stream to
+reddish purple and crimson; while the flowers disappear, all save the
+goldenrods and a few daisies, that continue to bloom on unscathed until the
+beginning of snowy winter. In still nights the grass panicles and every leaf
+and stalk are laden with frost crystals, through which the morning sunbeams
+sift in ravishing splendor, transforming each to a precious diamond radiating
+the colors of the rainbow. The brook shallows are plaited across and across
+with slender lances of ice, but both these and the grass crystals are melted
+before midday, and, notwithstanding the great elevation of the meadow, the
+afternoons are still warm enough to revive the chilled butterflies and call
+them out to enjoy the late-flowering goldenrods. The divine alpenglow flushes
+the surrounding forest every evening, followed by a crystal night with hosts of
+lily stars, whose size and brilliancy cannot be conceived by those who have
+never risen above the lowlands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus come and go the bright sun-days of autumn, not a cloud in the sky, week
+after week until near December. Then comes a sudden change. Clouds of a
+peculiar aspect with a slow, crawling gait gather and grow in the azure,
+throwing out satiny fringes, and becoming gradually darker until every
+lake-like rift and opening is closed and the whole bent firmament is obscured
+in equal structureless gloom. Then comes the snow, for the clouds are ripe, the
+meadows of the sky are in bloom, and shed their radiant blossoms like an
+orchard in the spring. Lightly, lightly they lodge in the brown grasses and in
+the tasseled needles of the pines, falling hour after hour, day after day,
+silently, lovingly,&mdash;all the winds hushed,&mdash;glancing and circling
+hither, thither, glinting against one another, rays interlocking in flakes as
+large as daisies; and then the dry grasses, and the trees, and the stones are
+all equally abloom again. Thunder-showers occur here during the summer months,
+and impressive it is to watch the coming of the big transparent drops, each a
+small world in itself,&mdash;one unbroken ocean without islands hurling free
+through the air like planets through space. But still more impressive to me is
+the coming of the snow-flowers,&mdash;falling stars, winter
+daisies,&mdash;giving bloom to all the ground alike. Raindrops blossom
+brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in
+full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The later snow-storms are oftentimes accompanied by winds that break up the
+crystals, when the temperature is low, into single petals and irregular dusty
+fragments; but there is comparatively little drifting on the meadow, so
+securely is it embosomed in the woods. From December to May, storm succeeds
+storm, until the snow is about fifteen or twenty feet deep, but the surface is
+always as smooth as the breast of a bird.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hushed now is the life that so late was beating warmly. Most of the birds have
+gone down below the snow-line, the plants sleep, and all the fly-wings are
+folded. Yet the sun beams gloriously many a cloudless day in midwinter, casting
+long lance shadows athwart the dazzling expanse. In June small flecks of the
+dead, decaying sod begin to appear, gradually widening and uniting with one
+another, covered with creeping rags of water during the day, and ice by night,
+looking as hopeless and unvital as crushed rocks just emerging from the
+darkness of the glacial period. Walk the meadow now! Scarce the memory of a
+flower will you find. The ground seems twice dead. Nevertheless, the annual
+resurrection is drawing near. The life-giving sun pours his floods, the last
+snow-wreath melts, myriads of growing points push eagerly through the steaming
+mold, the birds come back, new wings fill the air, and fervid summer life comes
+surging on, seemingly yet more glorious than before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is a perfect meadow, and under favorable circumstances exists without
+manifesting any marked changes for centuries. Nevertheless, soon or late it
+must inevitably grow old and vanish. During the calm Indian summer, scarce a
+sand-grain moves around its banks, but in flood-times and storm-times, soil is
+washed forward upon it and laid in successive sheets around its gently sloping
+rim, and is gradually extended to the center, making it dryer. Through a
+considerable period the meadow vegetation is not greatly affected thereby, for
+it gradually rises with the rising ground, keeping on the surface like
+water-plants rising on the swell of waves. But at length the elevation of the
+meadow-land goes on so far as to produce too dry a soil for the specific
+meadow-plants, when, of course, they have to give up their places to others
+fitted for the new conditions. The most characteristic of the newcomers at this
+elevation above the sea are principally sun-loving gilias, eriogonae, and
+compositae, and finally forest-trees. Henceforward the obscuring changes are so
+manifold that the original lake-meadow can be unveiled and seen only by the
+geologist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Generally speaking, glacier lakes vanish more slowly than the meadows that
+succeed them, because, unless very shallow, a greater quantity of material is
+required to fill up their basins and obliterate them than is required to render
+the surface of the meadow too high and dry for meadow vegetation. Furthermore,
+owing to the weathering to which the adjacent rocks are subjected, material of
+the finer sort, susceptible of transportation by rains and ordinary floods, is
+more abundant during the meadow period than during the lake period. Yet
+doubtless many a fine meadow favorably situated exists in almost prime beauty
+for thousands of years, the process of extinction being exceedingly slow, as we
+reckon time. This is especially the case with meadows circumstanced like the
+one we have described&mdash;embosomed in deep woods, with the ground rising
+gently away from it all around, the network of tree-roots in which all the
+ground is clasped preventing any rapid torrential washing. But, in exceptional
+cases, beautiful lawns formed with great deliberation are overwhelmed and
+obliterated at once by the action of land-slips, earthquake avalanches, or
+extraordinary floods, just as lakes are.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In those glacier meadows that take the places of shallow lakes which have been
+fed by feeble streams, glacier mud and fine vegetable humus enter largely into
+the composition of the soil; and on account of the shallowness of this soil,
+and the seamless, water-tight, undrained condition of the rock-basins, they are
+usually wet, and therefore occupied by tall grasses and sedges, whose coarse
+appearance offers a striking contrast to that of the delicate lawn-making kind
+described above. These shallow-soiled meadows are oftentimes still further
+roughened and diversified by partially buried moraines and swelling bosses of
+the bed-rock, which, with the trees and shrubs growing upon them, produce a
+striking effect as they stand in relief like islands in the grassy level, or
+sweep across in rugged curves from one forest wall to the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Throughout the upper meadow region, wherever water is sufficiently abundant and
+low in temperature, in basins secure from flood-washing, handsome bogs are
+formed with a deep growth of brown and yellow sphagnum picturesquely ruined
+with patches of kalmia and ledum which ripen masses of beautiful color in the
+autumn. Between these cool, spongy bogs and the dry, flowery meadows there are
+many interesting varieties which are graduated into one another by the varied
+conditions already alluded to, forming a series of delightful studies.
+</p>
+
+<h4>HANGING MEADOWS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Another, very well-marked and interesting kind of meadow, differing greatly
+both in origin and appearance from the lake-meadows, is found lying aslant upon
+moraine-covered hillsides trending in the direction of greatest declivity,
+waving up and down over rock heaps and ledges, like rich green ribbons
+brilliantly illumined with tall flowers. They occur both in the alpine and
+subalpine regions in considerable numbers, and never fail to make telling
+features in the landscape. They are often a mile or more in length, but never
+very wide&mdash;usually from thirty to fifty yards. When the mountain or cañon
+side on which, they lie dips at the required angle, and other conditions are at
+the same time favorable, they extend from above the timber line to the bottom
+of a cañon or lake basin, descending in fine, fluent lines like cascades,
+breaking here and there into a kind of spray on large boulders, or dividing and
+flowing around on either side of some projecting islet. Sometimes a noisy
+stream goes brawling down through them, and again, scarcely a drop of water is
+in sight. They owe their existence, however, to streams, whether visible or
+invisible, the wildest specimens being found where some perennial fountain, as
+a glacier or snowbank or moraine spring sends down its waters across a rough
+sheet of soil in a dissipated web of feeble, oozing rivulets. These conditions
+give rise to a meadowy vegetation, whose extending roots still more obstruct
+the free flow of the waters, and tend to dissipate them out over a yet wider
+area. Thus the moraine soil and the necessary moisture requisite for the better
+class of meadow plants are at times combined about as perfectly as if smoothly
+outspread on a level surface. Where the soil happens to be composed of the
+finer qualities of glacial detritus and the water is not in excess, the nearest
+approach is made by the vegetation to that of the lake-meadow. But where, as is
+more commonly the case, the soil is coarse and bouldery, the vegetation is
+correspondingly rank. Tall, wide-leaved grasses take their places along the
+sides, and rushes and nodding carices in the wetter portions, mingled with the
+most beautiful and imposing flowers,&mdash;orange lilies and larkspurs seven or
+eight feet high, lupines, senecios, aliums, painted-cups, many species of
+mimulus and pentstemon, the ample boat-leaved <i>veratrum alba</i>, and the
+magnificent alpine columbine, with spurs an inch and a half long. At an
+elevation of from seven to nine thousand feet showy flowers frequently form the
+bulk of the vegetation; then the hanging meadows become hanging gardens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In rare instances we find an alpine basin the bottom of which is a perfect
+meadow, and the sides nearly all the way round, rising in gentle curves, are
+covered with moraine soil, which, being saturated with melting snow from
+encircling fountains, gives rise to an almost continuous girdle of down-curving
+meadow vegetation that blends gracefully into the level meadow at the bottom,
+thus forming a grand, smooth, soft, meadow-lined mountain nest. It is in
+meadows of this sort that the mountain beaver (<i>Haplodon</i>) loves to make
+his home, excavating snug chambers beneath the sod, digging canals, turning the
+underground waters from channel to channel to suit his convenience, and feeding
+the vegetation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another kind of meadow or bog occurs on densely timbered hillsides where small
+perennial streams have been dammed at short intervals by fallen trees. Still
+another kind is found hanging down smooth, flat precipices, while corresponding
+leaning meadows rise to meet them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are also three kinds of small pot-hole meadows one of which is found
+along the banks of the main streams, another on the summits of rocky ridges,
+and the third on glacier pavements, all of them interesting in origin and
+brimful of plant beauty.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br/>
+THE FORESTS</h2>
+
+<p>
+The coniferous forests of the Sierra are the grandest and most beautiful in the
+world, and grow in a delightful climate on the most interesting and accessible
+of mountain-ranges, yet strange to say they are not well known. More than sixty
+years ago David Douglas, an enthusiastic botanist and tree lover, wandered
+alone through fine sections of the Sugar Pine and Silver Fir woods wild with
+delight. A few years later, other botanists made short journeys from the coast
+into the lower woods. Then came the wonderful multitude of miners into the
+foot-hill zone, mostly blind with gold-dust, soon followed by
+&ldquo;sheepmen,&rdquo; who, with wool over their eyes, chased their flocks
+through all the forest belts from one end of the range to the other. Then the
+Yosemite Valley was discovered, and thousands of admiring tourists passed
+through sections of the lower and middle zones on their way to that wonderful
+park, and gained fine glimpses of the Sugar Pines and Silver Firs along the
+edges of dusty trails and roads. But few indeed, strong and free with eyes
+undimmed with care, have gone far enough and lived long enough with the trees
+to gain anything like a loving conception of their grandeur and significance as
+manifested in the harmonies of their distribution and varying aspects
+throughout the seasons, as they stand arrayed in their winter garb rejoicing in
+storms, putting forth their fresh leaves in the spring while steaming with
+resiny fragrance, receiving the thunder-showers of summer, or reposing
+heavy-laden with ripe cones in the rich sungold of autumn. For knowledge of
+this kind one must dwell with the trees and grow with them, without any
+reference to time in the almanac sense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The distribution of the general forest in belts is readily perceived. These, as
+we have seen, extend in regular order from one extremity of the range to the
+other; and however dense and somber they may appear in general views, neither
+on the rocky heights nor down in the leafiest hollows will you find anything to
+remind you of the dank, malarial selvas of the Amazon and Orinoco, with, their
+&ldquo;boundless contiguity of shade,&rdquo; the monotonous uniformity of the
+Deodar forests of the Himalaya, the Black Forest of Europe, or the dense dark
+woods of Douglas Spruce where rolls the Oregon. The giant pines, and firs, and
+Sequoias hold their arms open to the sunlight, rising above one another on the
+mountain benches, marshaled in glorious array, giving forth the utmost
+expression of grandeur and beauty with inexhaustible variety and harmony.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus19"></a>
+<img src="images/img19.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST." />
+<p class="caption">VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The inviting openness of the Sierra woods is one of their most distinguishing
+characteristics. The trees of all the species stand more or less apart in
+groves, or in small, irregular groups, enabling one to find a way nearly
+everywhere, along sunny colonnades and through openings that have a smooth,
+park-like surface, strewn with brown needles and burs. Now you cross a wild
+garden, now a meadow, now a ferny, willowy stream; and ever and anon you emerge
+from all the groves and flowers upon some granite pavement or high, bare ridge
+commanding superb views above the waving sea of evergreens far and near.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One would experience but little difficulty in riding on horseback through the
+successive belts all the way up to the storm-beaten fringes of the icy peaks.
+The deep cañons, however, that extend from the axis of the range, cut the belts
+more or less completely into sections, and prevent the mounted traveler from
+tracing them lengthwise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This simple arrangement in zones and sections brings the forest, as a whole,
+within the comprehension of every observer. The different species are ever
+found occupying the same relative positions to one another, as controlled by
+soil, climate, and the comparative vigor of each species in taking and holding
+the ground; and so appreciable are these relations, one need never be at a loss
+in determining, within a few hundred feet, the elevation above sea-level by the
+trees alone; for, notwithstanding some of the species range upward for several
+thousand feet, and all pass one another more or less, yet even those possessing
+the greatest vertical range are available in this connection, in as much as
+they take on new forms corresponding with the variations in altitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Crossing the treeless plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin from the west
+and reaching the Sierra foot-hills, you enter the lower fringe of the forest,
+composed of small oaks and pines, growing so far apart that not one twentieth
+of the surface of the ground is in shade at clear noonday. After advancing
+fifteen or twenty miles, and making an ascent of from two to three thousand
+feet, you reach the lower margin of the main pine belt, composed of the
+gigantic Sugar Pine, Yellow Pine, Incense Cedar, and Sequoia. Next you come to
+the magnificent Silver Fir belt, and lastly to the upper pine belt, which
+sweeps up the rocky acclivities of the summit peaks in a dwarfed, wavering
+fringe to a height of from ten to twelve thousand feet.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus20"></a>
+<img src="images/img20.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA" />
+<p class="caption">EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+This general order of distribution, with reference to climate dependent on
+elevation, is perceived at once, but there are other harmonies, as far-reaching
+in this connection, that become manifest only after patient observation and
+study. Perhaps the most interesting of these is the arrangement of the forests
+in long, curving bands, braided together into lace-like patterns, and outspread
+in charming variety. The key to this beautiful harmony is the ancient glaciers;
+where they flowed the trees followed, tracing their wavering courses along
+cañons, over ridges, and over high, rolling plateaus. The Cedars of Lebanon,
+says Hooker, are growing upon one of the moraines of an ancient glacier. All
+the forests of the Sierra are growing upon moraines. But moraines vanish like
+the glaciers that make them. Every storm that falls upon them wastes them,
+cutting gaps, disintegrating boulders, and carrying away their decaying
+material into new formations, until at length they are no longer recognizable
+by any save students, who trace their transitional forms down from the fresh
+moraines still in process of formation, through those that are more and more
+ancient, and more and more obscured by vegetation and all kinds of post-glacial
+weathering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had the ice-sheet that once covered all the range been melted simultaneously
+from the foot-hills to the summits, the flanks would, of course, have been left
+almost bare of soil, and these noble forests would be wanting. Many groves and
+thickets would undoubtedly have grown up on lake and avalanche beds, and many a
+fair flower and shrub would have found food and a dwelling-place in weathered
+nooks and crevices, but the Sierra as a whole would have been a bare, rocky
+desert.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus21"></a>
+<img src="images/img21.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST." />
+<p class="caption">VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+It appears, therefore, that the Sierra forests in general indicate the extent
+and positions of the ancient moraines as well as they do lines of climate. For
+forests, properly speaking, cannot exist without soil; and, since the moraines
+have been deposited upon the solid rock, and only upon elected places, leaving
+a considerable portion of the old glacial surface bare, we find luxuriant
+forests of pine and fir abruptly terminated by scored and polished pavements on
+which not even a moss is growing, though soil alone is required to fit them for
+the growth of trees 200 feet in height.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+THE NUT PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus Sabiniana</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+The Nut Pine, the first conifer met in ascending the range from the west, grows
+only on the torrid foothills, seeming to delight in the most ardent sun-heat,
+like a palm; springing up here and there singly, or in scattered groups of five
+or six, among scrubby White Oaks and thickets of ceanothus and manzanita; its
+extreme upper limit being about 4000 feet above the sea, its lower about from
+500 to 800 feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This tree is remarkable for its airy, widespread, tropical appearance, which
+suggests a region of palms, rather than cool, resiny pine woods. No one would
+take it at first sight to be a conifer of any kind, it is so loose in habit and
+so widely branched, and its foliage is so thin and gray. Full-grown specimens
+are from forty to fifty feet in height, and from two to three feet in diameter.
+The trunk usually divides into three or four main branches, about fifteen and
+twenty feet from the ground, which, after bearing away from one another, shoot
+straight up and form separate summits; while the crooked subordinate branches
+aspire, and radiate, and droop in ornamental sprays. The slender, grayish-green
+needles are from eight to twelve inches long, loosely tasseled, and inclined to
+droop in handsome curves, contrasting with the stiff, dark-colored trunk and
+branches in a very striking manner. No other tree of my acquaintance, so
+substantial in body, is in its foliage so thin and so pervious to the light.
+The sunbeams sift through even the leafiest trees with scarcely any
+interruption, and the weary, heated traveler finds but little protection in
+their shade.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus22"></a>
+<img src="images/img22.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="THE NUT PINE" />
+<p class="caption">THE NUT PINE (<i>Pinus Sabiniana</i>)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The generous crop of nutritious nuts which the Nut Pine yields makes it a
+favorite with Indians, bears, and squirrels. The cones are most beautiful,
+measuring from five to eight inches in length, and not much less in thickness,
+rich chocolate-brown in color, and protected by strong, down-curving hooks
+which terminate the scales. Nevertheless, the little Douglas squirrel can open
+them. Indians gathering the ripe nuts make a striking picture. The men climb
+the trees like bears and beat off the cones with sticks, or recklessly cut off
+the more fruitful branches with hatchets, while the squaws gather the big,
+generous cones, and roast them until the scales open sufficiently to allow the
+hard-shelled seeds to be beaten out. Then, in the cool evenings, men, women,
+and children, with their capacity for dirt greatly increased by the soft resin
+with which they are all bedraggled, form circles around camp-fires, on the bank
+of the nearest stream, and lie in easy independence cracking nuts and laughing
+and chattering, as heedless of the future as the squirrels.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+<i>Pinus tuberculata</i>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This curious little pine is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000 feet,
+growing in close, willowy groves. It is exceedingly slender and graceful in
+habit, although trees that chance to stand alone outside the groves sweep forth
+long, curved branches, producing a striking contrast to the ordinary grove
+form. The foliage is of the same peculiar gray-green color as that of the Nut
+Pine, and is worn about as loosely, so that the body of the tree is scarcely
+obscured by it.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus23"></a>
+<img src="images/img23.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="THE GROVE FORM. THE ISOLATED FORM (PINUS TUBERCULATA)" />
+<p class="caption">THE GROVE FORM. THE ISOLATED FORM (PINUS TUBERCULATA).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+At the age of seven or eight years it begins to bear cones, not on branches,
+but on the main axis, and, as they never fall off, the trunk is soon
+picturesquely dotted with them. The branches also become fruitful after they
+attain sufficient size. The average size of the older trees is about thirty or
+forty feet in height, and twelve to fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are
+about four inches long, exceedingly hard, and covered with a sort of silicious
+varnish and gum, rendering them impervious to moisture, evidently with a view
+to the careful preservation of the seeds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No other conifer in the range is so closely restricted to special localities.
+It is usually found apart, standing deep in chaparral on sunny hill-and
+cañon-sides where there is but little depth of soil, and, where found at all,
+it is quite plentiful; but the ordinary traveler, following carriage-roads and
+trails, may ascend the range many times without meeting it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While exploring the lower portion of the Merced Cañon I found a lonely miner
+seeking his fortune in a quartz vein on a wild mountain-side planted with this
+singular tree. He told me that he called it the Hickory Pine, because of the
+whiteness and toughness of the wood. It is so little known, however, that it
+can hardly be said to have a common name. Most mountaineers refer to it as
+&ldquo;that queer little pine-tree covered all over with burs.&rdquo; In my
+studies of this species I found a very interesting and significant group of
+facts, whose relations will be seen almost as soon as stated:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+1st. All the trees in the groves I examined, however unequal in size, are of
+the same age.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+2d. Those groves are all planted on dry hillsides covered with chaparral, and
+therefore are liable to be swept by fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+3d. There are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves, but there
+is always a fine, hopeful crop springing up on the ground once occupied by any
+grove that has been destroyed by the burning of the chaparral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+4th. The cones never fall off and never discharge their seeds until the tree or
+branch to which they belong dies.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus24"></a>
+<img src="images/img24.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN CHARACTER OF WOODS." />
+<p class="caption">LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN CHARACTER OF WOODS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+A full discussion of the bearing of these facts upon one another would perhaps
+be out of place here, but I may at least call attention to the admirable
+adaptation of the tree to the fire-swept regions where alone it is found. After
+a grove has been destroyed, the ground is at once sown lavishly with all the
+seeds ripened during its whole life, which seem to have been carefully held in
+store with reference to such a calamity. Then a young grove immediately springs
+up, giving beauty for ashes.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+SUGAR PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus Lambertiana</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This is the noblest pine yet discovered, surpassing all others not merely in
+size but also in kingly beauty and majesty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It towers sublimely from every ridge and cañon of the range, at an elevation of
+from three to seven thousand feet above the sea, attaining most perfect
+development at a height of about 5000 feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Full-grown specimens are commonly about 220 feet high, and from six to eight
+feet in diameter near the ground, though some grand old patriarch is
+occasionally met that has enjoyed five or six centuries of storms, and attained
+a thickness of ten or even twelve feet, living on undecayed, sweet and fresh in
+every fiber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In southern Oregon, where it was first discovered by David Douglas, on the head
+waters of the Umpqua, it attains still grander dimensions, one specimen having
+been measured that was 245 feet high, and over eighteen feet in diameter three
+feet from the ground. The discoverer was the Douglas for whom the noble Douglas
+Spruce is named, and many other plants which will keep his memory sweet and
+fresh as long as trees and flowers are loved. His first visit to the Pacific
+Coast was made in the year 1825. The Oregon Indians watched him with curiosity
+as he wandered in the woods collecting specimens, and, unlike the fur-gathering
+strangers they had hitherto known, caring nothing about trade. And when at
+length they came to know him better, and saw that from year to year the growing
+things of the woods and prairies were his only objects of pursuit, they called
+him &ldquo;The Man of Grass,&rdquo; a title of which he was proud. During his
+first summer on the waters of the Columbia he made Fort Vancouver his
+headquarters, making excursions from this Hudson Bay post in every direction.
+On one of his long trips he saw in an Indian&rsquo;s pouch some of the seeds of
+a new species of pine which he learned were obtained from a very large tree far
+to the southward of the Columbia. At the end of the next summer, returning to
+Fort Vancouver after the setting in of the winter rains, bearing in mind the
+big pine he had heard of, he set out on an excursion up the Willamette Valley
+in search of it; and how he fared, and what dangers and hardships he endured,
+are best told in his own journal, from which I quote as follows:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+<i>October</i> 26, 1826. Weather dull. Cold and cloudy. When my friends in
+England are made acquainted with my travels I fear they will think I have told
+them nothing but my miseries…. I quitted my camp early in the morning to survey
+the neighboring country, leaving my guide to take charge of the horses until my
+return in the evening. About an hour&rsquo;s walk from the camp I met an
+Indian, who on perceiving me instantly strung his bow, placed on his left arm a
+sleeve of raccoon skin and stood on the defensive. Being quite sure that
+conduct was prompted by fear and not by hostile intentions, the poor fellow
+having probably never seen such a being as myself before, I laid my gun at my
+feet on the ground and waved my hand for him to come to me, which he did slowly
+and with great caution. I then made him place his bow and quiver of arrows
+beside my gun, and striking a light gave him a smoke out of my own pipe and a
+present of a few beads. With my pencil I made a rough sketch of the cone and
+pine tree which I wanted to obtain, and drew his attention to it, when he
+instantly pointed with his hand to the hills fifteen or twenty miles distant
+towards the south; and when I expressed my intention of going thither,
+cheerfully set out to accompany me. At midday I reached my long-wished-for
+pines, and lost no time in examining them and endeavoring to collect specimens
+and seeds. New and strange things seldom fail to make strong impressions, and
+are therefore frequently over-rated; so that, lest I should never see my
+friends in England to inform them verbally of this most beautiful and immensely
+grand tree, I shall here state the dimensions of the largest I could find among
+several that had been blown down by the wind. At 3 feet from the ground its
+circumference is 57 feet 9 inches; at 134 feet, 17 feet 5 inches; the extreme
+length 245 feet…. As it was impossible either to climb the tree or hew it down,
+I endeavored to knock off the cones by firing at them with ball, when the
+report of my gun brought eight Indians, all of them painted with red earth,
+armed with bows, arrows, bone-tipped spears, and flint-knives. They appeared
+anything but friendly. I explained to them what I wanted, and they seemed
+satisfied and sat down to smoke; but presently I saw one of them string his
+bow, and another sharpen his flint knife with a pair of wooden pincers and
+suspend it off the wrist of his right hand. Further testimony of their
+intentions was unnecessary. To save myself by flight was impossible, so without
+hesitation I stepped back about five paces, cocked my gun, drew one of the
+pistols out of my belt, and holding it in my left hand and the gun in my right,
+showed myself determined to fight for my life. As much as possible I endeavored
+to preserve my coolness, and thus we stood looking at one another without
+making any movement or uttering a word for perhaps ten minutes, when one at
+last, who seemed to be the leader, gave a sign that they wished for some
+tobacco; this I signified that they should have if they fetched a quantity of
+cones. They went off immediately in search of them, and no sooner were they all
+out of sight than I picked up my three cones and some twigs of the trees and
+made the quickest possible retreat, hurrying back to the camp, which I reached
+before dusk…. I now write lying on the grass with my gun cocked beside me, and
+penning these lines by the light of my Columbian candle, namely, an ignited
+piece of rosin-wood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This grand pine discovered under such, exciting circumstances Douglas named in
+honor of his friend Dr. Lambert of London.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trunk is a smooth, round, delicately tapered shaft, mostly without limbs,
+and colored rich purplish-brown, usually enlivened with tufts of yellow lichen.
+At the top of this magnificent bole, long, curving branches sweep gracefully
+outward and downward, sometimes forming a palm-like crown, but far more nobly
+impressive than any palm crown I ever beheld. The needles are about three
+inches long, finely tempered and arranged in rather close tassels at the ends
+of slender branchlets that clothe the long, outsweeping limbs. How well they
+sing in the wind, and how strikingly harmonious an effect is made by the
+immense cylindrical cones that depend loosely from the ends of the main
+branches! No one knows what Nature can do in the way of pine-burs until he has
+seen those of the Sugar Pine. They are commonly from fifteen to eighteen inches
+long, and three in diameter; green, shaded with dark purple on their sunward
+sides. They are ripe in September and October. Then the flat scales open and
+the seeds take wing, but the empty cones become still more beautiful and
+effective, for their diameter is nearly doubled by the spreading of the scales,
+and their color changes to a warm yellowish-brown; while they remain swinging
+on the tree all the following winter and summer, and continue effectively
+beautiful even on the ground many years after they fall. The wood is
+deliciously fragrant, and fine in grain and texture; it is of a rich
+cream-yellow, as if formed of condensed sunbeams. <i>Retinospora obtusa,
+Siebold</i>, the glory of Eastern forests, is called &ldquo;Fu-si-no-ki&rdquo;
+(tree of the sun) by the Japanese; the Sugar Pine is the sun-tree of the
+Sierra. Unfortunately it is greatly prized by the lumbermen, and in accessible
+places is always the first tree in the woods to feel their steel. But the
+regular lumbermen, with their saw-mills, have been, less generally destructive
+thus far than the shingle-makers. The wood splits freely, and there is a
+constant demand for the shingles. And because an ax, and saw, and frow are all
+the capital required for the business, many of that drifting, unsteady class of
+men so large in California engage in it for a few months in the year. When
+prospectors, hunters, ranch hands, etc., touch their &ldquo;bottom
+dollar&rdquo; and find themselves out of employment, they say, &ldquo;Well, I
+can at least go to the Sugar Pines and make shingles.&rdquo; A few posts are
+set in the ground, and a single length cut from the first tree felled produces
+boards enough for the walls and roof of a cabin; all the rest the lumberman
+makes is for sale, and he is speedily independent. No gardener or haymaker is
+more sweetly perfumed than these rough mountaineers while engaged in this
+business, but the havoc they make is most deplorable.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:20%;">
+<a name="illus25"></a>
+<img src="images/img25.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE" />
+<p class="caption">SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The sugar, from which the common name is derived, is to my taste the best of
+sweets&mdash;better than maple sugar. It exudes from the heart-wood, where
+wounds have been made, either by forest fires, or the ax, in the shape of
+irregular, crisp, candy-like kernels, which are crowded together in masses of
+considerable size, like clusters of resin-beads. When fresh, it is perfectly
+white and delicious, but, because most of the wounds on which it is found have
+been made by fire, the exuding sap is stained on the charred surface, and the
+hardened sugar becomes brown. Indians are fond of it, but on account of its
+laxative properties only small quantities may be eaten. Bears, so fond of sweet
+things in general, seem never to taste it; at least I have failed to find any
+trace of their teeth in this connection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No lover of trees will ever forget his first meeting with the Sugar Pine, nor
+will he afterward need a poet to call him to &ldquo;listen what the pine-tree
+saith.&rdquo; In most pine-trees there is a sameness of expression, which, to
+most people, is apt to become monotonous; for the typical spiry form, however
+beautiful, affords but little scope for appreciable individual character. The
+Sugar Pine is as free from conventionalities of form and motion as any oak. No
+two are alike, even to the most inattentive observer; and, notwithstanding they
+are ever tossing out their immense arms in what might seem most extravagant
+gestures, there is a majesty and repose about them that precludes all
+possibility of the grotesque, or even picturesque, in their general expression.
+They are the priests of pines, and seem ever to be addressing the surrounding
+forest. The Yellow Pine is found growing with them on warm hillsides, and the
+White Silver Fir on cool northern slopes; but, noble as these are, the Sugar
+Pine is easily king, and spreads his arms above them in blessing while they
+rock and wave in sign of recognition. The main branches are sometimes found to
+be forty feet in length, yet persistently simple, seldom dividing at all,
+excepting near the end; but anything like a bare cable appearance is prevented
+by the small, tasseled branchlets that extend all around them; and when these
+superb limbs sweep out symmetrically on all sides, a crown sixty or seventy
+feet wide is formed, which, gracefully poised on the summit of the noble shaft,
+and filled with sunshine, is one of the most glorious forest objects
+conceivable. Commonly, however, there is a great preponderance of limbs toward
+the east, away from the direction of the prevailing winds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No other pine seems to me so unfamiliar and self-contained. In approaching it,
+we feel as if in the presence of a superior being, and begin to walk with a
+light step, holding our breath. Then, perchance, while we gaze awe-stricken,
+along comes a merry squirrel, chattering and laughing, to break the spell,
+running up the trunk with no ceremony, and gnawing off the cones as if they
+were made only for him; while the carpenter-woodpecker hammers away at the
+bark, drilling holes in which to store his winter supply of acorns.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus26"></a>
+<img src="images/img26.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES" />
+<p class="caption">YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Although so wild and unconventional when full-grown, the Sugar Pine is a
+remarkably proper tree in youth. The old is the most original and independent
+in appearance of all the Sierra evergreens; the young is the most
+regular,&mdash;a strict follower of coniferous fashions,&mdash;slim, erect,
+with leafy, supple branches kept exactly in place, each tapering in outline and
+terminating in a spiry point. The successive transitional forms presented
+between the cautious neatness of youth and bold freedom of maturity offer a
+delightful study. At the age of fifty or sixty years, the shy, fashionable form
+begins to be broken up. Specialized branches push out in the most unthought-of
+places, and bend with the great cones, at once marking individual character,
+and this being constantly augmented from year to year by the varying action of
+the sunlight, winds, snow-storms, etc., the individuality of the tree is never
+again lost in the general forest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most constant companion of this species is the Yellow Pine, and a worthy
+companion it is.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus27"></a>
+<img src="images/img27.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE." />
+<p class="caption">FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, Sequoia, and the White Silver Fir are also more
+or less associated with it; but on many deep-soiled mountain-sides, at an
+elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, it forms the bulk of the forest,
+filling every swell and hollow and down-plunging ravine. The majestic crowns,
+approaching each other in bold curves, make a glorious canopy through which the
+tempered sunbeams pour, silvering the needles, and gilding the massive boles,
+and flowery, park-like ground, into a scene of enchantment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the most sunny slopes the white-flowered fragrant chamoebatia is spread like
+a carpet, brightened during early summer with the crimson Sarcodes, the wild
+rose, and innumerable violets and gilias. Not even in the shadiest nooks will
+you find any rank, untidy weeds or unwholesome darkness. On the north sides of
+ridges the boles are more slender, and the ground is mostly occupied by an
+underbrush of hazel, ceanothus, and flowering dogwood, but never so densely as
+to prevent the traveler from sauntering where he will; while the crowning
+branches are never impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and never so
+interblended as to lose their individuality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+View the forest from beneath or from some commanding ridge-top; each tree
+presents a study in itself, and proclaims the surpassing grandeur of the
+species.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+YELLOW, OR SILVER PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus ponderosa</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+The Silver, or Yellow, Pine, as it is commonly called, ranks second among the
+pines of the Sierra as a lumber tree, and almost rivals the Sugar Pine in
+stature and nobleness of port. Because of its superior powers of enduring
+variations of climate and soil, it has a more extensive range than any other
+conifer growing on the Sierra. On the western slope it is first met at an
+elevation of about 2000 feet, and extends nearly to the upper limit of the
+timber line. Thence, crossing the range by the lowest passes, it descends to
+the eastern base, and pushes out for a considerable distance into the hot
+volcanic plains, growing bravely upon well-watered moraines, gravelly lake
+basins, arctic ridges, and torrid lava-beds; planting itself upon the lips of
+craters, flourishing vigorously even there, and tossing ripe cones among the
+ashes and cinders of Nature&rsquo;s hearths.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The average size of full-grown trees on the western slope, where it is
+associated with the Sugar Pine, is a little less than 200 feet in height and
+from five to six feet in diameter, though specimens may easily be found that
+are considerably larger. I measured one, growing at an elevation of 4000 feet
+in the valley of the Merced, that is a few inches over eight feet in diameter,
+and 220 feet high.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Where there is plenty of free sunshine and other conditions are favorable, it
+presents a striking contrast in form to the Sugar Pine, being a symmetrical
+spire, formed of a straight round trunk, clad with innumerable branches that
+are divided over and over again. About one half of the trunk is commonly
+branchless, but where it grows at all close, three fourths or more become
+naked; the tree presenting then a more slender and elegant shaft than any other
+tree in the woods. The bark is mostly arranged in massive plates, some of them
+measuring four or five feet in length by eighteen inches in width, with a
+thickness of three or four inches, forming a quite marked and distinguishing
+feature. The needles are of a fine, warm, yellow-green color, six to eight
+inches long, firm and elastic, and crowded in handsome, radiant tassels on the
+upturning ends of the branches. The cones are about three or four inches long,
+and two and a half wide, growing in close, sessile clusters among the leaves.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:30%;">
+<a name="illus28"></a>
+<img src="images/img28.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="PINUS PONDEROSA" />
+<p class="caption">PINUS PONDEROSA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The species attains its noblest form in filled-up lake basins, especially in
+those of the older yosemites, and so prominent a part does it form of their
+groves that it may well be called the Yosemite Pine. Ripe specimens favorably
+situated are almost always 200 feet or more in height, and the branches clothe
+the trunk nearly to the ground, as seen in the illustration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Jeffrey variety attains its finest development in the northern portion of
+the range, in the wide basins of the McCloud and Pitt rivers, where it forms
+magnificent forests scarcely invaded by any other tree. It differs from the
+ordinary form in size, being only about half as tall, and in its redder and
+more closely furrowed bark, grayish-green foliage, less divided branches, and
+larger cones; but intermediate forms come in which make a clear separation
+impossible, although some botanists regard it as a distinct species. It is this
+variety that climbs storm-swept ridges, and wanders out among the volcanoes of
+the Great Basin. Whether exposed to extremes of heat or cold, it is dwarfed
+like every other tree, and becomes all knots and angles, wholly unlike the
+majestic forms we have been sketching. Old specimens, bearing cones about as
+big as pineapples, may sometimes be found clinging to rifted rocks at an
+elevation of seven or eight thousand feet, whose highest branches scarce reach
+above one&rsquo;s shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:20%;">
+<a name="illus29"></a>
+<img src="images/img29.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH. (THE FORM GROWING IN YOSEMITE VALLEY.)" />
+<p class="caption">SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH. (THE FORM GROWING IN YOSEMITE VALLEY.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+I have oftentimes feasted on the beauty of these noble trees when they were
+towering in all their winter grandeur, laden with snow&mdash;one mass of bloom;
+in summer, too, when the brown, staminate clusters hang thick among the
+shimmering needles, and the big purple burs are ripening in the mellow light;
+but it is during cloudless wind-storms that these colossal pines are most
+impressively beautiful. Then they bow like willows, their leaves streaming
+forward all in one direction, and, when the sun shines upon them at the
+required angle, entire groves glow as if every leaf were burnished silver. The
+fall of tropic light on the royal crown of a palm is a truly glorious
+spectacle, the fervid sun-flood breaking upon the glossy leaves in long
+lance-rays, like mountain water among boulders. But to me there is something
+more impressive in the fall of light upon these Silver Pines. It seems beaten
+to the finest dust, and is shed off in myriads of minute sparkles that seem to
+come from the very heart of the trees, as if, like rain falling upon fertile
+soil, it had been absorbed, to reappear in flowers of light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This species also gives forth the finest music to the wind. After listening to
+it in all kinds of winds, night and day, season after season, I think I could
+approximate to my position on the mountains by this pine-music alone. If you
+would catch the tones of separate needles, climb a tree. They are well
+tempered, and give forth no uncertain sound, each standing out, with no
+interference excepting during heavy gales; then you may detect the click of one
+needle upon another, readily distinguishable from their free, wing-like hum.
+Some idea of their temper may be drawn from the fact that, notwithstanding they
+are so long, the vibrations that give rise to the peculiar shimmering of the
+light are made at the rate of about two hundred and fifty per minute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When a Sugar Pine and one of this species equal in size are observed together,
+the latter is seen to be far more simple in manners, more lithely graceful, and
+its beauty is of a kind more easily appreciated; but then, it is, on the other
+hand, much less dignified and original in demeanor. The Silver Pine seems eager
+to shoot aloft. Even while it is drowsing in autumn sun-gold, you may still
+detect a skyward aspiration. But the Sugar Pine seems too unconsciously noble,
+and too complete in every way, to leave room for even a heavenward care.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+DOUGLAS SPRUCE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pseudotsuga Douglasii</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This tree is the king of the spruces, as the Sugar Pine is king of pines. It is
+by far the most majestic spruce I ever beheld in any forest, and one of the
+largest and longest lived of the giants that flourish throughout the main pine
+belt, often attaining a height of nearly 200 feet, and a diameter of six or
+seven. Where the growth is not too close, the strong, spreading branches come
+more than halfway down the trunk, and these are hung with innumerable slender,
+swaying sprays, that are handsomely feathered with the short leaves which
+radiate at right angles all around them. This vigorous spruce is ever
+beautiful, welcoming the mountain winds and the snow as well as the mellow
+summer light, and maintaining its youthful freshness undiminished from century
+to century through a thousand storms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It makes its finest appearance in the months of June and July. The rich brown
+buds with which its sprays are tipped swell and break about this time,
+revealing the young leaves, which at first are bright yellow, making the tree
+appear as if covered with gay blossoms; while the pendulous bracted cones with
+their shell-like scales are a constant adornment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young trees are mostly gathered into beautiful family groups, each sapling
+exquisitely symmetrical. The primary branches are whorled regularly around the
+axis, generally in fives, while each is draped with long, feathery sprays, that
+descend in curves as free and as finely drawn as those of falling water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Oregon and Washington it grows in dense forests, growing tall and mast-like
+to a height of 300 feet, and is greatly prized as a lumber tree. But in the
+Sierra it is scattered among other trees, or forms small groves, seldom
+ascending higher than 5500 feet, and never making what would be called a
+forest. It is not particular in its choice of soil&mdash;wet or dry, smooth or
+rocky, it makes out to live well on them all. Two of the largest specimens I
+have measured are in Yosemite Valley, one of which is more than eight feet in
+diameter, and is growing upon the terminal moraine of the residual glacier that
+occupied the South Fork Canon; the other is nearly as large, growing upon
+angular blocks of granite that have been shaken from the precipitous front of
+the Liberty Cap near the Nevada Fall. No other tree seems so capable of
+adapting itself to earthquake taluses, and many of these rough boulder-slopes
+are occupied by it almost exclusively, especially in yosemite gorges moistened
+by the spray of waterfalls.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+INCENSE CEDAR<br/>
+<small>(<i>Libocedrus decurrens</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+The Incense Cedar is another of the giants quite generally distributed
+throughout this portion of the forest, without exclusively occupying any
+considerable area, or even making extensive groves. It ascends to about 5000
+feet on the warmer hillsides, and reaches the climate most congenial to it at
+about from 3000 to 4000 feet, growing vigorously at this elevation on all kinds
+of soil, and in particular it is capable of enduring more moisture about its
+roots than any of its companions, excepting only the Sequoia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The largest specimens are about 150 feet high, and seven feet in diameter. The
+bark is brown, of a singularly rich tone very attractive to artists, and the
+foliage is tinted with a warmer yellow than that of any other evergreen in the
+woods. Casting your eye over the general forest from some ridge-top, the color
+alone of its spiry summits is sufficient to identify it in any company.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus30"></a>
+<img src="images/img30.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME." />
+<p class="caption">INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In youth, say up to the age of seventy or eighty years, no other tree forms so
+strictly tapered a cone from top to bottom. The branches swoop outward and
+downward in bold curves, excepting the younger ones near the top, which aspire,
+while the lowest droop to the ground, and all spread out in flat, ferny plumes,
+beautifully fronded, and imbricated upon one another. As it becomes older, it
+grows strikingly irregular and picturesque. Large special branches put out at
+right angles from the trunk, form big, stubborn elbows, and then shoot up
+parallel with the axis. Very old trees are usually dead at the top, the main
+axis protruding above ample masses of green plumes, gray and lichen-covered,
+and drilled full of acorn holes by the woodpeckers. The plumes are exceedingly
+beautiful; no waving fern-frond in shady dell is more unreservedly beautiful in
+form and texture, or half so inspiring in color and spicy fragrance. In its
+prime, the whole tree is thatched with them, so that they shed off rain and
+snow like a roof, making fine mansions for storm-bound birds and mountaineers.
+But if you would see the <i>Libocedrus</i> in all its glory, you must go to the
+woods in winter. Then it is laden with myriads of four-sided staminate cones
+about the size of wheat grains,&mdash;winter wheat,&mdash;producing a golden
+tinge, and forming a noble illustration of Nature&rsquo;s immortal vigor and
+virility. The fertile cones are about three fourths of an inch long, borne on
+the outside of the plumy branchlets, where they serve to enrich still more the
+surpassing beauty of this grand winter-blooming goldenrod.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+WHITE SILVER FIR<br/>
+<small>(<i>Abies concolor</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus31"></a>
+<img src="images/img31.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS. TWO SEQUOIAS IN THE FOREGROUND ON THE LEFT" />
+<p class="caption">FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS. TWO SEQUOIAS IN THE FOREGROUND ON THE LEFT.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+We come now to the most regularly planted of all the main forest belts,
+composed almost exclusively of two noble firs&mdash;<i>A. concolor</i> and
+<i>A. magnifica</i>. It extends with no marked interruption for 450 miles, at
+an elevation of from 5000 to nearly 9000 feet above the sea. In its youth <i>A.
+concolor</i> is a charmingly symmetrical tree with branches regularly whorled
+in level collars around its whitish-gray axis, which terminates in a strong,
+hopeful shoot. The leaves are in two horizontal rows, along branchlets that
+commonly are less than eight years old, forming handsome plumes, pinnated like
+the fronds of ferns. The cones are grayish-green when ripe, cylindrical, about
+from three to four inches long by one and a half to two inches wide, and stand
+upright on the upper branches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Full-grown trees, favorably situated as to soil and exposure, are about 200
+feet high, and five or six feet in diameter near the ground, though larger
+specimens are by no means rare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As old age creeps on, the bark becomes rougher and grayer, the branches lose
+their exact regularity, many are snow-bent or broken off, and the main axis
+often becomes double or otherwise irregular from accidents to the terminal bud
+or shoot; but throughout all the vicissitudes of its life on the mountains,
+come what may, the noble grandeur of the species is patent to every eye.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR, OR RED FIR<br/>
+<small>(<i>Abies magnifica</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This is the most charmingly symmetrical of all the giants of the Sierra woods,
+far surpassing its companion species in this respect, and easily distinguished
+from it by the purplish-red bark, which is also more closely furrowed than that
+of the white, and by its larger cones, more regularly whorled and fronded
+branches, and by its leaves, which are shorter, and grow all around the
+branchlets and point upward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In size, these two Silver Firs are about equal, the <i>magnifica</i> perhaps a
+little the taller. Specimens from 200 to 250 feet high are not rare on
+well-ground moraine soil, at an elevation of from 7500 to 8500 feet above
+sea-level. The largest that I measured stands back three miles from the brink
+of the north wall of Yosemite Valley. Fifteen years ago it was 240 feet high,
+with a diameter of a little more than five feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Happy the man with the freedom and the love to climb one of these superb trees
+in full flower and fruit. How admirable the forest-work of Nature is then seen
+to be, as one makes his way up through the midst of the broad, fronded
+branches, all arranged in exquisite order around the trunk, like the whorled
+leaves of lilies, and each branch and branchlet about as strictly pinnate as
+the most symmetrical fern-frond. The staminate cones are seen growing straight
+downward from the under side of the young branches in lavish profusion, making
+fine purple clusters amid the grayish-green foliage. On the topmost branches
+the fertile cones are set firmly on end like small casks. They are about six
+inches long, three wide, covered with a fine gray down, and streaked with
+crystal balsam that seems to have been poured upon each cone from above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both the Silver Firs live 250 years or more when the conditions about them are
+at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may often be seen, heavily
+storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising generation, with a
+protecting grove of saplings pressing close around his feet, each dressed with
+such loving care that not a leaf seems wanting. Other companies are made up of
+trees near the prime of life, exquisitely harmonized to one another in form and
+gesture, as if Nature had culled them one by one with nice discrimination from
+all the rest of the woods.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus32"></a>
+<img src="images/img32.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR" />
+<p class="caption">VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+It is from this tree, called Red Fir by the lumberman, that mountaineers always
+cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate as to be within its limits.
+Two rows of the plushy branches overlapping along the middle, and a crescent of
+smaller plumes mixed with ferns and flowers for a pillow, form the very best
+bed imaginable. The essences of the pressed leaves seem to fill every pore of
+one&rsquo;s body, the sounds of falling water make a soothing hush, while the
+spaces between the grand spires afford noble openings through which to gaze
+dreamily into the starry sky. Even in the matter of sensuous ease, any
+combination of cloth, steel springs, and feathers seems vulgar in comparison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fir woods are delightful sauntering-grounds at any time of year, but most
+so in autumn. Then the noble trees are hushed in the hazy light, and drip with
+balsam; the cones are ripe, and the seeds, with their ample purple wings,
+mottle the air like flocks of butterflies; while deer feeding in the flowery
+openings between the groves, and birds and squirrels in the branches, make a
+pleasant stir which enriches the deep, brooding calm of the wilderness, and
+gives a peculiar impressiveness to every tree. No wonder the enthusiastic
+Douglas went wild with joy when he first discovered this species. Even in the
+Sierra, where so many noble evergreens challenge admiration, we linger among
+these colossal firs with fresh love, and extol their beauty again and again, as
+if no other in the world could henceforth claim our regard.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus33"></a>
+<img src="images/img33.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA GLACIERS" />
+<p class="caption">SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA GLACIERS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+It is in these woods the great granite domes rise that are so striking and
+characteristic a feature of the Sierra. And here too we find the best of the
+garden meadows. They lie level on the tops of the dividing ridges, or sloping
+on the sides of them, embedded in the magnificent forest. Some of these meadows
+are in great part occupied by <i>Veratrumalba</i>, which here grows rank and
+tall, with boat-shaped leaves thirteen inches long and twelve inches wide,
+ribbed like those of cypripedium. Columbine grows on the drier margins with
+tall larkspurs and lupines waist-deep in grasses and sedges; several species of
+castilleia also make a bright show in beds of blue and white violets and
+daisies. But the glory of these forest meadows is a lily&mdash;<i>L.
+parvum</i>. The flowers are orange-colored and quite small, the smallest I ever
+saw of the true lilies; but it is showy nevertheless, for it is seven to eight
+feet high and waves magnificent racemes of ten to twenty flowers or more over
+one&rsquo;s head, while it stands out in the open ground with just enough of
+grass and other plants about it to make a fringe for its feet and show it off
+to best advantage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A dry spot a little way back from the margin of a Silver Fir lily garden makes
+a glorious campground, especially where the slope is toward the east and opens
+a view of the distant peaks along the summit of the range. The tall lilies are
+brought forward in all their glory by the light of your blazing camp-fire,
+relieved against the outer darkness, and the nearest of the trees with their
+whorled branches tower above you like larger lilies, and the sky seen through
+the garden opening seems one vast meadow of white lily stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning everything is joyous and bright, the delicious purple of the
+dawn changes softly to daffodil yellow and white; while the sunbeams pouring
+through the passes between the peaks give a margin of gold to each of them.
+Then the spires of the firs in the hollows of the middle region catch the glow,
+and your camp grove is filled with light. The birds begin to stir, seeking
+sunny branches on the edge of the meadow for sun-baths after the cold night,
+and looking for their breakfasts, every one of them as fresh as a lily and as
+charmingly arrayed. Innumerable insects begin to dance, the deer withdraw from
+the open glades and ridge-tops to their leafy hiding-places in the chaparral,
+the flowers open and straighten their petals as the dew vanishes, every pulse
+beats high, every life-cell rejoices, the very rocks seem to tingle with life,
+and God is felt brooding over everything great and small.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+BIG TREE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Sequoia gigantea</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+Between the heavy pine and Silver Fir belts we find the Big Tree, the king of
+all the conifers in the world, &ldquo;the noblest of a noble race.&rdquo; It
+extends in a widely interrupted belt from a small grove on the middle fork of
+the American River to the head of Deer Creek, a distance of about 260 miles,
+the northern limit being near the thirty-ninth parallel, the southern a little
+below the thirty-sixth, and the elevation of the belt above the sea varies from
+about 5000 to 8000 feet. From the American River grove to the forest on
+King&rsquo;s River the species occurs only in small isolated groups so sparsely
+distributed along the belt that three of the gaps in it are from forty to sixty
+miles wide. But from King&rsquo;s River southward the Sequoia is not restricted
+to mere groves, but extends across the broad rugged basins of the Kaweah and
+Tule rivers in noble forests, a distance of nearly seventy miles, the
+continuity of this part of the belt being broken only by deep cañons. The
+Fresno, the largest of the northern groves, occupies an area of three or four
+square miles, a short distance to the southward of the famous Mariposa Grove.
+Along the beveled rim of the cañon of the south fork of King&rsquo;s River
+there is a majestic forest of Sequoia about six miles long by two wide. This is
+the northernmost assemblage of Big Trees that may fairly be called a forest.
+Descending the precipitous divide between the King&rsquo;s River and Kaweah you
+enter the grand forests that form the main continuous portion of the belt.
+Advancing southward the giants become more and more irrepressibly exuberant,
+heaving their massive crowns into the sky from every ridge and slope, and
+waving onward in graceful compliance with the complicated topography of the
+region. The finest of the Kaweah section of the belt is on the broad ridge
+between Marble Creek and the middle fork, and extends from the granite
+headlands overlooking the hot plains to within a few miles of the cool glacial
+fountains of the summit peaks. The extreme upper limit of the belt is reached
+between the middle and south forks of the Kaweah at an elevation of 8400 feet.
+But the finest block of Big Tree forest in the entire belt is on the north fork
+of Tule River. In the northern groves there are comparatively few young trees
+or saplings. But here for every old, storm-stricken giant there are many in all
+the glory of prime vigor, and for each of these a crowd of eager, hopeful young
+trees and saplings growing heartily on moraines, rocky ledges, along
+watercourses, and in the moist alluvium of meadows, seemingly in hot pursuit of
+eternal life.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus34"></a>
+<img src="images/img34.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SEQUOIA GIGANTEA&mdash;VIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK" />
+<p class="caption">SEQUOIA GIGANTEA&mdash;VIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+But though the area occupied by the species increases so much from north to
+south there is no marked increase in the size of the trees. A height of 275
+feet and a diameter near the ground of about 20 feet is perhaps about the
+average size of full-grown trees favorably situated; specimens 25 feet in
+diameter are not very rare, and a few are nearly 300 feet high. In the
+Calaveras Grove there are four trees over 300 feet in height, the tallest of
+which by careful measurement is 325 feet. The largest I have yet met in the
+course of my explorations is a majestic old scarred monument in the
+King&rsquo;s River forest. It is 35 feet 8 inches in diameter inside the bark
+four feet from the ground. Under the most favorable conditions these giants
+probably live 5000 years or more, though few of even the larger trees are more
+than half as old. I never saw a Big Tree that had died a natural death; barring
+accidents they seem to be immortal, being exempt from all the diseases that
+afflict and kill other trees. Unless destroyed by man, they live on
+indefinitely until burned, smashed by lightning, or cast down by storms, or by
+the giving way of the ground on which they stand. The age of one that was
+felled in the Calaveras Grove, for the sake of having its stump for a
+dancing-floor, was about 1300 years, and its diameter, measured across the
+stump, 24 feet inside the bark. Another that was cut down in the King&rsquo;s
+River forest was about the same size, but nearly a thousand years older (2200
+years), though not a very old-looking tree. It was felled to procure a section
+for exhibition, and thus an opportunity was given to count its annual rings of
+growth. The colossal scarred monument in the King&rsquo;s River forest
+mentioned above is burned half through, and I spent a day in making an estimate
+of its age, clearing away the charred surface with an ax and carefully counting
+the annual rings with the aid of a pocket-lens. The wood-rings in the section I
+laid bare were so involved and contorted in some places that I was not able to
+determine its age exactly, but I counted over 4000 rings, which showed that
+this tree was in its prime, swaying in the Sierra winds, when Christ walked the
+earth. No other tree in the world, as far as I know, has looked down on so many
+centuries as the Sequoia, or opens such impressive and suggestive views into
+history.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So exquisitely harmonious and finely balanced are even the very mightiest of
+these monarchs of the woods in all their proportions and circumstances there
+never is anything overgrown or monstrous-looking about them. On coming in sight
+of them for the first time, you are likely to say, &ldquo;Oh, see what
+beautiful, noble-looking trees are towering there among the firs and
+pines!&rdquo;&mdash;their grandeur being in the mean time in great part
+invisible, but to the living eye it will be manifested sooner or later,
+stealing slowly on the senses, like the grandeur of Niagara, or the lofty
+Yosemite domes. Their great size is hidden from the inexperienced observer as
+long as they are seen at a distance in one harmonious view. When, however, you
+approach them and walk round them, you begin to wonder at their colossal size
+and seek a measuring-rod. These giants bulge considerably at the base, but not
+more than is required for beauty and safety; and the only reason that this
+bulging seems in some cases excessive is that only a comparatively small
+section of the shaft is seen at once in near views. One that I measured in the
+King&rsquo;s River forest was 25 feet in diameter at the ground, and 10 feet in
+diameter 200 feet above the ground, showing that the taper of the trunk as a
+whole is charmingly fine. And when you stand back far enough to see the massive
+columns from the swelling instep to the lofty summit dissolving in a dome of
+verdure, you rejoice in the unrivaled display of combined grandeur and beauty.
+About a hundred feet or more of the trunk is usually branchless, but its
+massive simplicity is relieved by the bark furrows, which instead of making an
+irregular network run evenly parallel, like the fluting of an architectural
+column, and to some extent by tufts of slender sprays that wave lightly in the
+winds and cast flecks of shade, seeming to have been pinned on here and there
+for the sake of beauty only. The young trees have slender simple branches down
+to the ground, put on with strict regularity, sharply aspiring at the top,
+horizontal about half-way down, and drooping in handsome curves at the base. By
+the time the sapling is five or six hundred years old this spiry, feathery,
+juvenile habit merges into the firm, rounded dome form of middle age, which in
+turn takes on the eccentric picturesqueness of old age. No other tree in the
+Sierra forest has foliage so densely massed or presents outlines so firmly
+drawn and so steadily subordinate to a special type. A knotty
+ungovernable-looking branch five to eight feet thick may be seen pushing out
+abruptly from the smooth trunk, as if sure to throw the regular curve into
+confusion, but as soon as the general outline is reached it stops short and
+dissolves in spreading bosses of law-abiding sprays, just as if every tree were
+growing beneath some huge, invisible bell-glass, against whose sides every
+branch was being pressed and molded, yet somehow indulging in so many small
+departures from the regular form that there is still an appearance of freedom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The foliage of the saplings is dark bluish-green in color, while the older
+trees ripen to a warm brownish-yellow tint like Libocedrus. The bark is rich
+cinnamon-brown, purplish in young trees and in shady portions of the old, while
+the ground is covered with brown leaves and burs forming color-masses of
+extraordinary richness, not to mention the flowers and underbrush that rejoice
+about them in their seasons. Walk the Sequoia woods at any time of year and you
+will say they are the most beautiful and majestic on earth. Beautiful and
+impressive contrasts meet you everywhere: the colors of tree and flower, rock
+and sky, light and shade, strength and frailty, endurance and evanescence,
+tangles of supple hazel-bushes, tree-pillars about as rigid as granite domes,
+roses and violets, the smallest of their kind, blooming around the feet of the
+giants, and rugs of the lowly chamaebatia where the sunbeams fall. Then in
+winter the trees themselves break forth in bloom, myriads of small four-sided
+staminate cones crowd the ends of the slender sprays, coloring the whole tree,
+and when ripe dusting the air and the ground with golden pollen. The fertile
+cones are bright grass-green, measuring about two inches in length by one and a
+half in thickness, and are made up of about forty firm rhomboidal scales
+densely packed, with from five to eight seeds at the base of each. A single
+cone, therefore, contains from two to three hundred seeds, which are about a
+fourth of an inch long by three sixteenths wide, including a thin, flat margin
+that makes them go glancing and wavering in their fall like a boy&rsquo;s kite.
+The fruitfulness of Sequoia may be illustrated by two specimen branches one and
+a half and two inches in diameter on which I counted 480 cones. No other Sierra
+conifer produces nearly so many seeds. Millions are ripened annually by a
+single tree, and in a fruitful year the product of one of the northern groves
+would be enough to plant all the mountain-ranges of the world. Nature takes
+care, however, that not one seed in a million shall germinate at all, and of
+those that do perhaps not one in ten thousand is suffered to live through the
+many vicissitudes of storm, drought, fire, and snow-crushing that beset their
+youth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Douglas squirrel is the happy harvester of most of the Sequoia cones. Out
+of every hundred perhaps ninety fall to his share, and unless cut off by his
+ivory sickle they shake out their seeds and remain on the tree for many years.
+Watching the squirrels at their harvest work in the Indian summer is one of the
+most delightful diversions imaginable. The woods are calm and the ripe colors
+are blazing in all their glory; the cone-laden trees stand motionless in the
+warm, hazy air, and you may see the crimson-crested woodcock, the prince of
+Sierra woodpeckers, drilling some dead limb or fallen trunk with his bill, and
+ever and anon filling the glens with his happy cackle. The humming-bird, too,
+dwells in these noble woods, and may oftentimes be seen glancing among the
+flowers or resting wing-weary on some leafless twig; here also are the familiar
+robin of the orchards, and the brown and grizzly bears so obviously fitted for
+these majestic solitudes; and the Douglas squirrel, making more hilarious,
+exuberant, vital stir than all the bears, birds, and humming wings together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as any accident happens to the crown of these Sequoias, such as being
+stricken off by lightning or broken by storms, then the branches beneath the
+wound, no matter how situated, seem to be excited like a colony of bees that
+have lost their queen, and become anxious to repair the damage. Limbs that have
+grown outward for centuries at right angles to the trunk begin to turn upward
+to assist in making a new crown, each speedily assuming the special form of
+true summits. Even in the case of mere stumps, burned half through, some mere
+ornamental tuft will try to go aloft and do its best as a leader in forming a
+new head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Groups of two or three of these grand trees are often found standing close
+together, the seeds from which they sprang having probably grown on ground
+cleared for their reception by the fall of a large tree of a former generation.
+These patches of fresh, mellow soil beside the upturned roots of the fallen
+giant may be from forty to sixty feet wide, and they are speedily occupied by
+seedlings. Out of these seedling-thickets perhaps two or three may become
+trees, forming those close groups called &ldquo;three graces,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;loving couples,&rdquo; etc. For even supposing that the trees should
+stand twenty or thirty feet apart while young, by the time they are full-grown
+their trunks will touch and crowd against each other and even appear as one in
+some cases.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is generally believed that this grand Sequoia was once far more widely
+distributed over the Sierra; but after long and careful study I have come to
+the conclusion that it never was, at least since the close of the glacial
+period, because a diligent search along the margins of the groves, and in the
+gaps between, fails to reveal a single trace of its previous existence beyond
+its present bounds. Notwithstanding, I feel confident that if every Sequoia in
+the range were to die to-day, numerous monuments of their existence would
+remain, of so imperishable a nature as to be available for the student more
+than ten thousand years hence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the first place we might notice that no species of coniferous tree in the
+range keeps its individuals so well together as Sequoia; a mile is perhaps the
+greatest distance of any straggler from the main body, and all of those
+stragglers that have come under my observation are young, instead of old
+monumental trees, relics of a more extended growth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again, Sequoia trunks frequently endure for centuries after they fall. I have a
+specimen block, cut from a fallen trunk, which is hardly distinguishable from
+specimens cut from living trees, although the old trunk-fragment from which it
+was derived has lain in the damp forest more than 380 years, probably thrice as
+long. The time measure in the case is simply this: when the ponderous trunk to
+which the old vestige belonged fell, it sunk itself into the ground, thus
+making a long, straight ditch, and in the middle of this ditch a Silver Fir is
+growing that is now four feet in diameter and 380 years old, as determined by
+cutting it half through and counting the rings, thus demonstrating that the
+remnant of the trunk that made the ditch has lain on the ground <i>more</i>
+than 380 years. For it is evident that to find the whole time, we must add to
+the 380 years the time that the vanished portion of the trunk lay in the ditch
+before being burned out of the way, plus the time that passed before the seed
+from which the monumental fir sprang fell into the prepared soil and took root.
+Now, because Sequoia trunks are never wholly consumed in one forest fire, and
+those fires recur only at considerable intervals, and because Sequoia ditches
+after being cleared are often left unplanted for centuries, it becomes evident
+that the trunk remnant in question may probably have lain a thousand years or
+more. And this instance is by no means a rare one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been once covered with
+Sequoia every tree may have fallen, and every trunk may have been burned or
+buried, leaving not a remnant, many of the ditches made by the fall of the
+ponderous trunks, and the bowls made by their upturning roots, would remain
+patent for thousands of years after the last vestige of the trunks that made
+them had vanished. Much of this ditch-writing would no doubt be quickly effaced
+by the flood-action of overflowing streams and rain-washing; but no
+inconsiderable portion would remain enduringly engraved on ridge-tops beyond
+such destructive action; for, where all the conditions are favorable, it is
+almost imperishable. <i>Now these historic ditches and root bowls occur in all
+the present Sequoia groves and forests, but as far as I have observed, not the
+faintest vestige of one presents itself outside of them</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We therefore conclude that the area covered by Sequoia has not been diminished
+during the last eight or ten thousand years, and probably not at all in
+post-glacial times.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Is the species verging to extinction? What are its relations to climate,
+soil, and associated trees?</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the phenomena bearing on these questions also throw light, as we shall
+endeavor to show, upon the peculiar distribution of the species, and sustain
+the conclusion already arrived at on the question of extension.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are few young trees or saplings
+growing up around the failing old ones to perpetuate the race, and in as much
+as those aged Sequoias, so nearly childless, are the only ones commonly known,
+the species, to most observers, seems doomed to speedy extinction, as being
+nothing more than an expiring remnant, vanquished in the so-called struggle for
+life by pines and firs that have driven it into its last strongholds in moist
+glens where climate is exceptionally favorable. But the language of the
+majestic continuous forests of the south creates a very different impression.
+No tree of all the forest is more enduringly established in concordance with
+climate and soil. It grows heartily everywhere&mdash;on moraines, rocky ledges,
+along watercourses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows, with a
+multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the aged, seemingly
+abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. For every old
+storm-stricken tree, there is one or more in all the glory of prime; and for
+each of these many young trees and crowds of exuberant saplings. So that if all
+the trees of any section of the main Sequoia forest were ranged together
+according to age, a very promising curve would be presented, all the way up
+from last year&rsquo;s seedlings to giants, and with the young and middle-aged
+portion of the curve many times longer than the old portion. Even as far north
+as the Fresno, I counted 536 saplings and seedlings growing promisingly upon a
+piece of rough avalanche soil not exceeding two acres in area. This soil bed is
+about seven years old, and has been seeded almost simultaneously by pines,
+firs, Libocedrus, and Sequoia, presenting a simple and instructive illustration
+of the struggle for life among the rival species; and it was interesting to
+note that the conditions thus far affecting them have enabled the young
+Sequoias to gain a marked advantage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In every instance like the above I have observed that the seedling Sequoia is
+capable of growing on both drier and wetter soil than its rivals, but requires
+more sunshine than they; the latter fact being clearly shown wherever a Sugar
+Pine or fir is growing in close contact with a Sequoia of about equal age and
+size, and equally exposed to the sun; the branches of the latter in such cases
+are always less leafy. Toward the south, however, where the Sequoia becomes
+<i>more</i> exuberant and numerous, the rival trees become <i>less</i> so; and
+where they mix with Sequoias, they mostly grow up beneath them, like slender
+grasses among stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of sandy flood-soil I counted
+ninety-four Sequoias, from one to twelve feet high, on a patch, of ground once
+occupied by four large Sugar Pines which lay crumbling beneath them,&mdash;an
+instance of conditions which have enabled Sequoias to crowd out the pines.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus35"></a>
+<img src="images/img35.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAÑON&mdash;YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK" />
+<p class="caption">MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAÑON&mdash;YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+I also noted eighty-six vigorous saplings upon a piece of fresh ground prepared
+for their reception by fire. Thus fire, the great destroyer of Sequoia, also
+furnishes bare virgin ground, one of the conditions essential for its growth
+from the seed. Fresh ground is, however, furnished in sufficient quantities for
+the constant renewal of the forests without fire, viz., by the fall of old
+trees. The soil is thus upturned and mellowed, and many trees are planted for
+every one that falls. Land-slips and floods also give rise to bare virgin
+ground; and a tree now and then owes its existence to a burrowing wolf or
+squirrel, but the most regular supply of fresh soil is furnished by the fall of
+aged trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The climatic changes in progress in the Sierra, bearing on the tenure of tree
+life, are entirely misapprehended, especially as to the time and the means
+employed by Nature in effecting them. It is constantly asserted in a vague way
+that the Sierra was vastly wetter than now, and that the increasing drought
+will of itself extinguish Sequoia, leaving its ground to other trees supposed
+capable of nourishing in a drier climate. But that Sequoia can and does grow on
+as dry ground as any of its present rivals, is manifest in a thousand places.
+&ldquo;Why, then,&rdquo; it will be asked, &ldquo;are Sequoias always found in
+greatest abundance in well-watered places where streams are exceptionally
+abundant?&rdquo; Simply because a growth of Sequoias creates those streams. The
+thirsty mountaineer knows well that in every Sequoia grove he will find running
+water, but it is a mistake to suppose that the water is the cause of the grove
+being there; on the contrary, the grove is the cause of the water being there.
+Drain off the water and the trees will remain, but cut off the trees, and the
+streams will vanish. Never was cause more completely mistaken for effect than
+in the case of these related phenomena of Sequoia woods and perennial streams,
+and I confess that at first I shared in the blunder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When attention is called to the method of Sequoia stream-making, it will be
+apprehended at once. The roots of this immense tree fill the ground, forming a
+thick sponge that absorbs and holds back the rains and melting snows, only
+allowing them to ooze and flow gently. Indeed, every fallen leaf and rootlet,
+as well as long clasping root, and prostrate trunk, may be regarded as a dam
+hoarding the bounty of storm-clouds, and dispensing it as blessings all through
+the summer, instead of allowing it to go headlong in short-lived floods.
+Evaporation is also checked by the dense foliage to a greater extent than by
+any other Sierra tree, and the air is entangled in masses and broad sheets that
+are quickly saturated; while thirsty winds are not allowed to go sponging and
+licking along the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So great is the retention of water in many places in the main belt, that bogs
+and meadows are created by the killing of the trees. A single trunk falling
+across a stream in the woods forms a dam 200 feet long, and from ten to thirty
+feet high, giving rise to a pond which kills the trees within its reach. These
+dead trees fall in turn, thus making a clearing, while sediments gradually
+accumulate changing the pond into a bog, or meadow, for a growth of carices and
+sphagnum. In some instances a series of small bogs or meadows rise above one
+another on a hillside, which are gradually merged into one another, forming
+sloping bogs, or meadows, which make striking features of Sequoia woods, and
+since all the trees that have fallen into them have been preserved, they
+contain records of the generations that have passed since they began to form.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since, then, it is a fact that thousands of Sequoias are growing thriftily on
+what is termed dry ground, and even clinging like mountain pines to rifts in
+granite precipices; and since it has also been shown that the extra moisture
+found in connection with the denser growths is an effect of their presence,
+instead of a cause of their presence, then the notions as to the former
+extension of the species and its near approach to extinction, based upon its
+supposed dependence on greater moisture, are seen to be erroneous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The decrease in the rain- and snow-fall since the close of the glacial period
+in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed. The highest post-glacial
+watermarks are well preserved in all the upper river channels, and they are not
+greatly higher than the spring floodmarks of the present; showing conclusively
+that no extraordinary decrease has taken place in the volume of the upper
+tributaries of post-glacial Sierra streams since they came into existence. But
+in the mean time, eliminating all this complicated question of climatic change,
+the plain fact remains that <i>the present rain- and snow-fall is abundantly
+sufficient for the luxuriant growth of Sequoia forests</i>. Indeed, all my
+observations tend to show that in a prolonged drought the Sugar Pines and firs
+would perish before the Sequoia, not alone because of the greater longevity of
+individual trees, but because the species can endure more drought, and make the
+most of whatever moisture falls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again, if the restriction and irregular distribution of the species be
+interpreted as a result of the desiccation of the range, then instead of
+increasing as it does in individuals toward the south where the rainfall is
+less, it should diminish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If, then, the peculiar distribution of Sequoia has not been governed by
+superior conditions of soil as to fertility or moisture, by what has it been
+governed?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the course of my studies I observed that the northern groves, the only ones
+I was at first acquainted with, were located on just those portions of the
+general forest soil-belt that were first laid bare toward the close of the
+glacial period when the ice-sheet began to break up into individual glaciers.
+And while searching the wide basin of the San Joaquin, and trying to account
+for the absence of Sequoia where every condition seemed favorable for its
+growth, it occured to me that this remarkable gap in the Sequoia belt is
+located exactly in the basin of the vast ancient <i>mer de glace</i> of the San
+Joaquin and King&rsquo;s River basins, which poured its frozen floods to the
+plain, fed by the snows that fell on more than fifty miles of the summit. I
+then perceived that the next great gap in the belt to the northward, forty
+miles wide, extending between the Calaveras and Tuolumne groves, occurs in the
+basin of the great ancient <i>mer de glace</i> of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus
+basins, and that the smaller gap between the Merced and Mariposa groves occurs
+in the basin of the smaller glacier of the Merced. <i>The wider the ancient
+glacier, the wider the corresponding gap in the Sequoia belt</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, pursuing my investigations across the basins of the Kaweah and Tule, I
+discovered that the Sequoia belt attained its greatest development just where,
+owing to the topographical peculiarities of the region, the ground had been
+most perfectly protected from the main ice-rivers that continued to pour past
+from the summit fountains long after the smaller local glaciers had been
+melted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Taking now a general view of the belt, beginning at the south, we see that the
+majestic ancient glaciers were shed off right and left down the valleys of Kern
+and King&rsquo;s rivers by the lofty protective spurs outspread embracingly
+above the warm Sequoia-filled basins of the Kaweah and Tule. Then, next
+northward, occurs the wide Sequoia-less channel, or basin, of the ancient San
+Joaquin and King&rsquo;s River <i>mer de glace</i>; then the warm, protected
+spots of Fresno and Mariposa groves; then the Sequoia-less channel of the
+ancient Merced glacier; next the warm, sheltered ground of the Merced and
+Tuolumne groves; then the Sequoia-less channel of the grand ancient <i>mer de
+glace</i> of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus; then the warm old ground of the
+Calaveras and Stanislaus groves. It appears, therefore, that just where, at a
+certain period in the history of the Sierra, the glaciers were not, there the
+Sequoia is, and just where the glaciers were, there the Sequoia is not.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus36"></a>
+<img src="images/img36.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAÑON" />
+<p class="caption">VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+What the other conditions may have been that enabled Sequoia to establish
+itself upon these oldest and warmest portions of the main glacial soil-belt, I
+cannot say. I might venture to state, however, in this connection, that since
+the Sequoia forests present a more and more ancient aspect as they extend
+southward, I am inclined to think that the species was distributed from the
+south, while the Sugar Pine, its great rival in the northern groves, seems to
+have come around the head of the Sacramento valley and down the Sierra from the
+north; consequently, when the Sierra soil-beds were first thrown open to
+preemption on the melting of the ice-sheet, the Sequoia may have established
+itself along the available portions of the south half of the range prior to the
+arrival of the Sugar Pine, while the Sugar Pine took possession of the north
+half prior to the arrival of Sequoia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But however much uncertainty may attach to this branch of the question, there
+are no obscuring shadows upon the grand general relationship we have pointed
+out between the present distribution of Sequoia and the ancient glaciers of the
+Sierra. And when we bear in mind that all the present forests of the Sierra are
+young, growing on moraine soil recently deposited, and that the flank of the
+range itself, with all its landscapes, is new-born, recently sculptured, and
+brought to the light of day from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial winter,
+then a thousand lawless mysteries disappear, and broad harmonies take their
+places.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial history of
+this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was more widely
+distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial epoch; that its
+present forests are scarcely past prime, if, indeed, they have reached prime;
+that the post-glacial day of the species is probably not half done; yet, when
+from a wider outlook the vast antiquity of the genus is considered, and its
+ancient richness in species and individuals; comparing our Sierra Giant and
+<i>Sequoia sempervirens</i> of the Coast Range, the only other living species
+of Sequoia, with the twelve fossil species already discovered and described by
+Heer and Lesquereux, some of which seem to have flourished over vast areas in
+the Arctic regions and in Europe and our own territories, during tertiary and
+cretaceous times,&mdash;then indeed it becomes plain that our two surviving
+species, restricted to narrow belts within the limits of California, are mere
+remnants of the genus, both as to species and individuals, and that they
+probably are verging to extinction. But the verge of a period beginning in
+cretaceous times may have a breadth of tens of thousands of years, not to
+mention the possible existence of conditions calculated to multiply and
+reëxtend both species and individuals. This, however, is a branch of the
+question into which I do not now purpose to enter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In studying the fate of our forest king, we have thus far considered the action
+of purely natural causes only; but, unfortunately, <i>man</i> is in the woods,
+and waste and pure destruction are making rapid headway. If the importance of
+forests were at all understood, even from an economic standpoint, their
+preservation would call forth the most watchful attention of government. Only
+of late years by means of forest reservations has the simplest groundwork for
+available legislation been laid, while in many of the finest groves every
+species of destruction is still moving on with accelerated speed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the course of my explorations I found no fewer than five mills located on or
+near the lower edge of the Sequoia belt, all of which were cutting considerable
+quantities of Big Tree lumber. Most of the Fresno group are doomed to feed the
+mills recently erected near them, and a company of lumbermen are now cutting
+the magnificent forest on King&rsquo;s River. In these milling operations waste
+far exceeds use, for after the choice young manageable trees on any given spot
+have been felled, the woods are fired to clear the ground of limbs and refuse
+with reference to further operations, and, of course, most of the seedlings and
+saplings are destroyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These mill ravages, however, are small as compared with the comprehensive
+destruction caused by &ldquo;sheepmen.&rdquo; Incredible numbers of sheep are
+driven to the mountain pastures every summer, and their course is ever marked
+by desolation. Every wild garden is trodden down, the shrubs are stripped of
+leaves as if devoured by locusts, and the woods are burned. Running fires are
+set everywhere, with a view to clearing the ground of prostrate trunks, to
+facilitate the movements of the flocks and improve the pastures. The entire
+forest belt is thus swept and devastated from one extremity of the range to the
+other, and, with the exception of the resinous <i>Pinus contorta</i>, Sequoia
+suffers most of all. Indians burn off the underbrush in certain localities to
+facilitate deer-hunting, mountaineers and lumbermen carelessly allow their
+camp-fires to run; but the fires of the sheepmen, or <i>muttoneers</i>, form
+more than ninety per cent. of all destructive fires that range the Sierra
+forests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It appears, therefore, that notwithstanding our forest king might live on
+gloriously in Nature&rsquo;s keeping, it is rapidly vanishing before the fire
+and steel of man; and unless protective measures be speedily invented and
+applied, in a few decades, at the farthest, all that will be left of <i>Sequoia
+gigantea</i> will be a few hacked and scarred monuments.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+TWO-LEAVED, OR TAMARACK, PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus contorta</i>, var.<i>Marrayana</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This species forms the bulk of the alpine forests, extending along the range,
+above the fir zone, up to a height of from 8000 to 9500 feet above the sea,
+growing in beautiful order upon moraines that are scarcely changed as yet by
+post-glacial weathering. Compared with the giants of the lower zones, this is a
+small tree, seldom attaining a height of a hundred feet. The largest specimen I
+ever measured was ninety feet in height, and a little over six in diameter four
+feet from the ground. The average height of mature trees throughout the entire
+belt is probably not far from fifty or sixty feet, with a diameter of two feet.
+It is a well-proportioned, rather handsome little pine, with grayish-brown
+bark, and crooked, much-divided branches, which cover the greater portion of
+the trunk, not so densely, however, as to prevent its being seen. The lower
+limbs curve downward, gradually take a horizontal position about half-way up
+the trunk, then aspire more and more toward the summit, thus forming a sharp,
+conical top. The foliage is short and rigid, two leaves in a fascicle, arranged
+in comparatively long, cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough, up-curving
+branchlets. The cones are about two inches long, growing in stiff clusters
+among the needles, without making any striking effect, except while very young,
+when they are of a vivid crimson color, and the whole tree appears to be dotted
+with brilliant flowers. The sterile cones are still more showy, on account of
+their great abundance, often giving a reddish-yellow tinge to the whole mass of
+the foliage, and filling the air with pollen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No other pine on the range is so regularly planted as this one. Moraine forests
+sweep along the sides of the high, rocky valleys for miles without
+interruption; still, strictly speaking, they are not dense, for flecks of
+sunshine and flowers find their way into the darkest places, where the trees
+grow tallest and thickest. Tall, nutritious grasses are specially abundant
+beneath them, growing over all the ground, in sunshine and shade, over
+extensive areas like a farmer&rsquo;s crop, and serving as pasture for the
+multitude of sheep that are driven from the arid plains every summer as soon as
+the snow is melted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Two-leaved Pine, more than any other, is subject to destruction by fire.
+The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled with resin, as though it had been
+showered down upon it like rain, so that even the green trees catch fire
+readily, and during strong winds whole forests are destroyed, the flames
+leaping from tree to tree, forming one continuous belt of roaring fire that
+goes surging and racing onward above the bending woods, like the grass-fires of
+a prairie. During the calm, dry season of Indian summer, the fire creeps
+quietly along the ground, feeding on the dry needles and burs; then, arriving
+at the foot of a tree, the resiny bark is ignited, and the heated air ascends
+in a powerful current, increasing in velocity, and dragging the flames swiftly
+upward; then the leaves catch fire, and an immense column of flame, beautifully
+spired on the edges, and tinted a rose-purple hue, rushes aloft thirty or forty
+feet above the top of the tree, forming a grand spectacle, especially on a dark
+night. It lasts, however, only a few seconds, vanishing with magical rapidity,
+to be succeeded by others along the fire-line at irregular intervals for weeks
+at a time&mdash;tree after tree flashing and darkening, leaving the trunks and
+branches hardly scarred. The heat, however, is sufficient to kill the trees,
+and in a few years the bark shrivels and falls off. Belts miles in extent are
+thus killed and left standing with the branches on, peeled and rigid, appearing
+gray in the distance, like misty clouds. Later the branches drop off, leaving a
+forest of bleached spars. At length the roots decay, and the forlorn trunks are
+blown down during some storm, and piled one upon another encumbering the ground
+until they are consumed by the next fire, and leave it ready for a fresh crop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The endurance of the species is shown by its wandering occasionally out over
+the lava plains with the Yellow Pine, and climbing moraineless mountain-sides
+with the Dwarf Pine, clinging to any chance support in rifts and crevices of
+storm-beaten rocks&mdash;always, however, showing the effects of such hardships
+in every feature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Down in sheltered lake hollows, on beds of rich alluvium, it varies so far from
+the common form as frequently to be taken for a distinct species. Here it grows
+in dense sods, like grasses, from forty to eighty feet high, bending all
+together to the breeze and whirling in eddying gusts more lithely than any
+other tree in the woods. I have frequently found specimens fifty feet high less
+than five inches in diameter. Being thus slender, and at the same time well
+clad with leafy boughs, it is oftentimes bent to the ground when laden with
+soft snow, forming beautiful arches in endless variety, some of which last
+until the melting of the snow in spring.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+MOUNTAIN PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus monticola</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+The Mountain Pine is king of the alpine woods, brave, hardy, and long-lived,
+towering grandly above its companions, and becoming stronger and more imposing
+just where other species begin to crouch and disappear. At its best it is
+usually about ninety feet high and five or six in diameter, though a specimen
+is often met considerably larger than this. The trunk is as massive and as
+suggestive of enduring strength as that of an oak. About two thirds of the
+trunk is commonly free of limbs, but close, fringy tufts of sprays occur all
+the way down, like those which adorn the colossal shafts of Sequoia. The bark
+is deep reddish-brown upon trees that occupy exposed situations near its upper
+limit, and furrowed rather deeply, the main furrows running nearly parallel
+with each other, and connected by conspicuous cross furrows, which, with one
+exception, are, as far as I have noticed, peculiar to this species.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cones are from four to eight inches long, slender, cylindrical, and
+somewhat curved, resembling those of the common White Pine of the Atlantic
+coast. They grow in clusters of about from three to six or seven, becoming
+pendulous as they increase in weight, chiefly by the bending of the branches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This species is nearly related to the Sugar Pine, and, though not half so tall,
+it constantly suggests its noble relative in the way that it extends its long
+arms and in general habit. The Mountain Pine is first met on the upper margin
+of the fir zone, growing singly in a subdued, inconspicuous form, in what
+appear as chance situations, without making much impression on the general
+forest. Continuing up through the Two-leaved Pines in the same scattered
+growth, it begins to show its character, and at an elevation of about 10,000
+feet attains its noblest development near the middle of the range, tossing its
+tough arms in the frosty air, welcoming storms and feeding on them, and
+reaching the grand old age of 1000 years.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR<br/>
+<small>(<i>Juniperus occidentalis</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus37"></a>
+<img src="images/img37.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR" />
+<p class="caption">JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Juniper is preëminently a rock tree, occupying the baldest domes and
+pavements, where there is scarcely a handful of soil, at a height of from 7000
+to 9500 feet. In such situations the trunk is frequently over eight feet in
+diameter, and not much more in height. The top is almost always dead in old
+trees, and great stubborn limbs push out horizontally that are mostly broken
+and bare at the ends, but densely covered and embedded here and there with
+bossy mounds of gray foliage. Some are mere weathered stumps, as broad as long,
+decorated with a few leafy sprays, reminding one of the crumbling towers of
+some ancient castle scantily draped with ivy. Only upon the head waters of the
+Carson have I found this species established on good moraine soil. Here it
+flourishes with the Silver and Two-leaved Pines, in great beauty and
+luxuriance, attaining a height of from forty to sixty feet, and manifesting but
+little of that rocky angularity so characteristic a feature throughout the
+greater portion, of its range. Two of the largest, growing at the head of Hope
+Valley, measured twenty-nine feet three inches and twenty-five feet six inches
+in circumference, respectively, four feet from the ground. The bark is of a
+bright cinnamon color, and, in thrifty trees, beautifully braided and
+reticulated, flaking off in thin, lustrous ribbons that are sometimes used by
+Indians for tent-matting. Its fine color and odd picturesqueness always catch
+an artist&rsquo;s eye, but to me the Juniper seems a singularly dull and
+taciturn tree, never speaking to one&rsquo;s heart. I have spent many a day and
+night in its company, in all kinds of weather, and have ever found it silent,
+cold, and rigid, like a column of ice. Its broad stumpiness, of course,
+precludes all possibility of waving, or even shaking; but it is not this rocky
+steadfastness that constitutes its silence. In calm, sun-days the Sugar Pine
+preaches the grandeur of the mountains like an apostle without moving a leaf.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus38"></a>
+<img src="images/img38.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS" />
+<p class="caption">STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+On level rocks it dies standing, and wastes insensibly out of existence like
+granite, the wind exerting about as little control over it alive or dead as it
+does over a glacier boulder. Some are undoubtedly over 2000 years old. All the
+trees of the alpine woods suffer, more or less, from avalanches, the Two-leaved
+Pine most of all. Gaps two or three hundred yards wide, extending from the
+upper limit of the tree-line to the bottoms of valleys and lake basins, are of
+common occurrence in all the upper forests, resembling the clearings of
+settlers in the old backwoods. Scarcely a tree is spared, even the soil is
+scraped away, while the thousands of uprooted pines and spruces are piled upon
+one another heads downward, and tucked snugly in along the sides of the
+clearing in two windrows, like lateral moraines. The pines lie with branches
+wilted and drooping like weeds. Not so the burly junipers. After braving in
+silence the storms of perhaps a dozen or twenty centuries, they seem in this,
+their last calamity, to become somewhat communicative, making sign of a very
+unwilling acceptance of their fate, holding themselves well up from the ground
+on knees and elbows, seemingly ill at ease, and anxious, like stubborn
+wrestlers, to rise again.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+HEMLOCK SPRUCE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Tsuga Pattoniana</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+The Hemlock Spruce is the most singularly beautiful of all the California
+coniferae. So slender is its axis at the top, that it bends over and droops
+like the stalk of a nodding lily. The branches droop also, and divide into
+innumerable slender, waving sprays, which are arranged in a varied, eloquent
+harmony that is wholly indescribable. Its cones are purple, and hang free, in
+the form of little tassels two inches long from all the sprays from top to
+bottom. Though exquisitely delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best
+where the snow lies deepest, far up in the region of storms, at an elevation of
+from 9000 to 9500 feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it is capable of growing
+considerably higher, say 10,500 feet. The tallest specimens, growing in
+sheltered hollows somewhat beneath the heaviest wind-currents, are from eighty
+to a hundred feet high, and from two to four feet in diameter. The very largest
+specimen I ever found was nineteen feet seven inches in circumference four feet
+from the ground, growing on the edge of Lake Hollow, at an elevation of 9250
+feet above the level of the sea. At the age of twenty or thirty years it
+becomes fruitful, and hangs out its beautiful purple cones at the ends of the
+slender sprays, where they swing free in the breeze, and contrast delightfully
+with the cool green foliage. They are translucent when young, and their beauty
+is delicious. After they are fully ripe, they spread their shell-like scales
+and allow the brown-winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while the empty
+cones remain to beautify the tree until the coming of a fresh crop.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus39"></a>
+<img src="images/img39.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH" />
+<p class="caption">STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH.</p>
+</div>
+<p>
+The staminate cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in bright
+clusters, yellow, and rose, and crimson. Those of the Hemlock Spruce are the
+most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue flowers, each on a
+slender stem.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Under all conditions, sheltered or storm-beaten, well-fed or ill-fed, this tree
+is singularly graceful in habit. Even at its highest limit upon exposed
+ridge-tops, though compelled to crouch in dense thickets, huddled close
+together, as if for mutual protection, it still manages to throw out its sprays
+in irrepressible loveliness; while on well-ground moraine soil it develops a
+perfectly tropical luxuriance of foliage and fruit, and is the very loveliest
+tree in the forest; poised in thin white sunshine, clad with branches from head
+to foot, yet not in the faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in
+unassuming majesty, drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of
+its race, loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven and
+joyously receptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like sensitive
+tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it. No other of our alpine
+conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches yield to the
+mountains&rsquo; gentlest breath; yet is it strong to meet the wildest onsets
+of the gale,&mdash;strong not in resistance, but compliance, bowing,
+snow-laden, to the ground, gracefully accepting burial month after month in the
+darkness beneath the heavy mantle of winter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the first soft snow begins to fall, the flakes lodge in the leaves,
+weighing down the branches against the trunk. Then the axis bends yet lower and
+lower, until the slender top touches the ground, thus forming a fine ornamental
+arch. The snow still falls lavishly, and the whole tree is at length buried, to
+sleep and rest in its beautiful grave as though dead. Entire groves of young
+trees, from ten to forty feet high, are thus buried every winter like slender
+grasses. But, like the violets and daisies which the heaviest snows crush not,
+they are safe. It is as though this were only Nature&rsquo;s method of putting
+her darlings to sleep instead of leaving them exposed to the biting storms of
+winter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus warmly wrapped they await the summer resurrection. The snow becomes soft
+in the sunshine, and freezes at night, making the mass hard and compact, like
+ice, so that during the months of April and May you can ride a horse over the
+prostrate groves without catching sight of a single leaf. At length the
+down-pouring sunshine sets them free. First the elastic tops of the arches
+begin to appear, then one branch after another, each springing loose with a
+gentle rustling sound, and at length the whole tree, with the assistance of the
+winds, gradually unbends and rises and settles back into its place in the warm
+air, as dry and feathery and fresh as young ferns just out of the coil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of the finest groves I have yet found are on the southern slopes of
+Lassen&rsquo;s Butte. There are also many charming companies on the head waters
+of the Tuolumne, Merced, and San Joaquin, and, in general, the species is so
+far from being rare that you can scarcely fail to find groves of considerable
+extent in crossing the range, choose what pass you may. The Mountain Pine grows
+beside it, and more frequently the two-leaved species; but there are many
+beautiful groups, numbering 1000 individuals, or more, without a single
+intruder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wish I had space to write more of the surpassing beauty of this favorite
+spruce. Every tree-lover is sure to regard it with special admiration;
+apathetic mountaineers, even, seeking only game or gold, stop to gaze on first
+meeting it, and mutter to themselves: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a mighty pretty
+tree,&rdquo; some of them adding, &ldquo;d&mdash;&mdash;d pretty!&rdquo; In
+autumn, when its cones are ripe, the little striped tamias, and the Douglas
+squirrel, and the Clark crow make a happy stir in its groves. The deer love to
+lie down beneath its spreading branches; bright streams from the snow that is
+always near ripple through its groves, and bryanthus spreads precious carpets
+in its shade. But the best words only hint its charms. Come to the mountains
+and see.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+DWARF PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus albicaulis</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This species forms the extreme edge of the timber line throughout nearly the
+whole extent of the range on both flanks. It is first met growing in company
+with <i>Pinus contorta</i>, var. <i>Murrayana</i>, on the upper margin of the
+belt, as an erect tree from fifteen to thirty feet high and from one to two
+feet in thickness; thence it goes straggling up the flanks of the summit peaks,
+upon moraines or crumbling ledges, wherever it can obtain a foothold, to an
+elevation of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, where it dwarfs to a mass of crumpled,
+prostrate branches, covered with slender, upright shoots, each tipped with a
+short, close-packed tassel of leaves. The bark is smooth and purplish, in some
+places almost white. The fertile cones grow in rigid clusters upon the upper
+branches, dark chocolate in color while young, and bear beautiful pearly seeds
+about the size of peas, most of which are eaten by two species of tamias and
+the notable Clark crow. The staminate cones occur in clusters, about an inch
+wide, down among the leaves, and, as they are colored bright rose-purple, they
+give rise to a lively, flowery appearance little looked for in such a tree.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus40"></a>
+<img src="images/img40.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES" />
+<p class="caption">GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Pines are commonly regarded as sky-loving trees that must necessarily aspire or
+die. This species forms a marked exception, creeping lowly, in compliance with
+the most rigorous demands of climate, yet enduring bravely to a more advanced
+age than many of its lofty relatives in the sun-lands below. Seen from a
+distance, it would never be taken for a tree of any kind. Yonder, for example,
+is Cathedral Peak, some three miles away, with a scattered growth of this pine
+creeping like mosses over the roof and around the beveled edges of the north
+gable, nowhere giving any hint of an ascending axis. When approached quite near
+it still appears matted and heathy, and is so low that one experiences no great
+difficulty in walking over the top of it. Yet it is seldom absolutely
+prostrate, at its lowest usually attaining a height of three or four feet, with
+a main trunk, and branches outspread and intertangled above it, as if in
+ascending they had been checked by a ceiling, against which they had grown and
+been compelled to spread horizontally. The winter snow is indeed such a
+ceiling, lasting half the year; while the pressed, shorn surface is made yet
+smoother by violent winds, armed with cutting sand-grains, that beat down any
+shoot that offers to rise much above the general level, and carve the dead
+trunks and branches in beautiful patterns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During stormy nights I have often camped snugly beneath the interlacing arches
+of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for centuries, make
+fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers, such as deer and wild
+sheep, who paw out oval hollows and lie beneath the larger trees in safe and
+comfortable concealment.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus41"></a>
+<img src="images/img41.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="A DWARF PINE" />
+<p class="caption">A DWARF PINE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The longevity of this lowly dwarf is far greater than would be guessed. Here,
+for example, is a specimen, growing at an elevation of 10,700 feet, which seems
+as though it might be plucked up by the roots, for it is only three and a half
+inches in diameter, and its topmost tassel is hardly three feet above the
+ground. Cutting it half through and counting the annual rings with the aid of a
+lens, we find its age to be no less than 255 years. Here is another telling
+specimen about the same height, 426 years old, whose trunk is only six inches
+in diameter; and one of its supple branchlets, hardly an eighth of an inch in
+diameter inside the bark, is seventy-five years old, and so filled with oily
+balsam, and so well seasoned by storms, that we may tie it in knots like a
+whip-cord.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+WHITE PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus flexilis</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This species is widely distributed throughout the Rocky Mountains, and over all
+the higher of the many ranges of the Great Basin, between the Wahsatch
+Mountains and the Sierra, where it is known as White Pine. In the Sierra it is
+sparsely scattered along the eastern flank, from Bloody Cañon southward nearly
+to the extremity of the range, opposite the village of Lone Pine, nowhere
+forming any appreciable portion of the general forest. From its peculiar
+position, in loose, straggling parties, it seems to have been derived from the
+Basin ranges to the eastward, where it is abundant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a larger tree than the Dwarf Pine. At an elevation of about 9000 feet
+above the sea, it often attains a height of forty or fifty feet, and a diameter
+of from three to five feet. The cones open freely when ripe, and are twice as
+large as those of the <i>albicaulis</i>, and the foliage and branches are more
+open, having a tendency to sweep out in free, wild curves, like those of the
+Mountain Pine, to which it is closely allied. It is seldom found lower than
+9000 feet above sea-level, but from this elevation it pushes upward over the
+roughest ledges to the extreme limit of tree-growth, where, in its dwarfed,
+storm-crushed condition, it is more like the white-barked species.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Throughout Utah and Nevada it is one of the principal timber-trees, great
+quantities being cut every year for the mines. The famous White Pine Mining
+District, White Pine City, and the White Pine Mountains have derived their
+names from it.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+NEEDLE PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus aristata</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+This species is restricted in the Sierra to the southern portion of the range,
+about the head waters of Kings and Kern rivers, where it forms extensive
+forests, and in some places accompanies the Dwarf Pine to the extreme limit of
+tree-growth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is first met at an elevation of between 9000 and 10,000 feet, and runs up to
+11,000 without seeming to suffer greatly from the climate or the leanness of
+the soil. It is a much finer tree than the Dwarf Pine. Instead of growing in
+clumps and low, heathy mats, it manages in some way to maintain an erect
+position, and usually stands single. Wherever the young trees are at all
+sheltered, they grow up straight and arrowy, with delicately tapered bole, and
+ascending branches terminated with glossy, bottle-brush tassels. At middle age,
+certain limbs are specialized and pushed far out for the bearing of cones,
+after the manner of the Sugar Pine; and in old age these branches droop and
+cast about in every direction, giving rise to very picturesque effects. The
+trunk becomes deep brown and rough, like that of the Mountain Pine, while the
+young cones are of a strange, dull, blackish-blue color, clustered on the upper
+branches. When ripe they are from three to four inches long, yellowish brown,
+resembling in every way those of the Mountain Pine. Excepting the Sugar Pine,
+no tree on the mountains is so capable of individual expression, while in grace
+of form and movement it constantly reminds one of the Hemlock Spruce.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus42"></a>
+<img src="images/img42.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES" />
+<p class="caption">OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The largest specimen I measured was a little over five feet in diameter and
+ninety feet in height, but this is more than twice the ordinary size.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This species is common throughout the Rocky Mountains and most of the short
+ranges of the Great Basin, where it is called the Fox-tail Pine, from its long
+dense leaf-tassels. On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and Golden Gate ranges it is
+quite abundant. About a foot or eighteen inches of the ends of the branches is
+densely packed with stiff outstanding needles which radiate like an electric
+fox or squirrel&rsquo;s tail. The needles have a glossy polish, and the
+sunshine sifting through them makes them burn with silvery luster, while their
+number and elastic temper tell delightfully in the winds. This tree is here
+still more original and picturesque than in the Sierra, far surpassing not only
+its companion conifers in this respect, but also the most noted of the lowland
+oaks. Some stand firmly erect, feathered with radiant tassels down to the
+ground, forming slender tapering towers of shining verdure; others, with two or
+three specialized branches pushed out at right angles to the trunk and densely
+clad with tasseled sprays, take the form of beautiful ornamental crosses. Again
+in the same woods you find trees that are made up of several boles united near
+the ground, spreading at the sides in a plane parallel to the axis of the
+mountain, with the elegant tassels hung in charming order between them, making
+a harp held against the main wind lines where they are most effective in
+playing the grand storm harmonies. And besides these there are many variable
+arching forms, alone or in groups, with innumerable tassels drooping beneath
+the arches or radiant above them, and many lowly giants of no particular form
+that have braved the storms of a thousand years. But whether old or young,
+sheltered or exposed to the wildest gales, this tree is ever found
+irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque, and offers a richer and more
+varied series of forms to the artist than any other conifer I know of.
+</p>
+
+<h4>
+NUT PINE<br/>
+<small>(<i>Pinus monophylla</i>)</small>
+</h4>
+
+<p>
+The Nut Pine covers or rather dots the eastern flank of the Sierra, to which it
+is mostly restricted, in grayish, bush-like patches, from the margin of the
+sage-plains to an elevation of from 7000 to 8000 feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A more contentedly fruitful and unaspiring conifer could not be conceived. All
+the species we have been sketching make departures more or less distant from
+the typical spire form, but none goes so far as this. Without any apparent
+exigency of climate or soil, it remains near the ground, throwing out crooked,
+divergent branches like an orchard apple-tree, and seldom pushes a single shoot
+higher than fifteen or twenty feet above the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The average thickness of the trunk is, perhaps, about ten or twelve inches. The
+leaves are mostly undivided, like round awls, instead of being separated, like
+those of other pines, into twos and threes and fives. The cones are green while
+growing, and are usually found over all the tree, forming quite a marked
+feature as seen against the bluish-gray foliage. They are quite small, only
+about two inches in length, and give no promise of edible nuts; but when we
+come to open them, we find that about half the entire bulk of the cone is made
+up of sweet, nutritious seeds, the kernels of which are nearly as large as
+those of hazel-nuts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is undoubtedly the most important food-tree on the Sierra, and furnishes
+the Mono, Carson, and Walker River Indians with more and better nuts than all
+the other species taken together. It is the Indians&rsquo; own tree, and many a
+white man have they killed for cutting it down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In its development Nature seems to have aimed at the formation of as great a
+fruit-bearing surface as possible. Being so low and accessible, the cones are
+readily beaten off with poles, and the nuts procured by roasting them until the
+scales open. In bountiful seasons a single Indian will gather thirty or forty
+bushels of them&mdash;a fine squirrelish employment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of all the conifers along the eastern base of the Sierra, and on all the many
+mountain groups and short ranges of the Great Basin, this foodful little pine
+is the commonest tree, and the most important. Nearly every mountain is planted
+with it to a height of from 8000 to 9000 feet above the sea. Some are covered
+from base to summit by this one species, with only a sparse growth of juniper
+on the lower slopes to break the continuity of its curious woods, which, though
+dark-looking at a distance, are almost shadeless, and have none of the damp,
+leafy glens and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods. Tens of
+thousands of acres occur in continuous belts. Indeed, viewed comprehensively
+the entire Basin seems to be pretty evenly divided into level plains dotted
+with sage-bushes and mountain-chains covered with Nut Pines. No slope is too
+rough, none too dry, for these bountiful orchards of the red man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It furnishes
+charcoal and timber for the mines, and, with the juniper, supplies the ranches
+with fuel and rough fencing. In fruitful seasons the nut crop is perhaps
+greater than the California wheat crop, which exerts so much influence
+throughout the food markets of the world. When, the crop is ripe, the Indians
+make ready the long beating-poles; bags, baskets, mats, and sacks are
+collected; the women out at service among the settlers, washing or drudging,
+assemble at the family huts; the men leave their ranch work; old and young, all
+are mounted on ponies and start in great glee to the nut-lands, forming
+curiously picturesque cavalcades; flaming scarfs and calico skirts stream
+loosely over the knotty ponies, two squaws usually astride of each, with baby
+midgets bandaged in baskets slung on their backs or balanced on the saddle-bow;
+while nut-baskets and water-jars project from each side, and the long
+beating-poles make angles in every direction. Arriving at some well-known
+central point where grass and water are found, the squaws with baskets, the men
+with poles ascend the ridges to the laden trees, followed by the children. Then
+the beating begins right merrily, the burs fly in every direction, rolling down
+the slopes, lodging here and there against rocks and sage-bushes, chased and
+gathered by the women and children with fine natural gladness. Smoke-columns
+speedily mark the joyful scene of their labors as the roasting-fires are
+kindled, and, at night, assembled in gay circles garrulous as jays, they begin
+the first nut feast of the season.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nuts are about half an inch long and a quarter of an inch in diameter,
+pointed at the top, round at the base, light brown in general color, and, like
+many other pine seeds, handsomely dotted with purple, like birds&rsquo; eggs.
+The shells are thin and may be crushed between the thumb and finger. The
+kernels are white, becoming brown by roasting, and are sweet to every palate,
+being eaten by birds, squirrels, dogs, horses, and men. Perhaps less than one
+bushel in a thousand of the whole crop is ever gathered. Still, besides
+supplying their own wants, in times of plenty the Indians bring large
+quantities to market; then they are eaten around nearly every fireside in the
+State, and are even fed to horses occasionally instead of barley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of other trees growing on the Sierra, but forming a very small part of the
+general forest, we may briefly notice the following:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Chamoecyparis Lawsoniana</i> is a magnificent tree in the coast ranges, but
+small in the Sierra. It is found only well to the northward along the banks of
+cool streams on the upper Sacramento toward Mount Shasta. Only a few trees of
+this species, as far as I have seen, have as yet gained a place in the Sierra
+woods. It has evidently been derived from the coast range by way of the tangle
+of connecting mountains at the head of the Sacramento Valley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In shady dells and on cool stream banks of the northern Sierra we also find the
+Yew (<i>Taxus brevifolia</i>).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The interesting Nutmeg Tree (<i>Torreya Californica</i>) is sparsely
+distributed along the western flank of the range at an elevation of about 4000
+feet, mostly in gulches and cañons. It is a small, prickly leaved, glossy
+evergreen, like a conifer, from twenty to fifty feet high, and one to two feet
+in diameter. The fruit resembles a green-gage plum, and contains one seed,
+about the size of an acorn, and like a nutmeg, hence the common name. The wood
+is fine-grained and of a beautiful, creamy yellow color like box, sweet-scented
+when dry, though the green leaves emit a disagreeable odor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Betula occidentalis</i>, the only birch, is a small, slender tree restricted
+to the eastern flank of the range along stream-sides below the pine-belt,
+especially in Owen&rsquo;s Valley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alder, Maple, and Nuttall&rsquo;s Flowering Dogwood make beautiful bowers over
+swift, cool streams at an elevation of from 3000 to 5000 feet, mixed more or
+less with willows and cottonwood; and above these in lake basins the aspen
+forms fine ornamental groves, and lets its light shine gloriously in the autumn
+months.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Chestnut Oak (<i>Quercus densiflora</i>) seems to have come from the coast
+range around the head of the Sacramento Valley, like the <i>Chamaecyparis</i>,
+but as it extends southward along the lower edge of the main pine-belt it grows
+smaller until it finally dwarfs to a mere chaparral bush. In the coast
+mountains it is a fine, tall, rather slender tree, about from sixty to
+seventy-five feet high, growing with the grand <i>Sequoia sempervirens</i>, or
+Redwood. But unfortunately it is too good to live, and is now being rapidly
+destroyed for tan-bark.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus43"></a>
+<img src="images/img43.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="PATE VALLEY, SHOWING THE OAKS. TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK." />
+<p class="caption">PATE VALLEY, SHOWING THE OAKS. TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Besides the common Douglas Oak and the grand <i>Quercus Wislizeni</i> of the
+foot-hills, and several small ones that make dense growths of chaparral, there
+are two mountain-oaks that grow with the pines up to an elevation of about 5000
+feet above the sea, and greatly enhance the beauty of the yosemite parks. These
+are the Mountain Live Oak and the Kellogg Oak, named in honor of the admirable
+botanical pioneer of California. Kellogg&rsquo;s Oak (<i>Quercus Kelloggii</i>)
+is a firm, bright, beautiful tree, reaching a height of sixty feet, four to
+seven feet in diameter, with wide-spreading branches, and growing at an
+elevation of from 3000 to 5000 feet in sunny valleys and flats among the
+evergreens, and higher in a dwarfed state. In the cliff-bound parks about 4000
+feet above the sea it is so abundant and effective it might fairly be called
+the Yosemite Oak. The leaves make beautiful masses of purple in the spring, and
+yellow in ripe autumn; while its acorns are eagerly gathered by Indians,
+squirrels, and woodpeckers. The Mountain Live Oak (<i>Q. Chrysolepis</i>) is a
+tough, rugged mountaineer of a tree, growing bravely and attaining noble
+dimensions on the roughest earthquake taluses in deep cañons and yosemite
+valleys. The trunk is usually short, dividing near the ground into great,
+wide-spreading limbs, and these again into a multitude of slender sprays, many
+of them cord-like and drooping to the ground, like those of the Great White Oak
+of the lowlands (<i>Q. lobata</i>). The top of the tree where there is plenty
+of space is broad and bossy, with a dense covering of shining leaves, making
+delightful canopies, the complicated system of gray, interlacing, arching
+branches as seen from beneath being exceedingly rich and picturesque. No other
+tree that I know dwarfs so regularly and completely as this under changes of
+climate due to changes in elevation. At the foot of a cañon 4000 feet above the
+sea you may find magnificent specimens of this oak fifty feet high, with
+craggy, bulging trunks, five to seven feet in diameter, and at the head of the
+cañon, 2500 feet higher, a dense, soft, low, shrubby growth of the same
+species, while all the way up the cañon between these extremes of size and
+habit a perfect gradation may be traced. The largest I have seen was fifty feet
+high, eight feet in diameter, and about seventy-five feet in spread. The trunk
+was all knots and buttresses, gray like granite, and about as angular and
+irregular as the boulders on which it was growing&mdash;a type of steadfast,
+unwedgeable strength.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX<br/>
+THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL<br/>
+<small>(<i>Sciurus Douglasii</i>)</small></h2>
+
+<p>
+The Douglas Squirrel is by far the most interesting and influential of the
+California sciuridae, surpassing every other species in force of character,
+numbers, and extent of range, and in the amount of influence he brings to bear
+upon the health and distribution of the vast forests he inhabits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Go where you will throughout the noble woods of the Sierra Nevada, among the
+giant pines and spruces of the lower zones, up through the towering Silver Firs
+to the storm-bent thickets of the summit peaks, you everywhere find this little
+squirrel the master-existence. Though only a few inches long, so intense is his
+fiery vigor and restlessness, he stirs every grove with wild life, and makes
+himself more important than even the huge bears that shuffle through the
+tangled underbrush beneath him. Every wind is fretted by his voice, almost
+every bole and branch feels the sting of his sharp feet. How much the growth of
+the trees is stimulated by this means it is not easy to learn, but his action
+in manipulating their seeds is more appreciable. Nature has made him master
+forester and committed most of her coniferous crops to his paws. Probably over
+fifty per cent. of all the cones ripened on the Sierra are cut off and handled
+by the Douglas alone, and of those of the Big Trees perhaps ninety per cent.
+pass through his hands: the greater portion is of course stored away for food
+to last during the winter and spring, but some of them are tucked separately
+into loosely covered holes, where some of the seeds germinate and become trees.
+But the Sierra is only one of the many provinces over which he holds sway, for
+his dominion extends over all the Redwood Belt of the Coast Mountains, and far
+northward throughout the majestic forests of Oregon, Washington, and British
+Columbia. I make haste to mention these facts, to show upon how substantial a
+foundation the importance I ascribe to him rests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Douglas is closely allied to the Red Squirrel or Chickaree of the eastern
+woods. Ours may be a lineal descendant of this species, distributed westward to
+the Pacific by way of the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains, and thence
+southward along our forested ranges. This view is suggested by the fact that
+our species becomes redder and more Chickaree-like in general, the farther it
+is traced back along the course indicated above. But whatever their
+relationship, and the evolutionary forces that have acted upon them, the
+Douglas is now the larger and more beautiful animal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the nose to the root of the tail he measures about eight inches; and his
+tail, which he so effectively uses in interpreting his feelings, is about six
+inches in length. He wears dark bluish-gray over the back and half-way down the
+sides, bright buff on the belly, with a stripe of dark gray, nearly black,
+separating the upper and under colors; this dividing stripe, however, is not
+very sharply defined. He has long black whiskers, which gives him a rather
+fierce look when observed closely, strong claws, sharp as fish-hooks, and the
+brightest of bright eyes, full of telling speculation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A King&rsquo;s River Indian told me that they call him
+&ldquo;Pillillooeet,&rdquo; which, rapidly pronounced with the first syllable
+heavily accented, is not unlike the lusty exclamation he utters on his way up a
+tree when excited. Most mountaineers in California call him the Pine Squirrel;
+and when I asked an old trapper whether he knew our little forester, he replied
+with brightening countenance: &ldquo;Oh, yes, of course I know him; everybody
+knows him. When I&rsquo;m huntin&rsquo; in the woods, I often find out where
+the deer are by his barkin&rsquo; at &rsquo;em. I call &rsquo;em
+Lightnin&rsquo; Squirrels, because they&rsquo;re so mighty quick and
+peert.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the true squirrels are more or less birdlike in speech and movements; but
+the Douglas is preëminently so, possessing, as he does, every attribute
+peculiarly squirrelish enthusiastically concentrated. He is the squirrel of
+squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his favorite evergreens crisp and
+glossy and undiseased as a sunbeam. Give him wings and he would outfly any bird
+in the woods. His big gray cousin is a looser animal, seemingly light enough to
+float on the wind; yet when leaping from limb to limb, or out of one tree-top
+to another, he sometimes halts to gather strength, as if making efforts
+concerning the upshot of which he does not always feel exactly confident. But
+the Douglas, with his denser body, leaps and glides in hidden strength,
+seemingly as independent of common muscles as a mountain stream. He threads the
+tasseled branches of the pines, stirring their needles like a rustling breeze;
+now shooting across openings in arrowy lines; now launching in curves, glinting
+deftly from side to side in sudden zigzags, and swirling in giddy loops and
+spirals around the knotty trunks; getting into what seem to be the most
+impossible situations without sense of danger; now on his haunches, now on his
+head; yet ever graceful, and punctuating his most irrepressible outbursts of
+energy with little dots and dashes of perfect repose. He is, without exception,
+the wildest animal I ever saw,&mdash;a fiery, sputtering little bolt of life,
+luxuriating in quick oxygen and the woods&rsquo; best juices. One can hardly
+think of such a creature being dependent, like the rest of us, on climate and
+food. But, after all, it requires no long acquaintance to learn he is human,
+for he works for a living. His busiest time is in the Indian summer. Then he
+gathers burs and hazel-nuts like a plodding farmer, working continuously every
+day for hours; saying not a word; cutting off the ripe cones at the top of his
+speed, as if employed by the job, and examining every branch in regular order,
+as if careful that not one should escape him; then, descending, he stores them
+away beneath logs and stumps, in anticipation of the pinching hunger days of
+winter. He seems himself a kind of coniferous fruit,&mdash;both fruit and
+flower. The resiny essences of the pines pervade every pore of his body, and
+eating his flesh is like chewing gum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One never tires of this bright chip of nature,&mdash;this brave little voice
+crying in the wilderness,&mdash;of observing his many works and ways, and
+listening to his curious language. His musical, piny gossip is as savory to the
+ear as balsam to the palate; and, though he has not exactly the gift of song,
+some of his notes are as sweet as those of a linnet&mdash;almost flute-like in
+softness, while others prick and tingle like thistles. He is the mocking-bird
+of squirrels, pouring forth mixed chatter and song like a perennial fountain;
+barking like a dog, screaming like a hawk, chirping like a blackbird or a
+sparrow; while in bluff, audacious noisiness he is a very jay.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:30%;">
+<a name="illus44"></a>
+<img src="images/img44.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
+ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE WHEN SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR" />
+<p class="caption">TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE WHEN
+SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In descending the trunk of a tree with the intention of alighting on the
+ground, he preserves a cautious silence, mindful, perhaps, of foxes and
+wildcats; but while rocking safely at home in the pine-tops there is no end to
+his capers and noise; and woe to the gray squirrel or chipmunk that ventures to
+set foot on his favorite tree! No matter how slyly they trace the furrows of
+the bark, they are speedily discovered, and kicked down-stairs with comic
+vehemence, while a torrent of angry notes comes rushing from his whiskered lips
+that sounds remarkably like swearing. He will even attempt at times to drive
+away dogs and men, especially if he has had no previous knowledge of them.
+Seeing a man for the first time, he approaches nearer and nearer, until within
+a few feet; then, with an angry outburst, he makes a sudden rush, all teeth and
+eyes, as if about to eat you up. But, finding that the big, forked animal
+doesn&rsquo;t scare, he prudently beats a retreat, and sets himself up to
+reconnoiter on some overhanging branch, scrutinizing every movement you make
+with ludicrous solemnity. Gathering courage, he ventures down the trunk again,
+churring and chirping, and jerking nervously up and down in curious loops,
+eyeing you all the time, as if snowing off and demanding your admiration.
+Finally, growing calmer, he settles down in a comfortable posture on some
+horizontal branch commanding a good view, and beats time with his tail to a
+steady &ldquo;Chee-up! chee-up!&rdquo; or, when somewhat less excited,
+&ldquo;Pee-ah!&rdquo; with the first syllable keenly accented, and the second
+drawn out like the scream of a hawk,&mdash;repeating this slowly and more
+emphatically at first, then gradually faster, until a rate of about 150 words a
+minute is reached; usually sitting all the time on his haunches, with paws
+resting on his breast, which pulses visibly with each word. It is remarkable,
+too, that, though articulating distinctly, he keeps his mouth shut most of the
+time, and speaks through his nose. I have occasionally observed him even eating
+Sequoia seeds and nibbling a troublesome flea, without ceasing or in any way
+confusing his &ldquo;Pee-ah! pee-ah!&rdquo; for a single moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While ascending trees all his claws come into play, but in descending the
+weight of his body is sustained chiefly by those of the hind feet; still in
+neither case do his movements suggest effort, though if you are near enough you
+may see the bulging strength of his short, bear-like arms, and note his sinewy
+fists clinched in the bark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether going up or down, he carries his tail extended at full length in line
+with his body, unless it be required for gestures. But while running along
+horizontal limbs or fallen trunks, it is frequently folded forward over the
+back, with the airy tip daintily upcurled. In cool weather it keeps him warm.
+Then, after he has finished his meal, you may see him crouched close on some
+level limb with his tail-robe neatly spread and reaching forward to his ears,
+the electric, outstanding hairs quivering in the breeze like pine-needles. But
+in wet or very cold weather he stays in his nest, and while curled up there his
+comforter is long enough to come forward around his nose. It is seldom so cold,
+however, as to prevent his going out to his stores when hungry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once as I lay storm-bound on the upper edge of the timber line on Mount Shasta,
+the thermometer nearly at zero and the sky thick with driving snow, a Douglas
+came bravely out several times from one of the lower hollows of a Dwarf Pine
+near my camp, faced the wind without seeming to feel it much, frisked lightly
+about over the mealy snow, and dug his way down to some hidden seeds with
+wonderful precision, as if to his eyes the thick snow-covering were glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No other of the Sierra animals of my acquaintance is better fed, not even the
+deer, amid abundance of sweet herbs and shrubs, or the mountain sheep, or
+omnivorous bears. His food consists of grass-seeds, berries, hazel-nuts,
+chinquapins, and the nuts and seeds of all the coniferous trees without
+exception,&mdash;Pine, Fir, Spruce, Libocedrus, Juniper, and Sequoia,&mdash;he
+is fond of them all, and they all agree with him, green or ripe. No cone is too
+large for him to manage, none so small as to be beneath his notice. The smaller
+ones, such as those of the Hemlock, and the Douglas Spruce, and the Two-leaved
+Pine, he cuts off and eats on a branch of the tree, without allowing them to
+fall; beginning at the bottom of the cone and cutting away the scales to expose
+the seeds; not gnawing by guess, like a bear, but turning them round and round
+in regular order, in compliance with their spiral arrangement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When thus employed, his location in the tree is betrayed by a dribble of
+scales, shells, and seed-wings, and, every few minutes, by the fall of the
+stripped axis of the cone. Then of course he is ready for another, and if you
+are watching you may catch a glimpse of him as he glides silently out to the
+end of a branch and see him examining the cone-clusters until he finds one to
+his mind; then, leaning over, pull back the springy needles out of his way,
+grasp the cone with his paws to prevent its falling, snip it off in an
+incredibly short time, seize it with jaws grotesquely stretched, and return to
+his chosen seat near the trunk. But the immense size of the cones of the Sugar
+Pine&mdash;from fifteen to twenty inches in length&mdash;and those of the
+Jeffrey variety of the Yellow Pine compel him to adopt a quite different
+method. He cuts them off without attempting to hold them, then goes down and
+drags them from where they have chanced to fall up to the bare, swelling ground
+around the instep of the tree, where he demolishes them in the same methodical
+way, beginning at the bottom and following the scale-spirals to the top.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:30%;">
+<a name="illus45"></a>
+<img src="images/img45.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE. (NAT. SIZE.)" />
+<p class="caption">SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE. (NAT. SIZE.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+From a single Sugar Pine cone he gets from two to four hundred seeds about half
+the size of a hazel-nut, so that in a few minutes he can procure enough to last
+a week. He seems, however, to prefer those of the two Silver First above all
+others; perhaps because they are most easily obtained, as the scales drop off
+when ripe without needing to be cut. Both species are filled with an
+exceedingly pungent, aromatic oil, which spices all his flesh, and is of itself
+sufficient to account for his lightning energy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You may easily know this little workman by his chips. On sunny hillsides around
+the principal trees they lie in big piles,&mdash;bushels and basketfuls of
+them, all fresh and clean, making the most beautiful kitchen-middens
+imaginable. The brown and yellow scales and nut-shells are as abundant and as
+delicately penciled and tinted as the shells along the sea-shore; while the
+beautiful red and purple seed-wings mingled with them would lead one to fancy
+that innumerable butterflies had there met their fate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He feasts on all the species long before they are ripe, but is wise enough to
+wait until they are matured before he gathers them into his barns. This is in
+October and November, which with him are the two busiest months of the year.
+All kinds of burs, big and little, are now cut off and showered down alike, and
+the ground is speedily covered with them. A constant thudding and bumping is
+kept up; some of the larger cones chancing to fall on old logs make the forest
+reëcho with the sound. Other nut-eaters less industrious know well what is
+going on, and hasten to carry away the cones as they fall. But however busy the
+harvester may be, he is not slow to descry the pilferers below, and instantly
+leaves his work to drive them away. The little striped tamias is a thorn in his
+flesh, stealing persistently, punish him as he may. The large Gray Squirrel
+gives trouble also, although the Douglas has been accused of stealing from him.
+Generally, however, just the opposite is the case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The excellence of the Sierra evergreens is well known to nurserymen throughout
+the world, consequently there is considerable demand for the seeds. The greater
+portion of the supply has hitherto been procured by chopping down the trees in
+the more accessible sections of the forest alongside of bridle-paths that cross
+the range. Sequoia seeds at first brought from twenty to thirty dollars per
+pound, and therefore were eagerly sought after. Some of the smaller fruitful
+trees were cut down in the groves not protected by government, especially those
+of Fresno and King&rsquo;s River. Most of the Sequoias, however, are of so
+gigantic a size that the seedsmen have to look for the greater portion of their
+supplies to the Douglas, who soon learns he is no match for these freebooters.
+He is wise enough, however, to cease working the instant he perceives them, and
+never fails to embrace every opportunity to recover his burs whenever they
+happen to be stored in any place accessible to him, and the busy seedsman often
+finds on returning to camp that the little Douglas has exhaustively spoiled the
+spoiler. I know one seed-gatherer who, whenever he robs the squirrels, scatters
+wheat or barley beneath the trees as conscience-money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The want of appreciable life remarked by so many travelers in the Sierra
+forests is never felt at this time of year. Banish all the humming insects and
+the birds and quadrupeds, leaving only Sir Douglas, and the most solitary of
+our so-called solitudes would still throb with ardent life. But if you should
+go impatiently even into the most populous of the groves on purpose to meet
+him, and walk about looking up among the branches, you would see very little of
+him. But lie down at the foot of one of the trees and straightway he will come.
+For, in the midst of the ordinary forest sounds, the falling of burs, piping of
+quails, the screaming of the Clark Crow, and the rustling of deer and bears
+among the chaparral, he is quick to detect your strange footsteps, and will
+hasten to make a good, close inspection of you as soon as you are still. First,
+you may hear him sounding a few notes of curious inquiry, but more likely the
+first intimation of his approach will be the prickly sounds of his feet as he
+descends the tree overhead, just before he makes his savage onrush to frighten
+you and proclaim your presence to every squirrel and bird in the neighborhood.
+If you remain perfectly motionless, he will come nearer and nearer, and
+probably set your flesh a-tingle by frisking across your body. Once, while I
+was seated at the foot of a Hemlock Spruce in one of the most inaccessible of
+the San Joaquin yosemites engaged in sketching, a reckless fellow came up
+behind me, passed under my bended arm, and jumped on my paper. And one warm
+afternoon, while an old friend of mine was reading out in the shade of his
+cabin, one of his Douglas neighbors jumped from the gable upon his head, and
+then with admirable assurance ran down over his shoulder and on to the book he
+held in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our Douglas enjoys a large social circle; for, besides his numerous relatives,
+<i>Sciurus fossor, Tamias quadrivitatus, T. Townsendii, Spermophilus Beccheyi,
+S. Douglasii</i>, he maintains intimate relations with the nut-eating birds,
+particularly the Clark Crow (<i>Picicorvus columbianus</i>) and the numerous
+woodpeckers and jays. The two spermophiles are astonishingly abundant in the
+lowlands and lower foot-hills, but more and more sparingly distributed up
+through the Douglas domains,&mdash;seldom venturing higher than six or seven
+thousand feet above the level of the sea. The gray sciurus ranges but little
+higher than this. The little striped tamias alone is associated with him
+everywhere. In the lower and middle zones, where they all meet, they are
+tolerably harmonious&mdash;a happy family, though very amusing skirmishes may
+occasionally be witnessed. Wherever the ancient glaciers have spread forest
+soil there you find our wee hero, most abundant where depth of soil and genial
+climate have given rise to a corresponding luxuriance in the trees, but
+following every kind of growth up the curving moraines to the highest glacial
+fountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though I cannot of course expect all my readers to sympathize fully in my
+admiration of this little animal, few, I hope, will think this sketch of his
+life too long. I cannot begin to tell here how much he has cheered my lonely
+wanderings during all the years I have been pursuing my studies in these
+glorious wilds; or how much unmistakable humanity I have found in him. Take
+this for example: One calm, creamy Indian summer morning, when the nuts were
+ripe, I was camped in the upper pine-woods of the south fork of the San
+Joaquin, where the squirrels seemed to be about as plentiful as the ripe burs.
+They were taking an early breakfast before going to their regular harvest-work.
+While I was busy with my own breakfast I heard the thudding fall of two or
+three heavy cones from a Yellow Pine near me. I stole noiselessly forward
+within about twenty feet of the base of it to observe. In a few moments down
+came the Douglas. The breakfast-burs he had cut off had rolled on the gently
+sloping ground into a clump of ceanothus bushes, but he seemed to know exactly
+where they were, for he found them at once, apparently without searching for
+them. They were more than twice as heavy as himself, but after turning them
+into the right position for getting a good hold with his long sickle-teeth he
+managed to drag them up to the foot of the tree from which he had cut them,
+moving backward. Then seating himself comfortably, he held them on end, bottom
+up, and demolished them at his ease. A good deal of nibbling had to be done
+before he got anything to eat, because the lower scales are barren, but when he
+had patiently worked his way up to the fertile ones he found two sweet nuts at
+the base of each, shaped like trimmed hams, and spotted purple like
+birds&rsquo; eggs. And notwithstanding these cones were dripping with soft
+balsam, and covered with prickles, and so strongly put together that a boy
+would be puzzled to cut them open with a jack-knife, he accomplished his meal
+with easy dignity and cleanliness, making less effort apparently than a man
+would in eating soft cookery from a plate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Breakfast done, I whistled a tune for him before he went to work, curious to
+see how he would be affected by it. He had not seen me all this while; but the
+instant I began to whistle he darted up the tree nearest to him, and came out
+on a small dead limb opposite me, and composed himself to listen. I sang and
+whistled more than a dozen airs, and as the music changed his eyes sparkled,
+and he turned his head quickly from side to side, but made no other response.
+Other squirrels, hearing the strange sounds, came around on all sides, also
+chipmunks and birds. One of the birds, a handsome, speckle-breasted thrush,
+seemed even more interested than the squirrels. After listening for awhile on
+one of the lower dead sprays of a pine, he came swooping forward within a few
+feet of my face, and remained fluttering in the air for half a minute or so,
+sustaining himself with whirring wing-beats, like a humming-bird in front of a
+flower, while I could look into his eyes and see his innocent wonder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time my performance must have lasted nearly half an hour. I sang or
+whistled &ldquo;Bonnie Boon,&rdquo; &ldquo;Lass o&rsquo; Gowrie,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;O&rsquo;er the Water to Charlie,&rdquo; &ldquo;Bonnie Woods o&rsquo;
+Cragie Lee,&rdquo; etc., all of which seemed to be listened to with bright
+interest, my first Douglas sitting patiently through it all, with his telling
+eyes fixed upon me until I ventured to give the &ldquo;Old Hundredth,&rdquo;
+when he screamed his Indian name, Pillillooeet, turned tail, and darted with
+ludicrous haste up the tree out of sight, his voice and actions in the case
+leaving a somewhat profane impression, as if he had said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be
+hanged if you get me to hear anything so solemn and unpiny.&rdquo; This acted
+as a signal for the general dispersal of the whole hairy tribe, though the
+birds seemed willing to wait further developments, music being naturally more
+in their line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What there can be in that grand old church-tune that is so offensive to birds
+and squirrels I can&rsquo;t imagine. A year or two after this High Sierra
+concert, I was sitting one fine day on a hill in the Coast Range where the
+common Ground Squirrels were abundant. They were very shy on account of being
+hunted so much; but after I had been silent and motionless for half an hour or
+so they began to venture out of their holes and to feed on the seeds of the
+grasses and thistles around me as if I were no more to be feared than a
+tree-stump. Then it occurred to me that this was a good opportunity to find out
+whether they also disliked &ldquo;Old Hundredth.&rdquo; Therefore I began to
+whistle as nearly as I could remember the same familiar airs that had pleased
+the mountaineers of the Sierra. They at once stopped eating, stood erect, and
+listened patiently until I came to &ldquo;Old Hundredth,&rdquo; when with
+ludicrous haste every one of them rushed to their holes and bolted in, their
+feet twinkling in the air for a moment as they vanished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No one who makes the acquaintance of our forester will fail to admire him; but
+he is far too self-reliant and warlike ever to be taken for a darling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How long the life of a Douglas Squirrel may be, I don&rsquo;t know. The young
+seem to sprout from knot-holes, perfect from the first, and as enduring as
+their own trees. It is difficult, indeed, to realize that so condensed a piece
+of sun-fire should ever become dim or die at all. He is seldom killed by
+hunters, for he is too small to encourage much of their attention, and when
+pursued in settled regions becomes excessively shy, and keeps close in the
+furrows of the highest trunks, many of which are of the same color as himself.
+Indian boys, however, lie in wait with unbounded patience to shoot them with
+arrows. In the lower and middle zones a few fall a prey to rattlesnakes.
+Occasionally he is pursued by hawks and wildcats, etc. But, upon the whole, he
+dwells safely in the deep bosom of the woods, the most highly favored of all
+his happy tribe. May his tribe increase!
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus46"></a>
+<img src="images/img46.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="TRYING THE BOW" />
+<p class="caption">TRYING THE BOW.</p>
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X<br/>
+A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS</h2>
+
+<p>
+The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are measured and
+bestowed with love on the forests to develop their strength and beauty. However
+restricted the scope of other forest influences, that of the winds is
+universal. The snow bends and trims the upper forests every winter, the
+lightning strikes a single tree here and there, while avalanches mow down
+thousands at a swoop as a gardener trims out a bed of flowers. But the winds go
+to every tree, fingering every leaf and branch and furrowed bole; not one is
+forgotten; the Mountain Pine towering with outstretched arms on the rugged
+buttresses of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring tenant of the
+dells; they seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in
+lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as
+required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing
+through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean; the winds
+blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable beauty and harmony
+as the sure result.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus47"></a>
+<img src="images/img47.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="A WIND-STORM IN THE
+CALIFORNIA FORESTS. (AFTER A SKETCH BY THE AUTHOR.)" />
+<p class="caption">A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS. (AFTER A SKETCH BY THE AUTHOR.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+After one has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses before a
+mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a crash that shakes
+the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the lowest thickset trees, could
+ever have found a period sufficiently stormless to establish themselves; or,
+once established, that they should not, sooner or later, have been blown down.
+But when the storm is over, and we behold the same forests tranquil again,
+towering fresh and unscathed in erect majesty, and consider what centuries of
+storms have fallen upon them since they were first planted,&mdash;hail, to
+break the tender seedlings; lightning, to scorch and shatter; snow, winds, and
+avalanches, to crush and overwhelm,&mdash;while the manifest result of all this
+wild storm-culture is the glorious perfection we behold; then faith in
+Nature&rsquo;s forestry is established, and we cease to deplore the violence of
+her most destructive gales, or of any other storm-implement whatsoever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never blown down, so long as
+they continue in sound health. These are the Juniper and the Dwarf Pine of the
+summit peaks. Their stiff, crooked roots grip the storm-beaten ledges like
+eagles&rsquo; claws, while their lithe, cord-like branches bend round
+compliantly, offering but slight holds for winds, however violent. The other
+alpine conifers&mdash;the Needle Pine, Mountain Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and
+Hemlock Spruce&mdash;are never thinned out by this agent to any destructive
+extent, on account of their admirable toughness and the closeness of their
+growth. In general the same is true of the giants of the lower zones. The
+kingly Sugar Pine, towering aloft to a height of more than 200 feet, offers a
+fine mark to storm-winds; but it is not densely foliaged, and its long,
+horizontal arms swing round compliantly in the blast, like tresses of green,
+fluent algae in a brook; while the Silver Firs in most places keep their ranks
+well together in united strength. The Yellow or Silver Pine is more frequently
+overturned than any other tree on the Sierra, because its leaves and branches
+form a larger mass in proportion to its height, while in many places it is
+planted sparsely, leaving open lanes through which storms may enter with full
+force. Furthermore, because it is distributed along the lower portion of the
+range, which was the first to be left bare on the breaking up of the ice-sheet
+at the close of the glacial winter, the soil it is growing upon has been longer
+exposed to post-glacial weathering, and consequently is in a more crumbling,
+decayed condition than the fresher soils farther up the range, and therefore
+offers a less secure anchorage for the roots.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While exploring the forest zones of Mount Shasta, I discovered the path of a
+hurricane strewn with thousands of pines of this species. Great and small had
+been uprooted or wrenched off by sheer force, making a clean gap, like that
+made by a snow avalanche. But hurricanes capable of doing this class of work
+are rare in the Sierra, and when we have explored the forests from one
+extremity of the range to the other, we are compelled to believe that they are
+the most beautiful on the face of the earth, however we may regard the agents
+that have made them so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is always something deeply exciting, not only in the sounds of winds in
+the woods, which exert more or less influence over every mind, but in their
+varied waterlike flow as manifested by the movements of the trees, especially
+those of the conifers. By no other trees are they rendered so extensively and
+impressively visible, not even by the lordly tropic palms or tree-ferns
+responsive to the gentlest breeze. The waving of a forest of the giant Sequoias
+is indescribably impressive and sublime, but the pines seem to me the best
+interpreters of winds. They are mighty waving goldenrods, ever in tune, singing
+and writing wind-music all their long century lives. Little, however, of this
+noble tree-waving and tree-music will you see or hear in the strictly alpine
+portion of the forests. The burly Juniper, whose girth sometimes more than
+equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it grows. The
+slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine stream out in wavering ripples, but
+the tallest and slenderest are far too unyielding to wave even in the heaviest
+gales. They only shake in quick, short vibrations. The Hemlock Spruce, however,
+and the Mountain Pine, and some of the tallest thickets of the Two-leaved
+species bow in storms with considerable scope and gracefulness. But it is only
+in the lower and middle zones that the meeting of winds and woods is to be seen
+in all its grandeur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the most beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever enjoyed in the Sierra
+occurred in December, 1874, when I happened to be exploring one of the
+tributary valleys of the Yuba River. The sky and the ground and the trees had
+been thoroughly rain-washed and were dry again. The day was intensely pure, one
+of those incomparable bits of California winter, warm and balmy and full of
+white sparkling sunshine, redolent of all the purest influences of the spring,
+and at the same time enlivened with one of the most bracing wind-storms
+conceivable. Instead of camping out, as I usually do, I then chanced to be
+stopping at the house of a friend. But when the storm began to sound, I lost no
+time in pushing out into the woods to enjoy it. For on such occasions Nature
+has always something rare to show us, and the danger to life and limb is hardly
+greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was still early morning when I found myself fairly adrift. Delicious
+sunshine came pouring over the hills, lighting the tops of the pines, and
+setting free a steam of summery fragrance that contrasted strangely with the
+wild tones of the storm. The air was mottled with pine-tassels and bright green
+plumes, that went flashing past in the sunlight like birds pursued. But there
+was not the slightest dustiness, nothing less pure than leaves, and ripe
+pollen, and flecks of withered bracken and moss. I heard trees falling for
+hours at the rate of one every two or three minutes; some uprooted, partly on
+account of the loose, water-soaked condition of the ground; others broken
+straight across, where some weakness caused by fire had determined the spot.
+The gestures of the various trees made a delightful study. Young Sugar Pines,
+light and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the ground; while
+the grand old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been tried in a hundred
+storms, waved solemnly above them, their long, arching branches streaming
+fluently on the gale, and every needle thrilling and ringing and shedding off
+keen lances of light like a diamond. The Douglas Spruces, with long sprays
+drawn out in level tresses, and needles massed in a gray, shimmering glow,
+presented a most striking appearance as they stood in bold relief along the
+hilltops. The madroños in the dells, with their red bark and large glossy
+leaves tilted every way, reflected the sunshine in throbbing spangles like
+those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a glacier lake. But the
+Silver Pines were now the most impressively beautiful of all. Colossal spires
+200 feet in height waved like supple golden-rods chanting and bowing low as if
+in worship, while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled
+into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such
+that the most steadfast monarch of them all rocked down to its roots with a
+motion plainly perceptible when one leaned against it. Nature was holding high
+festival, and every fiber of the most rigid giants thrilled with glad
+excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I drifted on through the midst of this passionate music and motion, across many
+a glen, from ridge to ridge; often halting in the lee of a rock for shelter, or
+to gaze and listen. Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest
+pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones of individual
+trees,&mdash;Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak,&mdash;and even the
+infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet. Each was
+expressing itself in its own way,&mdash;singing its own song, and making its
+own peculiar gestures,&mdash;manifesting a richness of variety to be found in
+no other forest I have yet seen. The coniferous woods of Canada, and the
+Carolinas, and Florida, are made up of trees that resemble one another about as
+nearly as blades of grass, and grow close together in much the same way.
+Coniferous trees, in general, seldom possess individual character, such as is
+manifest among Oaks and Elms. But the California forests are made up of a
+greater number of distinct species than any other in the world. And in them we
+find, not only a marked differentiation into special groups, but also a marked
+individuality in almost every tree, giving rise to storm effects indescribably
+glorious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through copses of hazel and
+ceanothus, I gained the summit of the highest ridge in the neighborhood; and
+then it occurred to me that it would be a fine thing to climb one of the trees
+to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear close to the Aeolian music of its
+topmost needles. But under the circumstances the choice of a tree was a serious
+matter. One whose instep was not very strong seemed in danger of being blown
+down, or of being struck by others in case they should fall; another was
+branchless to a considerable height above the ground, and at the same time too
+large to be grasped with arms and legs in climbing; while others were not
+favorably situated for clear views. After cautiously casting about, I made
+choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that were growing close
+together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed likely to fall unless all
+the rest fell with it. Though comparatively young, they were about 100 feet
+high, and their lithe, brushy tops were rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy.
+Being accustomed to climb trees in making botanical studies, I experienced no
+difficulty in reaching the top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so
+noble an exhilaration of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in
+the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and
+round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves,
+while I clung with muscles firm braced, like a bobolink on a reed.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus48"></a>
+<img src="images/img48.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="YELLOW PINE AND LIBOCEDRUS" />
+<p class="caption">YELLOW PINE AND LIBOCEDRUS<br/>
+The two inside trees are Libocedrus, the two outside trees, Yellow Pine.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In its widest sweeps my tree-top described an arc of from twenty to thirty
+degrees, but I felt sure of its elastic temper, having seen others of the same
+species still more severely tried&mdash;bent almost to the ground indeed, in
+heavy snows&mdash;without breaking a fiber. I was therefore safe, and free to
+take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the excited forest from my superb
+outlook. The view from here must be extremely beautiful in any weather. Now my
+eye roved over the piny hills and dales as over fields of waving grain, and
+felt the light running in ripples and broad swelling undulations across the
+valleys from ridge to ridge, as the shining foliage was stirred by
+corresponding waves of air. Oftentimes these waves of reflected light would
+break up suddenly into a kind of beaten foam, and again, after chasing one
+another in regular order, they would seem to bend forward in concentric curves,
+and disappear on some hillside, like sea-waves on a shelving shore. The
+quantity of light reflected from the bent needles was so great as to make whole
+groves appear as if covered with snow, while the black shadows beneath the
+trees greatly enhanced the effect of the silvery splendor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Excepting only the shadows there was nothing somber in all this wild sea of
+pines. On the contrary, notwithstanding this was the winter season, the colors
+were remarkably beautiful. The shafts of the pine and libocedrus were brown and
+purple, and most of the foliage was well tinged with yellow; the laurel groves,
+with the pale undersides of their leaves turned upward, made masses of gray;
+and then there was many a dash of chocolate color from clumps of manzanita, and
+jet of vivid crimson from the bark of the madroños, while the ground on the
+hillsides, appearing here and there through openings between the groves,
+displayed masses of pale purple and brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with this wild exuberance of
+light and motion. The profound bass of the naked branches and boles booming
+like waterfalls; the quick, tense vibrations of the pine-needles, now rising to
+a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a silky murmur; the rustling of laurel
+groves in the dells, and the keen metallic click of leaf on leaf&mdash;all this
+was heard in easy analysis when the attention was calmly bent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The varied gestures of the multitude were seen to fine advantage, so that one
+could recognize the different species at a distance of several miles by this
+means alone, as well as by their forms and colors, and the way they reflected
+the light. All seemed strong and comfortable, as if really enjoying the storm,
+while responding to its most enthusiastic greetings. We hear much nowadays
+concerning the universal struggle for existence, but no struggle in the common
+meaning of the word was manifest here; no recognition of danger by any tree; no
+deprecation; but rather an invincible gladness as remote from exultation as
+from fear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the music
+by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was streaming
+past. The fragrance of the woods was less marked than that produced during warm
+rain, when so many balsamic buds and leaves are steeped like tea; but, from the
+chafing of resiny branches against each other, and the incessant attrition of
+myriads of needles, the gale was spiced to a very tonic degree. And besides the
+fragrance from these local sources there were traces of scents brought from
+afar. For this wind came first from the sea, rubbing against its fresh, briny
+waves, then distilled through the redwoods, threading rich ferny gulches, and
+spreading itself in broad undulating currents over many a flower-enameled ridge
+of the coast mountains, then across the golden plains, up the purple
+foot-hills, and into these piny woods with the varied incense gathered by the
+way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we may be
+able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents alone.
+Mariners detect the flowery perfume of land-winds far at sea, and sea-winds
+carry the fragrance of dulse and tangle far inland, where it is quickly
+recognized, though mingled with the scents of a thousand land-flowers. As an
+illustration of this, I may tell here that I breathed sea-air on the Firth of
+Forth, in Scotland, while a boy; then was taken to Wisconsin, where I remained
+nineteen years; then, without in all this time having breathed one breath of
+the sea, I walked quietly, alone, from the middle of the Mississippi Valley to
+the Gulf of Mexico, on a botanical excursion, and while in Florida, far from
+the coast, my attention wholly bent on the splendid tropical vegetation about
+me, I suddenly recognized a sea-breeze, as it came sifting through the
+palmettos and blooming vine-tangles, which at once awakened and set free a
+thousand dormant associations, and made me a boy again in Scotland, as if all
+the intervening years had been annihilated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear them in mind; but few
+care to look at the winds, though far more beautiful and sublime, and though
+they become at times about as visible as flowing water. When the north winds in
+winter are making upward sweeps over the curving summits of the High Sierra,
+the fact is sometimes published with flying snow-banners a mile long. Those
+portions of the winds thus embodied can scarce be wholly invisible, even to the
+darkest imagination. And when we look around over an agitated forest, we may
+see something of the wind that stirs it, by its effects upon the trees. Yonder
+it descends in a rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the bending pines
+from hill to hill. Nearer, we see detached plumes and leaves, now speeding by
+on level currents, now whirling in eddies, or, escaping over the edges of the
+whirls, soaring aloft on grand, upswelling domes of air, or tossing on
+flame-like crests. Smooth, deep currents, cascades, falls, and swirling eddies,
+sing around every tree and leaf, and over all the varied topography of the
+region with telling changes of form, like mountain rivers conforming to the
+features of their channels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After tracing the Sierra streams from their fountains to the plains, marking
+where they bloom white in falls, glide in crystal plumes, surge gray and
+foam-filled in boulder-choked gorges, and slip through the woods in long,
+tranquil reaches&mdash;after thus learning their language and forms in detail,
+we may at length hear them chanting all together in one grand anthem, and
+comprehend them all in clear inner vision, covering the range like lace. But
+even this spectacle is far less sublime and not a whit more substantial than
+what we may behold of these storm-streams of air in the mountain woods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to
+me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers,
+in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true;
+but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than
+tree-wavings&mdash;many of them not so much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through the
+calming woods. The storm-tones died away, and, turning toward the east, I
+beheld the countless hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil, towering above
+one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout audience. The setting sun
+filled them with amber light, and seemed to say, while they listened, &ldquo;My
+peace I give unto you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I gazed on the impressive scene, all the so-called ruin of the storm was
+forgotten, and never before did these noble woods appear so fresh, so joyous,
+so immortal.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI<br/>
+THE RIVER FLOODS</h2>
+
+<p>
+The Sierra rivers are flooded every spring by the melting of the snow as
+regularly as the famous old Nile. They begin to rise in May, and in June
+high-water mark is reached. But because the melting does not go on rapidly over
+all the fountains, high and low, simultaneously, and the melted snow is not
+reinforced at this time of year by rain, the spring floods are seldom very
+violent or destructive. The thousand falls, however, and the cascades in the
+cañons are then in full bloom, and sing songs from one end of the range to the
+other. Of course the snow on the lower tributaries of the rivers is first
+melted, then that on the higher fountains most exposed to sunshine, and about a
+month later the cooler, shadowy fountains send down their treasures, thus
+allowing the main trunk streams nearly six weeks to get their waters hurried
+through the foot-hills and across the lowlands to the sea. Therefore very
+violent spring floods are avoided, and will be as long as the shading,
+restraining forests last. The rivers of the north half of the range are still
+less subject to sudden floods, because their upper fountains in great part lie
+protected from the changes of the weather beneath thick folds of lava, just as
+many of the rivers of Alaska lie beneath folds of ice, coming to the light
+farther down the range in large springs, while those of the high Sierra lie on
+the surface of solid granite, exposed to every change of temperature. More than
+ninety per cent. of the water derived from the snow and ice of Mount Shasta is
+at once absorbed and drained away beneath the porous lava folds of the
+mountain, where mumbling and groping in the dark they at length find larger
+fissures and tunnel-like caves from which they emerge, filtered and cool, in
+the form of large springs, some of them so large they give birth to rivers that
+set out on their journeys beneath the sun without any visible intermediate
+period of childhood. Thus the Shasta River issues from a large lake-like spring
+in Shasta Valley, and about two thirds of the volume of the McCloud River
+gushes forth suddenly from the face of a lava bluff in a roaring spring
+seventy-five yards wide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These spring rivers of the north are of course shorter than those of the south
+whose tributaries extend up to the tops of the mountains. Fall River, an
+important tributary of the Pitt or Upper Sacramento, is only about ten miles
+long, and is all falls, cascades, and springs from its head to its confluence
+with the Pitt. Bountiful springs, charmingly embowered, issue from the rocks at
+one end of it, a snowy fall a hundred and eighty feet high thunders at the
+other, and a rush of crystal rapids sing and dance between. Of course such
+streams are but little affected by the weather. Sheltered from evaporation
+their flow is nearly as full in the autumn as in the time of general spring
+floods. While those of the high Sierra diminish to less than the hundredth part
+of their springtime prime, shallowing in autumn to a series of silent pools
+among the rocks and hollows of their channels, connected by feeble, creeping
+threads of water, like the sluggish sentences of a tired writer, connected by a
+drizzle of &ldquo;ands&rdquo; and &ldquo;buts.&rdquo; Strange to say, the
+greatest floods occur in winter, when one would suppose all the wild waters
+would be muffled and chained in frost and snow. The same long, all-day storms
+of the so-called Rainy Season in California, that give rain to the lowlands,
+give dry frosty snow to the mountains. But at rare intervals warm rains and
+warm winds invade the mountains and push back the snow line from 2000 feet to
+8000, or even higher, and then come the big floods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was usually driven down out of the High Sierra about the end of November, but
+the winter of 1874 and 1875 was so warm and calm that I was tempted to seek
+general views of the geology and topography of the basin of Feather River in
+January. And I had just completed a hasty survey of the region, and made my way
+down to winter quarters, when one of the grandest flood-storms that I ever saw
+broke on the mountains. I was then in the edge of the main forest belt at a
+small foot-hill town called Knoxville, on the divide between the waters of the
+Feather and Yuba rivers. The cause of this notable flood was simply a sudden
+and copious fall of warm wind and rain on the basins of these rivers at a time
+when they contained a considerable quantity of snow. The rain was so heavy and
+long-sustained that it was, of itself, sufficient to make a good wild flood,
+while the snow which the warm wind and rain melted on the upper and middle
+regions of the basins was sufficient to make another flood equal to that of the
+rain. Now these two distinct harvests of flood waters were gathered
+simultaneously and poured out on the plain in one magnificent avalanche. The
+basins of the Yuba and Feather, like many others of the Sierra, are admirably
+adapted to the growth of floods of this kind. Their many tributaries radiate
+far and wide, comprehending extensive areas, and the tributaries are steeply
+inclined, while the trunks are comparatively level. While the flood-storm was
+in progress the thermometer at Knoxville ranged between 44° and 50°; and when
+warm wind and warm rain fall simultaneously on snow contained in basins like
+these, both the rain and that portion of the snow which the rain and wind melt
+are at first sponged up and held back until the combined mass becomes sludge,
+which at length, suddenly dissolving, slips and descends all together to the
+trunk channel; and since the deeper the stream the faster it flows, the flooded
+portion of the current above overtakes the slower foot-hill portion below it,
+and all sweeping forward together with a high, overcurling front, debouches on
+the open plain with a violence and suddenness that at first seem wholly
+unaccountable. The destructiveness of the lower portion of this particular
+flood was somewhat augmented by mining gravel in the river channels, and by
+levees which gave way after having at first restrained and held back the
+accumulating waters. These exaggerating conditions did not, however, greatly
+influence the general result, the main effect having been caused by the rare
+combination of flood factors indicated above. It is a pity that but few people
+meet and enjoy storms so noble as this in their homes in the mountains, for,
+spending themselves in the open levels of the plains, they are likely to be
+remembered more by the bridges and houses they carry away than by their beauty
+or the thousand blessings they bring to the fields and gardens of Nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the morning of the flood, January 19th, all the Feather and Yuba landscapes
+were covered with running water, muddy torrents filled every gulch and ravine,
+and the sky was thick with rain. The pines had long been sleeping in sunshine;
+they were now awake, roaring and waving with the beating storm, and the winds
+sweeping along the curves of hill and dale, streaming through the woods,
+surging and gurgling on the tops of rocky ridges, made the wildest of wild
+storm melody.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was easy to see that only a small part of the rain reached the ground in the
+form of drops. Most of it was thrashed into dusty spray like that into which
+small waterfalls are divided when they dash on shelving rocks. Never have I
+seen water coming from the sky in denser or more passionate streams. The wind
+chased the spray forward in choking drifts, and compelled me again and again to
+seek shelter in the dell copses and back of large trees to rest and catch my
+breath. Wherever I went, on ridges or in hollows, enthusiastic water still
+flashed and gurgled about my ankles, recalling a wild winter flood in Yosemite
+when a hundred waterfalls came booming and chanting together and filled the
+grand valley with a sea-like roar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After drifting an hour or two in the lower woods, I set out for the summit of a
+hill 900 feet high, with a view to getting as near the heart of the storm as
+possible. In order to reach it I had to cross Dry Creek, a tributary of the
+Yuba that goes crawling along the base of the hill on the northwest. It was now
+a booming river as large as the Tuolumne at ordinary stages, its current brown
+with mining-mud washed down from many a &ldquo;claim,&rdquo; and mottled with
+sluice-boxes, fence-rails, and logs that had long lain above its reach. A slim
+foot-bridge stretched across it, now scarcely above the swollen current. Here I
+was glad to linger, gazing and listening, while the storm was in its richest
+mood&mdash;the gray rain-flood above, the brown river-flood beneath. The
+language of the river was scarcely less enchanting than that of the wind and
+rain; the sublime overboom of the main bouncing, exulting current, the swash
+and gurgle of the eddies, the keen dash and clash of heavy waves breaking
+against rocks, and the smooth, downy hush of shallow currents feeling their way
+through the willow thickets of the margin. And amid all this varied throng of
+sounds I heard the smothered bumping and rumbling of boulders on the bottom as
+they were shoving and rolling forward against one another in a wild rush, after
+having lain still for probably 100 years or more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The glad creek rose high above its banks and wandered from its channel out over
+many a briery sand-flat and meadow. Alders and willows waist-deep were bearing
+up against the current with nervous trembling gestures, as if afraid of being
+carried away, while supple branches bending confidingly, dipped lightly and
+rose again, as if stroking the wild waters in play. Leaving the bridge and
+passing on through the storm-thrashed woods, all the ground seemed to be
+moving. Pine-tassels, flakes of bark, soil, leaves, and broken branches were
+being swept forward, and many a rock-fragment, weathered from exposed ledges,
+was now receiving its first rounding and polishing in the wild streams of the
+storm. On they rushed through every gulch and hollow, leaping, gliding, working
+with a will, and rejoicing like living creatures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor was the flood confined to the ground. Every tree had a water system of its
+own spreading far and wide like miniature Amazons and Mississippis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Toward midday, cloud, wind, and rain reached their highest development. The
+storm was in full bloom, and formed, from my commanding outlook on the hilltop,
+one of the most glorious views I ever beheld. As far as the eye could reach,
+above, beneath, around, wind-driven rain filled the air like one vast
+waterfall. Detached clouds swept imposingly up the valley, as if they were
+endowed with independent motion and had special work to do in replenishing the
+mountain wells, now rising above the pine-tops, now descending into their
+midst, fondling their arrowy spires and soothing every branch and leaf with
+gentleness in the midst of all the savage sound and motion. Others keeping near
+the ground glided behind separate groves, and brought them forward into relief
+with admirable distinctness; or, passing in front, eclipsed whole groves in
+succession, pine after pine melting in their gray fringes and bursting forth
+again seemingly clearer than before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The forms of storms are in great part measured, and controlled by the
+topography of the regions where they rise and over which they pass. When,
+therefore, we attempt to study them from the valleys, or from gaps and openings
+of the forest, we are confounded by a multitude of separate and apparently
+antagonistic impressions. The bottom of the storm is broken up into innumerable
+waves and currents that surge against the hillsides like sea-waves against a
+shore, and these, reacting on the nether surface of the storm, erode immense
+cavernous hollows and cañons, and sweep forward the resulting detritus in long
+trains, like the moraines of glaciers. But, as we ascend, these partial,
+confusing effects disappear and the phenomena are beheld united and harmonious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The longer I gazed into the storm, the more plainly visible it became. The
+drifting cloud detritus gave it a kind of visible body, which explained many
+perplexing phenomena, and published its movements in plain terms, while the
+texture of the falling mass of rain rounded it out and rendered it more
+complete. Because raindrops differ in size they fall at different velocities
+and overtake and clash against one another, producing mist and spray. They
+also, of course, yield unequal compliance to the force of the wind, which gives
+rise to a still greater degree of interference, and passionate gusts sweep off
+clouds of spray from the groves like that torn from wave-tops in a gale. All
+these factors of irregularity in density, color, and texture of the general
+rain mass tend to make it the more appreciable and telling. It is then seen as
+one grand flood rushing over bank and brae, bending the pines like weeds,
+curving this way and that, whirling in huge eddies in hollows and dells, while
+the main current pours grandly over all, like ocean currents over the
+landscapes that lie hidden at the bottom of the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I watched the gestures of the pines while the storm was at its height, and it
+was easy to see that they were not distressed. Several large Sugar Pines stood
+near the thicket in which I was sheltered, bowing solemnly and tossing their
+long arms as if interpreting the very words of the storm while accepting its
+wildest onsets with passionate exhilaration. The lions were feeding. Those who
+have observed sunflowers feasting on sunshine during the golden days of Indian
+summer know that none of their gestures express thankfulness. Their celestial
+food is too heartily given, too heartily taken to leave room for thanks. The
+pines were evidently accepting the benefactions of the storm in the same
+whole-souled manner; and when I looked down among the budding hazels, and still
+lower to the young violets and fern-tufts on the rocks, I noticed the same
+divine methods of giving and taking, and the same exquisite adaptations of what
+seems an outbreak of violent and uncontrollable force to the purposes of
+beautiful and delicate life. Calms like sleep come upon landscapes, just as
+they do on people and trees, and storms awaken them in the same way. In the dry
+midsummer of the lower portion of the range the withered hills and valleys seem
+to lie as empty and expressionless as dead shells on a shore. Even the highest
+mountains may be found occasionally dull and uncommunicative as if in some way
+they had lost countenance and shrunk to less than half their real stature. But
+when the lightnings crash and echo in the cañons, and the clouds come down
+wreathing and crowning their bald snowy heads, every feature beams with
+expression and they rise again in all their imposing majesty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Storms are fine speakers, and tell all they know, but their voices of
+lightning, torrent, and rushing wind are much less numerous than the nameless
+still, small voices too low for human ears; and because we are poor listeners
+we fail to catch much that is fairly within reach. Our best rains are heard
+mostly on roofs, and winds in chimneys; and when by choice or compulsion we are
+pushed into the heart of a storm, the confusion made by cumbersome equipments
+and nervous haste and mean fear, prevent our hearing any other than the loudest
+expressions. Yet we may draw enjoyment from storm sounds that are beyond
+hearing, and storm movements we cannot see. The sublime whirl of planets around
+their suns is as silent as raindrops oozing in the dark among the roots of
+plants. In this great storm, as in every other, there were tones and gestures
+inexpressibly gentle manifested in the midst of what is called violence and
+fury, but easily recognized by all who look and listen for them. The rain
+brought out the colors of the woods with delightful freshness, the rich brown
+of the bark of the trees and the fallen burs and leaves and dead ferns; the
+grays of rocks and lichens; the light purple of swelling buds, and the warm
+yellow greens of the libocedrus and mosses. The air was steaming with
+delightful fragrance, not rising and wafting past in separate masses, but
+diffused through all the atmosphere. Pine woods are always fragrant, but most
+so in spring when the young tassels are opening and in warm weather when the
+various gums and balsams are softened by the sun. The wind was now chafing
+their innumerable needles and the warm rain was steeping them. Monardella grows
+here in large beds in the openings, and there is plenty of laurel in dells and
+manzanita on the hillsides, and the rosy, fragrant chamoebatia carpets the
+ground almost everywhere. These, with the gums and balsams of the woods, form
+the main local fragrance-fountains of the storm. The ascending clouds of aroma
+wind-rolled and rain-washed became pure like light and traveled with the wind
+as part of it. Toward the middle of the afternoon the main flood cloud lifted
+along its western border revealing a beautiful section of the Sacramento Valley
+some twenty or thirty miles away, brilliantly sun-lighted and glistering with
+rain-sheets as if paved with silver. Soon afterward a jagged bluff-like cloud
+with a sheer face appeared over the valley of the Yuba, dark-colored and
+roughened with numerous furrows like some huge lava-table. The blue Coast Range
+was seen stretching along the sky like a beveled wall, and the somber, craggy
+Marysville Buttes rose impressively out of the flooded plain like islands out
+of the sea. Then the rain began to abate and I sauntered down through the
+dripping bushes reveling in the universal vigor and freshness that inspired all
+the life about me. How clean and unworn and immortal the woods seemed to
+be!&mdash;the lofty cedars in full bloom laden with golden pollen and their
+washed plumes shining; the pines rocking gently and settling back into rest,
+and the evening sunbeams spangling on the broad leaves of the madroños, their
+tracery of yellow boughs relieved against dusky thickets of Chestnut Oak;
+liverworts, lycopodiums, ferns were exulting in glorious revival, and every
+moss that had ever lived seemed to be coming crowding back from the dead to
+clothe each trunk and stone in living green. The steaming ground seemed fairly
+to throb and tingle with life; smilax, fritillaria, saxifrage, and young
+violets were pushing up as if already conscious of the summer glory, and
+innumerable green and yellow buds were peeping and smiling everywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the birds and squirrels, not a wing or tail of them was to be seen while
+the storm was blowing. Squirrels dislike wet weather more than cats do;
+therefore they were at home rocking in their dry nests. The birds were hiding
+in the dells out of the wind, some of the strongest of them pecking at acorns
+and manzanita berries, but most were perched on low twigs, their breast
+feathers puffed out and keeping one another company through the hard time as
+best they could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I arrived at the village about sundown, the good people bestirred
+themselves, pitying my bedraggled condition as if I were some benumbed castaway
+snatched from the sea, while I, in turn, warm with excitement and reeking like
+the ground, pitied them for being dry and defrauded of all the glory that
+Nature had spread round about them that day.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII<br/>
+SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS</h2>
+
+<p>
+The weather of spring and summer in the middle region of the Sierra is usually
+well flecked with rains and light dustings of snow, most of which are far too
+obviously joyful and life-giving to be regarded as storms; and in the
+picturesque beauty and clearness of outlines of their clouds they offer
+striking contrasts to those boundless, all-embracing cloud-mantles of the
+storms of winter. The smallest and most perfectly individualized specimens
+present a richly modeled cumulous cloud rising above the dark woods, about 11
+A.M., swelling with a visible motion straight up into the calm, sunny sky to a
+height of 12,000 to 14,000 feet above the sea, its white, pearly bosses
+relieved by gray and pale purple shadows in the hollows, and showing outlines
+as keenly defined as those of the glacier-polished domes. In less than an hour
+it attains full development and stands poised in the blazing sunshine like some
+colossal mountain, as beautiful in form and finish as if it were to become a
+permanent addition to the landscape. Presently a thunderbolt crashes through
+the crisp air, ringing like steel on steel, sharp and clear, its startling
+detonation breaking into a spray of echoes against the cliffs and cañon walls.
+Then down comes a cataract of rain. The big drops sift through the
+pine-needles, plash and patter on the granite pavements, and pour down the
+sides of ridges and domes in a network of gray, bubbling rills. In a few
+minutes the cloud withers to a mesh of dim filaments and disappears, leaving
+the sky perfectly clear and bright, every dust-particle wiped and washed out of
+it. Everything is refreshed and invigorated, a steam of fragrance rises, and
+the storm is finished&mdash;one cloud, one lightning-stroke, and one dash of
+rain. This is the Sierra mid-summer thunder-storm reduced to its lowest terms.
+But some of them attain much larger proportions, and assume a grandeur and
+energy of expression hardly surpassed by those bred in the depths of winter,
+producing those sudden floods called &ldquo;cloud-bursts,&rdquo; which are
+local, and to a considerable extent periodical, for they appear nearly every
+day about the same time for weeks, usually about eleven o&rsquo;clock, and
+lasting from five minutes to an hour or two. One soon becomes so accustomed to
+see them that the noon sky seems empty and abandoned without them, as if Nature
+were forgetting something. When the glorious pearl and alabaster clouds of
+these noonday storms are being built I never give attention to anything else.
+No mountain or mountain-range, however divinely clothed with light, has a more
+enduring charm than those fleeting mountains of the sky&mdash;floating
+fountains bearing water for every well, the angels of the streams and lakes;
+brooding in the deep azure, or sweeping softly along the ground over ridge and
+dome, over meadow, over forest, over garden and grove; lingering with cooling
+shadows, refreshing every flower, and soothing rugged rock-brows with a
+gentleness of touch and gesture wholly divine.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus49"></a>
+<img src="images/img49.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="BRIDAL VEIL FALLS,
+YOSEMITE VALLEY" />
+<p class="caption">BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The most beautiful and imposing of the summer storms rise just above the upper
+edge of the Silver Fir zone, and all are so beautiful that it is not easy to
+choose any one for particular description. The one that I remember best fell on
+the mountains near Yosemite Valley, July 19, 1869, while I was encamped in the
+Silver Fir woods. A range of bossy cumuli took possession of the sky, huge
+domes and peaks rising one beyond another with deep cañons between them,
+bending this way and that in long curves and reaches, interrupted here and
+there with white upboiling masses that looked like the spray of waterfalls.
+Zigzag lances of lightning followed each other in quick succession, and the
+thunder was so gloriously loud and massive it seemed as if surely an entire
+mountain was being shattered at every stroke. Only the trees were touched,
+however, so far as I could see,&mdash;a few firs 200 feet high, perhaps, and
+five to six feet in diameter, were split into long rails and slivers from top
+to bottom and scattered to all points of the compass. Then came the rain in a
+hearty flood, covering the ground and making it shine with a continuous sheet
+of water that, like a transparent film or skin, fitted closely down over all
+the rugged anatomy of the landscape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not long, geologically speaking, since the first raindrop fell on the
+present landscapes of the Sierra; and in the few tens of thousands of years of
+stormy cultivation they have been blest with, how beautiful they have become!
+The first rains fell on raw, crumbling moraines and rocks without a plant. Now
+scarcely a drop can fail to find a beautiful mark: on the tops of the peaks, on
+the smooth glacier pavements, on the curves of the domes, on moraines full of
+crystals, on the thousand forms of yosemitic sculpture with their tender beauty
+of balmy, flowery vegetation, laving, plashing, glinting, pattering; some
+falling softly on meadows, creeping out of sight, seeking and finding every
+thirsty rootlet, some through the spires of the woods, sifting in dust through
+the needles, and whispering good cheer to each of them; some falling with blunt
+tapping sounds, drumming on the broad leaves of veratrum, cypripedium,
+saxifrage; some falling straight into fragrant corollas, kissing the lips of
+lilies, glinting on the sides of crystals, on shining grains of gold; some
+falling into the fountains of snow to swell their well-saved stores; some into
+the lakes and rivers, patting the smooth glassy levels, making dimples and
+bells and spray, washing the mountain windows, washing the wandering winds;
+some plashing into the heart of snowy falls and cascades as if eager to join in
+the dance and the song and beat the foam yet finer. Good work and happy work
+for the merry mountain raindrops, each one of them a brave fall in itself,
+rushing from the cliffs and hollows of the clouds into the cliffs and hollows
+of the mountains; away from the thunder of the sky into the thunder of the
+roaring rivers. And how far they have to go, and how many cups to
+fill&mdash;cassiope-cups, holding half a drop, and lake basins between the
+hills, each replenished with equal care&mdash;every drop God&rsquo;s messenger
+sent on its way with glorious pomp and display of power&mdash;silvery new-born
+stars with lake and river, mountain and valley&mdash;all that the landscape
+holds&mdash;reflected in their crystal depths.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII<br/>
+THE WATER-OUZEL</h2>
+
+<p>
+The waterfalls of the Sierra are frequented by only one bird,&mdash;the Ouzel
+or Water Thrush (<i>Cinclus Mexicanus</i>, SW.). He is a singularly joyous and
+lovable little fellow, about the size of a robin, clad in a plain waterproof
+suit of bluish gray, with a tinge of chocolate on the head and shoulders. In
+form he is about as smoothly plump and compact as a pebble that has been
+whirled in a pot-hole, the flowing contour of his body being interrupted only
+by his strong feet and bill, the crisp wing-tips, and the up-slanted wren-like
+tail. Among all the countless waterfalls I have met in the course of ten
+years&rsquo; exploration in the Sierra, whether among the icy peaks, or warm
+foot-hills, or in the profound yosemitic cañons of the middle region, not one
+was found without its Ouzel. No cañon is too cold for this little bird, none
+too lonely, provided it be rich in falling water. Find a fall, or cascade, or
+rushing rapid, anywhere upon a clear stream, and there you will surely find its
+complementary Ouzel, flitting about in the spray, diving in foaming eddies,
+whirling like a leaf among beaten foam-bells; ever vigorous and enthusiastic,
+yet self-contained, and neither seeking nor shunning your company.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus50"></a>
+<img src="images/img50.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING" />
+<p class="caption">WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+If disturbed while dipping about in the margin shallows, he either sets off
+with a rapid whir to some other feeding-ground up or down the stream, or
+alights on some half-submerged rock or snag out in the current, and immediately
+begins to nod and courtesy like a wren, turning his head from side to side with
+many other odd dainty movements that never fail to fix the attention of the
+observer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He is the mountain streams&rsquo; own darling, the humming-bird of blooming
+waters, loving rocky ripple-slopes and sheets of foam as a bee loves flowers,
+as a lark loves sunshine and meadows. Among all the mountain birds, none has
+cheered me so much in my lonely wanderings,&mdash;none so unfailingly. For both
+in winter and summer he sings, sweetly, cheerily, independent alike of sunshine
+and of love, requiring no other inspiration than the stream on which he dwells.
+While water sings, so must he, in heat or cold, calm or storm, ever attuning
+his voice in sure accord; low in the drought of summer and the drought of
+winter, but never silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the golden days of Indian summer, after most of the snow has been
+melted, and the mountain streams have become feeble,&mdash;a succession of
+silent pools, linked together by shallow, transparent currents and strips of
+silvery lacework,&mdash;then the song of the Ouzel is at its lowest ebb. But as
+soon as the winter clouds have bloomed, and the mountain treasuries are once
+more replenished with snow, the voices of the streams and ouzels increase in
+strength and richness until the flood season of early summer. Then the torrents
+chant their noblest anthems, and then is the flood-time of our songster&rsquo;s
+melody. As for weather, dark days and sun days are the same to him. The voices
+of most song-birds, however joyous, suffer a long winter eclipse; but the Ouzel
+sings on through all the seasons and every kind of storm. Indeed no storm can
+be more violent than those of the waterfalls in the midst of which he delights
+to dwell. However dark and boisterous the weather, snowing, blowing, or cloudy,
+all the same he sings, and with never a note of sadness. No need of spring
+sunshine to thaw <i>his</i> song, for it never freezes. Never shall you hear
+anything wintry from <i>his</i> warm breast; no pinched cheeping, no wavering
+notes between sorrow and joy; his mellow, fluty voice is ever tuned to
+downright gladness, as free from dejection as cock-crowing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is pitiful to see wee frost-pinched sparrows on cold mornings in the
+mountain groves shaking the snow from their feathers, and hopping about as if
+anxious to be cheery, then hastening back to their hidings out of the wind,
+puffing out their breast-feathers over their toes, and subsiding among the
+leaves, cold and breakfastless, while the snow continues to fall, and there is
+no sign of clearing. But the Ouzel never calls forth a single touch of pity;
+not because he is strong to endure, but rather because he seems to live a
+charmed life beyond the reach of every influence that makes endurance
+necessary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One wild winter morning, when Yosemite Valley was swept its length from west to
+east by a cordial snow-storm, I sallied forth to see what I might learn and
+enjoy. A sort of gray, gloaming-like darkness filled the valley, the huge walls
+were out of sight, all ordinary sounds were smothered, and even the loudest
+booming of the falls was at times buried beneath the roar of the heavy-laden
+blast. The loose snow was already over five feet deep on the meadows, making
+extended walks impossible without the aid of snow-shoes. I found no great
+difficulty, however, in making my way to a certain ripple on the river where
+one of my ouzels lived. He was at home, busily gleaning his breakfast among the
+pebbles of a shallow portion of the margin, apparently unaware of anything
+extraordinary in the weather. Presently he flew out to a stone against which
+the icy current was beating, and turning his back to the wind, sang as
+delightfully as a lark in springtime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After spending an hour or two with my favorite, I made my way across the
+valley, boring and wallowing through the drifts, to learn as definitely as
+possible how the other birds were spending their time. The Yosemite birds are
+easily found during the winter because all of them excepting the Ouzel are
+restricted to the sunny north side of the valley, the south side being
+constantly eclipsed by the great frosty shadow of the wall. And because the
+Indian Cañon groves, from their peculiar exposure, are the warmest, the birds
+congregate there, more especially in severe weather.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I found most of the robins cowering on the lee side of the larger branches
+where the snow could not fall upon them, while two or three of the more
+enterprising were making desperate efforts to reach the mistletoe berries by
+clinging nervously to the under side of the snow-crowned masses, back downward,
+like woodpeckers. Every now and then they would dislodge some of the loose
+fringes of the snow-crown, which would come sifting down on them and send them
+screaming back to camp, where they would subside among their companions with a
+shiver, muttering in low, querulous chatter like hungry children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of the sparrows were busy at the feet of the larger trees gleaning seeds
+and benumbed insects, joined now and then by a robin weary of his unsuccessful
+attempts upon the snow-covered berries. The brave woodpeckers were clinging to
+the snowless sides of the larger boles and overarching branches of the camp
+trees, making short nights from side to side of the grove, pecking now and then
+at the acorns they had stored in the bark, and chattering aimlessly as if
+unable to keep still, yet evidently putting in the time in a very dull way,
+like storm-bound travelers at a country tavern. The hardy nut-hatches were
+threading the open furrows of the trunks in their usual industrious manner, and
+uttering their quaint notes, evidently less distressed than their neighbors.
+The Steller jays were of course making more noisy stir than all the other birds
+combined; ever coming and going with loud bluster, screaming as if each had a
+lump of melting sludge in his throat, and taking good care to improve the
+favorable opportunity afforded by the storm to steal from the acorn stores of
+the woodpeckers. I also noticed one solitary gray eagle braving the storm on
+the top of a tall pine-stump just outside the main grove. He was standing bolt
+upright with his back to the wind, a tuft of snow piled on his square
+shoulders, a monument of passive endurance. Thus every snow-bound bird seemed
+more or less uncomfortable if not in positive distress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The storm was reflected in every gesture, and not one cheerful note, not to say
+song, came from a single bill; their cowering, joyless endurance offering a
+striking contrast to the spontaneous, irrepressible gladness of the Ouzel, who
+could no more help exhaling sweet song than a rose sweet fragrance. He
+<i>must</i> sing though the heavens fall. I remember noticing the distress of a
+pair of robins during the violent earthquake of the year 1872, when the pines
+of the Valley, with strange movements, flapped and waved their branches, and
+beetling rock-brows came thundering down to the meadows in tremendous
+avalanches. It did not occur to me in the midst of the excitement of other
+observations to look for the ouzels, but I doubt not they were singing straight
+on through it all, regarding the terrible rock-thunder as fearlessly as they do
+the booming of the waterfalls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What may be regarded as the separate songs of the Ouzel are exceedingly
+difficult of description, because they are so variable and at the same time so
+confluent. Though I have been acquainted with my favorite ten years, and during
+most of this time have heard him sing nearly every day, I still detect notes
+and strains that seem new to me. Nearly all of his music is sweet and tender,
+lapsing from his round breast like water over the smooth lip of a pool, then
+breaking farther on into a sparkling foam of melodious notes, which, glow with
+subdued enthusiasm, yet without expressing much of the strong, gushing ecstasy
+of the bobolink or skylark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The more striking strains are perfect arabesques of melody, composed of a few
+full, round, mellow notes, embroidered with delicate trills which fade and melt
+in long slender cadences. In a general way his music is that of the streams
+refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of the falls are in it, the
+trills of rapids, the gurgling of margin eddies, the low whispering of level
+reaches, and the sweet tinkle of separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses
+and falling into tranquil pools.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Ouzel never sings in chorus with other birds, nor with his kind, but only
+with the streams. And like flowers that bloom beneath the surface of the
+ground, some of our favorite&rsquo;s best song-blossoms never rise above the
+surface of the heavier music of the water. I have often observed him singing in
+the midst of beaten spray, his music completely buried beneath the
+water&rsquo;s roar; yet I knew he was surely singing by his gestures and the
+movements of his bill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His food, as far as I have noticed, consists of all kinds of water insects,
+which in summer are chiefly procured along shallow margins. Here he wades about
+ducking his head under water and deftly turning over pebbles and fallen leaves
+with his bill, seldom choosing to go into deep water where he has to use his
+wings in diving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seems to be especially fond of the larvae; of mosquitos, found in abundance
+attached to the bottom of smooth rock channels where the current is shallow.
+When feeding in such places he wades up-stream, and often while his head is
+under water the swift current is deflected upward along the glossy curves of
+his neck and shoulders, in the form of a clear, crystalline shell, which fairly
+incloses him like a bell-glass, the shell being broken and re-formed as he
+lifts and dips his head; while ever and anon he sidles out to where the too
+powerful current carries him off his feet; then he dexterously rises on the
+wing and goes gleaning again in shallower places.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But during the winter, when the stream-banks are embossed in snow, and the
+streams themselves are chilled nearly to the freezing-point, so that the snow
+falling into them in stormy weather is not wholly dissolved, but forms a thin,
+blue sludge, thus rendering the current opaque&mdash;then he seeks the deeper
+portions of the main rivers, where he may dive to clear water beneath the
+sludge. Or he repairs to some open lake or mill-pond, at the bottom of which he
+feeds in safety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When thus compelled to betake himself to a lake, he does not plunge into it at
+once like a duck, but always alights in the first place upon some rock or
+fallen pine along the shore. Then flying out thirty or forty yards, more or
+less, according to the character of the bottom, he alights with a dainty glint
+on the surface, swims about, looks down, finally makes up his mind, and
+disappears with a sharp stroke of his wings. After feeding for two or three
+minutes he suddenly reappears, showers the water from his wings with one
+vigorous shake, and rises abruptly into the air as if pushed up from beneath,
+comes back to his perch, sings a few minutes, and goes out to dive again; thus
+coming and going, singing and diving at the same place for hours.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus51"></a>
+<img src="images/img51.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL" />
+<p class="caption">ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Ouzel is usually found singly; rarely in pairs, excepting during the
+breeding season, and <i>very</i> rarely in threes or fours. I once observed
+three thus spending a winter morning in company, upon a small glacier lake, on
+the Upper Merced, about 7500 feet above the level of the sea. A storm had
+occurred during the night, but the morning sun shone unclouded, and the shadowy
+lake, gleaming darkly in its setting of fresh snow, lay smooth and motionless
+as a mirror. My camp chanced to be within a few feet of the water&rsquo;s edge,
+opposite a fallen pine, some of the branches of which leaned out over the lake.
+Here my three dearly welcome visitors took up their station, and at once began
+to embroider the frosty air with their delicious melody, doubly delightful to
+me that particular morning, as I had been somewhat apprehensive of danger in
+breaking my way down through the snow-choked cañons to the lowlands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The portion of the lake bottom selected for a feeding-ground lies at a depth of
+fifteen or twenty feet below the surface, and is covered with a short growth of
+algae and other aquatic plants,&mdash;facts I had previously determined while
+sailing over it on a raft. After alighting on the glassy surface, they
+occasionally indulged in a little play, chasing one another round about in
+small circles; then all three would suddenly dive together, and then come
+ashore and sing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Ouzel seldom swims more than a few yards on the surface, for, not being
+web-footed, he makes rather slow progress, but by means of his strong, crisp
+wings he swims, or rather flies, with celerity under the surface, often to
+considerable distances. But it is in withstanding the force of heavy rapids
+that his strength of wing in this respect is most strikingly manifested. The
+following may be regarded as a fair illustration of his power of sub-aquatic
+flight. One stormy morning in winter when the Merced River was blue and green
+with unmelted snow, I observed one of my ouzels perched on a snag out in the
+midst of a swift-rushing rapid, singing cheerily, as if everything was just to
+his mind; and while I stood on the bank admiring him, he suddenly plunged into
+the sludgy current, leaving his song abruptly broken off. After feeding a
+minute or two at the bottom, and when one would suppose that he must inevitably
+be swept far down-stream, he emerged just where he went down, alighted on the
+same snag, showered the water-beads from his feathers, and continued his
+unfinished song, seemingly in tranquil ease as if it had suffered no
+interruption.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:40%;">
+<a name="illus52"></a>
+<img src="images/img52.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT" />
+<p class="caption">OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Ouzel alone of all birds dares to enter a white torrent. And though
+strictly terrestrial in structure, no other is so inseparably related to water,
+not even the duck, or the bold ocean albatross, or the stormy-petrel. For ducks
+go ashore as soon as they finish feeding in undisturbed places, and very often
+make long flights over land from lake to lake or field to field. The same is
+true of most other aquatic birds. But the Ouzel, born on the brink of a stream,
+or on a snag or boulder in the midst of it, seldom leaves it for a single
+moment. For, notwithstanding he is often on the wing, he never flies overland,
+but whirs with, rapid, quail-like beat above the stream, tracing all its
+windings. Even when the stream is quite small, say from five to ten feet wide,
+he seldom shortens his flight by crossing a bend, however abrupt it may be; and
+even when disturbed by meeting some one on the bank, he prefers to fly over
+one&rsquo;s head, to dodging out over the ground. When, therefore, his flight
+along a crooked stream is viewed endwise, it appears most strikingly
+wavered&mdash;a description on the air of every curve with lightning-like
+rapidity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The vertical curves and angles of the most precipitous torrents he traces with
+the same rigid fidelity, swooping down the inclines of cascades, dropping sheer
+over dizzy falls amid the spray, and ascending with the same fearlessness and
+ease, seldom seeking to lessen the steepness of the acclivity by beginning to
+ascend before reaching the base of the fall. No matter though it may be several
+hundred feet in height he holds straight on, as if about to dash headlong into
+the throng of booming rockets, then darts abruptly upward, and, after alighting
+at the top of the precipice to rest a moment, proceeds to feed and sing. His
+flight is solid and impetuous, without any intermission of
+wing-beats,&mdash;one homogeneous buzz like that of a laden bee on its way
+home. And while thus buzzing freely from fall to fall, he is frequently heard
+giving utterance to a long outdrawn train of unmodulated notes, in no way
+connected with his song, but corresponding closely with his flight in sustained
+vigor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Were the flights of all the ouzels in the Sierra traced on a chart, they would
+indicate the direction of the flow of the entire system of ancient glaciers,
+from about the period of the breaking up of the ice-sheet until near the close
+of the glacial winter; because the streams which the ouzels so rigidly follow
+are, with the unimportant exceptions of a few side tributaries, all flowing in
+channels eroded for them out of the solid flank of the range by the vanished
+glaciers,&mdash;the streams tracing the ancient glaciers, the ouzels tracing
+the streams. Nor do we find so complete compliance to glacial conditions in the
+life of any other mountain bird, or animal of any kind. Bears frequently accept
+the pathways laid down by glaciers as the easiest to travel; but they often
+leave them and cross over from cañon to cañon. So also, most of the birds trace
+the moraines to some extent, because the forests are growing on them. But they
+wander far, crossing the cañons from grove to grove, and draw exceedingly
+angular and complicated courses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Ouzel&rsquo;s nest is one of the most extraordinary pieces of bird
+architecture I ever saw, odd and novel in design, perfectly fresh and
+beautiful, and in every way worthy of the genius of the little builder. It is
+about a foot in diameter, round and bossy in outline, with a neatly arched
+opening near the bottom, somewhat like an old-fashioned brick oven, or
+Hottentot&rsquo;s hut. It is built almost exclusively of green and yellow
+mosses, chiefly the beautiful fronded hypnum that covers the rocks and old
+drift-logs in the vicinity of waterfalls. These are deftly interwoven, and
+felted together into a charming little hut; and so situated that many of the
+outer mosses continue to flourish as if they had not been plucked. A few fine,
+silky-stemmed grasses are occasionally found interwoven with the mosses, but,
+with the exception of a thin layer lining the floor, their presence seems
+accidental, as they are of a species found growing with the mosses and are
+probably plucked with them. The site chosen for this curious mansion is usually
+some little rock-shelf within reach of the lighter particles of the spray of a
+waterfall, so that its walls are kept green and growing, at least during the
+time of high water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No harsh lines are presented by any portion of the nest as seen in place, but
+when removed from its shelf, the back and bottom, and sometimes a portion of
+the top, is found quite sharply angular, because it is made to conform to the
+surface of the rock upon which and against which it is built, the little
+architect always taking advantage of slight crevices and protuberances that may
+chance to offer, to render his structure stable by means of a kind of gripping
+and dovetailing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In choosing a building-spot, concealment does not seem to be taken into
+consideration; yet notwithstanding the nest is large and guilelessly exposed to
+view, it is far from being easily detected, chiefly because it swells forward
+like any other bulging moss-cushion growing naturally in such situations. This
+is more especially the case where the nest is kept fresh by being well
+sprinkled. Sometimes these romantic little huts have their beauty enhanced by
+rock-ferns and grasses that spring up around the mossy walls, or in front of
+the door-sill, dripping with crystal beads.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Furthermore, at certain hours of the day, when the sunshine is poured down at
+the required angle, the whole mass of the spray enveloping the fairy
+establishment is brilliantly irised; and it is through so glorious a rainbow
+atmosphere as this that some of our blessed ouzels obtain their first peep at
+the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ouzels seem so completely part and parcel of the streams they inhabit, they
+scarce suggest any other origin than the streams themselves; and one might
+almost be pardoned in fancying they come direct from the living waters, like
+flowers from the ground. At least, from whatever cause, it never occurred to me
+to look for their nests until more than a year after I had made the
+acquaintance of the birds themselves, although I found one the very day on
+which I began the search. In making my way from Yosemite to the glaciers at the
+heads of the Merced and Tuolumne rivers, I camped in a particularly wild and
+romantic portion of the Nevada cañon where in previous excursions I had never
+failed to enjoy the company of my favorites, who were attracted here, no doubt,
+by the safe nesting-places in the shelving rocks, and by the abundance of food
+and falling water. The river, for miles above and below, consists of a
+succession of small falls from ten to sixty feet in height, connected by flat,
+plume-like cascades that go flashing from fall to fall, free and almost
+channelless, over waving folds of glacier-polished granite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the south side of one of the falls, that portion of the precipice which is
+bathed by the spray presents a series of little shelves and tablets caused by
+the development of planes of cleavage in the granite, and by the consequent
+fall of masses through the action of the water. &ldquo;Now here,&rdquo; said I,
+&ldquo;of all places, is the most charming spot for an Ouzel&rsquo;s
+nest.&rdquo; Then carefully scanning the fretted face of the precipice through
+the spray, I at length noticed a yellowish moss-cushion, growing on the edge of
+a level tablet within five or six feet of the outer folds of the fall. But
+apart from the fact of its being situated where one acquainted with the lives
+of ouzels would fancy an Ouzel&rsquo;s nest ought to be, there was nothing in
+its appearance visible at first sight, to distinguish it from other bosses of
+rock-moss similarly situated with reference to perennial spray; and it was not
+until I had scrutinized it again and again, and had removed my shoes and
+stockings and crept along the face of the rock within eight or ten feet of it,
+that I could decide certainly whether it was a nest or a natural growth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these moss huts three or four eggs are laid, white like foam-bubbles; and
+well may the little birds hatched from them sing water songs, for they hear
+them all their lives, and even before they are born.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have often observed the young just out of the nest making their odd gestures,
+and seeming in every way as much at home as their experienced parents, like
+young bees on their first excursions to the flower fields. No amount of
+familiarity with people and their ways seems to change them in the least. To
+all appearance their behavior is just the same on seeing a man for the first
+time, as when they have seen him frequently.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus53"></a>
+<img src="images/img53.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="THE OUZEL AT HOME" />
+<p class="caption">THE OUZEL AT HOME.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+On the lower reaches of the rivers where mills are built, they sing on through
+the din of the machinery, and all the noisy confusion of dogs, cattle, and
+workmen. On one occasion, while a wood-chopper was at work on the river-bank, I
+observed one cheerily singing within reach of the flying chips. Nor does any
+kind of unwonted disturbance put him in bad humor, or frighten him out of calm
+self-possession. In passing through a narrow gorge, I once drove one ahead of
+me from rapid to rapid, disturbing him four times in quick succession where he
+could not very well fly past me on account of the narrowness of the channel.
+Most birds under similar circumstances fancy themselves pursued, and become
+suspiciously uneasy; but, instead of growing nervous about it, he made his
+usual dippings, and sang one of his most tranquil strains. When observed within
+a few yards their eyes are seen to express remarkable gentleness and
+intelligence; but they seldom allow so near a view unless one wears clothing of
+about the same color as the rocks and trees, and knows how to sit still. On one
+occasion, while rambling along the shore of a mountain lake, where the birds,
+at least those born that season, had never seen a man, I sat down to rest on a
+large stone close to the water&rsquo;s edge, upon which it seemed the ouzels
+and sandpipers were in the habit of alighting when they came to feed on that
+part of the shore, and some of the other birds also, when they came down to
+wash or drink. In a few minutes, along came a whirring Ouzel and alighted on
+the stone beside me, within reach of my hand. Then suddenly observing me, he
+stooped nervously as if about to fly on the instant, but as I remained as
+motionless as the stone, he gained confidence, and looked me steadily in the
+face for about a minute, then flew quietly to the outlet and began to sing.
+Next came a sandpiper and gazed at me with much the same guileless expression
+of eye as the Ouzel. Lastly, down with a swoop came a Steller&rsquo;s jay out
+of a fir-tree, probably with the intention of moistening his noisy throat. But
+instead of sitting confidingly as my other visitors had done, he rushed off at
+once, nearly tumbling heels over head into the lake in his suspicious
+confusion, and with loud screams roused the neighborhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Love for song-birds, with their sweet human voices, appears to be more common
+and unfailing than love for flowers. Every one loves flowers to some extent, at
+least in life&rsquo;s fresh morning, attracted by them as instinctively as
+humming-birds and bees. Even the young Digger Indians have sufficient love for
+the brightest of those found growing on the mountains to gather them and braid
+them, as decorations for the hair. And I was glad to discover, through the few
+Indians that could be induced to talk on the subject, that they have names for
+the wild rose and the lily, and other conspicuous flowers, whether available as
+food or otherwise. Most men, however, whether savage or civilized, become
+apathetic toward all plants that have no other apparent use than the use of
+beauty. But fortunately one&rsquo;s first instinctive love of song-birds is
+never wholly obliterated, no matter what the influences upon our lives may be.
+I have often been delighted to see a pure, spiritual glow come into the
+countenances of hard business-men and old miners, when a song-bird chanced to
+alight near them. Nevertheless, the little mouthful of meat that swells out the
+breasts of some song-birds is too often the cause of their death. Larks and
+robins in particular are brought to market in hundreds. But fortunately the
+Ouzel has no enemy so eager to eat his little body as to follow him into the
+mountain solitudes. I never knew him to be chased even by hawks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An acquaintance of mine, a sort of foot-hill mountaineer, had a pet cat, a
+great, dozy, overgrown creature, about as broad-shouldered as a lynx. During
+the winter, while the snow lay deep, the mountaineer sat in his lonely cabin
+among the pines smoking his pipe and wearing the dull time away. Tom was his
+sole companion, sharing his bed, and sitting beside him on a stool with much
+the same drowsy expression of eye as his master. The good-natured bachelor was
+content with his hard fare of soda-bread and bacon, but Tom, the only creature
+in the world acknowledging dependence on him, must needs be provided with fresh
+meat. Accordingly he bestirred himself to contrive squirrel-traps, and waded
+the snowy woods with his gun, making sad havoc among the few winter birds,
+sparing neither robin, sparrow, nor tiny nuthatch, and the pleasure of seeing
+Tom eat and grow fat was his great reward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One cold afternoon, while hunting along the river-bank, he noticed a
+plain-feathered little bird skipping about in the shallows, and immediately
+raised his gun. But just then the confiding songster began to sing, and after
+listening to his summery melody the charmed hunter turned away, saying,
+&ldquo;Bless your little heart, I can&rsquo;t shoot you, not even for
+Tom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus54"></a>
+<img src="images/img54.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND
+AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CAÑON" />
+<p class="caption">YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CAÑON.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Even so far north as icy Alaska, I have found my glad singer. When I was
+exploring the glaciers between Mount Fairweather and the Stikeen River, one
+cold day in November, after trying in vain to force a way through the
+innumerable icebergs of Sum Dum Bay to the great glaciers at the head of it, I
+was weary and baffled and sat resting in my canoe convinced at last that I
+would have to leave this part of my work for another year. Then I began to plan
+my escape to open water before the young ice which was beginning to form should
+shut me in. While I thus lingered drifting with the bergs, in the midst of
+these gloomy forebodings and all the terrible glacial desolation and grandeur,
+I suddenly heard the well-known whir of an Ouzel&rsquo;s wings, and, looking
+up, saw my little comforter coming straight across the ice from the shore. In a
+second or two he was with me, flying three times round my head with a happy
+salute, as if saying, &ldquo;Cheer up, old friend; you see I&rsquo;m here, and
+all&rsquo;s well.&rdquo; Then he flew back to the shore, alighted on the
+topmost jag of a stranded iceberg, and began to nod and bow as though he were
+on one of his favorite boulders in the midst of a sunny Sierra cascade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The species is distributed all along the mountain-ranges of the Pacific Coast
+from Alaska to Mexico, and east to the Rocky Mountains. Nevertheless, it is as
+yet comparatively little known. Audubon and Wilson did not meet it. Swainson
+was, I believe, the first naturalist to describe a specimen from Mexico.
+Specimens were shortly afterward procured by Drummond near the sources of the
+Athabasca River, between the fifty-fourth and fifty-sixth parallels; and it has
+been collected by nearly all of the numerous exploring expeditions undertaken
+of late through our Western States and Territories; for it never fails to
+engage the attention of naturalists in a very particular manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such, then, is our little cinclus, beloved of every one who is so fortunate as
+to know him. Tracing on strong wing every curve of the most precipitous
+torrents from one extremity of the Sierra to the other; not fearing to follow
+them through their darkest gorges and coldest snow-tunnels; acquainted with
+every waterfall, echoing their divine music; and throughout the whole of their
+beautiful lives interpreting all that we in our unbelief call terrible in the
+utterances of torrents and storms, as only varied expressions of God&rsquo;s
+eternal love.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV<br/>
+THE WILD SHEEP<br/>
+<small>(<i>Ovis montana</i>)</small></h2>
+
+<p>
+The wild sheep ranks highest among the animal mountaineers of the Sierra.
+Possessed of keen sight and scent, and strong limbs, he dwells secure amid the
+loftiest summits, leaping unscathed from crag to crag, up and down the fronts
+of giddy precipices, crossing foaming torrents and slopes of frozen snow,
+exposed to the wildest storms, yet maintaining a brave, warm life, and
+developing from generation to generation in perfect strength and beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nearly all the lofty mountain-chains of the globe are inhabited by wild sheep,
+most of which, on account of the remote and all but inaccessible regions where
+they dwell, are imperfectly known as yet. They are classified by different
+naturalists under from five to ten distinct species or varieties, the best
+known being the burrhel of the Himalaya (<i>Ovis burrhel</i>, Blyth); the
+argali, the large wild sheep of central and northeastern Asia (<i>O. ammon</i>,
+Linn., or <i>Caprovis argali</i>); the Corsican mouflon (<i>O. musimon</i>,
+Pal.); the aoudad of the mountains of northern Africa (<i>Ammotragus
+tragelaphus</i>); and the Rocky Mountain bighorn (<i>O. montana</i>, Cuv.). To
+this last-named species belongs the wild sheep of the Sierra. Its range,
+according to the late Professor Baird of the Smithsonian Institution, extends
+&ldquo;from the region of the upper Missouri and Yellowstone to the Rocky
+Mountains and the high grounds adjacent to them on the eastern slope, and as
+far south as the Rio Grande. Westward it extends to the coast ranges of
+Washington, Oregon, and California, and follows the highlands some distance
+into Mexico.&rdquo;<a href="#linknote-1"
+name="linknoteref-1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> Throughout the vast region bounded on
+the east by the Wahsatch Mountains and on the west by the Sierra there are more
+than a hundred subordinate ranges and mountain groups, trending north and
+south, range beyond range, with summits rising from eight to twelve thousand
+feet above the level of the sea, probably all of which, according to my own
+observations, is, or has been, inhabited by this species.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Compared with the argali, which, considering its size and the vast extent of
+its range, is probably the most important of all the wild sheep, our species is
+about the same size, but the horns are less twisted and less divergent. The
+more important characteristics are, however, essentially the same, some of the
+best naturalists maintaining that the two are only varied forms of one species.
+In accordance with this view, Cuvier conjectures that since central Asia seems
+to be the region where the sheep first appeared, and from which it has been
+distributed, the argali may have been distributed over this continent from Asia
+by crossing Bering Strait on ice. This conjecture is not so ill founded as at
+first sight would appear; for the Strait is only about fifty miles wide, is
+interrupted by three islands, and is jammed with ice nearly every winter.
+Furthermore the argali is abundant on the mountains adjacent to the Strait at
+East Cape, where it is well known to the Tschuckchi hunters and where I have
+seen many of their horns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On account of the extreme variability of the sheep under culture, it is
+generally supposed that the innumerable domestic breeds have all been derived
+from the few wild species; but the whole question is involved in obscurity.
+According to Darwin, sheep have been domesticated from a very ancient period,
+the remains of a small breed, differing from any now known, having been found
+in the famous Swiss lake-dwellings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Compared with the best-known domestic breeds, we find that our wild species is
+much larger, and, instead of an all-wool garment, wears a thick over-coat of
+hair like that of the deer, and an under-covering of fine wool. The hair,
+though rather coarse, is comfortably soft and spongy, and lies smooth, as if
+carefully tended with comb and brush. The predominant color during most of the
+year is brownish-gray, varying to bluish-gray in the autumn; the belly and a
+large, conspicuous patch on the buttocks are white; and the tail, which is very
+short, like that of a deer, is black, with a yellowish border. The wool is
+white, and grows in beautiful spirals down out of sight among the shining hair,
+like delicate climbing vines among stalks of corn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The horns of the male are of immense size, measuring in their greater diameter
+from five to six and a half inches, and from two and a half to three feet in
+length around the curve. They are yellowish-white in color, and ridged
+transversely, like those of the domestic ram. Their cross-section near the base
+is somewhat triangular in outline, and flattened toward the tip. Rising boldly
+from the top of the head, they curve gently backward and outward, then forward
+and outward, until about three fourths of a circle is described, and until the
+flattened, blunt tips are about two feet or two and a half feet apart. Those of
+the female are flattened throughout their entire length, are less curved than
+those of the male, and much smaller, measuring less than a foot along the
+curve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A ram and ewe that I obtained near the Modoc lava-beds, to the northeast of
+Mount Shasta, measured as follows:
+</p>
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-left: 3em; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;">
+
+<tr>
+<td></td><td><i>Ram.</i></td><td></td><td><i>Ewe.</i></td><td></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td></td><td><i>ft.</i></td><td><i>in.</i></td><td><i>ft.</i></td><td><i>in.</i></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Height at shoulders</td><td>3</td><td>6</td><td>3</td><td>0</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Girth around shoulders</td><td>3</td><td>11</td><td>3</td><td>3¾</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Length from nose to root of tail</td><td>5</td><td>10¼</td><td>4</td><td>3½</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Length of ears</td><td>0</td><td>4¾</td><td>0</td><td>5</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Length of tail</td><td>0</td><td>4½</td><td>0</td><td>4½</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Length of horns around curve</td><td>2</td><td>9</td><td>0</td><td>11½</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Distance across from tip to tip of horns</td><td>2</td><td>5½</td><td></td><td></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Circumference of horns at base</td><td>1</td><td>4</td><td>0</td><td>6</td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<p>
+The measurements of a male obtained in the Rocky Mountains by Audubon vary but
+little as compared with the above. The weight of his specimen was 344 pounds,<a
+href="#linknote-2" name="linknoteref-2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> which is, perhaps,
+about an average for full-grown males. The females are about a third lighter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides these differences in size, color, hair, etc., as noted above, we may
+observe that the domestic sheep, in a general way, is expressionless, like a
+dull bundle of something only half alive, while the wild is as elegant and
+graceful as a deer, every movement manifesting admirable strength and
+character. The tame is timid; the wild is bold. The tame is always more or less
+ruffled and dirty; while the wild is as smooth and clean as the flowers of his
+mountain pastures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The earliest mention that I have been able to find of the wild sheep in America
+is by Father Picolo, a Catholic missionary at Monterey, in the year 1797, who,
+after describing it, oddly enough, as &ldquo;a kind of deer with a sheep-like
+head, and about as large as a calf one or two years old,&rdquo; naturally
+hurries on to remark: &ldquo;I have eaten of these beasts; their flesh is very
+tender and delicious.&rdquo; Mackenzie, in his northern travels, heard the
+species spoken of by the Indians as &ldquo;white buffaloes.&rdquo; And Lewis
+and Clark tell us that, in a time of great scarcity on the head waters of the
+Missouri, they saw plenty of wild sheep, but they were &ldquo;too shy to be
+shot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few of the more energetic of the Pah Ute Indians hunt the wild sheep every
+season among the more accessible sections of the High Sierra, in the
+neighborhood of passes, where, from having been pursued, they have become
+extremely wary; but in the rugged wilderness of peaks and cañons, where the
+foaming tributaries of the San Joaquin and King&rsquo;s rivers take their rise,
+they fear no hunter save the wolf, and are more guileless and approachable than
+their tame kindred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While engaged in the work of exploring high regions where they delight to roam
+I have been greatly interested in studying their habits. In the months of
+November and December, and probably during a considerable portion of midwinter,
+they all flock together, male and female, old and young. I once found a
+complete band of this kind numbering upward of fifty, which, on being alarmed,
+went bounding away across a jagged lava-bed at admirable speed, led by a
+majestic old ram, with the lambs safe in the middle of the flock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spring and summer, the full-grown rams form separate bands of from three to
+twenty, and are usually found feeding along the edges of glacier meadows, or
+resting among the castle-like crags of the high summits; and whether quietly
+feeding, or scaling the wild cliffs, their noble forms and the power and beauty
+of their movements never fail to strike the beholder with lively admiration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their resting-places seem to be chosen with reference to sunshine and a wide
+outlook, and most of all to safety. Their feeding-grounds are among the most
+beautiful of the wild gardens, bright with daisies and gentians and mats of
+purple bryanthus, lying hidden away on rocky headlands and cañon sides, where
+sunshine is abundant, or down in the shady glacier valleys, along the banks of
+the streams and lakes, where the plushy sod is greenest. Here they feast all
+summer, the happy wanderers, perhaps relishing the beauty as well as the taste
+of the lovely flora on which they feed.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus55"></a>
+<img src="images/img55.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA" />
+<p class="caption">SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+When the winter storms set in, loading their highland pastures with snow, then,
+like the birds, they gather and go to lower climates, usually descending the
+eastern flank of the range to the rough, volcanic table-lands and treeless
+ranges of the Great Basin adjacent to the Sierra. They never make haste,
+however, and seem to have no dread of storms, many of the strongest only going
+down leisurely to bare, wind-swept ridges, to feed on bushes and dry
+bunch-grass, and then returning up into the snow. Once I was snow-bound on
+Mount Shasta for three days, a little below the timber line. It was a dark and
+stormy time, well calculated to test the skill and endurance of mountaineers.
+The snow-laden gale drove on night and day in hissing, blinding floods, and
+when at length it began to abate, I found that a small band of wild sheep had
+weathered the storm in the lee of a clump of Dwarf Pines a few yards above my
+storm-nest, where the snow was eight or ten feet deep. I was warm back of a
+rock, with blankets, bread, and fire. My brave companions lay in the snow,
+without food, and with only the partial shelter of the short trees, yet they
+made no sign of suffering or faint-heartedness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the months of May and June, the wild sheep bring forth their young in
+solitary and almost inaccessible crags, far above the nesting-rocks of the
+eagle. I have frequently come upon the beds of the ewes and lambs at an
+elevation of from 12,000 to 13,000 feet above sea-level. These beds are simply
+oval-shaped hollows, pawed out among loose, disintegrating rock-chips and sand,
+upon some sunny spot commanding a good outlook, and partially sheltered from
+the winds that sweep those lofty peaks almost without intermission. Such is the
+cradle of the little mountaineer, aloft in the very sky; rocked in storms,
+curtained in clouds, sleeping in thin, icy air; but, wrapped in his hairy coat,
+and nourished by a strong, warm mother, defended from the talons of the eagle
+and the teeth of the sly coyote, the bonny lamb grows apace. He soon learns to
+nibble the tufted rock-grasses and leaves of the white spirsea; his horns begin
+to shoot, and before summer is done he is strong and agile, and goes forth with
+the flock, watched by the same divine love that tends the more helpless human
+lamb in its cradle by the fireside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing is more commonly remarked by noisy, dusty trail-travelers in the Sierra
+than the want of animal life&mdash;no song-birds, no deer, no squirrels, no
+game of any kind, they say. But if such could only go away quietly into the
+wilderness, sauntering afoot and alone with natural deliberation, they would
+soon learn that these mountain mansions are not without inhabitants, many of
+whom, confiding and gentle, would not try to shun their acquaintance.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus56"></a>
+<img src="images/img56.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM (DOMESTIC)" />
+<p class="caption">HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM (DOMESTIC).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In the fall of 1873 I was tracing the South Fork of the San Joaquin up its wild
+cañon to its farthest glacier fountains. It was the season of alpine Indian
+summer. The sun beamed lovingly; the squirrels were nutting in the pine-trees,
+butterflies hovered about the last of the goldenrods, the willow and maple
+thickets were yellow, the meadows brown, and the whole sunny, mellow landscape
+glowed like a countenance in the deepest and sweetest repose. On my way over
+the glacier-polished rocks along the river, I came to an expanded portion of
+the cañon, about two miles long and half a mile wide, which formed a level park
+inclosed with picturesque granite walls like those of Yosemite Valley. Down
+through the middle of it poured the beautiful river shining and spangling in
+the golden light, yellow groves on its banks, and strips of brown meadow; while
+the whole park was astir with wild life, some of which even the noisiest and
+least observing of travelers must have seen had they been with me. Deer, with
+their supple, well-grown fawns, bounded from thicket to thicket as I advanced;
+grouse kept rising from the brown grass with a great whirring of wings, and,
+alighting on the lower branches of the pines and poplars, allowed a near
+approach, as if curious to see me. Farther on, a broad-shouldered wildcat
+showed himself, coming out of a grove, and crossing the river on a flood-jamb
+of logs, halting for a moment to look back. The bird-like tamias frisked about
+my feet everywhere among the pine-needles and seedy grass-tufts; cranes waded
+the shallows of the river-bends, the kingfisher rattled from perch to perch,
+and the blessed ouzel sang amid the spray of every cascade. Where may lonely
+wanderer find a more interesting family of mountain-dwellers, earth-born
+companions and fellow-mortals? It was afternoon when I joined them, and the
+glorious landscape began to fade in the gloaming before I awoke from their
+enchantment. Then I sought a camp-ground on the river-bank, made a cupful of
+tea, and lay down to sleep on a smooth place among the yellow leaves of an
+aspen grove. Next day I discovered yet grander landscapes and grander life.
+Following the river over huge, swelling rock-bosses through a majestic cañon,
+and past innumerable cascades, the scenery in general became gradually wilder
+and more alpine. The Sugar Pine and Silver Firs gave place to the hardier Cedar
+and Hemlock Spruce. The cañon walls became more rugged and bare, and gentians
+and arctic daisies became more abundant in the gardens and strips of meadow
+along the streams. Toward the middle of the afternoon I came to another valley,
+strikingly wild and original in all its features, and perhaps never before
+touched by human foot. As regards area of level bottom-land, it is one of the
+very smallest of the Yosemite type, but its walls are sublime, rising to a
+height of from 2000 to 4000 feet above the river. At the head of the valley the
+main cañon forks, as is found to be the case in all yosemites. The formation of
+this one is due chiefly to the action of two great glaciers, whose fountains
+lay to the eastward, on the flanks of Mounts Humphrey and Emerson and a cluster
+of nameless peaks farther south.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus57"></a>
+<img src="images/img57.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP" />
+<p class="caption">HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The gray, boulder-chafed river was singing loudly through the valley, but above
+its massy roar I heard the booming of a waterfall, which drew me eagerly on;
+and just as I emerged from the tangled groves and brier-thickets at the head of
+the valley, the main fork of the river came in sight, falling fresh from its
+glacier fountains in a snowy cascade, between granite walls 2000 feet high. The
+steep incline down which the glad waters thundered seemed to bar all farther
+progress. It was not long, however, before I discovered a crooked seam in the
+rock, by which I was enabled to climb to the edge of a terrace that crosses the
+cañon, and divides the cataract nearly in the middle. Here I sat down to take
+breath and make some entries in my note-book, taking advantage, at the same
+time, of my elevated position above the trees to gaze back over the valley into
+the heart of the noble landscape, little knowing the while what neighbors were
+near.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After spending a few minutes in this way, I chanced to look across the fall,
+and there stood three sheep quietly observing me. Never did the sudden
+appearance of a mountain, or fall, or human friend more forcibly seize and
+rivet my attention. Anxiety to observe accurately held me perfectly still.
+Eagerly I marked the flowing undulations of their firm, braided muscles, their
+strong legs, ears, eyes, heads, their graceful rounded necks, the color of
+their hair, and the bold, upsweeping curves of their noble horns. When they
+moved I watched every gesture, while they, in no wise disconcerted either by my
+attention or by the tumultuous roar of the water, advanced deliberately
+alongside the rapids, between the two divisions of the cataract, turning now
+and then to look at me. Presently they came to a steep, ice-burnished
+acclivity, which they ascended by a succession of quick, short, stiff-legged
+leaps, reaching the top without a struggle. This was the most startling feat of
+mountaineering I had ever witnessed, and, considering only the mechanics of the
+thing, my astonishment could hardly have been greater had they displayed wings
+and taken to flight. &ldquo;Surefooted&rdquo; mules on such ground would have
+fallen and rolled like loosened boulders. Many a time, where the slopes are far
+lower, I have been compelled to take off my shoes and stockings, tie them to my
+belt, and creep barefooted, with the utmost caution. No wonder then, that I
+watched the progress of these animal mountaineers with keen sympathy, and
+exulted in the boundless sufficiency of wild nature displayed in their
+invention, construction, and keeping. A few minutes later I caught sight of a
+dozen more in one band, near the foot of the upper fall. They were standing on
+the same side of the river with me, only twenty-five or thirty yards away,
+looking as unworn and perfect as if created on the spot. It appeared by their
+tracks, which I had seen in the Little Yosemite, and by their present position,
+that when I came up the cañon they were all feeding together down in the
+valley, and in their haste to reach high ground, where they could look about
+them to ascertain the nature of the strange disturbance, they were divided,
+three ascending on one side the river, the rest on the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The main band, headed by an experienced chief, now began to cross the wild
+rapids between the two divisions of the cascade. This was another exciting
+feat; for, among all the varied experiences of mountaineers, the crossing of
+boisterous, rock-dashed torrents is found to be one of the most trying to the
+nerves. Yet these fine fellows walked fearlessly to the brink, and jumped from
+boulder to boulder, holding themselves in easy poise above the whirling,
+confusing current, as if they were doing nothing extraordinary.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus58"></a>
+<img src="images/img58.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="CROSSING A CAÑON STREAM" />
+<p class="caption">CROSSING A CAÑON STREAM.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In the immediate foreground of this rare picture there was a fold of
+ice-burnished granite, traversed by a few bold lines in which rock-ferns and
+tufts of bryanthus were growing, the gray cañon walls on the sides, nobly
+sculptured and adorned with brown cedars and pines; lofty peaks in the
+distance, and in the middle ground the snowy fall, the voice and soul of the
+landscape; fringing bushes beating time to its thunder-tones, the brave sheep
+in front of it, their gray forms slightly obscured in the spray, yet standing
+out in good, heavy relief against the close white water, with their huge horns
+rising like the upturned roots of dead pine-trees, while the evening sunbeams
+streaming up the cañon colored all the picture a rosy purple and made it
+glorious. After crossing the river, the dauntless climbers, led by their chief,
+at once began to scale the cañon wall, turning now right, now left, in long,
+single file, keeping well apart out of one another&rsquo;s way, and leaping in
+regular succession from crag to crag, now ascending slippery dome-curves, now
+walking leisurely along the edges of precipices, stopping at times to gaze down
+at me from some flat-topped rock, with heads held aslant, as if curious to
+learn what I thought about it, or whether I was likely to follow them. After
+reaching the top of the wall, which, at this place, is somewhere between 1500
+and 2000 feet high, they were still visible against the sky as they lingered,
+looking down in groups of twos or threes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Throughout the entire ascent they did not make a single awkward step, or an
+unsuccessful effort of any kind. I have frequently seen tame sheep in mountains
+jump upon a sloping rock-surface, hold on tremulously a few seconds, and fall
+back baffled and irresolute. But in the most trying situations, where the
+slightest want or inaccuracy would have been fatal, these always seemed to move
+in comfortable reliance on their strength and skill, the limits of which they
+never appeared to know. Moreover, each one of the flock, while following the
+guidance of the most experienced, yet climbed with intelligent independence as
+a perfect individual, capable of separate existence whenever it should wish or
+be compelled to withdraw from the little clan. The domestic sheep, on the
+contrary, is only a fraction of an animal, a whole flock being required to form
+an individual, just as numerous flowerets are required to make one complete
+sunflower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those shepherds who, in summer, drive their flocks to the mountain pastures,
+and, while watching them night and day, have seen them frightened by bears and
+storms, and scattered like wind-driven chaff, will, in some measure, be able to
+appreciate the self-reliance and strength and noble individuality of
+Nature&rsquo;s sheep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like the Alp-climbing ibex of Europe, our mountaineer is said to plunge
+headlong down the faces of sheer precipices, and alight on his big horns. I
+know only two hunters who claim to have actually witnessed this feat; I never
+was so fortunate. They describe the act as a diving head-foremost. The horns
+are so large at the base that they cover the upper portion of the head down
+nearly to a level with the eyes, and the skull is exceedingly strong. I struck
+an old, bleached specimen on Mount Ritter a dozen blows with my ice-ax without
+breaking it. Such skulls would not fracture very readily by the wildest
+rock-diving, but other bones could hardly be expected to hold together in such
+a performance; and the mechanical difficulties in the way of controlling their
+movements, after striking upon an irregular surface, are, in themselves,
+sufficient to show this boulder-like method of progression to be impossible,
+even in the absence of all other evidence on the subject; moreover, the ewes
+follow wherever the rams may lead, although their horns are mere spikes. I have
+found many pairs of the horns of the old rams considerably battered, doubtless
+a result of fighting. I was particularly interested in the question, after
+witnessing the performances of this San Joaquin band upon the glaciated rocks
+at the foot of the falls; and as soon as I procured specimens and examined
+their feet, all the mystery disappeared. The secret, considered in connection
+with exceptionally strong muscles, is simply this: the wide posterior portion
+of the bottom of the foot, instead of wearing down and becoming flat and hard,
+like the feet of tame sheep and horses, bulges out in a soft, rubber-like pad
+or cushion, which not only grips and holds well on smooth rocks, but fits into
+small cavities, and down upon or against slight protuberances. Even the hardest
+portions of the edge of the hoof are comparatively soft and elastic;
+furthermore, the toes admit of an extraordinary amount of both lateral and
+vertical movement, allowing the foot to accommodate itself still more perfectly
+to the irregularities of rock surfaces, while at the same time increasing the
+gripping power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the base of Sheep Rock, one of the winter strongholds of the Shasta flocks,
+there lives a stock-raiser who has had the advantage of observing the movements
+of wild sheep every winter; and, in the course of a conversation with him on
+the subject of their diving habits, he pointed to the front of a lava headland
+about 150 feet high, which is only eight or ten degrees out of the
+perpendicular. &ldquo;There,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I followed a band of them
+fellows to the back of that rock yonder, and expected to capture them all, for
+I thought I had a dead thing on them. I got behind them on a narrow bench that
+runs along the face of the wall near the top and comes to an end where they
+couldn&rsquo;t get away without falling and being killed; but they jumped off,
+and landed all right, as if that were the regular thing with them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;jumped 150 feet perpendicular! Did you see
+them do it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t see them going down, for I
+was behind them; but I saw them go off over the brink, and then I went below
+and found their tracks where they struck on the loose rubbish at the bottom.
+They just <i>sailed right off</i>, and landed on their feet right side up. That
+is the kind of animal <i>they</i> is&mdash;beats anything else that goes on
+four legs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:30%;">
+<a name="illus59"></a>
+<img src="images/img59.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE" />
+<p class="caption">WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+On another occasion, a flock that was pursued by hunters retreated to another
+portion of this same cliff where it is still higher, and, on being followed,
+they were seen jumping down in perfect order, one behind another, by two men
+who happened to be chopping where they had a fair view of them and could watch
+their progress from top to bottom of the precipice. Both ewes and rams made the
+frightful descent without evincing any extraordinary concern, hugging the rock
+closely, and controlling the velocity of their half falling, half leaping
+movements by striking at short intervals and holding back with their cushioned,
+rubber feet upon small ledges and roughened inclines until near the bottom,
+when they &ldquo;sailed off&rdquo; into the free air and alighted on their
+feet, but with their bodies so nearly in a vertical position that they appeared
+to be diving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It appears, therefore, that the methods of this wild mountaineering become
+clearly comprehensible as soon as we make ourselves acquainted with the rocks,
+and the kind of feet and muscles brought to bear upon them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Modoc and Pah Ute Indians are, or rather have been, the most successful
+hunters of the wild sheep in the regions that have come under my own
+observation. I have seen large numbers of heads and horns in the caves of Mount
+Shasta and the Modoc lava-beds, where the Indians had been feasting in stormy
+weather; also in the cañons of the Sierra opposite Owen&rsquo;s Valley; while
+the heavy obsidian arrow-heads found on some of the highest peaks show that
+this warfare has long been going on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the more accessible ranges that stretch across the desert regions of western
+Utah and Nevada, considerable numbers of Indians used to hunt in company like
+packs of wolves, and being perfectly acquainted with the topography of their
+hunting-grounds, and with the habits and instincts of the game, they were
+pretty successful. On the tops of nearly every one of the Nevada mountains that
+I have visited, I found small, nest-like inclosures built of stones, in which,
+as I afterward learned, one or more Indians would lie in wait while their
+companions scoured the ridges below, knowing that the alarmed sheep would
+surely run to the summit, and when they could be made to approach with the wind
+they were shot at short range.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus60"></a>
+<img src="images/img60.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP" />
+<p class="caption">INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Still larger bands of Indians used to make extensive hunts upon some dominant
+mountain much frequented by the sheep, such as Mount Grant on the Wassuck Range
+to the west of Walker Lake. On some particular spot, favorably situated with
+reference to the well-known trails of the sheep, they built a high-walled
+corral, with long guiding wings diverging from the gateway; and into this
+inclosure they sometimes succeeded in driving the noble game. Great numbers of
+Indians were of course required, more, indeed, than they could usually muster,
+counting in squaws, children, and all; they were compelled, therefore, to build
+rows of dummy hunters out of stones, along the ridge-tops which they wished to
+prevent the sheep from crossing. And, without discrediting the sagacity of the
+game, these dummies were found effective; for, with a few live Indians moving
+about excitedly among them, they could hardly be distinguished at a little
+distance from men, by any one not in the secret. The whole ridge-top then
+seemed to be alive with hunters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The only animal that may fairly be regarded as a companion or rival of the
+sheep is the so-called Rocky Mountain goat (<i>Aplocerus montana</i>, Rich.),
+which, as its name indicates, is more antelope than goat. He, too, is a brave
+and hardy climber, fearlessly crossing the wildest summits, and braving the
+severest storms, but he is shaggy, short-legged, and much less dignified in
+demeanor than the sheep. His jet-black horns are only about five or six inches
+in length, and the long, white hair with which he is covered obscures the
+expression of his limbs. I have never yet seen a single specimen in the Sierra,
+though possibly a few flocks may have lived on Mount Shasta a comparatively
+short time ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ranges of these two mountaineers are pretty distinct, and they see but
+little of each other; the sheep being restricted mostly to the dry, inland
+mountains; the goat or chamois to the wet, snowy glacier-laden mountains of the
+northwest coast of the continent in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and
+Alaska. Probably more than 200 dwell on the icy, volcanic cone of Mount
+Rainier; and while I was exploring the glaciers of Alaska I saw flocks of these
+admirable mountaineers nearly every day, and often followed their trails
+through the mazes of bewildering crevasses, in which they are excellent guides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three species of deer are found in California,&mdash;the black-tailed,
+white-tailed, and mule deer. The first mentioned (<i>Cervus Columbianus</i>) is
+by far the most abundant, and occasionally meets the sheep during the summer on
+high glacier meadows, and along the edge of the timber line; but being a forest
+animal, seeking shelter and rearing its young in dense thickets, it seldom
+visits the wild sheep in its higher homes. The antelope, though not a
+mountaineer, is occasionally met in winter by the sheep while feeding along the
+edges of the sage-plains and bare volcanic hills to the east of the Sierra. So
+also is the mule deer, which is almost restricted in its range to this eastern
+region. The white-tailed species belongs to the coast ranges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps no wild animal in the world is without enemies, but highlanders, as a
+class, have fewer than lowlanders. The wily panther, slipping and crouching
+among long grass and bushes, pounces upon the antelope and deer, but seldom
+crosses the bald, craggy thresholds of the sheep. Neither can the bears be
+regarded as enemies; for, though they seek to vary their every-day diet of nuts
+and berries by an occasional meal of mutton, they prefer to hunt tame and
+helpless flocks. Eagles and coyotes, no doubt, capture an unprotected lamb at
+times, or some unfortunate beset in deep, soft snow, but these cases are little
+more than accidents. So, also, a few perish in long-continued snow-storms,
+though, in all my mountaineering, I have not found more than five or six that
+seemed to have met their fate in this way. A little band of three were
+discovered snow-bound in Bloody Canon a few years ago, and were killed with an
+ax by mountaineers, who chanced to be crossing the range in winter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Man is the most dangerous enemy of all, but even from him our brave
+mountain-dweller has little to fear in the remote solitudes of the High Sierra.
+The golden plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin were lately thronged with
+bands of elk and antelope, but, being fertile and accessible, they were
+required for human pastures. So, also, are many of the feeding-grounds of the
+deer&mdash;hill, valley, forest, and meadow&mdash;but it will be long before
+man will care to take the highland castles of the sheep. And when we consider
+here how rapidly entire species of noble animals, such as the elk, moose, and
+buffalo, are being pushed to the very verge of extinction, all lovers of
+wildness will rejoice with me in the rocky security of <i>Ovis montana</i>, the
+bravest of all the Sierra mountaineers.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="linknote-1" id="linknote-1"></a> <a href="#linknoteref-1">[1]</a> 
+Pacific Railroad Survey, Vol. VIII, page 678.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="linknote-2" id="linknote-2"></a> <a href="#linknoteref-2">[2]</a> 
+Audubon and Bachman&rsquo;s &ldquo;Quadrupeds of North America.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV<br/>
+IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS</h2>
+
+<p>
+Murphy&rsquo;s camp is a curious old mining-town in Calaveras County, at an
+elevation of 2400 feet above the sea, situated like a nest in the center of a
+rough, gravelly region, rich in gold. Granites, slates, lavas, limestone, iron
+ores, quartz veins, auriferous gravels, remnants of dead fire-rivers and dead
+water-rivers are developed here side by side within a radius of a few miles,
+and placed invitingly open before the student like a book, while the people and
+the region beyond the camp furnish mines of study of never-failing interest and
+variety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I discovered this curious place, I was tracing the channels of the ancient
+pre-glacial rivers, instructive sections of which have been laid bare here and
+in the adjacent regions by the miners. Rivers, according to the poets,
+&ldquo;go on forever&rdquo;; but those of the Sierra are young as yet and have
+scarcely learned the way down to the sea; while at least one generation of them
+have died and vanished together with most of the basins they drained. All that
+remains of them to tell their history is a series of interrupted fragments of
+channels, mostly choked with gravel, and buried beneath broad, thick sheets of
+lava. These are known as the &ldquo;Dead Rivers of California,&rdquo; and the
+gravel deposited in them is comprehensively called the &ldquo;Blue Lead.&rdquo;
+In some places the channels of the present rivers trend in the same direction,
+or nearly so, as those of the ancient rivers; but, in general, there is little
+correspondence between them, the entire drainage having been changed, or,
+rather, made new. Many of the hills of the ancient landscapes have become
+hollows, and the old hollows have become hills. Therefore the fragmentary
+channels, with their loads of auriferous gravel, occur in all kinds of
+unthought-of places, trending obliquely, or even at right angles to the present
+drainage, across the tops of lofty ridges or far beneath them, presenting
+impressive illustrations of the magnitude of the changes accomplished since
+those ancient streams were annihilated. The last volcanic period preceding the
+regeneration of the Sierra landscapes seems to have come on over all the range
+almost simultaneously, like the glacial period, notwithstanding lavas of
+different age occur together in many places, indicating numerous periods of
+activity in the Sierra fire-fountains. The most important of the ancient
+river-channels in this region is a section that extends from the south side of
+the town beneath Coyote Creek and the ridge beyond it to the Cañon of the
+Stanislaus; but on account of its depth below the general surface of the
+present valleys the rich gold gravels it is known to contain cannot be easily
+worked on a large scale. Their extraordinary richness may be inferred from the
+fact that many claims were profitably worked in them by sinking shafts to a
+depth of 200 feet or more, and hoisting the dirt by a windlass. Should the dip
+of this ancient channel be such as to make the Stanislaus Cañon available as a
+dump, then the grand deposit might be worked by the hydraulic method, and
+although a long, expensive tunnel would be required, the scheme might still
+prove profitable, for there is &ldquo;millions in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The importance of these ancient gravels as gold fountains is well known to
+miners. Even the superficial placers of the present streams have derived much
+of their gold from them. According to all accounts, the Murphy placers have
+been very rich&mdash;&ldquo;terrific rich,&rdquo; as they say here. The hills
+have been cut and scalped, and every gorge and gulch and valley torn to pieces
+and disemboweled, expressing a fierce and desperate energy hard to understand.
+Still, any kind of effort-making is better than inaction, and there is
+something sublime in seeing men working in dead earnest at anything, pursuing
+an object with glacier-like energy and persistence. Many a brave fellow has
+recorded a most eventful chapter of life on these Calaveras rocks. But most of
+the pioneer miners are sleeping now, their wild day done, while the few
+survivors linger languidly in the washed-out gulches or sleepy village like
+harried bees around the ruins of their hive. &ldquo;We have no industry left
+<i>now</i>,&rdquo; they told me, &ldquo;and no men; everybody and everything
+hereabouts has gone to decay. We are only bummers&mdash;out of the game, a thin
+scatterin&rsquo; of poor, dilapidated cusses, compared with what we used to be
+in the grand old gold-days. We were giants then, and you can look around here
+and see our tracks.&rdquo; But although these lingering pioneers are perhaps
+more exhausted than the mines, and about as dead as the dead rivers, they are
+yet a rare and interesting set of men, with much gold mixed with the rough,
+rocky gravel of their characters; and they manifest a breeding and intelligence
+little looked for in such surroundings as theirs. As the heavy, long-continued
+grinding of the glaciers brought out the features of the Sierra, so the intense
+experiences of the gold period have brought out the features of these old
+miners, forming a richness and variety of character little known as yet. The
+sketches of Bret Harte, Hayes, and Miller have not exhausted this field by any
+means. It is interesting to note the extremes possible in one and the same
+character: harshness and gentleness, manliness and childishness, apathy and
+fierce endeavor. Men who, twenty years ago, would not cease their shoveling to
+save their lives, now play in the streets with children. Their long,
+Micawber-like waiting after the exhaustion of the placers has brought on an
+exaggerated form of dotage. I heard a group of brawny pioneers in the street
+eagerly discussing the quantity of tail required for a boy&rsquo;s kite; and
+one graybeard undertook the sport of flying it, volunteering the information
+that he was a boy, &ldquo;always was a boy, and d&mdash;n a man who was not a
+boy inside, however ancient outside!&rdquo; Mines, morals, politics, the
+immortality of the soul, etc., were discussed beneath shade-trees and in
+saloons, the time for each being governed apparently by the temperature.
+Contact with Nature, and the habits of observation acquired in gold-seeking,
+had made them all, to some extent, collectors, and, like wood-rats, they had
+gathered all kinds of odd specimens into their cabins, and now required me to
+examine them. They were themselves the oddest and most interesting specimens.
+One of them offered to show me around the old diggings, giving me fair warning
+before setting out that I might not like him, &ldquo;because,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;people say I&rsquo;m eccentric. I notice everything, and gather beetles
+and snakes and anything that&rsquo;s queer; and so some don&rsquo;t like me,
+and call me eccentric. I&rsquo;m always trying to find out things. Now,
+there&rsquo;s a weed; the Indians eat it for greens. What do you call those
+long-bodied flies with big heads?&rdquo; &ldquo;Dragon-flies,&rdquo; I
+suggested. &ldquo;Well, their jaws work sidewise, instead of up and down, and
+grasshoppers&rsquo; jaws work the same way, and therefore I think they are the
+same species. I always notice everything like that, and just because I do, they
+say I&rsquo;m eccentric,&rdquo; etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Anxious that I should miss none of the wonders of their old gold-field, the
+good people had much to say about the marvelous beauty of Cave City Cave, and
+advised me to explore it. This I was very glad to do, and finding a guide who
+knew the way to the mouth of it, I set out from Murphy the next morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most beautiful and extensive of the mountain caves of California occur in a
+belt of metamorphic limestone that is pretty generally developed along the
+western flank of the Sierra from the McCloud River on the north to the Kaweah
+on the south, a distance of over 400 miles, at an elevation of from 2000 to
+7000 feet above the sea. Besides this regular belt of caves, the California
+landscapes are diversified by long imposing ranks of sea-caves, rugged and
+variable in architecture, carved in the coast headlands and precipices by
+centuries of wave-dashing; and innumerable lava-caves, great and small,
+originating in the unequal flowing and hardening of the lava sheets in which
+they occur, fine illustrations of which are presented in the famous Modoc Lava
+Beds, and around the base of icy Shasta. In this comprehensive glance we may
+also notice the shallow wind-worn caves in stratified sandstones along the
+margins of the plains; and the cave-like recesses in the Sierra slates and
+granites, where bears and other mountaineers find shelter during the fall of
+sudden storms. In general, however, the grand massive uplift of the Sierra, as
+far as it has been laid-bare to observation, is about as solid and caveless as
+a boulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fresh beauty opens one&rsquo;s eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very
+abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents
+its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make
+short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral,
+or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like
+worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of
+what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun
+sees on our return to common every-day beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our way from Murphy&rsquo;s to the cave lay across a series of picturesque,
+moory ridges in the chaparral region between the brown foot-hills and the
+forests, a flowery stretch of rolling hill-waves breaking here and there into a
+kind of rocky foam on the higher summits, and sinking into delightful bosky
+hollows embowered with vines. The day was a fine specimen of California summer,
+pure sunshine, unshaded most of the time by a single cloud. As the sun rose
+higher, the heated air began to flow in tremulous waves from every southern
+slope. The sea-breeze that usually comes up the foot-hills at this season, with
+cooling on its wings, was scarcely perceptible. The birds were assembled
+beneath leafy shade, or made short, languid flights in search of food, all save
+the majestic buzzard; with broad wings outspread he sailed the warm air
+unwearily from ridge to ridge, seeming to enjoy the fervid sunshine like a
+butterfly. Squirrels, too, whose spicy ardor no heat or cold may abate, were
+nutting among the pines, and the innumerable hosts of the insect kingdom were
+throbbing and wavering unwearied as sunbeams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This brushy, berry-bearing region used to be a deer and bear pasture, but since
+the disturbances of the gold period these fine animals have almost wholly
+disappeared. Here, also, once roamed the mastodon and elephant, whose bones are
+found entombed in the river gravels and beneath thick folds of lava. Toward
+noon, as we were riding slowly over bank and brae, basking in the unfeverish
+sun-heat, we witnessed the upheaval of a new mountain-range, a Sierra of clouds
+abounding in landscapes as truly sublime and beautiful&mdash;if only we have a
+mind to think so and eyes to see&mdash;as the more ancient rocky Sierra beneath
+it, with its forests and waterfalls; reminding us that, as there is a lower
+world of caves, so, also, there is an upper world of clouds. Huge, bossy cumuli
+developed with astonishing rapidity from mere buds, swelling with visible
+motion into colossal mountains, and piling higher, higher, in long massive
+ranges, peak beyond peak, dome over dome, with many a picturesque valley and
+shadowy cave between; while the dark firs and pines of the upper benches of the
+Sierra were projected against their pearl bosses with exquisite clearness of
+outline. These cloud mountains vanished in the azure as quickly as they were
+developed, leaving no detritus; but they were not a whit less real or
+interesting on this account. The more enduring hills over which we rode were
+vanishing as surely as they, only not so fast, a difference which is great or
+small according to the standpoint from which it is contemplated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the bottom of every dell we found little homesteads embosomed in wild brush
+and vines wherever the recession of the hills left patches of arable ground.
+These secluded flats are settled mostly by Italians and Germans, who plant a
+few vegetables and grape-vines at odd times, while their main business is
+mining and prospecting. In spite of all the natural beauty of these dell
+cabins, they can hardly be called homes. They are only a better kind of camp,
+gladly abandoned whenever the hoped-for gold harvest has been gathered. There
+is an air of profound unrest and melancholy about the best of them. Their
+beauty is thrust upon them by exuberant Nature, apart from which they are only
+a few logs and boards rudely jointed and without either ceiling or floor, a
+rough fireplace with corresponding cooking utensils, a shelf-bed, and stool.
+The ground about them is strewn with battered prospecting-pans, picks,
+sluice-boxes, and quartz specimens from many a ledge, indicating the trend of
+their owners&rsquo; hard lives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ride from Murphy&rsquo;s to the cave is scarcely two hours long, but we
+lingered among quartz-ledges and banks of dead river gravel until long after
+noon. At length emerging from a narrow-throated gorge, a small house came in
+sight set in a thicket of fig-trees at the base of a limestone hill.
+&ldquo;That,&rdquo; said my guide, pointing to the house, &ldquo;is Cave City,
+and the cave is in that gray hill.&rdquo; Arriving at the one house of this
+one-house city, we were boisterously welcomed by three drunken men who had come
+to town to hold a spree. The mistress of the house tried to keep order, and in
+reply to our inquiries told us that the cave guide was then in the cave with a
+party of ladies. &ldquo;And must we wait until he returns?&rdquo; we asked. No,
+that was unnecessary; we might take candles and go into the cave alone,
+provided we shouted from time to time so as to be found by the guide, and were
+careful not to fall over the rocks or into the dark pools. Accordingly taking a
+trail from the house, we were led around the base of the hill to the mouth of
+the cave, a small inconspicuous archway, mossy around the edges and shaped like
+the door of a water-ouzel&rsquo;s nest, with no appreciable hint or
+advertisement of the grandeur of the many crystal chambers within. Lighting our
+candles, which seemed to have no illuminating power in the thick darkness, we
+groped our way onward as best we could along narrow lanes and alleys, from
+chamber to chamber, around rustic columns and heaps of fallen rocks, stopping
+to rest now and then in particularly beautiful places&mdash;fairy alcoves
+furnished with admirable variety of shelves and tables, and round bossy stools
+covered with sparkling crystals. Some of the corridors were muddy, and in
+plodding along these we seemed to be in the streets of some prairie village in
+spring-time. Then we would come to handsome marble stairways conducting right
+and left into upper chambers ranged above one another three or four stories
+high, floors, ceilings, and walls lavishly decorated with innumerable
+crystalline forms. After thus wandering exploringly, and alone for a mile or
+so, fairly enchanted, a murmur of voices and a gleam of light betrayed the
+approach of the guide and his party, from whom, when they came up, we received
+a most hearty and natural stare, as we stood half concealed in a side recess
+among stalagmites. I ventured to ask the dripping, crouching company how they
+had enjoyed their saunter, anxious to learn how the strange sunless scenery of
+the underworld had impressed them. &ldquo;Ah, it&rsquo;s nice! It&rsquo;s
+splendid!&rdquo; they all replied and echoed. &ldquo;The Bridal Chamber back
+here is just glorious! This morning we came down from the Calaveras Big Tree
+Grove, and the trees are nothing to it.&rdquo; After making this curious
+comparison they hastened sunward, the guide promising to join us shortly on the
+bank of a deep pool, where we were to wait for him. This is a charming little
+lakelet of unknown depth, never yet stirred by a breeze, and its eternal calm
+excites the imagination even more profoundly than the silvery lakes of the
+glaciers rimmed with meadows and snow and reflecting sublime mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our guide, a jolly, rollicking Italian, led us into the heart of the hill, up
+and down, right and left, from chamber to chamber more and more magnificent,
+all a-glitter like a glacier cave with icicle-like stalactites and stalagmites
+combined in forms of indescribable beauty. We were shown one large room that
+was occasionally used as a dancing-hall; another that was used as a chapel,
+with natural pulpit and crosses and pews, sermons in every stone, where a
+priest had said mass. Mass-saying is not so generally developed in connection
+with natural wonders as dancing. One of the first conceits excited by the giant
+Sequoias was to cut one of them down and dance on its stump. We have also seen
+dancing in the spray of Niagara; dancing in the famous Bower Cave above
+Coulterville; and nowhere have I seen so much dancing as in Yosemite. A dance
+on the inaccessible South Dome would likely follow the making of an easy way to
+the top of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was delightful to witness here the infinite deliberation of Nature, and the
+simplicity of her methods in the production of such mighty results, such
+perfect repose combined with restless enthusiastic energy. Though cold and
+bloodless as a landscape of polar ice, building was going on in the dark with
+incessant activity. The archways and ceilings were everywhere hung with
+down-growing crystals, like inverted groves of leafless saplings, some of them
+large, others delicately attenuated, each tipped with a single drop of water,
+like the terminal bud of a pine-tree. The only appreciable sounds were the
+dripping and tinkling of water failing into pools or faintly plashing on the
+crystal floors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In some places the crystal decorations are arranged in graceful flowing folds
+deeply plicated like stiff silken drapery. In others straight lines of the
+ordinary stalactite forms are combined with reference to size and tone in a
+regularly graduated system like the strings of a harp with musical tones
+corresponding thereto; and on these stone harps we played by striking the
+crystal strings with a stick. The delicious liquid tones they gave forth seemed
+perfectly divine as they sweetly whispered and wavered through the majestic
+halls and died away in faintest cadence,&mdash;the music of fairy-land. Here we
+lingered and reveled, rejoicing to find so much music in stony silence, so much
+splendor in darkness, so many mansions in the depths of the mountains,
+buildings ever in process of construction, yet ever finished, developing from
+perfection to perfection, profusion without overabundance; every particle
+visible or invisible in glorious motion, marching to the music of the spheres
+in a region regarded as the abode of eternal stillness and death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The outer chambers of mountain caves are frequently selected as homes by wild
+beasts. In the Sierra, however, they seem to prefer homes and hiding-places in
+chaparral and beneath shelving precipices, as I have never seen their tracks in
+any of the caves. This is the more remarkable because notwithstanding the
+darkness and oozing water there is nothing uncomfortably cellar-like or
+sepulchral about them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we emerged into the bright landscapes of the sun everything looked
+brighter, and we felt our faith in Nature&rsquo;s beauty strengthened, and saw
+more clearly that beauty is universal and immortal, above, beneath, on land and
+sea, mountain and plain, in heat and cold, light and darkness.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI<br/>
+THE BEE-PASTURES</h2>
+
+<p>
+When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its entire
+length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy Sierra to the
+ocean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin
+wilderness&mdash;through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers,
+along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain, park
+and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the
+mountains&mdash;throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber
+line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish, abundance. Here they grew more or less
+apart in special sheets and patches of no great size, there in broad, flowing
+folds hundreds of miles in length&mdash;zones of polleny forests, zones of
+flowery chaparral, stream-tangles of rubus and wild rose, sheets of golden
+composite, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of bryanthus and clover, and so
+on, certain species blooming somewhere all the year round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But of late years plows and sheep have made sad havoc in these glorious
+pastures, destroying tens of thousands of the flowery acres like a fire, and
+banishing many species of the best honey-plants to rocky cliffs and
+fence-corners, while, on the other hand, cultivation thus far has given no
+adequate compensation, at least in kind; only acres of alfalfa for miles of the
+richest wild pasture, ornamental roses and honeysuckles around cottage doors
+for cascades of wild roses in the dells, and small, square orchards and
+orange-groves for broad mountain-belts of chaparral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March, April, and
+May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that,
+in walking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than 400 miles,
+your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step. Mints, gilias,
+nemophilas, castilleias, and innumerable compositae were so crowded together
+that, had ninety-nine per cent. of them been taken away, the plain would still
+have seemed to any but Californians extravagantly flowery. The radiant,
+honeyful corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another,
+glowed in the living light like a sunset sky&mdash;one sheet of purple and
+gold, with the bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it from the
+north, the San Joaquin from the south, and their many tributaries sweeping in
+at right angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into sections fringed
+with trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Along the rivers there is a strip of bottom-land, countersunk beneath the
+general level, and wider toward the foot-hills, where magnificent oaks, from
+three to eight feet in diameter, cast grateful masses of shade over the open,
+prairie-like levels. And close along the water&rsquo;s edge there was a fine
+jungle of tropical luxuriance, composed of wild-rose and bramble bushes and a
+great variety of climbing vines, wreathing and interlacing the branches and
+trunks of willows and alders, and swinging across from summit to summit in
+heavy festoons. Here the wild bees reveled in fresh bloom long after the
+flowers of the drier plain had withered and gone to seed. And in midsummer,
+when the &ldquo;blackberries&rdquo; were ripe, the Indians came from the
+mountains to feast&mdash;men, women, and babies in long, noisy trains, often
+joined by the farmers of the neighborhood, who gathered this wild fruit with
+commendable appreciation of its superior flavor, while their home orchards were
+full of ripe peaches, apricots, nectarines, and figs, and their vineyards were
+laden with grapes. But, though these luxuriant, shaggy river-beds were thus
+distinct from the smooth, treeless plain, they made no heavy dividing lines in
+general views. The whole appeared as one continuous sheet of bloom bounded only
+by the mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I first saw this central garden, the most extensive and regular of all the
+bee-pastures of the State, it seemed all one sheet of plant gold, hazy and
+vanishing in the distance, distinct as a new map along the foot-hills at my
+feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Descending the eastern slopes of the Coast Range through beds of gilias and
+lupines, and around many a breezy hillock and bush-crowned headland, I at
+length waded out into the midst of it. All the ground was covered, not with
+grass and green leaves, but with radiant corollas, about ankle-deep next the
+foot-hills, knee-deep or more five or six miles out. Here were bahia, madia,
+madaria, burrielia, chrysopsis, corethrogyne, grindelia, etc., growing in close
+social congregations of various shades of yellow, blending finely with the
+purples of clarkia, orthocarpus, and oenothera, whose delicate petals were
+drinking the vital sunbeams without giving back any sparkling glow.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus61"></a>
+<img src="images/img61.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA" />
+<p class="caption">A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Because so long a period of extreme drought succeeds the rainy season, most of
+the vegetation is composed of annuals, which spring up simultaneously, and
+bloom together at about the same height above the ground, the general surface
+being but slightly ruffled by the taller phacelias, pentstemons, and groups of
+<i>Salvia carduacea</i>, the king of the mints.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sauntering in any direction, hundreds of these happy sun-plants brushed against
+my feet at every step, and closed over them as if I were wading in liquid gold.
+The air was sweet with fragrance, the larks sang their blessed songs, rising on
+the wing as I advanced, then sinking out of sight in the polleny sod, while
+myriads of wild bees stirred the lower air with their monotonous
+hum&mdash;monotonous, yet forever fresh and sweet as every-day sunshine. Hares
+and spermophiles showed themselves in considerable numbers in shallow places,
+and small bands of antelopes were almost constantly in sight, gazing curiously
+from some slight elevation, and then bounding swiftly away with unrivaled grace
+of motion. Yet I could discover no crushed flowers to mark their track, nor,
+indeed, any destructive action of any wild foot or tooth whatever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The great yellow days circled by uncounted, while I drifted toward the north,
+observing the countless forms of life thronging about me, lying down almost
+anywhere on the approach of night. And what glorious botanical beds I had!
+Oftentimes on awaking I would find several new species leaning over me and
+looking me full in the face, so that my studies would begin before rising.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About the first of May I turned eastward, crossing the San Joaquin River
+between the mouths of the Tuolumne and Merced, and by the time I had reached
+the Sierra foot-hills most of the vegetation had gone to seed and become as dry
+as hay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the seasons of the great plain are warm or temperate, and bee-flowers are
+never wholly wanting; but the grand springtime&mdash;the annual
+resurrection&mdash;is governed by the rains, which usually set in about the
+middle of November or the beginning of December. Then the seeds, that for six
+months have lain on the ground dry and fresh as if they had been gathered into
+barns, at once unfold their treasured life. The general brown and purple of the
+ground, and the dead vegetation of the preceding year, give place to the green
+of mosses and liverworts and myriads of young leaves. Then one species after
+another comes into flower, gradually overspreading the green with yellow and
+purple, which lasts until May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The &ldquo;rainy season&rdquo; is by no means a gloomy, soggy period of
+constant cloudiness and rain. Perhaps nowhere else in North America, perhaps in
+the world, are the months of December, January, February, and March so full of
+bland, plant-building sunshine. Referring to my notes of the winter and spring
+of 1868-69, every day of which I spent out of doors, on that section of the
+plain lying between the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, I find that the first rain
+of the season fell on December 18th. January had only six rainy days&mdash;that
+is, days on which rain fell; February three, March five, April three, and May
+three, completing the so-called rainy season, which was about an average one.
+The ordinary rain-storm of this region is seldom very cold or violent. The
+winds, which in settled weather come from the northwest, veer round into the
+opposite direction, the sky fills gradually and evenly with one general cloud,
+from which, the rain falls steadily, often for days in succession, at a
+temperature of about 45° or 50°.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More than seventy-five per cent. of all the rain of this season came from the
+northwest, down the coast over southeastern Alaska, British Columbia,
+Washington, and Oregon, though the local winds of these circular storms blow
+from the southeast. One magnificent local storm from the northwest fell on
+March 21. A massive, round-browed cloud came swelling and thundering over the
+flowery plain in most imposing majesty, its bossy front burning white and
+purple in the full blaze of the sun, while warm rain poured from its ample
+fountains like a cataract, beating down flowers and bees, and flooding the dry
+watercourses as suddenly as those of Nevada are flooded by the so-called
+&ldquo;cloudbursts.&rdquo; But in less than half an hour not a trace of the
+heavy, mountain-like cloud-structure was left in the sky, and the bees were on
+the wing, as if nothing more gratefully refreshing could have been sent them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By the end of January four species of plants were in flower, and five or six
+mosses had already adjusted their hoods and were in the prime of life; but the
+flowers were not sufficiently numerous as yet to affect greatly the general
+green of the young leaves. Violets made their appearance in the first week of
+February, and toward the end of this month the warmer portions of the plain
+were already golden with myriads of the flowers of rayed composite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the full springtime. The sunshine grew warmer and richer, new plants
+bloomed every day; the air became more tuneful with humming wings, and sweeter
+with the fragrance of the opening flowers. Ants and ground squirrels were
+getting ready for their summer work, rubbing their benumbed limbs, and sunning
+themselves on the husk-piles before their doors, and spiders were busy mending
+their old webs, or weaving new ones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In March, the vegetation was more than doubled in depth and color; claytonia,
+calandrinia, a large white gilia, and two nemophilas were in bloom, together
+with a host of yellow composite, tall enough now to bend in the wind and show
+wavering ripples of shade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In April, plant-life, as a whole, reached its greatest height, and the plain,
+over all its varied surface, was mantled with a close, furred plush of purple
+and golden corollas. By the end of this month, most of the species had ripened
+their seeds, but undecayed, still seemed to be in bloom from the numerous
+corolla-like involucres and whorls of chaffy scales of the composite. In May,
+the bees found in flower only a few deep-set liliaceous plants and eriogonums.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+June, July, August, and September is the season of rest and sleep,&mdash;a
+winter of dry heat,&mdash;followed in October by a second outburst of bloom at
+the very driest time of the year. Then, after the shrunken mass of leaves and
+stalks of the dead vegetation crinkle and turn to dust beneath the foot, as if
+it had been baked in an oven, <i>Hemizonia virgata</i>, a slender, unobtrusive
+little plant, from six inches to three feet high, suddenly makes its appearance
+in patches miles in extent, like a resurrection of the bloom of April. I have
+counted upward of 3000 flowers, five eighths of an inch in diameter, on a
+single plant. Both its leaves and stems are so slender as to be nearly
+invisible, at a distance of a few yards, amid so showy a multitude of flowers.
+The ray and disk flowers are both yellow, the stamens purple, and the texture
+of the rays is rich and velvety, like the petals of garden pansies. The
+prevailing wind turns all the heads round to the southeast, so that in facing
+northwestward we have the flowers looking us in the face. In my estimation,
+this little plant, the last born of the brilliant host of compositae that
+glorify the plain, is the most interesting of all. It remains in flower until
+November, uniting with two or three species of wiry eriogonums, which continue
+the floral chain around December to the spring flowers of January. Thus,
+although the main bloom and honey season is only about three months long, the
+floral circle, however thin around some of the hot, rainless months, is never
+completely broken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How long the various species of wild bees have lived in this honey-garden,
+nobody knows; probably ever since the main body of the present flora gained
+possession of the land, toward the close of the glacial period. The first brown
+honey-bees brought to California are said to have arrived in San Francisco in
+March, 1853. A bee-keeper by the name of Shelton purchased a lot, consisting of
+twelve swarms, from some one at Aspinwall, who had brought them from New York.
+When landed at San Francisco, all the hives contained live bees, but they
+finally dwindled to one hive, which was taken to San José. The little
+immigrants flourished and multiplied in the bountiful pastures of the Santa
+Clara Valley, sending off three swarms the first season. The owner was killed
+shortly afterward, and in settling up his estate, two of the swarms were sold
+at auction for $105 and $110 respectively. Other importations were made, from
+time to time, by way of the Isthmus, and, though great pains were taken to
+insure success, about one half usually died on the way. Four swarms were
+brought safely across the plains in 1859, the hives being placed in the rear
+end of a wagon, which was stopped in the afternoon to allow the bees to fly and
+feed in the floweriest places that were within reach until dark, when the hives
+were closed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In 1855, two years after the time of the first arrivals from New York, a single
+swarm was brought over from San José, and let fly in the Great Central Plain.
+Bee-culture, however, has never gained much attention here, notwithstanding the
+extraordinary abundance of honey-bloom, and the high price of honey during the
+early years. A few hives are found here and there among settlers who chanced to
+have learned something about the business before coming to the State. But
+sheep, cattle, grain, and fruit raising are the chief industries, as they
+require less skill and care, while the profits thus far have been greater. In
+1856 honey sold here at from one and a half to two dollars per pound. Twelve
+years later the price had fallen to twelve and a half cents. In 1868 I sat down
+to dinner with a band of ravenous sheep-shearers at a ranch on the San Joaquin,
+where fifteen or twenty hives were kept, and our host advised us not to spare
+the large pan of honey he had placed on the table, as it was the cheapest
+article he had to offer. In all my walks, however, I have never come upon a
+regular bee-ranch in the Central Valley like those so common and so skilfully
+managed in the southern counties of the State. The few pounds of honey and wax
+produced are consumed at home, and are scarcely taken into account among the
+coarser products of the farm. The swarms that escape from their careless owners
+have a weary, perplexing time of it in seeking suitable homes. Most of them
+make their way to the foot-hills of the mountains, or to the trees that line
+the banks of the rivers, where some hollow log or trunk may be found. A friend
+of mine, while out hunting on the San Joaquin, came upon an old coon trap,
+hidden among some tall grass, near the edge of the river, upon which he sat
+down to rest. Shortly afterward his attention was attracted to a crowd of angry
+bees that were flying excitedly about his head, when he discovered that he was
+sitting upon their hive, which was found to contain more than 200 pounds of
+honey. Out in the broad, swampy delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers,
+the little wanderers have been known to build their combs in a bunch of rushes,
+or stiff, wiry grass, only slightly protected from the weather, and in danger
+every spring of being carried away by floods. They have the advantage, however,
+of a vast extent of fresh pasture, accessible only to themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The present condition of the Grand Central Garden is very different from that
+we have sketched. About twenty years ago, when the gold placers had been pretty
+thoroughly exhausted, the attention of fortune-seekers&mdash;not
+home-seekers&mdash;was, in great part, turned away from the mines to the
+fertile plains, and many began experiments in a kind of restless, wild
+agriculture. A load of lumber would be hauled to some spot on the free
+wilderness, where water could be easily found, and a rude box-cabin built. Then
+a gang-plow was procured, and a dozen mustang ponies, worth ten or fifteen
+dollars apiece, and with these hundreds of acres were stirred as easily as if
+the land had been under cultivation for years, tough, perennial roots being
+almost wholly absent. Thus a ranch was established, and from these bare wooden
+huts, as centers of desolation, the wild flora vanished in ever-widening
+circles. But the arch destroyers are the shepherds, with their flocks of hoofed
+locusts, sweeping over the ground like a fire, and trampling down every rod
+that escapes the plow as completely as if the whole plain were a cottage
+garden-plot without a fence. But notwithstanding these destroyers, a thousand
+swarms of bees may be pastured here for every one now gathering honey. The
+greater portion is still covered every season with a repressed growth of
+bee-flowers, for most of the species are annuals, and many of them are not
+relished by sheep or cattle, while the rapidity of their growth enables them to
+develop and mature their seeds before any foot has time to crush them. The
+ground is, therefore, kept sweet, and the race is perpetuated, though only as a
+suggestive shadow of the magnificence of its wildness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The time will undoubtedly come when the entire area of this noble valley will
+be tilled like a garden, when the fertilizing waters of the mountains, now
+flowing to the sea, will be distributed to every acre, giving rise to
+prosperous towns, wealth, arts, etc. Then, I suppose, there will be few left,
+even among botanists, to deplore the vanished primeval flora. In the mean time,
+the pure waste going on&mdash;the wanton destruction of the innocents&mdash;is
+a sad sight to see, and the sun may well be pitied in being compelled to look
+on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bee-pastures of the Coast Ranges last longer and are more varied than those
+of the great plain, on account of differences of soil and climate, moisture,
+and shade, etc. Some of the mountains are upward of 4000 feet in height, and
+small streams, springs, oozy bogs, etc., occur in great abundance and variety
+in the wooded regions, while open parks, flooded with sunshine, and hill-girt
+valleys lying at different elevations, each with its own peculiar climate and
+exposure, possess the required conditions for the development of species and
+families of plants widely varied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next the plain there is, first, a series of smooth hills, planted with a rich
+and showy vegetation that differs but little from that of the plain
+itself&mdash;as if the edge of the plain had been lifted and bent into flowing
+folds, with all its flowers in place, only toned down a little as to their
+luxuriance, and a few new species introduced, such as the hill lupines, mints,
+and gilias. The colors show finely when thus held to view on the slopes;
+patches of red, purple, blue, yellow, and white, blending around the edges, the
+whole appearing at a little distance like a map colored in sections.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Above this lies the park and chaparral region, with oaks, mostly evergreen,
+planted wide apart, and blooming shrubs from three to ten feet high; manzanita
+and ceanothus of several species, mixed with rhamnus, cercis, pickeringia,
+cherry, amelanchier, and adenostoma, in shaggy, interlocking thickets, and many
+species of hosackia, clover, monardella, castilleia, etc., in the openings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The main ranges send out spurs somewhat parallel to their axes, inclosing level
+valleys, many of them quite extensive, and containing a great profusion of
+sun-loving bee-flowers in their wild state; but these are, in great part,
+already lost to the bees by cultivation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nearer the coast are the giant forests of the redwoods, extending from near the
+Oregon line to Santa Cruz. Beneath the cool, deep shade of these majestic trees
+the ground is occupied by ferns, chiefly woodwardia and aspidiums, with only a
+few flowering plants&mdash;oxalis, trientalis, erythronium, fritillaria,
+smilax, and other shade-lovers. But all along the redwood belt there are sunny
+openings on hill-slopes looking to the south, where the giant trees stand back,
+and give the ground to the small sunflowers and the bees. Around the lofty
+redwood walls of these little bee-acres there is usually a fringe of Chestnut
+Oak, Laurel, and Madroño, the last of which is a surpassingly beautiful tree,
+and a great favorite with the bees. The trunks of the largest specimens are
+seven or eight feet thick, and about fifty feet high; the bark red and
+chocolate colored, the leaves plain, large, and glossy, like those of
+<i>Magnolia grandiflora</i>, while the flowers are yellowish-white, and
+urn-shaped, in well-proportioned panicles, from five to ten inches long. When
+in full bloom, a single tree seems to be visited at times by a whole hive of
+bees at once, and the deep hum of such a multitude makes the listener guess
+that more than the ordinary work of honey-winning must be going on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How perfectly enchanting and care-obliterating are these withdrawn gardens of
+the woods&mdash;long vistas opening to the sea&mdash;sunshine sifting and
+pouring upon the flowery ground in a tremulous, shifting mosaic, as the
+light-ways in the leafy wall open and close with the swaying
+breeze&mdash;shining leaves and flowers, birds and bees, mingling together in
+springtime harmony, and soothing fragrance exhaling from a thousand thousand
+fountains! In these balmy, dissolving days, when the deep heart-beats of Nature
+are felt thrilling rocks and trees and everything alike, common business and
+friends are happily forgotten, and even the natural honey-work of bees, and the
+care of birds for their young, and mothers for their children, seem slightly
+out of place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To the northward, in Humboldt and the adjacent counties, whole hillsides are
+covered with rhododendron, making a glorious melody of bee-bloom in the spring.
+And the Western azalea, hardly less flowery, grows in massy thickets three to
+eight feet high around the edges of groves and woods as far south as San Luis
+Obispo, usually accompanied by manzanita; while the valleys, with their varying
+moisture and shade, yield a rich variety of the smaller honey-flowers, such as
+mentha, lycopus, micromeria, audibertia, trichostema, and other mints; with
+vaccinium, wild strawberry, geranium, calais, and goldenrod; and in the cool
+glens along the stream-banks, where the shade of trees is not too deep,
+spiraea, dog-wood, heteromeles, and calycanthus, and many species of rubus form
+interlacing tangles, some portion of which continues in bloom for months.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though the coast region was the first to be invaded and settled by white men,
+it has suffered less from a bee point of view than either of the other main
+divisions, chiefly, no doubt, because of the unevenness of the surface, and
+because it is owned and protected instead of lying exposed to the flocks of the
+wandering &ldquo;sheepmen.&rdquo; These remarks apply more particularly to the
+north half of the coast. Farther south there is less moisture, less forest
+shade, and the honey flora is less varied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Sierra region is the largest of the three main divisions of the bee-lands
+of the State, and the most regularly varied in its subdivisions, owing to their
+gradual rise from the level of the Central Plain to the alpine summits. The
+foot-hill region is about as dry and sunful, from the end of May until the
+setting in of the winter rains, as the plain. There are no shady forests, no
+damp glens, at all like those lying at the same elevations in the Coast
+Mountains. The social compositae of the plain, with a few added species, form
+the bulk of the herbaceous portion of the vegetation up to a height of 1500
+feet or more, shaded lightly here and there with oaks and Sabine Pines, and
+interrupted by patches of ceanothus and buckeye. Above this, and just below the
+forest region, there is a dark, heath-like belt of chaparral, composed almost
+exclusively of <i>Adenostoma fasciculata</i>, a bush belonging to the rose
+family, from five to eight feet high, with small, round leaves in fascicles,
+and bearing a multitude of small white flowers in panicles on the ends of the
+upper branches. Where it occurs at all, it usually covers all the ground with a
+close, impenetrable growth, scarcely broken for miles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up through the forest region, to a height of about 9000 feet above sea-level,
+there are ragged patches of manzanita, and five or six species of ceanothus,
+called deer-brush or California lilac. These are the most important of all the
+honey-bearing bushes of the Sierra. <i>Chamaebatia foliolosa</i>, a little
+shrub about a foot high, with flowers like the strawberry, makes handsome
+carpets beneath the pines, and seems to be a favorite with the bees; while
+pines themselves furnish unlimited quantities of pollen and honey-dew. The
+product of a single tree, ripening its pollen at the right time of year, would
+be sufficient for the wants of a whole hive. Along the streams there is a rich
+growth of lilies, larkspurs, pedicularis, castilleias, and clover. The alpine
+region contains the flowery glacier meadows, and countless small gardens in all
+sorts of places full of potentilla of several species, spraguea, ivesia,
+epilobium, and goldenrod, with beds of bryanthus and the charming cassiope
+covered with sweet bells. Even the tops of the mountains are blessed with
+flowers,&mdash;dwarf phlox, polemonium, ribes, hulsea, etc. I have seen wild
+bees and butterflies feeding at a height of 13,000 feet above the sea. Many,
+however, that go up these dangerous heights never come down again. Some,
+undoubtedly, perish in storms, and I have found thousands lying dead or
+benumbed on the surface of the glaciers, to which they had perhaps been
+attracted by the white glare, taking them for beds of bloom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From swarms that escaped their owners in the lowlands, the honey-bee is now
+generally distributed throughout the whole length of the Sierra, up to an
+elevation of 8000 feet above sea-level. At this height they flourish without
+care, though the snow every winter is deep. Even higher than this several
+bee-trees have been cut which contained over 200 pounds of honey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The destructive action of sheep has not been so general on the mountain
+pastures as on those of the great plain, but in many places it has been more
+complete, owing to the more friable character of the soil, and its sloping
+position. The slant digging and down-raking action of hoofs on the steeper
+slopes of moraines has uprooted and buried many of the tender plants from year
+to year, without allowing them time to mature their seeds. The shrubs, too, are
+badly bitten, especially the various species of ceanothus. Fortunately, neither
+sheep nor cattle care to feed on the manzanita, spiraea, or adenostoma; and
+these fine honey-bushes are too stiff and tall, or grow in places too rough and
+inaccessible, to be trodden under foot. Also the cañon walls and gorges, which
+form so considerable a part of the area of the range, while inaccessible to
+domestic sheep, are well fringed with honey-shrubs, and contain thousands of
+lovely bee-gardens, lying hid in narrow side-cañons and recesses fenced with
+avalanche taluses, and on the top of flat, projecting headlands, where only
+bees would think to look for them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, on the other hand, a great portion of the woody plants that escape the
+feet and teeth of the sheep are destroyed by the shepherds by means of running
+fires, which are set everywhere during the dry autumn for the purpose of
+burning off the old fallen trunks and underbrush, with a view to improving the
+pastures, and making more open ways for the flocks. These destructive
+sheep-fires sweep through nearly the entire forest belt of the range, from one
+extremity to the other, consuming not only the underbrush, but the young trees
+and seedlings on which the permanence of the forests depends; thus setting in
+motion a long train of evils which will certainly reach far beyond bees and
+beekeepers.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus62"></a>
+<img src="images/img62.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="WILD BEE GARDEN" />
+<p class="caption">WILD BEE GARDEN.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The plow has not yet invaded the forest region to any appreciable extent,
+neither has it accomplished much in the foot-hills. Thousands of bee-ranches
+might be established along the margin of the plain, and up to a height of 4000
+feet, wherever water could be obtained. The climate at this elevation admits of
+the making of permanent homes, and by moving the hives to higher pastures as
+the lower pass out of bloom, the annual yield of honey would be nearly doubled.
+The foot-hill pastures, as we have seen, fail about the end of May, those of
+the chaparral belt and lower forests are in full bloom in June, those of the
+upper and alpine region in July, August, and September. In Scotland, after the
+best of the Lowland bloom is past, the bees are carried in carts to the
+Highlands, and set free on the heather hills. In France, too, and in Poland,
+they are carried from pasture to pasture among orchards and fields in the same
+way, and along the rivers in barges to collect the honey of the delightful
+vegetation of the banks. In Egypt they are taken far up the Nile, and floated
+slowly home again, gathering the honey-harvest of the various fields on the
+way, timing their movements in accord with the seasons. Were similar methods
+pursued in California the productive season would last nearly all the year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The average elevation of the north half of the Sierra is, as we have seen,
+considerably less than that of the south half, and small streams, with the bank
+and meadow gardens dependent upon them, are less abundant. Around the head
+waters of the Yuba, Feather, and Pitt rivers, the extensive tablelands of lava
+are sparsely planted with pines, through which the sunshine reaches the ground
+with little interruption. Here flourishes a scattered, tufted growth of golden
+applopappus, linosyris, bahia, wyetheia, arnica, artemisia, and similar plants;
+with manzanita, cherry, plum, and thorn in ragged patches on the cooler
+hill-slopes. At the extremities of the Great Central Plain, the Sierra and
+Coast Ranges curve around and lock together in a labyrinth of mountains and
+valleys, throughout which their floras are mingled, making at the north, with
+its temperate climate and copious rainfall, a perfect paradise for bees,
+though, strange to say, scarcely a single regular bee-ranch has yet been
+established in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of all the upper flower fields of the Sierra, Shasta is the most honeyful, and
+may yet surpass in fame the celebrated honey hills of Hybla and hearthy
+Hymettus. Regarding this noble mountain from a bee point of view, encircled by
+its many climates, and sweeping aloft from the torrid plain into the frosty
+azure, we find the first 5000 feet from the summit generally snow-clad, and
+therefore about as honeyless as the sea. The base of this arctic region is
+girdled by a belt of crumbling lava measuring about 1000 feet in vertical
+breadth, and is mostly free from snow in summer. Beautiful lichens enliven the
+faces of the cliffs with their bright colors, and in some of the warmer nooks
+there are a few tufts of alpine daisies, wall-flowers and pentstemons; but,
+notwithstanding these bloom freely in the late summer, the zone as a whole is
+almost as honeyless as the icy summit, and its lower edge may be taken as the
+honey-line. Immediately below this comes the forest zone, covered with a rich
+growth of conifers, chiefly Silver Firs, rich in pollen and honey-dew, and
+diversified with countless garden openings, many of them less than a hundred
+yards across. Next, in orderly succession, comes the great bee zone. Its area
+far surpasses that of the icy summit and both the other zones combined, for it
+goes sweeping majestically around the entire mountain, with a breadth of six or
+seven miles and a circumference of nearly a hundred miles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shasta, as we have already seen, is a fire-mountain created by a succession of
+eruptions of ashes and molten lava, which, flowing over the lips of its several
+craters, grew outward and upward like the trunk of a knotty exogenous tree.
+Then followed a strange contrast. The glacial winter came on, loading the
+cooling mountain with ice, which flowed slowly outward in every direction,
+radiating from the summit in the form of one vast conical glacier&mdash;a
+down-crawling mantle of ice upon a fountain of smoldering fire, crushing and
+grinding for centuries its brown, flinty lavas with incessant activity, and
+thus degrading and remodeling the entire mountain. When, at length, the glacial
+period began to draw near its close, the ice-mantle was gradually melted off
+around the bottom, and, in receding and breaking into its present fragmentary
+condition, irregular rings and heaps of moraine matter were stored upon its
+flanks. The glacial erosion of most of the Shasta lavas produces detritus,
+composed of rough, sub-angular boulders of moderate size and of porous gravel
+and sand, which yields freely to the transporting power of running water.
+Magnificent floods from the ample fountains of ice and snow working with
+sublime energy upon this prepared glacial detritus, sorted it out and carried
+down immense quantities from the higher slopes, and reformed it in smooth,
+delta-like beds around the base; and it is these flood-beds joined together
+that now form the main honey-zone of the old volcano.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, has Mother Nature
+accomplished her beneficent designs&mdash;now a flood of fire, now a flood of
+ice, now a flood of water; and at length an outburst of organic life, a milky
+way of snowy petals and wings, girdling the rugged mountain like a cloud, as if
+the vivifying sunbeams beating against its sides had broken into a foam of
+plant-bloom and bees, as sea-waves break and bloom on a rock shore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this flowery wilderness the bees rove and revel, rejoicing in the bounty of
+the sun, clambering eagerly through bramble and hucklebloom, ringing the myriad
+bells of the manzanita, now humming aloft among polleny willows and firs, now
+down on the ashy ground among gilias and buttercups, and anon plunging deep
+into snowy banks of cherry and buckthorn. They consider the lilies and roll
+into them, and, like lilies, they toil not, for they are impelled by sun-power,
+as water-wheels by water-power; and when the one has plenty of high-pressure
+water, the other plenty of sunshine, they hum and quiver alike. Sauntering in
+the Shasta bee-lands in the sun-days of summer, one may readily infer the time
+of day from the comparative energy of bee-movements alone&mdash;drowsy and
+moderate in the cool of the morning, increasing in energy with the ascending
+sun, and, at high noon, thrilling and quivering in wild ecstasy, then gradually
+declining again to the stillness of night. In my excursions among the glaciers
+I occasionally meet bees that are hungry, like mountaineers who venture too far
+and remain too long above the bread-line; then they droop and wither like
+autumn leaves. The Shasta bees are perhaps better fed than any others in the
+Sierra. Their field-work is one perpetual feast; but, however exhilarating the
+sunshine or bountiful the supply of flowers, they are always dainty feeders.
+Humming-moths and hummingbirds seldom set foot upon a flower, but poise on the
+wing in front of it, and reach forward as if they were sucking through straws.
+But bees, though, as dainty as they, hug their favorite flowers with profound
+cordiality, and push their blunt, polleny faces against them, like babies on
+their mother&rsquo;s bosom. And fondly, too, with eternal love, does Mother
+Nature clasp her small bee-babies, and suckle them, multitudes at once, on her
+warm Shasta breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides the common honey-bee there are many other species here&mdash;fine
+mossy, burly fellows, who were nourished on the mountains thousands of sunny
+seasons before the advent of the domestic species. Among these are the
+bumblebees, mason-bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters. Butterflies, too, and
+moths of every size and pattern; some broad-winged like bats, flapping slowly,
+and sailing in easy curves; others like small, flying violets, shaking about
+loosely in short, crooked flights close to the flowers, feasting luxuriously
+night and day. Great numbers of deer also delight to dwell in the brushy
+portions of the bee-pastures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bears, too, roam the sweet wilderness, their blunt, shaggy forms harmonizing
+well with the trees and tangled bushes, and with the bees, also,
+notwithstanding the disparity in size. They are fond of all good things, and
+enjoy them to the utmost, with but little troublesome
+discrimination&mdash;flowers and leaves as well as berries, and the bees
+themselves as well as their honey. Though the California bears have as yet had
+but little experience with honeybees, they often succeed in reaching their
+bountiful stores, and it seems doubtful whether bees themselves enjoy honey
+with so great a relish. By means of their powerful teeth and claws they can
+gnaw and tear open almost any hive conveniently accessible. Most honey-bees,
+however, in search of a home are wise enough to make choice of a hollow in a
+living tree, a considerable distance above the ground, when such places are to
+be had; then they are pretty secure, for though the smaller black and brown
+bears climb well, they are unable to break into strong hives while compelled to
+exert themselves to keep from falling, and at the same time to endure the
+stings of the fighting bees without having their paws free to rub them off. But
+woe to the black bumblebees discovered in their mossy nests in the ground! With
+a few strokes of their huge paws the bears uncover the entire establishment,
+and, before time is given for a general buzz, bees old and young, larvae,
+honey, stings, nest, and all are taken in one ravishing mouthful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not the least influential of the agents concerned in the superior sweetness of
+the Shasta flora are its storms&mdash;storms I mean that are strictly local,
+bred and born on the mountain. The magical rapidity with which they are grown
+on the mountain-top, and bestow their charity in rain and snow, never fails to
+astonish the inexperienced lowlander. Often in calm, glowing days, while the
+bees are still on the wing, a storm-cloud may be seen far above in the pure
+ether, swelling its pearl bosses, and growing silently, like a plant. Presently
+a clear, ringing discharge of thunder is heard, followed by a rush of wind that
+comes sounding over the bending woods like the roar of the ocean, mingling
+raindrops, snow-flowers, honey-flowers, and bees in wild storm harmony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still more impressive are the warm, reviving days of spring in the mountain
+pastures. The blood of the plants throbbing beneath the life-giving sunshine
+seems to be heard and felt. Plant growth goes on before our eyes, and every
+tree in the woods, and every bush and flower is seen as a hive of restless
+industry. The deeps of the sky are mottled with singing wings of every tone and
+color; clouds of brilliant chrysididae dancing and swirling in exquisite
+rhythm, golden-barred vespidae, dragon-flies, butterflies, grating cicadas, and
+jolly, rattling grasshoppers, fairly enameling the light.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus63"></a>
+<img src="images/img63.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.&mdash;WHITE SAGE" />
+<p class="caption">IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.&mdash;WHITE SAGE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+On bright, crisp mornings a striking optical effect may frequently be observed
+from the shadows of the higher mountains while the sunbeams are pouring past
+overhead. Then every insect, no matter what may be its own proper color, burns
+white in the light. Gauzy-winged hymenoptera, moths, jet-black beetles, all are
+transfigured alike in pure, spiritual white, like snowflakes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Southern California, where bee-culture has had so much skilful attention of
+late years, the pasturage is not more abundant, or more advantageously varied
+as to the number of its honey-plants and their distribution over mountain and
+plain, than that of many other portions of the State where the industrial
+currents flow in other channels. The famous White Sage (<i>Audibertia</i>),
+belonging to the mint family, flourishes here in all its glory, blooming in
+May, and yielding great quantities of clear, pale honey, which is greatly
+prized in every market it has yet reached. This species grows chiefly in the
+valleys and low hills. The Black Sage on the mountains is part of a dense,
+thorny chaparral, which is composed chiefly of adenostoma, ceanothus,
+manzanita, and cherry&mdash;not differing greatly from that of the southern
+portion of the Sierra, but more dense and continuous, and taller, and remaining
+longer in bloom. Stream-side gardens, so charming a feature of both the Sierra
+and Coast Mountains, are less numerous in Southern California, but they are
+exceedingly rich in honey-flowers, wherever found,&mdash;melilotus, columbine,
+collinsia, verbena, zauschneria, wild rose, honeysuckle, philadelphus, and
+lilies rising from the warm, moist dells in a very storm of exuberance. Wild
+buckwheat of many species is developed in abundance over the dry, sandy valleys
+and lower slopes of the mountains, toward the end of summer, and is, at this
+time, the main dependence of the bees, reinforced here and there by orange
+groves, alfalfa fields, and small home gardens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The main honey months, in ordinary seasons, are April, May, June, July, and
+August; while the other months are usually flowery enough to yield sufficient
+for the bees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+According to Mr. J.T. Gordon, President of the Los Angeles County
+Bee-keepers&rsquo; Association, the first bees introduced into the county were
+a single hive, which cost $150 in San Francisco, and arrived in September,
+1854.<a href="#linknote-3" name="linknoteref-3"><sup>[1]</sup></a> In April, of
+the following year, this hive sent out two swarms, which were sold for $100
+each. From this small beginning the bees gradually multiplied to about 3000
+swarms in the year 1873. In 1876 it was estimated that there were between
+15,000 and 20,000 hives in the county, producing an annual yield of about 100
+pounds to the hive&mdash;in some exceptional cases, a much greater yield.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In San Diego County, at the beginning of the season of 1878, there were about
+24,000 hives, and the shipments from the one port of San Diego for the same
+year, from July 17 to November 10, were 1071 barrels, 15,544 cases, and nearly
+90 tons. The largest bee-ranches have about a thousand hives, and are carefully
+and skilfully managed, every scientific appliance of merit being brought into
+use. There are few bee-keepers, however, who own half as many as this, or who
+give their undivided attention to the business. Orange culture, at present, is
+heavily overshadowing every other business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A good many of the so-called bee-ranches of Los Angeles and San Diego counties
+are still of the rudest pioneer kind imaginable. A man unsuccessful in
+everything else hears the interesting story of the profits and comforts of
+bee-keeping, and concludes to try it; he buys a few colonies, or gets them,
+from some overstocked ranch on shares, takes them back to the foot of some
+cañon, where the pasturage is fresh, squats on the land, with, or without, the
+permission of the owner, sets up his hives, makes a box-cabin for himself,
+scarcely bigger than a bee-hive, and awaits his fortune.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bees suffer sadly from famine during the dry years which occasionally occur in
+the southern and middle portions of the State. If the rainfall amounts only to
+three or four inches, instead of from twelve to twenty, as in ordinary seasons,
+then sheep and cattle die in thousands, and so do these small, winged cattle,
+unless they are carefully fed, or removed to other pastures. The year 1877 will
+long be remembered as exceptionally rainless and distressing. Scarcely a flower
+bloomed on the dry valleys away from the stream-sides, and not a single
+grain-field depending upon rain was reaped. The seed only sprouted, came up a
+little way, and withered. Horses, cattle, and sheep grew thinner day by day,
+nibbling at bushes and weeds, along the shallowing edges of streams, many of
+which were dried up altogether, for the first time since the settlement of the
+country.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus64"></a>
+<img src="images/img64.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="A BEE-RANCH ON A
+SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE. CARDINAL FLOWER" />
+<p class="caption">A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE. CARDINAL FLOWER.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In the course of a trip I made during the summer of that year through Monterey,
+San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties, the
+deplorable effects of the drought were everywhere visible&mdash;leafless
+fields, dead and dying cattle, dead bees, and half-dead people with dusty,
+doleful faces. Even the birds and squirrels were in distress, though their
+suffering was less painfully apparent than that of the poor cattle. These were
+falling one by one in slow, sure starvation along the banks of the hot,
+sluggish streams, while thousands of buzzards correspondingly fat were sailing
+above them, or standing gorged on the ground beneath the trees, waiting with
+easy faith for fresh carcasses. The quails, prudently considering the hard
+times, abandoned all thought of pairing. They were too poor to marry, and so
+continued in flocks all through the year without attempting to rear young. The
+ground-squirrels, though an exceptionally industrious and enterprising race, as
+every farmer knows, were hard pushed for a living; not a fresh leaf or seed was
+to be found save in the trees, whose bossy masses of dark green foliage
+presented a striking contrast to the ashen baldness of the ground beneath them.
+The squirrels, leaving their accustomed feeding-grounds, betook themselves to
+the leafy oaks to gnaw out the acorn stores of the provident woodpeckers, but
+the latter kept up a vigilant watch upon their movements. I noticed four
+woodpeckers in league against one squirrel, driving the poor fellow out of an
+oak that they claimed. He dodged round the knotty trunk from side to side, as
+nimbly as he could in his famished condition, only to find a sharp bill
+everywhere. But the fate of the bees that year seemed the saddest of all. In
+different portions of Los Angeles and San Diego counties, from one half to
+three fourths of them died of sheer starvation. Not less than 18,000 colonies
+perished in these two counties alone, while in the adjacent counties the
+death-rate was hardly less.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<a name="illus65"></a>
+<img src="images/img65.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="WILD BUCKWHEAT.&mdash;A BEE RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS" />
+<p class="caption">WILD BUCKWHEAT.&mdash;A BEE RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Even the colonies nearest to the mountains suffered this year, for the smaller
+vegetation on the foot-hills was affected by the drought almost as severely as
+that of the valleys and plains, and even the hardy, deep-rooted chaparral, the
+surest dependence of the bees, bloomed sparingly, while much of it was beyond
+reach. Every swarm could have been saved, however, by promptly supplying them
+with food when their own stores began to fail, and before they became enfeebled
+and discouraged; or by cutting roads back into the mountains, and taking them
+into the heart of the flowery chaparral. The Santa Lucia, San Rafael, San
+Gabriel, San Jacinto, and San Bernardino ranges are almost untouched as yet
+save by the wild bees. Some idea of their resources, and of the advantages and
+disadvantages they offer to bee-keepers, may be formed from an excursion that I
+made into the San Gabriel Range about the beginning of August of &ldquo;the dry
+year.&rdquo; This range, containing most of the characteristic features of the
+other ranges just mentioned, overlooks the Los Angeles vineyards and orange
+groves from the north, and is more rigidly inaccessible in the ordinary meaning
+of the word than any other that I ever attempted to penetrate. The slopes are
+exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot, and they are covered with thorny
+bushes from five to ten feet high. With the exception of little spots not
+visible in general views, the entire surface is covered with them, massed in
+close hedge growth, sweeping gracefully down into every gorge and hollow, and
+swelling over every ridge and summit in shaggy, ungovernable exuberance,
+offering more honey to the acre for half the year than the most crowded
+clover-field. But when beheld from the open San Gabriel Valley, beaten with dry
+sunshine, all that was seen of the range seemed to wear a forbidding aspect.
+From base to summit all seemed gray, barren, silent, its glorious chaparral
+appearing like dry moss creeping over its dull, wrinkled ridges and hollows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Setting out from Pasadena, I reached the foot of the range about sundown; and
+being weary and heated with my walk across the shadeless valley, concluded to
+camp for the night. After resting a few moments, I began to look about among
+the flood-boulders of Eaton Creek for a camp-ground, when I came upon a
+strange, dark-looking man who had been chopping cord-wood. He seemed surprised
+at seeing me, so I sat down with him on the live-oak log he had been cutting,
+and made haste to give a reason for my appearance in his solitude, explaining
+that I was anxious to find out something about the mountains, and meant to make
+my way up Eaton Creek next morning. Then he kindly invited me to camp with him,
+and led me to his little cabin, situated at the foot of the mountains, where a
+small spring oozes out of a bank overgrown with wild-rose bushes. After supper,
+when the daylight was gone, he explained that he was out of candles; so we sat
+in the dark, while he gave me a sketch of his life in a mixture of Spanish and
+English. He was born in Mexico, his father Irish, his mother Spanish. He had
+been a miner, rancher, prospector, hunter, etc., rambling always, and wearing
+his life away in mere waste; but now he was going to settle down. His past
+life, he said, was of &ldquo;no account,&rdquo; but the future was promising.
+He was going to &ldquo;make money and marry a Spanish woman.&rdquo; People mine
+here for water as for gold. He had been running a tunnel into a spur of the
+mountain back of his cabin. &ldquo;My prospect is good,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;and if I chance to strike a good, strong flow, I&rsquo;ll soon be worth
+$5000 or $10,000. For that flat out there,&rdquo; referring to a small,
+irregular patch of bouldery detritus, two or three acres in size, that had been
+deposited by Eaton Creek during some flood season,&mdash;&ldquo;that flat is
+large enough for a nice orange-grove, and the bank behind the cabin will do for
+a vineyard, and after watering my own trees and vines I will have some water
+left to sell to my neighbors below me, down the valley. And then,&rdquo; he
+continued, &ldquo;I can keep bees, and make money that way, too, for the
+mountains above here are just full of honey in the summer-time, and one of my
+neighbors down here says that he will let me have a whole lot of hives, on
+shares, to start with. You see I&rsquo;ve a good thing; I&rsquo;m all right
+now.&rdquo; All this prospective affluence in the sunken, boulder-choked
+flood-bed of a mountain-stream! Leaving the bees out of the count, most
+fortune-seekers would as soon think of settling on the summit of Mount Shasta.
+Next morning, wishing my hopeful entertainer good luck, I set out on my shaggy
+excursion.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus66"></a>
+<img src="images/img66.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT, SPANISH BAYONET" />
+<p class="caption">A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT, SPANISH BAYONET.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+About half an hour&rsquo;s walk above the cabin, I came to &ldquo;The
+Fall,&rdquo; famous throughout the valley settlements as the finest yet
+discovered in the San Gabriel Mountains. It is a charming little thing, with a
+low, sweet voice, singing like a bird, as it pours from a notch in a short
+ledge, some thirty-five or forty feet into a round mirror-pool. The face of the
+cliff back of it, and on both sides, is smoothly covered and embossed with
+mosses, against which the white water shines out in showy relief, like a silver
+instrument in a velvet case. Hither come the San Gabriel lads and lassies, to
+gather ferns and dabble away their hot holidays in the cool water, glad to
+escape from their commonplace palm-gardens and orange-groves. The delicate
+maidenhair grows on fissured rocks within reach of the spray, while
+broad-leaved maples and sycamores cast soft, mellow shade over a rich profusion
+of bee-flowers, growing among boulders in front of the pool&mdash;the fall, the
+flowers, the bees, the ferny rocks, and leafy shade forming a charming little
+poem of wildness, the last of a series extending down the flowery slopes of
+Mount San Antonio through the rugged, foam-beaten bosses of the main Eaton
+Canon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the base of the fall I followed the ridge that forms the western rim of
+the Eaton basin to the summit of one of the principal peaks, which is about
+5000 feet above sea-level. Then, turning eastward, I crossed the middle of the
+basin, forcing a way over its many subordinate ridges and across its eastern
+rim, having to contend almost everywhere with the floweriest and most
+impenetrable growth of honey-bushes I had ever encountered since first my
+mountaineering began. Most of the Shasta chaparral is leafy nearly to the
+ground; here the main stems are naked for three or four feet, and interspiked
+with dead twigs, forming a stiff <i>chevaux de frise</i> through which even the
+bears make their way with difficulty. I was compelled to creep for miles on all
+fours, and in following the bear-trails often found tufts of hair on the bushes
+where they had forced themselves through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For 100 feet or so above the fall the ascent was made possible only by tough
+cushions of club-moss that clung to the rock. Above this the ridge weathers
+away to a thin knife-blade for a few hundred yards, and thence to the summit of
+the range it carries a bristly mane of chaparral. Here and there small openings
+occur on rocky places, commanding fine views across the cultivated valley to
+the ocean. These I found by the tracks were favorite outlooks and
+resting-places for the wild animals&mdash;bears, wolves, foxes, wildcats,
+etc.&mdash;which abound here, and would have to be taken into account in the
+establishment of bee-ranches. In the deepest thickets I found wood-rat
+villages&mdash;groups of huts four to six feet high, built of sticks and leaves
+in rough, tapering piles, like musk-rat cabins. I noticed a good many bees,
+too, most of them wild. The tame honey-bees seemed languid and wing-weary, as
+if they had come all the way up from the flowerless valley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After reaching the summit I had time to make only a hasty survey of the basin,
+now glowing in the sunset gold, before hastening down into one of the tributary
+cañons in search, of water. Emerging from a particularly tedious breadth of
+chaparral, I found myself free and erect in a beautiful park-like grove of
+Mountain Live Oak, where the ground was planted with aspidiums and brier-roses,
+while the glossy foliage made a close canopy overhead, leaving the gray
+dividing trunks bare to show the beauty of their interlacing arches. The bottom
+of the cañon was dry where I first reached it, but a bunch of scarlet mimulus
+indicated water at no great distance, and I soon discovered about a bucketful
+in a hollow of the rock. This, however, was full of dead bees, wasps, beetles,
+and leaves, well steeped and simmered, and would, therefore, require boiling
+and filtering through fresh charcoal before it could be made available. Tracing
+the dry channel about a mile farther down to its junction with a larger
+tributary cañon, I at length discovered a lot of boulder pools, clear as
+crystal, brimming full, and linked together by glistening streamlets just
+strong enough to sing audibly. Flowers in full bloom adorned their margins,
+lilies ten feet high, larkspur, columbines, and luxuriant ferns, leaning and
+overarching in lavish abundance, while a noble old Live Oak spread its rugged
+arms over all. Here I camped, making my bed on smooth cobblestones.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+<a name="illus67"></a>
+<img src="images/img67.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="A BEE-KEEPER&rsquo;S
+CABIN.&mdash;BURRIELIA (ABOVE).&mdash;MADIA (BELOW)" />
+<p class="caption">A BEE-KEEPER&rsquo;S CABIN.&mdash;BURRIELIA (ABOVE).&mdash;MADIA (BELOW).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Next day, in the channel of a tributary that heads on Mount San Antonio, I
+passed about fifteen or twenty gardens like the one in which I
+slept&mdash;lilies in every one of them, in the full pomp of bloom. My third
+camp was made near the middle of the general basin, at the head of a long
+system of cascades from ten to 200 feet high, one following the other in close
+succession down a rocky, inaccessible cañon, making a total descent of nearly
+1700 feet. Above the cascades the main stream passes through a series of open,
+sunny levels, the largest of which are about an acre in size, where the wild
+bees and their companions were feasting on a showy growth of zauschneria,
+painted cups, and monardella; and gray squirrels were busy harvesting the burs
+of the Douglas Spruce, the only conifer I met in the basin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eastern slopes of the basin are in every way similar to those we have
+described, and the same may be said of other portions of the range. From the
+highest summit, far as the eye could reach, the landscape was one vast
+bee-pasture, a rolling wilderness of honey-bloom, scarcely broken by bits of
+forest or the rocky outcrops of hilltops and ridges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Behind the San Bernardino Range lies the wild &ldquo;sage-brush country,&rdquo;
+bounded on the east by the Colorado River, and extending in a general northerly
+direction to Nevada and along the eastern base of the Sierra beyond Mono Lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The greater portion of this immense region, including Owen&rsquo;s Valley,
+Death Valley, and the Sink of the Mohave, the area of which is nearly one fifth
+that of the entire State, is usually regarded as a desert, not because of any
+lack in the soil, but for want of rain, and rivers available for irrigation.
+Very little of it, however, is desert in the eyes of a bee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking now over all the available pastures of California, it appears that the
+business of beekeeping is still in its infancy. Even in the more enterprising
+of the southern counties, where so vigorous a beginning has been made, less
+than a tenth of their honey resources have as yet been developed; while in the
+Great Plain, the Coast Ranges, the Sierra Nevada, and the northern region about
+Mount Shasta, the business can hardly be said to exist at all. What the limits
+of its developments in the future may be, with the advantages of cheaper
+transportation and the invention of better methods in general, it is not easy
+to guess. Nor, on the other hand, are we able to measure the influence on bee
+interests likely to follow the destruction of the forests, now rapidly falling
+before fire and the ax. As to the sheep evil, that can hardly become greater
+than it is at the present day. In short, notwithstanding the wide-spread
+deterioration and destruction of every kind already effected, California, with
+her incomparable climate and flora, is still, as far as I know, the best of all
+the bee-lands of the world.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="linknote-3" id="linknote-3"></a> <a href="#linknoteref-3">[1]</a> 
+Fifteen hives of Italian bees were introduced into Los Angeles County in 1855,
+and in 1876 they had increased to 500. The marked superiority claimed for them
+over the common species is now attracting considerable attention.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,9175 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mountains of California, by John Muir
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Mountains of California
+
+Author: John Muir
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2003 [EBook #10012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Beth Trapaga and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA
+
+
+BY
+
+JOHN MUIR
+
+
+[Illustration: HOOFED LOCUSTS.]
+
+
+1894
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I THE SIERRA NEVADA
+  II THE GLACIERS
+ III THE SNOW
+  IV A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA
+   V THE PASSES
+  VI THE GLACIER LAKES
+ VII THE GLACIER MEADOWS
+VIII THE FORESTS
+  IX THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
+   X A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS
+  XI THE RIVER FLOODS
+ XII SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS
+XIII THE WATER-OUZEL
+ XIV THE WILD SHEEP
+  XV IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS
+ XVI THE BEE-PASTURES
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+HOOFED LOCUSTS
+MOUNT TAMALPAIS--NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE
+MOUNT SHASTA, LOOKING SOUTHWEST
+MOUNT HOOD
+MOUNT RAINIER FROM PARADISE VALLEY--NISQUALLY GLACIER
+MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY
+MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION BOUNDARY
+VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CA�ON
+LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS
+THE DEATH OF A LAKE
+LAKE STARR KING
+VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST
+EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA
+VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST
+NUT PINE
+THE GROVE FORM
+LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN CHARACTER OF WOODS
+SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE
+YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES
+FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE
+PINUS PONDEROSA
+SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH
+INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME
+FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS
+VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR
+SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA
+  GLACIERS
+JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR
+STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH
+GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES
+A DWARF PINE
+OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES
+TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE WHEN SHOWING
+  OFF TO A SPECTATOR
+SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE
+TRYING THE BOW
+A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS
+WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING
+ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL
+OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT
+THE OUZEL AT HOME
+YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CANON
+SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA
+HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM
+HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP
+CROSSING A CA�ON STREAM
+WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE
+INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP
+A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA
+WILD BEE GARDEN
+IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.--WHITE SAGE
+A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE.--CARDINAL FLOWER
+WILD BUCKWHEAT.--A BEE-RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS
+A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT.--SPANISH BAYONET
+A BEE-KEEPER'S CABIN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+THE SIERRA NEVADA
+
+Go where you may within the bounds of California, mountains are ever in
+sight, charming and glorifying every landscape. Yet so simple and
+massive is the topography of the State in general views, that the main
+central portion displays only one valley, and two chains of mountains
+which seem almost perfectly regular in trend and height: the Coast Range
+on the west side, the Sierra Nevada on the east. These two ranges coming
+together in curves on the north and south inclose a magnificent basin,
+with a level floor more than 400 miles long, and from 35 to 60 miles
+wide. This is the grand Central Valley of California, the waters of
+which have only one outlet to the sea through the Golden Gate. But with
+this general simplicity of features there is great complexity of hidden
+detail. The Coast Range, rising as a grand green barrier against the
+ocean, from 2000 to 8000 feet high, is composed of innumerable
+forest-crowned spurs, ridges, and rolling hill-waves which inclose a
+multitude of smaller valleys; some looking out through long,
+forest-lined vistas to the sea; others, with but few trees, to the
+Central Valley; while a thousand others yet smaller are embosomed and
+concealed in mild, round-browed hills, each, with its own climate, soil,
+and productions.
+
+Making your way through the mazes of the Coast Range to the summit of
+any of the inner peaks or passes opposite San Francisco, in the clear
+springtime, the grandest and most telling of all California landscapes
+is outspread before you. At your feet lies the great Central Valley
+glowing golden in the sunshine, extending north and south farther than
+the eye can reach, one smooth, flowery, lake-like bed of fertile soil.
+Along its eastern margin rises the mighty Sierra, miles in height,
+reposing like a smooth, cumulous cloud in the sunny sky, and so
+gloriously colored, and so luminous, it seems to be not clothed with
+light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.
+Along the top, and extending a good way down, you see a pale, pearl-gray
+belt of snow; and below it a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the
+extension of the forests; and along the base of the range a broad belt
+of rose-purple and yellow, where lie the minor's gold-fields and the
+foot-hill gardens. All these colored belts blending smoothly make a wall
+of light ineffably fine, and as beautiful as a rainbow, yet firm as
+adamant.
+
+When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, from the
+summit of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or
+plowed as yet, was one furred, rich sheet of golden compositae, and the
+luminous wall of the mountains shone in all its glory. Then it seemed to
+me the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the
+Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing
+and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the
+sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday radiance on the
+trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the alpenglow, and a thousand
+dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, it
+still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely
+beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen.
+
+The Sierra is about 500 miles long, 70 miles wide, and from 7000 to
+nearly 15,000 feet high. In general views no mark of man is visible on
+it, nor anything to suggest the richness of the life it cherishes, or
+the depth and grandeur of its sculpture. None of its magnificent
+forest-crowned ridges rises much above the general level to publish its
+wealth. No great valley or lake is seen, or river, or group of
+well-marked features of any kind, standing out in distinct pictures.
+Even the summit-peaks, so clear and high in the sky, seem comparatively
+smooth and featureless. Nevertheless, glaciers are still at work in the
+shadows of the peaks, and thousands of lakes and meadows shine and bloom
+beneath them, and the whole range is furrowed with ca�ons to a depth of
+from 2000 to 5000 feet, in which once flowed majestic glaciers, and in
+which now flow and sing a band of beautiful rivers.
+
+Though of such stupendous depth, these famous ca�ons are not raw,
+gloomy, jagged-walled gorges, savage and inaccessible. With rough
+passages here and there they still make delightful pathways for the
+mountaineer, conducting from the fertile lowlands to the highest icy
+fountains, as a kind of mountain streets full of charming life and
+light, graded and sculptured by the ancient glaciers, and presenting,
+throughout all their courses, a rich variety of novel and attractive
+scenery, the most attractive that has yet been discovered in the
+mountain-ranges of the world.
+
+In many places, especially in the middle region of the western flank of
+the range, the main ca�ons widen into spacious valleys or parks,
+diversified like artificial landscape-gardens, with charming groves and
+meadows, and thickets of blooming bushes, while the lofty, retiring
+walls, infinitely varied in form and sculpture, are fringed with ferns,
+flowering-plants of many species, oaks, and evergreens, which find
+anchorage on a thousand narrow steps and benches; while the whole is
+enlivened and made glorious with rejoicing streams that come dancing and
+foaming over the sunny brows of the cliffs to join the shining river
+that flows in tranquil beauty down the middle of each one of them.
+
+The walls of these park valleys of the Yosemite kind are made up of
+rocks mountains in size, partly separated from each other by narrow
+gorges and side-ca�ons; and they are so sheer in front, and so compactly
+built together on a level floor, that, comprehensively seen, the parks
+they inclose look like immense halls or temples lighted from above.
+Every rock seems to glow with life. Some lean back in majestic repose;
+others, absolutely sheer, or nearly so, for thousands of feet, advance
+their brows in thoughtful attitudes beyond their companions, giving
+welcome to storms and calms alike, seemingly conscious yet heedless of
+everything going on about them, awful in stern majesty, types of
+permanence, yet associated with beauty of the frailest and most fleeting
+forms; their feet set in pine-groves and gay emerald meadows, their
+brows in the sky; bathed in light, bathed in floods of singing water,
+while snow-clouds, avalanches, and the winds shine and surge and wreathe
+about them as the years go by, as if into these mountain mansions Nature
+had taken pains to gather her choicest treasures to draw her lovers into
+close and confiding communion with her.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT TAMALPAIS--NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE.]
+
+Here, too, in the middle region of deepest ca�ons are the grandest
+forest-trees, the Sequoia, king of conifers, the noble Sugar and Yellow
+Pines, Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, and the Silver Firs, each a giant of
+its kind, assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all
+other coniferous forests in the world, both in the number of its species
+and in the size and beauty of its trees. The winds flow in melody
+through their colossal spires, and they are vocal everywhere with the
+songs of birds and running water. Miles of fragrant ceanothus and
+manzanita bushes bloom beneath them, and lily gardens and meadows, and
+damp, ferny glens in endless variety of fragrance and color, compelling
+the admiration of every observer. Sweeping on over ridge and valley,
+these noble trees extend a continuous belt from end to end of the range,
+only slightly interrupted by sheer-walled ca�ons at intervals of about
+fifteen and twenty miles. Here the great burly brown bears delight to
+roam, harmonizing with the brown boles of the trees beneath which they
+feed. Deer, also, dwell here, and find food and shelter in the ceanothus
+tangles, with a multitude of smaller people. Above this region of
+giants, the trees grow smaller until the utmost limit of the timber line
+is reached on the stormy mountain-slopes at a height of from ten to
+twelve thousand feet above the sea, where the Dwarf Pine is so lowly and
+hard beset by storms and heavy snow, it is pressed into flat tangles,
+over the tops of which we may easily walk. Below the main forest belt
+the trees likewise diminish in size, frost and burning drought repressing
+and blasting alike.
+
+The rose-purple zone along the base of the range comprehends nearly all
+the famous gold region of California. And here it was that miners from
+every country under the sun assembled in a wild, torrent-like rush to
+seek their fortunes. On the banks of every river, ravine, and gully they
+have left their marks. Every gravel- and boulder-bed has been
+desperately riddled over and over again. But in this region the pick and
+shovel, once wielded with savage enthusiasm, have been laid away, and
+only quartz-mining is now being carried on to any considerable extent.
+The zone in general is made up of low, tawny, waving foot-hills,
+roughened here and there with brush and trees, and outcropping masses of
+slate, colored gray and red with lichens. The smaller masses of slate,
+rising abruptly from the dry, grassy sod in leaning slabs, look like
+ancient tombstones in a deserted burying-ground. In early spring, say
+from February to April, the whole of this foot-hill belt is a paradise
+of bees and flowers. Refreshing rains then fall freely, birds are busy
+building their nests, and the sunshine is balmy and delightful. But by
+the end of May the soil, plants, and sky seem to have been baked in an
+oven. Most of the plants crumble to dust beneath the foot, and the
+ground is full of cracks; while the thirsty traveler gazes with eager
+longing through the burning glare to the snowy summits looming like hazy
+clouds in the distance.
+
+The trees, mostly _Quercus Douglasii_ and _Pinus Sabiniana_,
+thirty to forty feet high, with thin, pale-green foliage, stand far
+apart and cast but little shade. Lizards glide about on the rocks
+enjoying a constitution that no drought can dry, and ants in amazing
+numbers, whose tiny sparks of life seem to burn the brighter with the
+increasing heat, ramble industriously in long trains in search of food.
+Crows, ravens, magpies--friends in distress--gather on the ground
+beneath the best shade-trees, panting with drooping wings and bills wide
+open, scarce a note from any of them during the midday hours. Quails,
+too, seek the shade during the heat of the day about tepid pools in the
+channels of the larger mid-river streams. Rabbits scurry from thicket to
+thicket among the ceanothus bushes, and occasionally a long-eared hare
+is seen cantering gracefully across the wider openings. The nights are
+calm and dewless during the summer, and a thousand voices proclaim the
+abundance of life, notwithstanding the desolating effect of dry sunshine
+on the plants and larger animals. The hylas make a delightfully pure and
+tranquil music after sunset; and coyotes, the little, despised dogs of
+the wilderness, brave, hardy fellows, looking like withered wisps of
+hay, bark in chorus for hours. Mining-towns, most of them dead, and a
+few living ones with bright bits of cultivation about them, occur at
+long intervals along the belt, and cottages covered with climbing roses,
+in the midst of orange and peach orchards, and sweet-scented hay-fields
+in fertile flats where water for irrigation may be had. But they are
+mostly far apart, and make scarce any mark in general views.
+
+Every winter the High Sierra and the middle forest region get snow in
+glorious abundance, and even the foot-hills are at times whitened. Then
+all the range looks like a vast beveled wall of purest marble. The rough
+places are then made smooth, the death and decay of the year is covered
+gently and kindly, and the ground seems as clean as the sky. And though
+silent in its flight from the clouds, and when it is taking its place on
+rock, or tree, or grassy meadow, how soon the gentle snow finds a voice!
+Slipping from the heights, gathering in avalanches, it booms and roars
+like thunder, and makes a glorious show as it sweeps down the
+mountain-side, arrayed in long, silken streamers and wreathing, swirling
+films of crystal dust.
+
+The north half of the range is mostly covered with floods of lava, and
+dotted with volcanoes and craters, some of them recent and perfect in
+form, others in various stages of decay. The south half is composed of
+granite nearly from base to summit, while a considerable number of
+peaks, in the middle of the range, are capped with metamorphic slates,
+among which are Mounts Dana and Gibbs to the east of Yosemite Valley.
+Mount Whitney, the culminating point of the range near its southern
+extremity, lifts its helmet-shaped crest to a height of nearly 14,700
+feet. Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a height of
+14,440 feet at the northern extremity, and forms a noble landmark for
+all the surrounding region within a radius of a hundred miles. Residual
+masses of volcanic rocks occur throughout most of the granitic southern
+portion also, and a considerable number of old volcanoes on the flanks,
+especially along the eastern base of the range near Mono Lake and
+southward. But it is only to the northward that the entire range, from
+base to summit, is covered with lava.
+
+From the summit of Mount Whitney only granite is seen. Innumerable peaks
+and spires but little lower than its own storm-beaten crags rise in
+groups like forest-trees, in full view, segregated by ca�ons of
+tremendous depth and ruggedness. On Shasta nearly every feature in the
+vast view speaks of the old volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in
+Oregon, the icy volcanoes of Mount Pitt and the Three Sisters rise above
+the dark evergreen woods. Southward innumerable smaller craters and
+cones are distributed along the axis of the range and on each flank. Of
+these, Lassen's Butte is the highest, being nearly 11,000 feet above
+sea-level. Miles of its flanks are reeking and bubbling with hot
+springs, many of them so boisterous and sulphurous they seem over ready
+to become spouting geysers like those of the Yellowstone.
+
+The Cinder Cone near marks the most recent volcanic eruption in the
+Sierra. It is a symmetrical truncated cone about 700 feet high, covered
+with gray cinders and ashes, and has a regular unchanged crater on its
+summit, in which a few small Two-leaved Pines are growing. These show
+that the age of the cone is not less than eighty years. It stands
+between two lakes, which a short time ago were one. Before the cone was
+built, a flood of rough vesicular lava was poured into the lake, cutting
+it in two, and, overflowing its banks, the fiery flood advanced into the
+pine-woods, overwhelming the trees in its way, the charred ends of some
+of which may still be seen projecting from beneath the snout of the
+lava-stream where it came to rest. Later still there was an eruption of
+ashes and loose obsidian cinders, probably from the same vent, which,
+besides forming the Cinder Cone, scattered a heavy shower over the
+surrounding woods for miles to a depth of from six inches to several
+feet.
+
+The history of this last Sierra eruption is also preserved in the
+traditions of the Pitt River Indians. They tell of a fearful time of
+darkness, when the sky was black with ashes and smoke that threatened
+every living thing with death, and that when at length the sun appeared
+once more it was red like blood.
+
+Less recent craters in great numbers roughen the adjacent region; some
+of them with lakes in their throats, others overgrown with trees and
+flowers, Nature in these old hearths and firesides having literally
+given beauty for ashes. On the northwest side of Mount Shasta there is a
+subordinate cone about 3000 feet below the summit, which, has been
+active subsequent to the breaking up of the main ice-cap that once
+covered the mountain, as is shown by its comparatively unwasted crater
+and the streams of unglaciated lava radiating from it. The main summit
+is about a mile and a half in diameter, bounded by small crumbling peaks
+and ridges, among which we seek in vain for the outlines of the ancient
+crater.
+
+These ruinous masses, and the deep glacial grooves that flute the sides
+of the mountain, show that it has been considerably lowered and wasted
+by ice; how much we have no sure means of knowing. Just below the
+extreme summit hot sulphurous gases and vapor issue from irregular
+fissures, mixed with spray derived from melting snow, the last feeble
+expression of the mighty force that built the mountain. Not in one great
+convulsion was Shasta given birth. The crags of the summit and the
+sections exposed by the glaciers down the sides display enough of its
+internal framework to prove that comparatively long periods of
+quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which the
+cooling lavas ceased to flow, and became permanent additions to the bulk
+of the growing mountain. With alternate haste and deliberation eruption
+succeeded eruption till the old volcano surpassed even its present
+sublime height.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT SHASTA, LOOKING SOUTHWEST.]
+
+Standing on the icy top of this, the grandest of all the fire-mountains
+of the Sierra, we can hardly fail to look forward to its next eruption.
+Gardens, vineyards, homes have been planted confidingly on the flanks of
+volcanoes which, after remaining steadfast for ages, have suddenly
+blazed into violent action, and poured forth overwhelming floods of
+fire. It is known that more than a thousand years of cool calm have
+intervened between violent eruptions. Like gigantic geysers spouting
+molten rock instead of water, volcanoes work and rest, and we have no
+sure means of knowing whether they are dead when still, or only
+sleeping.
+
+Along the western base of the range a telling series of sedimentary
+rocks containing the early history of the Sierra are now being studied.
+But leaving for the present these first chapters, we see that only a
+very short geological time ago, just before the coming on of that
+winter of winters called the glacial period, a vast deluge of molten
+rocks poured from many a chasm and crater on the flanks and summit of
+the range, filling lake basins and river channels, and obliterating
+nearly every existing feature on the northern portion. At length these
+all-destroying floods ceased to flow. But while the great volcanic cones
+built up along the axis still burned and smoked, the whole Sierra passed
+under the domain of ice and snow. Then over the bald, featureless,
+fire-blackened mountains, glaciers began to crawl, covering them from
+the summits to the sea with a mantle of ice; and then with infinite
+deliberation the work went on of sculpturing the range anew. These
+mighty agents of erosion, halting never through unnumbered centuries,
+crushed and ground the flinty lavas and granites beneath their crystal
+folds, wasting and building until in the fullness of time the Sierra was
+born again, brought to light nearly as we behold it today, with glaciers
+and snow-crushed pines at the top of the range, wheat-fields and
+orange-groves at the foot of it.
+
+This change from icy darkness and death to life and beauty was slow, as
+we count time, and is still going on, north and south, over all the
+world wherever glaciers exist, whether in the form of distinct rivers,
+as in Switzerland, Norway, the mountains of Asia, and the Pacific Coast;
+or in continuous mantling folds, as in portions of Alaska, Greenland,
+Franz-Joseph-Land, Nova Zembla, Spitzbergen, and the lands about the
+South Pole. But in no country, as far as I know, may these majestic
+changes be studied to better advantage than in the plains and mountains
+of California.
+
+Toward the close of the glacial period, when the snow-clouds became less
+fertile and the melting waste of sunshine became greater, the lower
+folds of the ice-sheet in California, discharging fleets of icebergs
+into the sea, began to shallow and recede from the lowlands, and then
+move slowly up the flanks of the Sierra in compliance with the changes
+of climate. The great white mantle on the mountains broke up into a
+series of glaciers more or less distinct and river-like, with many
+tributaries, and these again were melted and divided into still smaller
+glaciers, until now only a few of the smallest residual topmost branches
+of the grand system exist on the cool slopes of the summit peaks.
+
+Plants and animals, biding their time, closely followed the retiring
+ice, bestowing quick and joyous animation on the new-born landscapes.
+Pine-trees marched up the sun-warmed moraines in long, hopeful files,
+taking the ground and establishing themselves as soon as it was ready
+for them; brown-spiked sedges fringed the shores of the newborn lakes;
+young rivers roared in the abandoned channels of the glaciers; flowers
+bloomed around the feet of the great burnished domes,--while with quick
+fertility mellow beds of soil, settling and warming, offered food to
+multitudes of Nature's waiting children, great and small, animals as
+well as plants; mice, squirrels, marmots, deer, bears, elephants, etc.
+The ground burst into bloom with magical rapidity, and the young forests
+into bird-song: life in every form warming and sweetening and growing
+richer as the years passed away over the mighty Sierra so lately
+suggestive of death and consummate desolation only.
+
+It is hard without long and loving study to realize the magnitude of the
+work done on these mountains during the last glacial period by glaciers,
+which are only streams of closely compacted snow-crystals. Careful study
+of the phenomena presented goes to show that the pre-glacial condition
+of the range was comparatively simple: one vast wave of stone in which a
+thousand mountains, domes, ca�ons, ridges, etc., lay concealed. And in
+the development of these Nature chose for a tool not the earthquake or
+lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding
+rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered
+centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea. Laboring harmoniously in
+united strength they crushed and ground and wore away the rocks in their
+march, making vast beds of soil, and at the same time developed and
+fashioned the landscapes into the delightful variety of hill and dale
+and lordly mountain that mortals call beauty. Perhaps more than a mile
+in average depth has the range been thus degraded during the last
+glacial period,--a quantity of mechanical work almost inconceivably
+great. And our admiration must be excited again and again as we toil and
+study and learn that this vast job of rockwork, so far-reaching in its
+influences, was done by agents so fragile and small as are these flowers
+of the mountain clouds. Strong only by force of numbers, they carried
+away entire mountains, particle by particle, block by block, and cast
+them into the sea; sculptured, fashioned, modeled all the range, and
+developed its predestined beauty. All these new Sierra landscapes were
+evidently predestined, for the physical structure of the rocks on which
+the features of the scenery depend was acquired while they lay at least
+a mile deep below the pre-glacial surface. And it was while these
+features were taking form in the depths of the range, the particles of
+the rocks marching to their appointed places in the dark with reference
+to the coming beauty, that the particles of icy vapor in the sky
+marching to the same music assembled to bring them to the light. Then,
+after their grand task was done, these bands of snow-flowers, these
+mighty glaciers, were melted and removed as if of no more importance
+than dew destined to last but an hour. Few, however, of Nature's agents
+have left monuments so noble and enduring as they. The great granite
+domes a mile high, the ca�ons as deep, the noble peaks, the Yosemite
+valleys, these, and indeed nearly all other features of the Sierra
+scenery, are glacier monuments.
+
+Contemplating the works of these flowers of the sky, one may easily
+fancy them endowed with life: messengers sent down to work in the
+mountain mines on errands of divine love. Silently flying through the
+darkened air, swirling, glinting, to their appointed places, they seem
+to have taken counsel together, saying, "Come, we are feeble; let us
+help one another. We are many, and together we will be strong. Marching
+in close, deep ranks, let us roll away the stones from these mountain
+sepulchers, and set the landscapes free. Let us uncover these clustering
+domes. Here let us carve a lake basin; there, a Yosemite Valley; here, a
+channel for a river with fluted steps and brows for the plunge of
+songful cataracts. Yonder let us spread broad sheets of soil, that man
+and beast may be fed; and here pile trains of boulders for pines and
+giant Sequoias. Here make ground for a meadow; there, for a garden and
+grove, making it smooth and fine for small daisies and violets and beds
+of heathy bryanthus, spicing it well with crystals, garnet feldspar, and
+zircon." Thus and so on it has oftentimes seemed to me sang and planned
+and labored the hearty snow-flower crusaders; and nothing that I can
+write can possibly exaggerate the grandeur and beauty of their work.
+Like morning mist they have vanished in sunshine, all save the few small
+companies that still linger on the coolest mountainsides, and, as
+residual glaciers, are still busily at work completing the last of the
+lake basins, the last beds of soil, and the sculpture of some of the
+highest peaks.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT HOOD.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+THE GLACIERS
+
+Of the small residual glaciers mentioned in the preceding chapter, I
+have found sixty-five in that portion of the range lying between
+latitude 36� 30' and 39�. They occur singly or in small groups on the
+north sides of the peaks of the High Sierra, sheltered beneath broad
+frosty shadows, in amphitheaters of their own making, where the snow,
+shooting down from the surrounding heights in avalanches, is most
+abundant. Over two thirds of the entire number lie between latitude 37�
+and 38�, and form the highest fountains of the San Joaquin, Merced,
+Tuolumne, and Owen's rivers.
+
+The glaciers of Switzerland, like those of the Sierra, are mere wasting
+remnants of mighty ice-floods that once filled the great valleys and
+poured into the sea. So, also, are those of Norway, Asia, and South
+America. Even the grand continuous mantles of ice that still cover
+Greenland, Spitsbergen, Nova Zembla, Franz-Joseph-Land, parts of Alaska,
+and the south polar region are shallowing and shrinking. Every glacier
+in the world is smaller than it once was. All the world is growing
+warmer, or the crop of snow-flowers is diminishing. But in contemplating
+the condition of the glaciers of the world, we must bear in mind while
+trying to account for the changes going on that the same sunshine that
+wastes them builds them. Every glacier records the expenditure of an
+enormous amount of sun-heat in lifting the vapor for the snow of which
+it is made from the ocean to the mountains, as Tyndall strikingly shows.
+
+The number of glaciers in the Alps, according to the Schlagintweit
+brothers, is 1100, of which 100 may be regarded as primary, and the
+total area of ice, snow, and _n�v�_ is estimated at 1177 square
+miles, or an average for each glacier of little more than one square
+mile. On the same authority, the average height above sea-level at which
+they melt is about 7414 feet. The Grindelwald glacier descends below
+4000 feet, and one of the Mont Blanc glaciers reaches nearly as low a
+point. One of the largest of the Himalaya glaciers on the head waters of
+the Ganges does not, according to Captain Hodgson, descend below 12,914
+feet. The largest of the Sierra glaciers on Mount Shasta descends to
+within 9500 feet of the level of the sea, which, as far as I have
+observed, is the lowest point reached by any glacier within the bounds
+of California, the average height of all being not far from 11,000 feet.
+
+The changes that have taken place in the glacial conditions of the
+Sierra from the time of greatest extension is well illustrated by the
+series of glaciers of every size and form extending along the mountains
+of the coast to Alaska. A general exploration of this instructive region
+shows that to the north of California, through Oregon and Washington,
+groups of active glaciers still exist on all the high volcanic cones of
+the Cascade Range,--Mount Pitt, the Three Sisters, Mounts Jefferson,
+Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier, Baker, and others,--some of them of
+considerable size, though none of them approach the sea. Of these
+mountains Rainier, in Washington, is the highest and iciest. Its
+dome-like summit, between 14,000 and 15,000 feet high, is capped with
+ice, and eight glaciers, seven to twelve miles long, radiate from it as
+a center, and form the sources of the principal streams of the State.
+The lowest-descending of this fine group flows through beautiful forests
+to within 3500 feet of the sea-level, and sends forth a river laden with
+glacier mud and sand. On through British Columbia and southeastern
+Alaska the broad, sustained mountain-chain, extending along the coast,
+is generally glacier-bearing. The upper branches of nearly all the main
+ca�ons and fiords are occupied by glaciers, which gradually increase in
+size, and descend lower until the high region between Mount Fairweather
+and Mount St. Elias is reached, where a considerable number discharge
+into the waters of the ocean. This is pre�minently the ice-land of
+Alaska and of the entire Pacific Coast.
+
+Northward from here the glaciers gradually diminish in size and
+thickness, and melt at higher levels. In Prince William Sound and Cook's
+Inlet many fine glaciers are displayed, pouring from the surrounding
+mountains; but to the north of latitude 62� few, if any, glaciers
+remain, the ground being mostly low and the snowfall light. Between
+latitude 56� and 60� there are probably more than 5000 glaciers, not
+counting the smallest. Hundreds of the largest size descend through the
+forests to the level of the sea, or near it, though as far as my own
+observations have reached, after a pretty thorough examination of the
+region, not more than twenty-five discharge icebergs into the sea. All
+the long high-walled fiords into which these great glaciers of the first
+class flow are of course crowded with icebergs of every conceivable
+form, which are detached with thundering noise at intervals of a few
+minutes from an imposing ice-wall that is thrust forward into deep
+water. But these Pacific Coast icebergs are small as compared with those
+of Greenland and the Antarctic region, and only a few of them escape
+from the intricate system of channels, with which this portion of the
+coast is fringed, into the open sea. Nearly all of them are swashed and
+drifted by wind and tide back and forth in the fiords until finally
+melted by the ocean water, the sunshine, the warm winds, and the copious
+rains of summer. Only one glacier on the coast, observed by Prof.
+Russell, discharges its bergs directly into the open sea, at Icy Cape,
+opposite Mount St. Elias. The southernmost of the glaciers that reach
+the sea occupies a narrow, picturesque fiord about twenty miles to the
+northwest of the mouth of the Stikeen River, in latitude 56� 50'. The
+fiord is called by the natives "Hutli," or Thunder Bay, from the noise
+made by the discharge of the icebergs. About one degree farther north
+there are four of these complete glaciers, discharging at the heads of
+the long arms of Holkam Bay. At the head of the Tahkoo Inlet, still
+farther north, there is one; and at the head and around the sides of
+Glacier Bay, trending in a general northerly direction from Cross Sound
+in latitude 58� to 59�, there are seven of these complete glaciers
+pouring bergs into the bay and its branches, and keeping up an eternal
+thundering. The largest of this group, the Muir, has upward of 200
+tributaries, and a width below the confluence of the main tributaries of
+about twenty-five miles. Between the west side of this icy bay and the
+ocean all the ground, high and low, excepting the peaks of the
+Fairweather Range, is covered with a mantle of ice from 1000 to probably
+3000 feet thick, which discharges by many distinct mouths.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT RAINIER FROM PARADISE VALLEY--NISQUALLY GLACIER.]
+
+This fragmentary ice-sheet, and the immense glaciers about Mount St.
+Elias, together with the multitude of separate river-like glaciers that
+load the slopes of the coast mountains, evidently once formed part of a
+continuous ice-sheet that flowed over all the region hereabouts, and
+only a comparatively short time ago extended as far southward as the
+mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, probably farther. All the islands
+of the Alexander Archipelago, as well as the headlands and promontories
+of the mainland, display telling traces of this great mantle that are
+still fresh and unmistakable. They all have the forms of the greatest
+strength with reference to the action of a vast rigid press of
+oversweeping ice from the north and northwest, and their surfaces have a
+smooth, rounded, overrubbed appearance, generally free from angles. The
+intricate labyrinth of canals, channels, straits, passages, sounds,
+narrows, etc. between the islands, and extending into the mainland, of
+course manifest in their forms and trends and general characteristics
+the same subordination to the grinding action of universal glaciation as
+to their origin, and differ from the islands and banks of the fiords
+only in being portions of the pre-glacial margin of the continent more
+deeply eroded, and therefore covered by the ocean waters which flowed
+into them as the ice was melted out of them. The formation and extension
+of fiords in this manner is still going on, and may be witnessed in many
+places in Glacier Bay, Yakutat Bay, and adjacent regions. That the
+domain of the sea is being extended over the land by the wearing away of
+its shores, is well known, but in these icy regions of Alaska, and even
+as far south as Vancouver Island, the coast rocks have been so short a
+time exposed to wave-action they are but little wasted as yet. In these
+regions the extension of the sea effected by its own action in
+post-glacial time is scarcely appreciable as compared with that effected
+by ice-action.
+
+Traces of the vanished glaciers made during the period of greater
+extension abound on the Sierra as far south as latitude 36�. Even the
+polished rock surfaces, the most evanescent of glacial records, are
+still found in a wonderfully perfect state of preservation on the upper
+half of the middle portion of the range, and form the most striking of
+all the glacial phenomena. They occur in large irregular patches in the
+summit and middle regions, and though they have been subjected to the
+action of the weather with its corroding storms for thousands of years,
+their mechanical excellence is such that they still reflect the sunbeams
+like glass, and attract the attention of every observer. The attention
+of the mountaineer is seldom arrested by moraines, however regular and
+high they may be, or by ca�ons, however deep, or by rocks, however noble
+in form and sculpture; but he stoops and rubs his hands admiringly on
+the shining surfaces and trios hard to account for their mysterious
+smoothness. He has seen the snow descending in avalanches, but concludes
+this cannot be the work of snow, for he finds it where no avalanches
+occur. Nor can water have done it, for he sees this smoothness glowing
+on the sides and tops of the highest domes. Only the winds of all the
+agents he knows seem capable of flowing in the directions indicated by
+the scoring. Indians, usually so little curious about geological
+phenomena, have come to me occasionally and asked me, "What makeum the
+ground so smooth at Lake Tenaya?" Even horses and dogs gaze wonderingly
+at the strange brightness of the ground, and smell the polished spaces
+and place their feet cautiously on them when they come to them for the
+first time, as if afraid of sinking. The most perfect of the polished
+pavements and walls lie at an elevation of from 7000 to 9000 feet above
+the sea, where the rock is compact silicious granite. Small dim patches
+may be found as low as 3000 feet on the driest and most enduring
+portions of sheer walls with a southern exposure, and on compact
+swelling bosses partially protected from rain by a covering of large
+boulders. On the north half of the range the striated and polished
+surfaces are less common, not only because this part of the chain is
+lower, but because the surface rocks are chiefly porous lavas subject to
+comparatively rapid waste. The ancient moraines also, though well
+preserved on most of the south half of the range, are nearly obliterated
+to the northward, but then material is found scattered and
+disintegrated.
+
+A similar blurred condition of the superficial records of glacial action
+obtains throughout most of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and
+Alaska, due in great part to the action of excessive moisture. Even in
+southeastern Alaska, where the most extensive glaciers on the continent
+are, the more evanescent of the traces of their former greater
+extension, though comparatively recent, are more obscure than those of
+the ancient California glaciers whore the climate is drier and the rocks
+more resisting.
+
+These general views of the glaciers of the Pacific Coast will enable my
+readers to see something of the changes that have taken place in
+California, and will throw light on the residual glaciers of the High
+Sierra.
+
+Prior to the autumn of 1871 the glaciers of the Sierra were unknown. In
+October of that year I discovered the Black Mountain Glacier in a
+shadowy amphitheater between Black and Rod Mountains, two of the peaks
+of the Merced group. This group is the highest portion of a spur that
+straggles out from the main axis of the range in the direction of
+Yosemite Valley. At the time of this interesting discovery I was
+exploring the _n�v�_ amphitheaters of the group, and tracing the
+courses of the ancient glaciers that once poured from its ample
+fountains through the Illilouette Basin and the Yosemite Valley, not
+expecting to find any active glaciers so far south in the land of
+sunshine.
+
+Beginning on the northwestern extremity of the group, I explored the
+chief tributary basins in succession, their moraines, roches moutonn�es,
+and splendid glacier pavements, taking them in regular succession
+without any reference to the time consumed in their study. The monuments
+of the tributary that poured its ice from between Red and Black
+Mountains I found to be the most interesting of them all; and when I saw
+its magnificent moraines extending in majestic curves from the spacious
+amphitheater between the mountains, I was exhilarated with the work that
+lay before me. It was one of the golden days of the Sierra Indian
+summer, when the rich sunshine glorifies every landscape however rocky
+and cold, and suggests anything rather than glaciers. The path of the
+vanished glacier was warm now, and shone in many places as if washed
+with silver. The tall pines growing on the moraines stood transfigured
+in the glowing light, the poplar groves on the levels of the basin were
+masses of orange-yellow, and the late-blooming goldenrods added gold to
+gold. Pushing on over my rosy glacial highway, I passed lake after lake
+set in solid basins of granite, and many a thicket and meadow watered by
+a stream that issues from the amphitheater and links the lakes together;
+now wading through plushy bogs knee-deep in yellow and purple sphagnum;
+now passing over bare rock. The main lateral moraines that bounded the
+view on either hand are from 100 to nearly 200 feet high, and about as
+regular as artificial embankments, and covered with a superb growth of
+Silver Fir and Pine. But this garden and forest luxuriance was speedily
+left behind. The trees were dwarfed as I ascended; patches of the alpine
+bryanthus and cassiope began to appear, and arctic willows pressed into
+flat carpets by the winter snow. The lakelets, which a few miles down
+the valley were so richly embroidered with flowery meadows, had here, at
+an elevation of 10,000 feet, only small brown mats of carex, leaving
+bare rocks around more than half their shores. Yet amid this alpine
+suppression the Mountain Pine bravely tossed his storm-beaten branches
+on the ledges and buttresses of Red Mountain, some specimens being over
+100 feet high, and 24 feet in circumference, seemingly as fresh and
+vigorous as the giants of the lower zones.
+
+Evening came on just as I got fairly within the portal of the main
+amphitheater. It is about a mile wide, and a little less than two miles
+long. The crumbling spurs and battlements of Red Mountain bound it on
+the north, the somber, rudely sculptured precipices of Black Mountain on
+the south, and a hacked, splintery _col_, curving around from
+mountain to mountain, shuts it in on the east.
+
+I chose a camping-ground on the brink of one of the lakes where a
+thicket of Hemlock Spruce sheltered me from the night wind. Then, after
+making a tin-cupful of tea, I sat by my camp-fire reflecting on the
+grandeur and significance of the glacial records I had seen. As the
+night advanced the mighty rock walls of my mountain mansion seemed to
+come nearer, while the starry sky in glorious brightness stretched
+across like a ceiling from wall to wall, and fitted closely down into
+all the spiky irregularities of the summits. Then, after a long fireside
+rest and a glance at my note-book, I cut a few leafy branches for a bed,
+and fell into the clear, death-like sleep of the tired mountaineer.
+
+Early next morning I set out to trace the grand old glacier that had
+done so much for the beauty of the Yosemite region back to its farthest
+fountains, enjoying the charm that every explorer feels in Nature's
+untrodden wildernesses. The voices of the mountains were still asleep.
+The wind scarce stirred the pine-needles. The sun was up, but it was yet
+too cold for the birds and the few burrowing animals that dwell here.
+Only the stream, cascading from pool to pool, seemed to be wholly awake.
+Yet the spirit of the opening day called to action. The sunbeams came
+streaming gloriously through the jagged openings of the _col_,
+glancing on the burnished pavements and lighting the silvery lakes,
+while every sun-touched rock burned white on its edges like melting iron
+in a furnace. Passing round the north shore of my camp lake I followed
+the central stream past many cascades from lakelet to lakelet. The
+scenery became more rigidly arctic, the Dwarf Pines and Hemlocks
+disappeared, and the stream was bordered with icicles. As the sun rose
+higher rocks were loosened on shattered portions of the cliffs, and came
+down in rattling avalanches, echoing wildly from crag to crag.
+
+The main lateral moraines that extend from the jaws of the amphitheater
+into the Illilouette Basin are continued in straggling masses along the
+walls of the amphitheater, while separate boulders, hundreds of tons in
+weight, are left stranded here and there out in the middle of the
+channel. Here, also, I observed a series of small terminal moraines
+ranged along the south wall of the amphitheater, corresponding in size
+and form with the shadows cast by the highest portions. The meaning of
+this correspondence between moraines and shadows was afterward made
+plain. Tracing the stream back to the last of its chain of lakelets, I
+noticed a deposit of fine gray mud on the bottom except where the force
+of the entering current had prevented its settling. It looked like the
+mud worn from a grindstone, and I at once suspected its glacial origin,
+for the stream that was carrying it came gurgling out of the base of a
+raw moraine that seemed in process of formation. Not a plant or
+weather-stain was visible on its rough, unsettled surface. It is from 60
+to over 100 feet high, and plunges forward at an angle of 38�.
+Cautiously picking my way, I gained the top of the moraine and was
+delighted to see a small but well characterized glacier swooping down
+from the gloomy precipices of Black Mountain in a finely graduated curve
+to the moraine on which I stood. The compact ice appeared on all the
+lower portions of the glacier, though gray with dirt and stones embedded
+in it. Farther up the ice disappeared beneath coarse granulated snow.
+The surface of the glacier was further characterized by dirt bands and
+the outcropping edges of the blue veins, showing the laminated structure
+of the ice. The uppermost crevasse, or "bergschrund," where the
+_n�v�_ was attached to the mountain, was from 12 to 14 feet wide,
+and was bridged in a few places by the remains of snow avalanches.
+Creeping along the edge of the schrund, holding on with benumbed
+fingers, I discovered clear sections where the bedded structure was
+beautifully revealed. The surface snow, though sprinkled with stones
+shot down from the cliffs, was in some places almost pure, gradually
+becoming crystalline and changing to whitish porous ice of different
+shades of color, and this again changing at a depth of 20 or 30 feet to
+blue ice, some of the ribbon-like bands of which were nearly pure, and
+blended with the paler bands in the most gradual and delicate manner
+imaginable. A series of rugged zigzags enabled me to make my way down
+into the weird under-world of the crevasse. Its chambered hollows were
+hung with a multitude of clustered icicles, amid which pale, subdued
+light pulsed and shimmered with indescribable loveliness. Water dripped
+and tinkled overhead, and from far below came strange, solemn murmurings
+from currents that were feeling their way through veins and fissures in
+the dark. The chambers of a glacier are perfectly enchanting,
+notwithstanding one feels out of place in their frosty beauty. I was
+soon cold in my shirt-sleeves, and the leaning wall threatened to engulf
+me; yet it was hard to leave the delicious music of the water and the
+lovely light. Coming again to the surface, I noticed boulders of every
+size on their journeys to the terminal moraine--journeys of more than a
+hundred years, without a single stop, night or day, winter or summer.
+
+The sun gave birth to a network of sweet-voiced rills that ran
+gracefully down the glacier, curling and swirling in their shining
+channels, and cutting clear sections through the porous surface-ice into
+the solid blue, where the structure of the glacier was beautifully
+illustrated.
+
+The series of small terminal moraines which I had observed in the
+morning, along the south wall of the amphitheater, correspond in every
+way with the moraine of this glacier, and their distribution with
+reference to shadows was now understood. When the climatic changes came
+on that caused the melting and retreat of the main glacier that filled
+the amphitheater, a series of residual glaciers were left in the cliff
+shadows, under the protection of which they lingered, until they formed
+the moraines we are studying. Then, as the snow became still less
+abundant, all of them vanished in succession, except the one just
+described; and the cause of its longer life is sufficiently apparent in
+the greater area of snow-basin it drains, and its more perfect
+protection from wasting sunshine. How much longer this little glacier
+will last depends, of course, on the amount of snow it receives from
+year to year, as compared with melting waste.
+
+After this discovery, I made excursions over all the High Sierra,
+pushing my explorations summer after summer, and discovered that what at
+first sight in the distance looked like extensive snow-fields, wore in
+great part glaciers, busily at work completing the sculpture of the
+summit-peaks so grandly blocked out by their giant predecessors.
+
+On August 21, I set a series of stakes in the Maclure Glacier, near
+Mount Lyell, and found its rate of motion to be little more than an inch
+a day in the middle, showing a great contrast to the Muir Glacier in
+Alaska, which, near the front, flows at a rate of from five to ten feet
+in twenty-four hours. Mount Shasta has three glaciers, but Mount
+Whitney, although it is the highest mountain in the range, does not now
+cherish a single glacier. Small patches of lasting snow and ice occur on
+its northern slopes, but they are shallow, and present no well marked
+evidence of glacial motion. Its sides, however, are scored and polished
+in many places by the action of its ancient glaciers that flowed east
+and west as tributaries of the great glaciers that once filled the
+valleys of the Kern and Owen's rivers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+THE SNOW
+
+The first snow that whitens the Sierra, usually falls about the end of
+October or early in November, to a depth of a few inches, after months
+of the most charming Indian summer weather imaginable. But in a few
+days, this light covering mostly melts from the slopes exposed to the
+sun and causes but little apprehension on the part of mountaineers who
+may be lingering among the high peaks at this time. The first general
+winter storm that yields snow that is to form a lasting portion of the
+season's supply, seldom breaks on the mountains before the end of
+November. Then, warned by the sky, cautions mountaineers, together with
+the wild sheep, deer, and most of the birds and bears, make haste to the
+lowlands or foot-hills; and burrowing marmots, mountain beavers,
+wood-rats, and such people go into winter quarters, some of them not
+again to see the light of day until the general awakening and
+resurrection of the spring in June or July. The first heavy fall is
+usually from about two to four feet in depth. Then, with intervals of
+splendid sunshine, storm succeeds storm, heaping snow on snow, until
+thirty to fifty feet has fallen. But on account of its settling and
+compacting, and the almost constant waste from melting and evaporation,
+the average depth actually found at any time seldom exceeds ten feet in
+the forest region, or fifteen feet along the slopes of the summit peaks.
+
+Even during the coldest weather evaporation never wholly ceases, and the
+sunshine that abounds between the storms is sufficiently powerful to
+melt the surface more or less through all the winter months. Waste from
+melting also goes on to some extent on the bottom from heat stored up in
+the rocks, and given off slowly to the snow in contact with them, as is
+shown by the rising of the streams on all the higher regions after the
+first snowfall, and their steady sustained flow all winter.
+
+The greater portion of the snow deposited around the lofty summits of
+the range falls in small crisp flakes and broken crystals, or, when
+accompanied by strong winds and low temperature, the crystals, instead
+of being locked together in their fall to form tufted flakes, are beaten
+and broken into meal and fine dust. But down in the forest region the
+greater portion comes gently to the ground, light and feathery, some of
+the flakes in mild weather being nearly an inch in diameter, and it is
+evenly distributed and kept from drifting to any great extent by the
+shelter afforded by the large trees. Every tree during the progress of
+gentle storms is loaded with, fairy bloom at the coldest and darkest
+time of year, bending the branches, and hushing every singing needle.
+But as soon as the storm is over, and the sun shines, the snow at once
+begins to shift and settle and fall from the branches in miniature
+avalanches, and the white forest soon becomes green again. The snow on
+the ground also settles and thaws every bright day, and freezes at
+night, until it becomes coarsely granulated, and loses every trace of
+its rayed crystalline structure, and then a man may walk firmly over its
+frozen surface as if on ice. The forest region up to an elevation of
+7000 feet is usually in great part free from snow in June, but at this
+time the higher regions are still heavy-laden, and are not touched by
+spring weather to any considerable extent before the middle or end of
+July.
+
+One of the most striking effects of the snow on the mountains is the
+burial of the rivers and small lakes.
+
+    As the snow fa's in the river
+    A moment white, then lost forever,
+
+sang Burns, in illustrating the fleeting character of human pleasure.
+The first snowflakes that fall into the Sierra rivers vanish thus
+suddenly; but in great storms, when the temperature is low, the
+abundance of the snow at length chills the water nearly to the
+freezing-point, and then, of course, it ceases to melt and consume the
+snow so suddenly. The falling flakes and crystals form, cloud-like
+masses of blue sludge, which are swept forward with the current and
+carried down to warmer climates many miles distant, while some are
+lodged against logs and rocks and projecting points of the banks, and
+last for days, piled high above the level of the water, and show white
+again, instead of being at once "lost forever," while the rivers
+themselves are at length lost for months during the snowy period. The
+snow is first built out from the banks in bossy, over-curling drifts,
+compacting and cementing until the streams are spanned. They then flow
+in the dark beneath a continuous covering across the snowy zone, which
+is about thirty miles wide. All the Sierra rivers and their tributaries
+in these high regions are thus lost every winter, as if another glacial
+period had come on. Not a drop of running water is to be seen excepting
+at a few points where large falls occur, though the rush and rumble of
+the heavier currents may still be heard. Toward spring, when the weather
+is warm during the day and frosty at night, repeated thawing and
+freezing and new layers of snow render the bridging-masses dense and
+firm, so that one may safely walk across the streams, or even lead a
+horse across them without danger of falling through. In June the
+thinnest parts of the winter ceiling, and those most exposed to
+sunshine, begin to give way, forming dark, rugged-edged, pit-like sinks,
+at the bottom of which the rushing water may be seen. At the end of June
+only here and there may the mountaineer find a secure snow-bridge. The
+most lasting of the winter bridges, thawing from below as well as from
+above, because of warm currents of air passing through the tunnels, are
+strikingly arched and sculptured; and by the occasional freezing of the
+oozing, dripping water of the ceiling they become brightly and
+picturesquely icy. In some of the reaches, where there is a free margin,
+we may walk through them. Small skylights appearing here and there,
+these tunnels are not very dark. The roaring river fills all the arching
+way with impressively loud reverberating music, which is sweetened at
+times by the ouzel, a bird that is not afraid to go wherever a stream
+may go, and to sing wherever a stream sings.
+
+All the small alpine pools and lakelets are in like manner obliterated
+from the winter landscapes, either by being first frozen and then
+covered by snow, or by being filled in by avalanches. The first
+avalanche of the season shot into a lake basin may perhaps find the
+surface frozen. Then there is a grand crashing of breaking ice and
+dashing of waves mingled with the low, deep booming of the avalanche.
+Detached masses of the invading snow, mixed with fragments of ice, drift
+about in sludgy, island-like heaps, while the main body of it forms a
+talus with its base wholly or in part resting on the bottom of the
+basin, as controlled by its depth and the size of the avalanche. The
+next avalanche, of course, encroaches still farther, and so on with each
+in succession until the entire basin may be filled and its water sponged
+up or displaced. This huge mass of sludge, more or less mixed with sand,
+stones, and perhaps timber, is frozen to a considerable depth, and much
+sun-heat is required to thaw it. Some of these unfortunate lakelets are
+not clear of ice and snow until near the end of summer. Others are never
+quite free, opening only on the side opposite the entrance of the
+avalanches. Some show only a narrow crescent of water lying between the
+shore and sheer bluffs of icy compacted snow, masses of which breaking
+off float in front like icebergs in a miniature Arctic Ocean, while the
+avalanche heaps leaning back against the mountains look like small
+glaciers. The frontal cliffs are in some instances quite picturesque,
+and with the berg-dotted waters in front of them lighted with sunshine
+are exceedingly beautiful. It often happens that while one side of a
+lake basin is hopelessly snow-buried and frozen, the other, enjoying
+sunshine, is adorned with beautiful flower-gardens. Some of the smaller
+lakes are extinguished in an instant by a heavy avalanche either of
+rocks or snow. The rolling, sliding, ponderous mass entering on one side
+sweeps across the bottom and up the opposite side, displacing the water
+and even scraping the basin clean, and shoving the accumulated rocks and
+sediments up the farther bank and taking full possession. The dislodged
+water is in part absorbed, but most of it is sent around the front of
+the avalanche and down the channel of the outlet, roaring and hurrying
+as if frightened and glad to escape.
+
+
+SNOW-BANNERS
+
+The most magnificent storm phenomenon I ever saw, surpassing in showy
+grandeur the most imposing effects of clouds, floods, or avalanches, was
+the peaks of the High Sierra, back of Yosemite Valley, decorated with
+snow-banners. Many of the starry snow-flowers, out of which these
+banners are made, fall before they are ripe, while most of those that do
+attain perfect development as six-rayed crystals glint and chafe against
+one another in their fall through the frosty air, and are broken into
+fragments. This dry fragmentary snow is still further prepared for the
+formation of banners by the action of the wind. For, instead of finding
+rest at once, like the snow which falls into the tranquil depths of the
+forests, it is rolled over and over, beaten against rock-ridges, and
+swirled in pits and hollows, like boulders, pebbles, and sand in the
+pot-holes of a river, until finally the delicate angles of the crystals
+are worn off, and the whole mass is reduced to dust. And whenever
+storm-winds find this prepared snow-dust in a loose condition on exposed
+slopes, where there is a free upward sweep to leeward, it is tossed back
+into the sky, and borne onward from peak to peak in the form of banners
+or cloudy drifts, according to the velocity of the wind and the
+conformation of the slopes up or around which it is driven. While thus
+flying through the air, a small portion makes good its escape, and
+remains in the sky as vapor. But far the greater part, after being
+driven into the sky again and again, is at length locked fast in bossy
+drifts, or in the wombs of glaciers, some of it to remain silent and
+rigid for centuries before it is finally melted and sent singing down
+the mountainsides to the sea.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding the abundance of winter snow-dust in the mountains,
+and the frequency of high winds, and the length of time the dust remains
+loose and exposed to their action, the occurrence of well-formed banners
+is, for causes we shall hereafter note, comparatively rare. I have seen
+only one display of this kind that seemed in every way perfect. This was
+in the winter of 1873, when the snow-laden summits were swept by a wild
+"norther." I happened at the time to be wintering in Yosemite Valley,
+that sublime Sierra temple where every day one may see the grandest
+sights. Yet even here the wild gala-day of the north wind seemed
+surpassingly glorious. I was awakened in the morning by the rocking of
+my cabin and the beating of pine-burs on the roof. Detached torrents and
+avalanches from the main wind-flood overhead were rushing wildly down
+the narrow side ca�ons, and over the precipitous walls, with loud
+resounding roar, rousing the pines to enthusiastic action, and making
+the whole valley vibrate as though it were an instrument being played.
+
+But afar on the lofty exposed peaks of the range standing so high in the
+sky, the storm was expressing itself in still grander characters, which
+I was soon to see in all their glory. I had long been anxious to study
+some points in the structure of the ice-cone that is formed every winter
+at the foot of the upper Yosemite fall, but the blinding spray by which
+it is invested had hitherto prevented me from making a sufficiently near
+approach. This morning the entire body of the fall was torn into gauzy
+shreds, and blown horizontally along the face of the cliff, leaving the
+cone dry; and while making my way to the top of an overlooking ledge to
+seize so favorable an opportunity to examine the interior of the cone,
+the peaks of the Merced group came in sight over the shoulder of the
+South Dome, each waving a resplendent banner against the blue sky, as
+regular in form, and as firm in texture, as if woven of fine silk. So
+rare and splendid a phenomenon, of course, overbore all other
+considerations, and I at once let the ice-cone go, and began to force my
+way out of the valley to some dome or ridge sufficiently lofty to
+command a general view of the main summits, feeling assured that I
+should find them bannered still more gloriously; nor was I in the least
+disappointed. Indian Ca�on, through which I climbed, was choked with
+snow that had been shot down in avalanches from the high cliffs on
+either side, rendering the ascent difficult; but inspired by the roaring
+storm, the tedious wallowing brought no fatigue, and in four hours I
+gained the top of a ridge above the valley, 8000 feet high. And there in
+bold relief, like a clear painting, appeared a most imposing scene.
+Innumerable peaks, black and sharp, rose grandly into the dark blue sky,
+their bases set in solid white, their sides streaked and splashed with
+snow, like ocean rocks with foam; and from every summit, all free and
+unconfused, was streaming a beautiful silky silvery banner, from half a
+mile to a mile in length, slender at the point of attachment, then
+widening gradually as it extended from the peak until it was about 1000
+or 1500 feet in breadth, as near as I could estimate. The cluster of
+peaks called the "Crown of the Sierra," at the head of the Merced and
+Tuolumne rivers,--Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Conness, Lyell, Maclure, Ritter,
+with their nameless compeers,--each had its own refulgent banner, waving
+with a clearly visible motion in the sunglow, and there was not a single
+cloud in the sky to mar their simple grandeur. Fancy yourself standing
+on this Yosemite ridge looking eastward. You notice a strange garish
+glitter in the air. The gale drives wildly overhead with a fierce,
+tempestuous roar, but its violence is not felt, for you are looking
+through a sheltered opening in the woods as through a window. There, in
+the immediate foreground of your picture, rises a majestic forest of
+Silver Fir blooming in eternal freshness, the foliage yellow-green, and
+the snow beneath the trees strewn with their beautiful plumes, plucked
+off by the wind. Beyond, and extending over all the middle ground, are
+somber swaths of pine, interrupted by huge swelling ridges and domes;
+and just beyond the dark forest you see the monarchs of the High Sierra
+waving their magnificent banners. They are twenty miles away, but you
+would not wish them nearer, for every feature is distinct, and the whole
+glorious show is seen in its right proportions. After this general view,
+mark how sharply the dark snowless ribs and buttresses and summits of
+the peaks are defined, excepting the portions veiled by the banners, and
+how delicately their sides are streaked with snow, where it has come to
+rest in narrow flutings and gorges. Mark, too, how grandly the banners
+wave as the wind is deflected against their sides, and how trimly each
+is attached to the very summit of its peak, like a streamer at a
+masthead; how smooth and silky they are in texture, and how finely their
+fading fringes are penciled on the azure sky. See how dense and opaque
+they are at the point of attachment, and how filmy and translucent
+toward the end, so that the peaks back of them are seen dimly, as though
+you were looking through ground glass. Yet again observe how some of the
+longest, belonging to the loftiest summits, stream perfectly free all
+the way across intervening notches and passes from peak to peak, while
+others overlap and partly hide each other. And consider how keenly every
+particle of this wondrous cloth of snow is flashing out jets of light.
+These are the main features of the beautiful and terrible picture as
+seen from the forest window; and it would still be surpassingly glorious
+were the fore- and middle-grounds obliterated altogether, leaving only
+the black peaks, the white banners, and the blue sky.
+
+Glancing now in a general way at the formation of snow-banners, we find
+that the main causes of the wondrous beauty and perfection of those we
+have been contemplating were the favorable direction and great force of
+the wind, the abundance of snow-dust, and the peculiar conformation of
+the slopes of the peaks. It is essential not only that the wind should
+move with great velocity and steadiness to supply a sufficiently copious
+and continuous stream of snow-dust, but that it should come from the
+north. No perfect banner is ever hung on the Sierra peaks by a south
+wind. Had the gale that day blown from the south, leaving other
+conditions unchanged, only a dull, confused, fog-like drift would have
+been produced; for the snow, instead of being spouted up over the tops
+of the peaks in concentrated currents to be drawn out as streamers,
+would have been shed off around the sides, and piled down into the
+glacier wombs. The cause of the concentrated action of the north wind is
+found in the peculiar form of the north sides of the peaks, where the
+amphitheaters of the residual glaciers are. In general the south sides
+are convex and irregular, while the north sides are concave both in
+their vertical and horizontal sections; the wind in ascending these
+curves converges toward the summits, carrying the snow in concentrating
+currents with it, shooting it almost straight up into the air above the
+peaks, from which it is then carried away in a horizontal direction.
+
+This difference in form between the north and south sides of the peaks
+was almost wholly produced by the difference in the kind and quantity of
+the glaciation to which they have been subjected, the north sides having
+been hollowed by residual shadow-glaciers of a form that never existed
+on the sun-beaten sides.
+
+It appears, therefore, that shadows in great part determine not only the
+forms of lofty icy mountains, but also those of the snow-banners that
+the wild winds hang on them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA
+
+Early one bright morning in the middle of Indian summer, while the
+glacier meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from the
+foot of Mount Lyell, on my way down to Yosemite Valley, to replenish my
+exhausted store of bread and tea. I had spent the past summer, as many
+preceding ones, exploring the glaciers that lie on the head waters of
+the San Joaquin, Tuolumne, Merced, and Owen's rivers; measuring and
+studying their movements, trends, crevasses, moraines, etc., and the
+part they had played during the period of their greater extension in the
+creation and development of the landscapes of this alpine wonderland.
+The time for this kind of work was nearly over for the year, and I began
+to look forward with delight to the approaching winter with its wondrous
+storms, when I would be warmly snow-bound in my Yosemite cabin with
+plenty of bread and books; but a tinge of regret came on when I
+considered that possibly I might not see this favorite region again
+until the next summer, excepting distant views from the heights about
+the Yosemite walls.
+
+To artists, few portions of the High Sierra are, strictly speaking,
+picturesque. The whole massive uplift of the range is one great picture,
+not clearly divisible into smaller ones; differing much in this respect
+from the older, and what may be called, riper mountains of the Coast
+Range. All the landscapes of the Sierra, as we have seen, were born
+again, remodeled from base to summit by the developing ice-floods of the
+last glacial winter. But all those new landscapes were not brought forth
+simultaneously; some of the highest, where the ice lingered longest, are
+tens of centuries younger than those of the warmer regions below them.
+In general, the younger the mountain-landscapes,--younger, I mean, with
+reference to the time of their emergence from the ice of the glacial
+period,--the less separable are they into artistic bits capable of being
+made into warm, sympathetic, lovable pictures with appreciable humanity
+in them.
+
+Here, however, on the head waters of the Tuolumne, is a group of wild
+peaks on which the geologist may say that the sun has but just begun to
+shine, which is yet in a high degree picturesque, and in its main
+features so regular and evenly balanced as almost to appear
+conventional--one somber cluster of snow-laden peaks with gray
+pine-fringed granite bosses braided around its base, the whole surging
+free into the sky from the head of a magnificent valley, whose lofty
+walls are beveled away on both sides so as to embrace it all without
+admitting anything not strictly belonging to it. The foreground was now
+aflame with autumn colors, brown and purple and gold, ripe in the mellow
+sunshine; contrasting brightly with the deep, cobalt blue of the sky,
+and the black and gray, and pure, spiritual white of the rocks and
+glaciers. Down through the midst, the young Tuolumne was seen pouring
+from its crystal fountains, now resting in glassy pools as if changing
+back again into ice, now leaping in white cascades as if turning to
+snow; gliding right and left between granite bosses, then sweeping on
+through the smooth, meadowy levels of the valley, swaying pensively from
+side to side with calm, stately gestures past dipping willows and
+sedges, and around groves of arrowy pine; and throughout its whole
+eventful course, whether flowing fast or slow, singing loud or low, ever
+filling the landscape with spiritual animation, and manifesting the
+grandeur of its sources in every movement and tone.
+
+Pursuing my lonely way down the valley, I turned again and again to gaze
+on the glorious picture, throwing up my arms to inclose it as in a
+frame. After long ages of growth in the darkness beneath the glaciers,
+through sunshine and storms, it seemed now to be ready and waiting for
+the elected artist, like yellow wheat for the reaper; and I could not
+help wishing that I might carry colors and brushes with me on my
+travels, and learn to paint. In the mean time I had to be content with
+photographs on my mind and sketches in my note-books. At length, after I
+had rounded a precipitous headland that puts out from the west wall of
+the valley, every peak vanished from sight, and I pushed rapidly along
+the frozen meadows, over the divide between the waters of the Merced and
+Tuolumne, and down through the forests that clothe the slopes of Cloud's
+Rest, arriving in Yosemite in due time--which, with me, is _any_
+time. And, strange to say, among the first people I met here were two
+artists who, with letters of introduction, were awaiting my return. They
+inquired whether in the course of my explorations in the adjacent
+mountains I had ever come upon a landscape suitable for a large
+painting; whereupon I began a description of the one that had so lately
+excited my admiration. Then, as I went on further and further into
+details, their faces began to glow, and I offered to guide them to it,
+while they declared that they would gladly follow, far or near,
+whithersoever I could spare the time to lead them.
+
+Since storms might come breaking down through the fine weather at any
+time, burying the colors in snow, and cutting off the artists' retreat,
+I advised getting ready at once.
+
+I led them out of the valley by the Vernal and Nevada Falls, thence over
+the main dividing ridge to the Big Tuolumne Meadows, by the old Mono
+trail, and thence along the upper Tuolumne River to its head. This was
+my companions' first excursion into the High Sierra, and as I was almost
+always alone in my mountaineering, the way that the fresh beauty was
+reflected in their faces made for me a novel and interesting study. They
+naturally were affected most of all by the colors--the intense azure of
+the sky, the purplish grays of the granite, the red and browns of dry
+meadows, and the translucent purple and crimson of huckleberry bogs; the
+flaming yellow of aspen groves, the silvery flashing of the streams, and
+the bright green and blue of the glacier lakes. But the general
+expression of the scenery--rocky and savage--seemed sadly disappointing;
+and as they threaded the forest from ridge to ridge, eagerly scanning
+the landscapes as they were unfolded, they said: "All this is huge and
+sublime, but we see nothing as yet at all available for effective
+pictures. Art is long, and art is limited, you know; and here are
+foregrounds, middle-grounds, backgrounds, all alike; bare rock-waves,
+woods, groves, diminutive flecks of meadow, and strips of glittering
+water." "Never mind," I replied, "only bide a wee, and I will show you
+something you will like."
+
+At length, toward the end of the second day, the Sierra Crown began to
+come into view, and when we had fairly rounded the projecting headland
+before mentioned, the whole picture stood revealed in the flush of the
+alpenglow. Their enthusiasm was excited beyond bounds, and the more
+impulsive of the two, a young Scotchman, dashed ahead, shouting and
+gesticulating and tossing his arms in the air like a madman. Here, at
+last, was a typical alpine landscape.
+
+After feasting awhile on the view, I proceeded to make camp in a
+sheltered grove a little way back from the meadow, where pine-boughs
+could be obtained for beds, and where there was plenty of dry wood for
+fires, while the artists ran here and there, along the river-bends and
+up the sides of the ca�on, choosing foregrounds for sketches. After
+dark, when our tea was made and a rousing fire had been built, we began
+to make our plans. They decided to remain several days, at the least,
+while I concluded to make an excursion in the mean time to the untouched
+summit of Ritter.
+
+It was now about the middle of October, the springtime of snow-flowers.
+The first winter-clouds had already bloomed, and the peaks were strewn
+with fresh crystals, without, however, affecting the climbing to any
+dangerous extent. And as the weather was still profoundly calm, and the
+distance to the foot of the mountain only a little more than a day, I
+felt that I was running no great risk of being storm-bound.
+
+Mount Ritter is king of the mountains of the middle portion of the High
+Sierra, as Shasta of the north and Whitney of the south sections.
+Moreover, as far as I know, it had never been climbed. I had explored
+the adjacent wilderness summer after summer, but my studies thus far had
+never drawn me to the top of it. Its height above sea-level is about
+13,300 feet, and it is fenced round by steeply inclined glaciers, and
+ca�ons of tremendous depth and ruggedness, which render it almost
+inaccessible. But difficulties of this kind only exhilarate the
+mountaineer.
+
+Next morning, the artists went heartily to their work and I to mine.
+Former experiences had given good reason to know that passionate storms,
+invisible as yet, might be brooding in the calm sun-gold; therefore,
+before bidding farewell, I warned the artists not to be alarmed should I
+fail to appear before a week or ten days, and advised them, in case a
+snow-storm should set in, to keep up big fires and shelter themselves as
+best they could, and on no account to become frightened and attempt to
+seek their way back to Yosemite alone through the drifts.
+
+My general plan was simply this: to scale the ca�on, wall, cross over to
+the eastern flank of the range, and then make my way southward to the
+northern spurs of Mount Ritter in compliance with the intervening
+topography; for to push on directly southward from camp through the
+innumerable peaks and pinnacles that adorn this portion of the axis of
+the range, however interesting, would take too much time, besides being
+extremely difficult and dangerous at this time of year.
+
+All my first day was pure pleasure; simply mountaineering indulgence,
+crossing the dry pathways of the ancient glaciers, tracing happy
+streams, and learning the habits of the birds and marmots in the groves
+and rocks. Before I had gone a mile from camp, I came to the foot of a
+white cascade that beats its way down a rugged gorge in the ca�on wall,
+from a height of about nine hundred feet, and pours its throbbing waters
+into the Tuolumne. I was acquainted with its fountains, which,
+fortunately, lay in my course. What a fine traveling companion it proved
+to be, what songs it sang, and how passionately it told the mountain's
+own joy! Gladly I climbed along its dashing border, absorbing its divine
+music, and bathing from time to time in waftings of irised spray.
+Climbing higher, higher, now beauty came streaming on the sight: painted
+meadows, late-blooming gardens, peaks of rare architecture, lakes here
+and there, shining like silver, and glimpses of the forested middle
+region and the yellow lowlands far in the west. Beyond the range I saw
+the so-called Mono Desert, lying dreamily silent in thick purple
+light--a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished
+granite. Here the waters divide, shouting in glorious enthusiasm, and
+falling eastward to vanish in the volcanic sands and dry sky of the
+Great Basin, or westward to the Great Valley of California, and thence
+through the Bay of San Francisco and the Golden Gate to the sea.
+
+Passing a little way down over the summit until I had reached an
+elevation of about 10,000 feet, I pushed on southward toward a group of
+savage peaks that stand guard about Ritter on the north and west,
+groping my way, and dealing instinctively with every obstacle as it
+presented itself. Here a huge gorge would be found cutting across my
+path, along the dizzy edge of which I scrambled until some less
+precipitous point was discovered where I might safely venture to the
+bottom and then, selecting some feasible portion of the opposite wall,
+reascend with the same slow caution. Massive, flat-topped spurs
+alternate with the gorges, plunging abruptly from the shoulders of the
+snowy peaks, and planting their feet in the warm desert. These were
+everywhere marked and adorned with characteristic sculptures of the
+ancient glaciers that swept over this entire region like one vast
+ice-wind, and the polished surfaces produced by the ponderous flood are
+still so perfectly preserved that in many places the sunlight reflected
+from them is about as trying to the eyes as sheets of snow.
+
+God's glacial-mills grind slowly, but they have been kept in motion long
+enough in California to grind sufficient soil for a glorious abundance
+of life, though most of the grist has been carried to the lowlands,
+leaving these high regions comparatively lean and bare; while the
+post-glacial agents of erosion have not yet furnished sufficient
+available food over the general surface for more than a few tufts of the
+hardiest plants, chiefly carices and eriogonae. And it is interesting to
+learn in this connection that the sparseness and repressed character of
+the vegetation at this height is caused more by want of soil than by
+harshness of climate; for, here and there, in sheltered hollows
+(countersunk beneath the general surface) into which a few rods of
+well-ground moraine chips have been dumped, we find groves of spruce and
+pine thirty to forty feet high, trimmed around the edges with willow and
+huckleberry bushes, and oftentimes still further by an outer ring of
+tall grasses, bright with lupines, larkspurs, and showy columbines,
+suggesting a climate by no means repressingly severe. All the streams,
+too, and the pools at this elevation are furnished with little gardens
+wherever soil can be made to lie, which, though making scarce any show
+at a distance, constitute charming surprises to the appreciative
+observer. In these bits of leanness a few birds find grateful homes.
+Having no acquaintance with man, they fear no ill, and flock curiously
+about the stranger, almost allowing themselves to be taken in the hand.
+In so wild and so beautiful a region was spent my first day, every sight
+and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and
+building up his individuality.
+
+Now came the solemn, silent evening. Long, blue, spiky shadows crept out
+across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible,
+gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the
+glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me
+one of the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God.
+At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a
+rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed and waiting like devout
+worshipers. Just before the alpenglow began to fade, two crimson clouds
+came streaming across the summit like wings of flame, rendering the
+sublime scene yet more impressive; then came darkness and the stars.
+
+Icy Ritter was still miles away, but I could proceed no farther that
+night. I found a good campground on the rim of a glacier basin about
+11,000 feet above the sea. A small lake nestles in the bottom of it,
+from which I got water for my tea, and a storm-beaten thicket near by
+furnished abundance of resiny fire-wood. Somber peaks, hacked and
+shattered, circled half-way around the horizon, wearing a savage aspect
+in the gloaming, and a waterfall chanted solemnly across the lake on its
+way down from the foot of a glacier. The fall and the lake and the
+glacier were almost equally bare; while the scraggy pines anchored in
+the rock-fissures were so dwarfed and shorn by storm-winds that you
+might walk over their tops. In tone and aspect the scene was one of the
+most desolate I ever beheld. But the darkest scriptures of the mountains
+are illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to make
+themselves felt when one is alone.
+
+I made my bed in a nook of the pine-thicket, where the branches were
+pressed and crinkled overhead like a roof, and bent down around the
+sides. These are the best bedchambers the high mountains afford--snug as
+squirrel-nests, well ventilated, full of spicy odors, and with plenty of
+wind-played needles to sing one asleep. I little expected company, but,
+creeping in through a low side-door, I found five or six birds nestling
+among the tassels. The night-wind began to blow soon after dark; at
+first only a gentle breathing, but increasing toward midnight to a rough
+gale that fell upon my leafy roof in ragged surges like a cascade,
+bearing wild sounds from the crags overhead. The waterfall sang in
+chorus, filling the old ice-fountain with its solemn roar, and seeming
+to increase in power as the night advanced--fit voice for such a
+landscape. I had to creep out many times to the fire during the night,
+for it was biting cold and I had no blankets. Gladly I welcomed the
+morning star.
+
+The dawn in the dry, wavering air of the desert was glorious. Everything
+encouraged my undertaking and betokened success. There was no cloud in
+the sky, no storm-tone in the wind. Breakfast of bread and tea was soon
+made. I fastened a hard, durable crust to my belt by way of provision,
+in case I should be compelled to pass a night on the mountain-top; then,
+securing the remainder of my little stock against wolves and wood-rats,
+I set forth free and hopeful.
+
+How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this
+alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The
+highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the
+lower peaks and spires caught the glow, and long lances of light,
+streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen
+meadows. The majestic form of Ritter was full in sight, and I pushed
+rapidly on over rounded rock-bosses and pavements, my iron-shod shoes
+making a clanking sound, suddenly hushed now and then in rugs of
+bryanthus, and sedgy lake-margins soft as moss. Here, too, in this
+so-called "land of desolation," I met cassiope, growing in fringes among
+the battered rocks. Her blossoms had faded long ago, but they were still
+clinging with happy memories to the evergreen sprays, and still so
+beautiful as to thrill every fiber of one's being. Winter and summer,
+you may hear her voice, the low, sweet melody of her purple bells. No
+evangel among all the mountain plants speaks Nature's love more plainly
+than cassiope. Where she dwells, the redemption of the coldest solitude
+is complete. The very rocks and glaciers seem to feel her presence, and
+become imbued with her own fountain sweetness. All things were warming
+and awakening. Frozen rills began to flow, the marmots came out of their
+nests in boulder-piles and climbed sunny rocks to bask, and the
+dun-headed sparrows were flitting about seeking their breakfasts. The
+lakes seen from every ridge-top were brilliantly rippled and spangled,
+shimmering like the thickets of the low Dwarf Pines. The rocks, too,
+seemed responsive to the vital heat--rock-crystals and snow-crystals
+thrilling alike. I strode on exhilarated, as if never more to feel
+fatigue, limbs moving of themselves, every sense unfolding like the
+thawing flowers, to take part in the new day harmony.
+
+All along my course thus far, excepting when down in the ca�ons, the
+landscapes were mostly open to me, and expansive, at least on one side.
+On the left were the purple plains of Mono, reposing dreamily and warm;
+on the right, the near peaks springing keenly into the thin sky with
+more and more impressive sublimity. But these larger views were at
+length lost. Rugged spurs, and moraines, and huge, projecting buttresses
+began to shut me in. Every feature became more rigidly alpine, without,
+however, producing any chilling effect; for going to the mountains is
+like going home. We always find that the strangest objects in these
+fountain wilds are in some degree familiar, and we look upon them with a
+vague sense of having seen them before.
+
+On the southern shore of a frozen lake, I encountered an extensive field
+of hard, granular snow, up which I scampered in fine tone, intending to
+follow it to its head, and cross the rocky spur against which it leans,
+hoping thus to come direct upon the base of the main Ritter peak. The
+surface was pitted with oval hollows, made by stones and drifted
+pine-needles that had melted themselves into the mass by the radiation
+of absorbed sun-heat. These afforded good footholds, but the surface
+curved more and more steeply at the head, and the pits became shallower
+and less abundant, until I found myself in danger of being shed off like
+avalanching snow. I persisted, however, creeping on all fours, and
+shuffling up the smoothest places on my back, as I had often done on
+burnished granite, until, after slipping several times, I was compelled
+to retrace my course to the bottom, and make my way around the west end
+of the lake, and thence up to the summit of the divide between the head
+waters of Rush Creek and the northernmost tributaries of the San
+Joaquin.
+
+Arriving on the summit of this dividing crest, one of the most exciting
+pieces of pure wilderness was disclosed that I ever discovered in all my
+mountaineering. There, immediately in front, loomed the majestic mass of
+Mount Ritter, with a glacier swooping down its face nearly to my feet,
+then curving westward and pouring its frozen flood into a dark blue
+lake, whose shores were bound with precipices of crystalline snow; while
+a deep chasm drawn between the divide and the glacier separated the
+massive picture from everything else. I could see only the one sublime
+mountain, the one glacier, the one lake; the whole veiled with one blue
+shadow--rock, ice, and water close together without a single leaf or
+sign of life. After gazing spellbound, I began instinctively to
+scrutinize every notch and gorge and weathered buttress of the mountain,
+with reference to making the ascent. The entire front above the glacier
+appeared as one tremendous precipice, slightly receding at the top, and
+bristling with spires and pinnacles set above one another in formidable
+array. Massive lichen-stained battlements stood forward here and there,
+hacked at the top with angular notches, and separated by frosty gullies
+and recesses that have been veiled in shadow ever since their creation;
+while to right and left, as far as I could see, were huge, crumbling
+buttresses, offering no hope to the climber. The head of the glacier
+sends up a few finger-like branches through narrow _couloirs_; but
+these seemed too steep and short to be available, especially as I had no
+ax with which to cut steps, and the numerous narrow-throated gullies
+down which stones and snow are avalanched seemed hopelessly steep,
+besides being interrupted by vertical cliffs; while the whole front was
+rendered still more terribly forbidding by the chill shadow and the
+gloomy blackness of the rocks.
+
+Descending the divide in a hesitating mood, I picked my way across the
+yawning chasm at the foot, and climbed out upon the glacier. There were
+no meadows now to cheer with their brave colors, nor could I hear the
+dun-headed sparrows, whose cheery notes so often relieve the silence of
+our highest mountains. The only sounds were the gurgling of small rills
+down in the veins and crevasses of the glacier, and now and then the
+rattling report of falling stones, with the echoes they shot out into
+the crisp air.
+
+I could not distinctly hope to reach the summit from this side, yet I
+moved on across the glacier as if driven by fate. Contending with
+myself, the season is too far spent, I said, and even should I be
+successful, I might be storm-bound on the mountain; and in the
+cloud-darkness, with the cliffs and crevasses covered with snow, how
+could I escape? No; I must wait till next summer. I would only approach
+the mountain now, and inspect it, creep about its flanks, learn what I
+could of its history, holding myself ready to flee on the approach of
+the first storm-cloud. But we little know until tried how much of the
+uncontrollable there is in us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and
+up dangerous heights, let the judgment forbid as it may.
+
+I succeeded in gaining the foot of the cliff on the eastern extremity of
+the glacier, and there discovered the mouth of a narrow avalanche gully,
+through which I began to climb, intending to follow it as far as
+possible, and at least obtain some fine wild views for my pains. Its
+general course is oblique to the plane of the mountain-face, and the
+metamorphic slates of which the mountain is built are cut by cleavage
+planes in such a way that they weather off in angular blocks, giving
+rise to irregular steps that greatly facilitate climbing on the sheer
+places. I thus made my way into a wilderness of crumbling spires and
+battlements, built together in bewildering combinations, and glazed in
+many places with a thin coating of ice, which I had to hammer off with
+stones. The situation was becoming gradually more perilous; but, having
+passed several dangerous spots, I dared not think of descending; for, so
+steep was the entire ascent, one would inevitably fall to the glacier in
+case a single misstep were made. Knowing, therefore, the tried danger
+beneath, I became all the more anxious concerning the developments to be
+made above, and began to be conscious of a vague foreboding of what
+actually befell; not that I was given to fear, but rather because my
+instincts, usually so positive and true, seemed vitiated in some way,
+and were leading me astray. At length, after attaining an elevation of
+about 12,800 feet, I found myself at the foot of a sheer drop in the bed
+of the avalanche channel I was tracing, which seemed absolutely to bar
+further progress. It was only about forty-five or fifty feet high, and
+somewhat roughened by fissures and projections; but these seemed so
+slight and insecure, as footholds, that I tried hard to avoid the
+precipice altogether, by scaling the wall of the channel on either side.
+But, though less steep, the walls were smoother than the obstructing
+rock, and repeated efforts only showed that I must either go right ahead
+or turn back. The tried dangers beneath seemed even greater than that of
+the cliff in front; therefore, after scanning its face again and again,
+I began to scale it, picking my holds with intense caution. After
+gaining a point about halfway to the top, I was suddenly brought to a
+dead stop, with arms outspread, clinging close to the face of the rock,
+unable to move hand or foot either up or down. My doom appeared fixed. I
+_must_ fall. There would be a moment of bewilderment, and then a
+lifeless rumble down the one general precipice to the glacier below.
+
+When this final danger flashed upon me, I became nerve-shaken for the
+first time since setting foot on the mountains, and my mind seemed to
+fill with a stifling smoke. But this terrible eclipse lasted only a
+moment, when life blazed forth again with preternatural clearness. I
+seemed suddenly to become possessed of a new sense. The other self,
+bygone experiences, Instinct, or Guardian Angel,--call it what you
+will,--came forward and assumed control. Then my trembling muscles
+became firm again, every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as through a
+microscope, and my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision with
+which I seemed to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft upon
+wings, my deliverance could not have been more complete.
+
+Above this memorable spot, the face of the mountain is still more
+savagely hacked and torn. It is a maze of yawning chasms and gullies, in
+the angles of which rise beetling crags and piles of detached boulders
+that seem to have been gotten ready to be launched below. But the
+strange influx of strength I had received seemed inexhaustible. I found
+a way without effort, and soon stood upon the topmost crag in the
+blessed light.
+
+How truly glorious the landscape circled around this noble
+summit!--giant mountains, valleys innumerable, glaciers and meadows,
+rivers and lakes, with the wide blue sky bent tenderly over them all.
+But in my first hour of freedom from that terrible shadow, the sunlight
+in which I was laving seemed all in all.
+
+Looking southward along the axis of the range, the eye is first caught
+by a row of exceedingly sharp and slender spires, which rise openly to a
+height of about a thousand feet, above a series of short, residual
+glaciers that lean back against their bases; their fantastic sculpture
+and the unrelieved sharpness with which they spring out of the ice
+rendering them peculiarly wild and striking. These are "The Minarets."
+Beyond them you behold a sublime wilderness of mountains, their snowy
+summits towering together in crowded abundance, peak beyond peak,
+swelling higher, higher as they sweep on southward, until the
+culminating point of the range is reached on Mount Whitney, near the
+head of the Kern River, at an elevation of nearly 14,700 feet above the
+level of the sea.
+
+Westward, the general flank of the range is seen flowing sublimely away
+from the sharp summits, in smooth undulations; a sea of huge gray
+granite waves dotted with lakes and meadows, and fluted with stupendous
+ca�ons that grow steadily deeper as they recede in the distance. Below
+this gray region lies the dark forest zone, broken here and there by
+upswelling ridges and domes; and yet beyond lies a yellow, hazy belt,
+marking the broad plain of the San Joaquin, bounded on its farther side
+by the blue mountains of the coast.
+
+Turning now to the northward, there in the immediate foreground is the
+glorious Sierra Crown, with Cathedral Peak, a temple of marvelous
+architecture, a few degrees to the left of it; the gray, massive form of
+Mammoth Mountain to the right; while Mounts Ord, Gibbs, Dana, Conness,
+Tower Peak, Castle Peak, Silver Mountain, and a host of noble
+companions, as yet nameless, make a sublime show along the axis of the
+range.
+
+Eastward, the whole region seems a land of desolation covered with
+beautiful light. The torrid volcanic basin of Mono, with its one bare
+lake fourteen miles long; Owen's Valley and the broad lava table-land at
+its head, dotted with craters, and the massive Inyo Range, rivaling even
+the Sierra in height; these are spread, map-like, beneath you, with
+countless ranges beyond, passing and overlapping one another and fading
+on the glowing horizon.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY.]
+
+At a distance of less than 3000 feet below the summit of Mount Ritter
+you may find tributaries of the San Joaquin and Owen's rivers, bursting
+forth from the ice and snow of the glaciers that load its flanks; while
+a little to the north of here are found the highest affluents of the
+Tuolumne and Merced. Thus, the fountains of four of the principal rivers
+of California are within a radius of four or five miles.
+
+Lakes are seen gleaming in all sorts of places,--round, or oval, or
+square, like very mirrors; others narrow and sinuous, drawn close around
+the peaks like silver zones, the highest reflecting only rocks, snow,
+and the sky. But neither these nor the glaciers, nor the bits of brown
+meadow and moorland that occur here and there, are large enough to make
+any marked impression upon the mighty wilderness of mountains. The eye,
+rejoicing in its freedom, roves about the vast expanse, yet returns
+again and again to the fountain peaks. Perhaps some one of the multitude
+excites special attention, some gigantic castle with turret and
+battlement, or some Gothic cathedral more abundantly spired than
+Milan's. But, generally, when looking for the first time from an
+all-embracing standpoint like this, the inexperienced observer is
+oppressed by the incomprehensible grandeur, variety, and abundance of
+the mountains rising shoulder to shoulder beyond the reach of vision;
+and it is only after they have been studied one by one, long and
+lovingly, that their far-reaching harmonies become manifest. Then,
+penetrate the wilderness where you may, the main telling features, to
+which all the surrounding topography is subordinate, are quickly
+perceived, and the most complicated clusters of peaks stand revealed
+harmoniously correlated and fashioned like works of art--eloquent
+monuments of the ancient ice-rivers that brought them into relief from
+the general mass of the range. The ca�ons, too, some of them a mile
+deep, mazing wildly through the mighty host of mountains, however
+lawless and ungovernable at first sight they appear, are at length
+recognized as the necessary effects of causes which followed each other
+in harmonious sequence--Nature's poems carved on tables of stone--the
+simplest and most emphatic of her glacial compositions.
+
+Could we have been here to observe during the glacial period, we should
+have overlooked a wrinkled ocean of ice as continuous as that now
+covering the landscapes of Greenland; filling every valley and ca�on
+with only the tops of the fountain peaks rising darkly above the
+rock-encumbered ice-waves like islets in a stormy sea--those islets the
+only hints of the glorious landscapes now smiling in the sun. Standing
+here in the deep, brooding silence all the wilderness seems motionless,
+as if the work of creation were done. But in the midst of this outer
+steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and change. Ever and
+anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These cliff-bound
+glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water and
+grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite
+shores and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young
+rivers is fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to the
+plains. Here are the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here more
+simply than elsewhere is the eternal flux of nature manifested. Ice
+changing to water, lakes to meadows, and mountains to plains. And while
+we thus contemplate Nature's methods of landscape creation, and, reading
+the records she has carved on the rocks, reconstruct, however
+imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also learn that as these we
+now behold have succeeded those of the pre-glacial age, so they in turn
+are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others yet unborn.
+
+But in the midst of these fine lessons and landscapes, I had to remember
+that the sun was wheeling far to the west, while a new way down the
+mountain had to be discovered to some point on the timber line where I
+could have a fire; for I had not even burdened myself with a coat. I
+first scanned the western spurs, hoping some way might appear through
+which I might reach the northern glacier, and cross its snout; or pass
+around the lake into which it flows, and thus strike my morning track.
+This route was soon sufficiently unfolded to show that, if practicable
+at all, it would require so much time that reaching camp that night
+would be out of the question. I therefore scrambled back eastward,
+descending the southern slopes obliquely at the same time. Here the
+crags seemed less formidable, and the head of a glacier that flows
+northeast came in sight, which I determined to follow as far as
+possible, hoping thus to make my way to the foot of the peak on the east
+side, and thence across the intervening ca�ons and ridges to camp.
+
+The inclination of the glacier is quite moderate at the head, and, as
+the sun had softened the _n�v�_, I made safe and rapid progress,
+running and sliding, and keeping up a sharp outlook for crevasses. About
+half a mile from the head, there is an ice-cascade, where the glacier
+pours over a sharp declivity and is shattered into massive blocks
+separated by deep, blue fissures. To thread my way through the slippery
+mazes of this crevassed portion seemed impossible, and I endeavored to
+avoid it by climbing off to the shoulder of the mountain. But the slopes
+rapidly steepened and at length fell away in sheer precipices,
+compelling a return to the ice. Fortunately, the day had been warm
+enough to loosen the ice-crystals so as to admit of hollows being dug in
+the rotten portions of the blocks, thus enabling me to pick my way with
+far less difficulty than I had anticipated. Continuing down over the
+snout, and along the left lateral moraine, was only a confident saunter,
+showing that the ascent of the mountain by way of this glacier is easy,
+provided one is armed with an ax to cut steps here and there.
+
+The lower end of the glacier was beautifully waved and barred by the
+outcropping edges of the bedded ice-layers which represent the annual
+snowfalls, and to some extent the irregularities of structure caused by
+the weathering of the walls of crevasses, and by separate snowfalls
+which have been followed by rain, hail, thawing and freezing, etc. Small
+rills were gliding and swirling over the melting surface with a smooth,
+oily appearance, in channels of pure ice--their quick, compliant
+movements contrasting most impressively with the rigid, invisible flow
+of the glacier itself, on whose back they all were riding.
+
+Night drew near before I reached the eastern base of the mountain, and
+my camp lay many a rugged mile to the north; but ultimate success was
+assured. It was now only a matter of endurance and ordinary
+mountain-craft. The sunset was, if possible, yet more beautiful than
+that of the day before. The Mono landscape seemed to be fairly saturated
+with warm, purple light. The peaks marshaled along the summit were in
+shadow, but through every notch and pass streamed vivid sun-fire,
+soothing and irradiating their rough, black angles, while companies of
+small, luminous clouds hovered above them like very angels of light.
+
+Darkness came on, but I found my way by the trends of the ca�ons and the
+peaks projected against the sky. All excitement died with the light, and
+then I was weary. But the joyful sound of the waterfall across the lake
+was heard at last, and soon the stars were seen reflected in the lake
+itself. Taking my bearings from these, I discovered the little pine
+thicket in which my nest was, and then I had a rest such as only a tired
+mountaineer may enjoy. After lying loose and lost for awhile, I made a
+sunrise fire, went down to the lake, dashed water on my head, and dipped
+a cupful for tea. The revival brought about by bread and tea was as
+complete as the exhaustion from excessive enjoyment and toil. Then I
+crept beneath the pine-tassels to bed. The wind was frosty and the fire
+burned low, but my sleep was none the less sound, and the evening
+constellations had swept far to the west before I awoke.
+
+After thawing and resting in the morning sunshine, I sauntered
+home,--that is, back to the Tuolumne camp,--bearing away toward a
+cluster of peaks that hold the fountain snows of one of the north
+tributaries of Rush Creek. Here I discovered a group of beautiful
+glacier lakes, nestled together in a grand amphitheater. Toward evening,
+I crossed the divide separating the Mono waters from those of the
+Tuolumne, and entered the glacier basin that now holds the fountain
+snows of the stream that forms the upper Tuolumne cascades. This stream
+I traced down through its many dells and gorges, meadows and bogs,
+reaching the brink of the main Tuolumne at dusk.
+
+A loud whoop for the artists was answered again and again. Their
+camp-fire came in sight, and half an hour afterward I was with them.
+They seemed unreasonably glad to see me. I had been absent only three
+days; nevertheless, though the weather was fine, they had already been
+weighing chances as to whether I would ever return, and trying to decide
+whether they should wait longer or begin to seek their way back to the
+lowlands. Now their curious troubles were over. They packed their
+precious sketches, and next morning we set out homeward bound, and in
+two days entered the Yosemite Valley from the north by way of Indian
+Ca�on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+THE PASSES
+
+The sustained grandeur of the High Sierra is strikingly illustrated by
+the great height of the passes. Between latitude 36� 20' and 38� the
+lowest pass, gap, gorge, or notch of any kind cutting across the axis of
+the range, as far as I have discovered, exceeds 9000 feet in height
+above the level of the sea; while the average height of all that are in
+use, either by Indians or whites, is perhaps not less than 11,000 feet,
+and not one of these is a carriage-pass.
+
+Farther north a carriage-road has been constructed through what is known
+as the Sonora Pass, on the head waters of the Stanislaus and Walker's
+rivers, the summit of which is about 10,000 feet above the sea.
+Substantial wagon-roads have also been built through the Carson and
+Johnson passes, near the head of Lake Tahoe, over which immense
+quantities of freight were hauled from California to the mining regions
+of Nevada, before the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad.
+
+Still farther north, a considerable number of comparatively low passes
+occur, some of which are accessible to wheeled vehicles, and through
+these rugged defiles during the exciting years of the gold period long
+emigrant-trains with foot-sore cattle wearily toiled. After the
+toil-worn adventurers had escaped a thousand dangers and had crawled
+thousands of miles across the plains the snowy Sierra at last loomed in
+sight, the eastern wall of the land of gold. And as with shaded eyes
+they gazed through the tremulous haze of the desert, with what joy must
+they have descried the pass through which they were to enter the better
+land of their hopes and dreams!
+
+Between the Sonora Pass and the southern extremity of the High Sierra, a
+distance of nearly 160 miles, there are only five passes through which
+trails conduct from one side of the range to the other. These are barely
+practicable for animals; a pass in these regions meaning simply any
+notch or ca�on through which one may, by the exercise of unlimited
+patience, make out to lead a mule, or a sure-footed mustang; animals
+that can slide or jump as well as walk. Only three of the five passes
+may be said to be in use, viz.: the Kearsarge, Mono, and Virginia Creek;
+the tracks leading through the others being only obscure Indian trails,
+not graded in the least, and scarcely traceable by white men; for much
+of the way is over solid rock and earthquake avalanche taluses, where
+the unshod ponies of the Indians leave no appreciable sign. Only skilled
+mountaineers are able to detect the marks that serve to guide the
+Indians, such as slight abrasions of the looser rocks, the displacement
+of stones here and there, and bent bushes and weeds. A general knowledge
+of the topography is, then, the main guide, enabling one to determine
+where the trail ought to go--_must_ go. One of these Indian trails
+crosses the range by a nameless pass between the head waters of the
+south and middle forks of the San Joaquin, the other between the north
+and middle forks of the same river, just to the south of "The Minarets";
+this last being about 9000 feet high, is the lowest of the five. The
+Kearsarge is the highest, crossing the summit near the head of the south
+fork of King's River, about eight miles to the north of Mount Tyndall,
+through the midst of the most stupendous rock-scenery. The summit of
+this pass is over 12,000 feet above sea-level; nevertheless, it is one
+of the safest of the five, and is used every summer, from July to
+October or November, by hunters, prospectors, and stock-owners, and to
+some extent by enterprising pleasure-seekers also. For, besides the
+surpassing grandeur of the scenery about the summit, the trail, in
+ascending the western flank of the range, conducts through a grove of
+the giant Sequoias, and through the magnificent Yosemite Valley of the
+south fork of King's River. This is, perhaps, the highest traveled pass
+on the North American continent.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION
+BOUNDARY.]
+
+The Mono Pass lies to the east of Yosemite Valley, at the head of one of
+the tributaries of the south fork of the Tuolumne. This is the best
+known and most extensively traveled of all that exist in the High
+Sierra. A trail was made through it about the time of the Mono gold
+excitement, in the year 1858, by adventurous miners and prospectors--men
+who would build a trail down the throat of darkest Erebus on the way to
+gold. Though more than a thousand feet lower than the Kearsarge, it is
+scarcely less sublime in rock-scenery, while in snowy, falling water it
+far surpasses it. Being so favorably situated for the stream of Yosemite
+travel, the more adventurous tourists cross over through this glorious
+gateway to the volcanic region around Mono Lake. It has therefore gained
+a name and fame above every other pass in the range. According to the
+few barometrical observations made upon it, its highest point is 10,765
+feet above the sea. The other pass of the five we have been considering
+is somewhat lower, and crosses the axis of the range a few miles to the
+north of the Mono Pass, at the head of the southernmost tributary of
+Walker's River. It is used chiefly by roaming bands of the Pah Ute
+Indians and "sheepmen."
+
+But, leaving wheels and animals out of the question, the free
+mountaineer with a sack of bread on his shoulders and an ax to cut steps
+in ice and frozen snow can make his way across the range almost
+everywhere, and at any time of year when the weather is calm. To him
+nearly every notch between the peaks is a pass, though much patient
+step-cutting is at times required up and down steeply inclined glaciers,
+with cautious climbing over precipices that at first sight would seem
+hopelessly inaccessible.
+
+In pursuing my studies, I have crossed from side to side of the range at
+intervals of a few miles all along the highest portion of the chain,
+with far less real danger than one would naturally count on. And what
+fine wildness was thus revealed--storms and avalanches, lakes and
+waterfalls, gardens and meadows, and interesting animals--only those
+will ever know who give the freest and most buoyant portion of their
+lives to climbing and seeing for themselves.
+
+To the timid traveler, fresh from the sedimentary levels of the
+lowlands, these highways, however picturesque and grand, seem terribly
+forbidding--cold, dead, gloomy gashes in the bones of the mountains, and
+of all Nature's ways the ones to be most cautiously avoided. Yet they
+are full of the finest and most telling examples of Nature's love; and
+though hard to travel, none are safer. For they lead through regions
+that lie far above the ordinary haunts of the devil, and of the
+pestilence that walks in darkness. True, there are innumerable places
+where the careless step will be the last step; and a rock falling from
+the cliffs may crush without warning like lightning from the sky; but
+what then! Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the
+lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even
+divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of
+civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home.
+Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care,
+save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty
+into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these
+so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill,
+they cure a thousand.
+
+All the passes make their steepest ascents on the eastern flank. On this
+side the average rise is not far from a thousand feet to the mile, while
+on the west it is about two hundred feet. Another marked difference
+between the eastern and western portions of the passes is that the
+former begin at the very foot of the range, while the latter can hardly
+be said to begin lower than an elevation of from seven to ten thousand
+feet. Approaching the range from the gray levels of Mono and Owen's
+Valley on the east, the traveler sees before him the steep, short passes
+in full view, fenced in by rugged spurs that come plunging down from the
+shoulders of the peaks on either side, the courses of the more direct
+being disclosed from top to bottom without interruption. But from the
+west one sees nothing of the way he may be seeking until near the
+summit, after days have been spent in threading the forests growing on
+the main dividing ridges between the river ca�ons.
+
+It is interesting to observe how surely the alp-crossing animals of
+every kind fall into the same trails. The more rugged and inaccessible
+the general character of the topography of any particular region, the
+more surely will the trails of white men, Indians, bears, wild sheep,
+etc., be found converging into the best passes. The Indians of the
+western slope venture cautiously over the passes in settled weather to
+attend dances, and obtain loads of pine-nuts and the larvae of a small
+fly that breeds in Mono and Owen's lakes, which, when dried, forms an
+important article of food; while the Pah Utes cross over from the east
+to hunt the deer and obtain supplies of acorns; and it is truly
+astonishing to see what immense loads the haggard old squaws make out to
+carry bare-footed through these rough passes, oftentimes for a distance
+of sixty or seventy miles. They are always accompanied by the men, who
+stride on, unburdened and erect, a little in advance, kindly stooping at
+difficult places to pile stepping-stones for their patient, pack-animal
+wives, just as they would prepare the way for their ponies.
+
+Bears evince great sagacity as mountaineers, but although they are
+tireless and enterprising travelers they seldom cross the range. I have
+several times tracked them through the Mono Pass, but only in late
+years, after cattle and sheep had passed that way, when they doubtless
+were following to feed on the stragglers and on those that had been
+killed by falling over the rocks. Even the wild sheep, the best
+mountaineers of all, choose regular passes in making journeys across the
+summits. Deer seldom cross the range in either direction. I have never
+yet observed a single specimen of the mule-deer of the Great Basin west
+of the summit, and rarely one of the black-tailed species on the eastern
+slope, notwithstanding many of the latter ascend the range nearly to the
+summit every summer, to feed in the wild gardens and bring forth their
+young.
+
+The glaciers are the pass-makers, and it is by them that the courses of
+all mountaineers are predestined. Without exception every pass in the
+Sierra was created by them without the slightest aid or predetermining
+guidance from any of the cataclysmic agents. I have seen elaborate
+statements of the amount of drilling and blasting accomplished in the
+construction of the railroad across the Sierra, above Donner Lake; but
+for every pound of rock moved in this way, the glaciers which descended
+east and west through this same pass, crushed and carried away more than
+a hundred tons.
+
+The so-called practicable road-passes are simply those portions of the
+range more degraded by glacial action than the adjacent portions, and
+degraded in such a way as to leave the summits rounded, instead of
+sharp; while the peaks, from the superior strength and hardness of their
+rocks, or from more favorable position, having suffered less
+degradation, are left towering above the passes as if they had been
+heaved into the sky by some force acting from beneath.
+
+The scenery of all the passes, especially at the head, is of the wildest
+and grandest description,--lofty peaks massed together and laden around
+their bases with ice and snow; chains of glacier lakes; cascading
+streams in endless variety, with glorious views, westward over a sea of
+rocks and woods, and eastward over strange ashy plains, volcanoes, and
+the dry, dead-looking ranges of the Great Basin. Every pass, however,
+possesses treasures of beauty all its own.
+
+Having thus in a general way indicated the height, leading features, and
+distribution of the principal passes, I will now endeavor to describe
+the Mono Pass in particular, which may, I think, be regarded as a fair
+example of the higher alpine passes in general.
+
+The main portion of the Mono Pass is formed by Bloody Ca�on, which
+begins at the summit of the range, and runs in a general
+east-northeasterly direction to the edge of the Mono Plain.
+
+The first white men who forced a way through its somber depths were, as
+we have seen, eager gold-seekers. But the ca�on was known and traveled
+as a pass by the Indians and mountain animals long before its discovery
+by white men, as is shown by the numerous tributary trails which come
+into it from every direction. Its name accords well with the character
+of the "early times" in California, and may perhaps have been suggested
+by the predominant color of the metamorphic slates in which it is in
+great part eroded; or more probably by blood-stains made by the
+unfortunate animals which were compelled to slip and shuffle awkwardly
+over its rough, cutting rocks. I have never known an animal, either mule
+or horse, to make its way through the ca�on, either in going up or down,
+without losing more or less blood from wounds on the legs. Occasionally
+one is killed outright--falling headlong and rolling over precipices
+like a boulder. But such accidents are rarer than from the terrible
+appearance of the trail one would be led to expect; the more experienced
+when driven loose find their way over the dangerous places with a
+caution and sagacity that is truly wonderful. During the gold excitement
+it was at times a matter of considerable pecuniary importance to force a
+way through the ca�on with pack-trains early in the spring while it was
+yet heavily blocked with snow; and then the mules with their loads had
+sometimes to be let down over the steepest drifts and avalanche beds by
+means of ropes.
+
+A good bridle-path leads from Yosemite through many a grove and meadow
+up to the head of the ca�on, a distance of about thirty miles. Here the
+scenery undergoes a sudden and startling condensation. Mountains, red,
+gray, and black, rise close at hand on the right, whitened around their
+bases with banks of enduring snow; on the left swells the huge red mass
+of Mount Gibbs, while in front the eye wanders down the shadowy ca�on,
+and out on the warm plain of Mono, where the lake is seen gleaming like
+a burnished metallic disk, with clusters of lofty volcanic cones to the
+south of it.
+
+When at length we enter the mountain gateway, the somber rocks seem
+aware of our presence, and seem to come thronging closer about us.
+Happily the ouzel and the old familiar robin are here to sing us
+welcome, and azure daisies beam with trustfulness and sympathy, enabling
+us to feel something of Nature's love even here, beneath the gaze of her
+coldest rocks.
+
+The effect of this expressive outspokenness on the part of the
+ca�on-rocks is greatly enhanced by the quiet aspect of the alpine
+meadows through which we pass just before entering the narrow gateway.
+The forests in which they lie, and the mountain-tops rising beyond them,
+seem quiet and tranquil. We catch their restful spirit, yield to the
+soothing influences of the sunshine, and saunter dreamily on through
+flowers and bees, scarce touched by a definite thought; then suddenly we
+find ourselves in the shadowy ca�on, closeted with Nature in one of her
+wildest strongholds.
+
+After the first bewildering impression begins to wear off, we perceive
+that it is not altogether terrible; for besides the reassuring birds and
+flowers we discover a chain of shining lakelets hanging down from the
+very summit of the pass, and linked together by a silvery stream. The
+highest are set in bleak, rough bowls, scantily fringed with brown and
+yellow sedges. Winter storms blow snow through the ca�on in blinding
+drifts, and avalanches shoot from the heights. Then are these sparkling
+tarns filled and buried, leaving not a hint of their existence. In June
+and July they begin to blink and thaw out like sleepy eyes, the carices
+thrust up their short brown spikes, the daisies bloom in turn, and the
+most profoundly buried of them all is at length warmed and summered as
+if winter were only a dream.
+
+Red Lake is the lowest of the chain, and also the largest. It seems
+rather dull and forbidding at first sight, lying motionless in its deep,
+dark bed. The ca�on wall rises sheer from the water's edge on the south,
+but on the opposite side there is sufficient space and sunshine for a
+sedgy daisy garden, the center of which is brilliantly lighted with
+lilies, castilleias, larkspurs, and columbines, sheltered from the wind
+by leafy willows, and forming a most joyful outburst of plant-life
+keenly emphasized by the chill baldness of the onlooking cliffs.
+
+After indulging here in a dozing, shimmering lake-rest, the happy stream
+sets forth again, warbling and trilling like an ouzel, ever delightfully
+confiding, no matter how dark the way; leaping, gliding, hither,
+thither, clear or foaming: manifesting the beauty of its wildness in
+every sound and gesture.
+
+One of its most beautiful developments is the Diamond Cascade, situated
+a short distance below Red Lake. Here the tense, crystalline water is
+first dashed into coarse, granular spray mixed with dusty foam, and then
+divided into a diamond pattern by following the diagonal cleavage-joints
+that intersect the face of the precipice over which it pours. Viewed in
+front, it resembles a strip of embroidery of definite pattern, varying
+through the seasons with the temperature and the volume of water. Scarce
+a flower may be seen along its snowy border. A few bent pines look on
+from a distance, and small fringes of cassiope and rock-ferns are
+growing in fissures near the head, but these are so lowly and
+undemonstrative that only the attentive observer will be likely to
+notice them.
+
+On the north wall of the ca�on, a little below the Diamond Cascade, a
+glittering side stream makes its appearance, seeming to leap directly
+out of the sky. It first resembles a crinkled ribbon of silver hanging
+loosely down the wall, but grows wider as it descends, and dashes the
+dull rock with foam. A long rough talus curves up against this part of
+the cliff, overgrown with snow-pressed willows, in which the fall
+disappears with many an eager surge and swirl and plashing leap, finally
+beating its way down to its confluence with the main ca�on stream.
+
+Below this point the climate is no longer arctic. Butterflies become
+larger and more abundant, grasses with imposing spread of panicle wave
+above your shoulders, and the summery drone of the bumblebee thickens
+the air. The Dwarf Pine, the tree-mountaineer that climbs highest and
+braves the coldest blasts, is found scattered in storm-beaten clumps from
+the summit of the pass about half-way down the ca�on. Here it is
+succeeded by the hardy Two-leaved Pine, which is speedily joined by the
+taller Yellow and Mountain Pines. These, with the burly juniper, and
+shimmering aspen, rapidly grow larger as the sunshine becomes richer,
+forming groves that block the view; or they stand more apart here and
+there in picturesque groups, that make beautiful and obvious harmony
+with the rocks and with one another. Blooming underbrush becomes
+abundant,--azalea, spiraea, and the brier-rose weaving fringes for the
+streams, and shaggy rugs to relieve the stern, unflinching rock-bosses.
+
+Through this delightful wilderness, Ca�on Creek roves without any
+constraining channel, throbbing and wavering; now in sunshine, now in
+thoughtful shade; falling, swirling, flashing from side to side in
+weariless exuberance of energy. A glorious milky way of cascades is thus
+developed, of which Bower Cascade, though one of the smallest, is
+perhaps the most beautiful of them all. It is situated in the lower
+region of the pass, just where the sunshine begins to mellow between the
+cold and warm climates. Here the glad creek, grown strong with tribute
+gathered from many a snowy fountain on the heights, sings richer
+strains, and becomes more human and lovable at every step. Now you may
+by its side find the rose and homely yarrow, and small meadows full of
+bees and clover. At the head of a low-browed rock, luxuriant dogwood
+bushes and willows arch over from bank to bank, embowering the stream
+with their leafy branches; and drooping plumes, kept in motion by the
+current, fringe the brow of the cascade in front. From this leafy covert
+the stream leaps out into the light in a fluted curve thick sown with
+sparkling crystals, and falls into a pool filled with brown boulders,
+out of which it creeps gray with foam-bells and disappears in a tangle
+of verdure like that from which it came.
+
+Hence, to the foot of the ca�on, the metamorphic slates give place to
+granite, whose nobler sculpture calls forth expressions of corresponding
+beauty from the stream in passing over it,--bright trills of rapids,
+booming notes of falls, solemn hushes of smooth-gliding sheets, all
+chanting and blending in glorious harmony. When, at length, its
+impetuous alpine life is done, it slips through a meadow with scarce an
+audible whisper, and falls asleep in Moraine Lake.
+
+This water-bed is one of the finest I ever saw. Evergreens wave
+soothingly about it, and the breath of flowers floats over it like
+incense. Here our blessed stream rests from its rocky wanderings, all
+its mountaineering done,--no more foaming rock-leaping, no more wild,
+exulting song. It falls into a smooth, glassy sleep, stirred only by the
+night-wind, which, coming down the ca�on, makes it croon and mutter in
+ripples along its broidered shores.
+
+Leaving the lake, it glides quietly through the rushes, destined never
+more to touch the living rock. Henceforth its path lies through ancient
+moraines and reaches of ashy sage-plain, which nowhere afford rocks
+suitable for the development of cascades or sheer falls. Yet this beauty
+of maturity, though less striking, is of a still higher order, enticing
+us lovingly on through gentian meadows and groves of rustling aspen to
+Lake Mono, where, spirit-like, our happy stream vanishes in vapor, and
+floats free again in the sky.
+
+Bloody Ca�on, like every other in the Sierra, was recently occupied by a
+glacier, which derived its fountain snows from the adjacent summits, and
+descended into Mono Lake, at a time when its waters stood at a much
+higher level than now. The principal characters in which the history of
+the ancient glaciers is preserved are displayed here in marvelous
+freshness and simplicity, furnishing the student with extraordinary
+advantages for the acquisition of knowledge of this sort. The most
+striking passages are polished and striated surfaces, which in many
+places reflect the rays of the sun like smooth water. The dam of Red
+Lake is an elegantly modeled rib of metamorphic slate, brought into
+relief because of its superior strength, and because of the greater
+intensity of the glacial erosion of the rock immediately above it,
+caused by a steeply inclined tributary glacier, which entered the main
+trunk with a heavy down-thrust at the head of the lake.
+
+Moraine Lake furnishes an equally interesting example of a basin formed
+wholly, or in part, by a terminal moraine dam curved across the path of
+a stream between two lateral moraines.
+
+At Moraine Lake the ca�on proper terminates, although apparently
+continued by the two lateral moraines of the vanished glacier. These
+moraines are about 300 feet high, and extend unbrokenly from the sides
+of the ca�on into the plain, a distance of about five miles, curving and
+tapering in beautiful lines. Their sunward sides are gardens, their
+shady sides are groves; the former devoted chiefly to eriogonae,
+compositae, and graminae; a square rod containing five or six profusely
+flowered eriogonums of several species, about the same number of bahia
+and linosyris, and a few grass tufts; each species being planted trimly
+apart, with bare gravel between, as if cultivated artificially.
+
+My first visit to Bloody Ca�on was made in the summer of 1869, under
+circumstances well calculated to heighten the impressions that are the
+peculiar offspring of mountains. I came from the blooming tangles of
+Florida, and waded out into the plant-gold of the great valley of
+California, when its flora was as yet untrodden. Never before had I
+beheld congregations of social flowers half so extensive or half so
+glorious. Golden composite covered all the ground from the Coast Range
+to the Sierra like a stratum of curdled sunshine, in which I reveled for
+weeks, watching the rising and setting of their innumerable suns; then I
+gave myself up to be borne forward on the crest of the summer wave that
+sweeps annually up the Sierra and spends itself on the snowy summits.
+
+At the Big Tuolumne Meadows I remained more than a month, sketching,
+botanizing, and climbing among the surrounding mountains. The
+mountaineer with whom I then happened to be camping was one of those
+remarkable men one so frequently meets in California, the hard angles
+and bosses of whose characters have been brought into relief by the
+grinding excitements of the gold period, until they resemble glacial
+landscapes. But at this late day, my friend's activities had subsided,
+and his craving for rest caused him to become a gentle shepherd and
+literally to lie down with the lamb.
+
+Recognizing the unsatisfiable longings of my Scotch Highland instincts,
+he threw out some hints concerning Bloody Ca�on, and advised me to
+explore it. "I have never seen it myself," he said, "for I never was so
+unfortunate as to pass that way. But I have heard many a strange story
+about it, and I warrant you will at least find it wild enough."
+
+Then of course I made haste to see it. Early next morning I made up a
+bundle of bread, tied my note-book to my belt, and strode away in the
+bracing air, full of eager, indefinite hope. The plushy lawns that lay
+in my path served to soothe my morning haste. The sod in many places was
+starred with daisies and blue gentians, over which I lingered. I traced
+the paths of the ancient glaciers over many a shining pavement, and
+marked the gaps in the upper forests that told the power of the winter
+avalanches. Climbing higher, I saw for the first time the gradual
+dwarfing of the pines in compliance with climate, and on the summit
+discovered creeping mats of the arctic willow overgrown with silky
+catkins, and patches of the dwarf vaccinium with its round flowers
+sprinkled in the grass like purple hail; while in every direction the
+landscape stretched sublimely away in fresh wildness--a manuscript
+written by the hand of Nature alone.
+
+At length, as I entered the pass, the huge rocks began to close around
+in all their wild, mysterious impressiveness, when suddenly, as I was
+gazing eagerly about me, a drove of gray hairy beings came in sight,
+lumbering toward me with a kind of boneless, wallowing motion like
+bears.
+
+I never turn back, though often so inclined, and in this particular
+instance, amid such surroundings, everything seemed singularly
+unfavorable for the calm acceptance of so grim a company. Suppressing my
+fears, I soon discovered that although as hairy as bears and as crooked
+as summit pines, the strange creatures were sufficiently erect to belong
+to our own species. They proved to be nothing more formidable than Mono
+Indians dressed in the skins of sage-rabbits. Both the men and the women
+begged persistently for whisky and tobacco, and seemed so accustomed to
+denials that I found it impossible to convince them that I had none to
+give. Excepting the names of these two products of civilization, they
+seemed to understand not a word of English; but I afterward learned that
+they were on their way to Yosemite Valley to feast awhile on trout and
+procure a load of acorns to carry back through the pass to their huts on
+the shore of Mono Lake.
+
+Occasionally a good countenance may be seen among the Mono Indians, but
+these, the first specimens I had seen, were mostly ugly, and some of
+them altogether hideous. The dirt on their faces was fairly stratified,
+and seemed so ancient and so undisturbed it might almost possess a
+geological significance. The older faces were, moreover, strangely
+blurred and divided into sections by furrows that looked like the
+cleavage-joints of rocks, suggesting exposure on the mountains in a
+castaway condition for ages. Somehow they seemed to have no right place
+in the landscape, and I was glad to see them fading out of sight down
+the pass.
+
+Then came evening, and the somber cliffs were inspired with the
+ineffable beauty of the alpenglow. A solemn calm fell upon everything.
+All the lower portion of the ca�on was in gloaming shadow, and I crept
+into a hollow near one of the upper lakelets to smooth the ground in a
+sheltered nook for a bed. When the short twilight faded, I kindled a
+sunny fire, made a cup of tea, and lay down to rest and look at the
+stars. Soon the night-wind began to flow and pour in torrents among the
+jagged peaks, mingling strange tones with those of the waterfalls
+sounding far below; and as I drifted toward sleep I began to experience
+an uncomfortable feeling of nearness to the furred Monos. Then the full
+moon looked down over the edge of the ca�on wall, her countenance
+seemingly filled with intense concern, and apparently so near as to
+produce a startling effect as if she had entered my bedroom, forgetting
+all the world, to gaze on me alone.
+
+The night was full of strange sounds, and I gladly welcomed the morning.
+Breakfast was soon done, and I set forth in the exhilarating freshness
+of the new day, rejoicing in the abundance of pure wildness so close
+about me. The stupendous rocks, hacked and scarred with centuries of
+storms, stood sharply out in the thin early light, while down in the
+bottom of the ca�on grooved and polished bosses heaved and glistened
+like swelling sea-waves, telling a grand old story of the ancient
+glacier that poured its crushing floods above them.
+
+Here for the first time I met the arctic daisies in all their perfection
+of purity and spirituality,--gentle mountaineers face to face with the
+stormy sky, kept safe and warm by a thousand miracles. I leaped lightly
+from rock to rock, glorying in the eternal freshness and sufficiency of
+Nature, and in the ineffable tenderness with which she nurtures her
+mountain darlings in the very fountains of storms. Fresh beauty appeared
+at every step, delicate rock-ferns, and groups of the fairest flowers.
+Now another lake came to view, now a waterfall. Never fell light in
+brighter spangles, never fell water in whiter foam. I seemed to float
+through the ca�on enchanted, feeling nothing of its roughness, and was
+out in the Mono levels before I was aware.
+
+Looking back from the shore of Moraine Lake, my morning ramble seemed
+all a dream. There curved Bloody Ca�on, a mere glacial furrow 2000 feet
+deep, with smooth rocks projecting from the sides and braided together
+in the middle, like bulging, swelling muscles. Here the lilies were
+higher than my head, and the sunshine was warm enough for palms. Yet the
+snow around the arctic willows was plainly visible only four miles away,
+and between were narrow specimen zones of all the principal climates of
+the globe.
+
+On the bank of a small brook that comes gurgling down the side of the
+left lateral moraine, I found a camp-fire still burning, which no doubt
+belonged to the gray Indians I had met on the summit, and I listened
+instinctively and moved cautiously forward, half expecting to see some
+of their grim faces peering out of the bushes.
+
+Passing on toward the open plain, I noticed three well-defined terminal
+moraines curved gracefully across the ca�on stream, and joined by long
+splices to the two noble laterals. These mark the halting-places of the
+vanished glacier when it was retreating into its summit shadows on the
+breaking-up of the glacial winter.
+
+Five miles below the foot of Moraine Lake, just where the lateral
+moraines lose themselves in the plain, there was a field of wild rye,
+growing in magnificent waving bunches six to eight feet high, bearing
+heads from six to twelve inches long. Rubbing out some of the grains, I
+found them about five eighths of an inch long, dark-colored, and sweet.
+Indian women were gathering it in baskets, bending down large handfuls,
+beating it out, and fanning it in the wind. They were quite picturesque,
+coming through the rye, as one caught glimpses of them here and there,
+in winding lanes and openings, with splendid tufts arching above their
+heads, while their incessant chat and laughter showed their heedless
+joy.
+
+Like the rye-field, I found the so-called desert of Mono blooming in a
+high state of natural cultivation with the wild rose, cherry, aster, and
+the delicate abronia; also innumerable gilias, phloxes, poppies, and
+bush-compositae. I observed their gestures and the various expressions
+of their corollas, inquiring how they could be so fresh and beautiful
+out in this volcanic desert. They told as happy a life as any
+plant-company I ever met, and seemed to enjoy even the hot sand and the
+wind.
+
+But the vegetation of the pass has been in great part destroyed, and the
+same may be said of all the more accessible passes throughout the range.
+Immense numbers of starving sheep and cattle have been driven through
+them into Nevada, trampling the wild gardens and meadows almost out of
+existence. The lofty walls are untouched by any foot, and the falls sing
+on unchanged; but the sight of crushed flowers and stripped, bitten
+bushes goes far toward destroying the charm of wildness.
+
+The ca�on should be seen in winter. A good, strong traveler, who knows
+the way and the weather, might easily make a safe excursion through it
+from Yosemite Valley on snow-shoes during some tranquil time, when the
+storms are hushed. The lakes and falls would be buried then; but so,
+also, would be the traces of destructive feet, while the views of the
+mountains in their winter garb, and the ride at lightning speed down the
+pass between the snowy walls, would be truly glorious.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CA�ON.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+THE GLACIER LAKES
+
+Among the many unlooked-for treasures that are bound up and hidden away
+in the depths of Sierra solitudes, none more surely charm and surprise
+all kinds of travelers than the glacier lakes. The forests and the
+glaciers and the snowy fountains of the streams advertise their wealth
+in a more or less telling manner even in the distance, but nothing is
+seen of the lakes until we have climbed above them. All the upper
+branches of the rivers are fairly laden with lakes, like orchard trees
+with fruit. They lie embosomed in the deep woods, down in the grovy
+bottoms of ca�ons, high on bald tablelands, and around the feet of the
+icy peaks, mirroring back their wild beauty over and over again. Some
+conception of their lavish abundance may be made from the fact that,
+from one standpoint on the summit of Red Mountain, a day's journey to
+the east of Yosemite Valley, no fewer than forty-two are displayed
+within a radius of ten miles. The whole number in the Sierra can hardly
+be less than fifteen hundred, not counting the smaller pools and tarns,
+which are innumerable. Perhaps two thirds or more lie on the western
+flank of the range, and all are restricted to the alpine and subalpine
+regions. At the close of the last glacial period, the middle and
+foot-hill regions also abounded in lakes, all of which have long since
+vanished as completely as the magnificent ancient glaciers that brought
+them into existence.
+
+Though the eastern flank of the range is excessively steep, we find
+lakes pretty regularly distributed throughout even the most precipitous
+portions. They are mostly found in the upper branches of the ca�ons, and
+in the glacial amphitheaters around the peaks.
+
+Occasionally long, narrow specimens occur upon the steep sides of
+dividing ridges, their basins swung lengthwise like hammocks, and very
+rarely one is found lying so exactly on the summit of the range at the
+head of some pass that its waters are discharged down both flanks when
+the snow is melting fast. But, however situated, they soon cease to form
+surprises to the studious mountaineer; for, like all the love-work of
+Nature, they are harmoniously related to one another, and to all the
+other features of the mountains. It is easy, therefore, to find the
+bright lake-eyes in the roughest and most ungovernable-looking
+topography of any landscape countenance. Even in the lower regions,
+where they have been closed for many a century, their rocky orbits are
+still discernible, filled in with the detritus of flood and avalanche. A
+beautiful system of grouping in correspondence with the glacial
+fountains is soon perceived; also their extension in the direction of
+the trends of the ancient glaciers; and in general their dependence as
+to form, size, and position upon the character of the rocks in which
+their basins have been eroded, and the quantity and direction of
+application of the glacial force expended upon each basin.
+
+In the upper ca�ons we usually find them in pretty regular succession,
+strung together like beads on the bright ribbons of their
+feeding-streams, which pour, white and gray with foam and spray, from
+one to the other, their perfect mirror stillness making impressive
+contrasts with the grand blare and glare of the connecting cataracts. In
+Lake Hollow, on the north side of the Hoffman spur, immediately above
+the great Tuolumne ca�on, there are ten lovely lakelets lying near
+together in one general hollow, like eggs in a nest. Seen from above, in
+a general view, feathered with Hemlock Spruce, and fringed with sedge,
+they seem to me the most singularly beautiful and interestingly located
+lake-cluster I have ever yet discovered.
+
+Lake Tahoe, 22 miles long by about 10 wide, and from 500 to over 1600
+feet in depth, is the largest of all the Sierra lakes. It lies just
+beyond the northern limit of the higher portion of the range between the
+main axis and a spur that puts out on the east side from near the head
+of the Carson River. Its forested shores go curving in and out around
+many an emerald bay and pine-crowned promontory, and its waters are
+everywhere as keenly pure as any to be found among the highest
+mountains.
+
+Donner Lake, rendered memorable by the terrible fate of the Donner
+party, is about three miles long, and lies about ten miles to the north
+of Tahoe, at the head of one of the tributaries of the Truckee. A few
+miles farther north lies Lake Independence, about the same size as
+Donner. But far the greater number of the lakes lie much higher and are
+quite small, few of them exceeding a mile in length, most of them less
+than half a mile.
+
+Along the lower edge of the lake-belt, the smallest have disappeared by
+the filling-in of their basins, leaving only those of considerable size.
+But all along the upper freshly glaciated margin of the lake-bearing
+zone, every hollow, however small, lying within reach of any portion of
+the close network of streams, contains a bright, brimming pool; so that
+the landscape viewed from the mountain-tops seems to be sown broadcast
+with them. Many of the larger lakes are encircled with smaller ones like
+central gems girdled with sparkling brilliants. In general, however,
+there is no marked dividing line as to size. In order, therefore, to
+prevent confusion, I would state here that in giving numbers, I include
+none less than 500 yards in circumference.
+
+In the basin of the Merced River, I counted 131, of which 111 are upon
+the tributaries that fall so grandly into Yosemite Valley. Pohono Creek,
+which forms the fall of that name, takes its rise in a beautiful lake,
+lying beneath the shadow of a lofty granite spur that puts out from
+Buena Vista peak. This is now the only lake left in the whole Pohono
+Basin. The Illilouette has sixteen, the Nevada no fewer than
+sixty-seven, the Tenaya eight, Hoffmann Creek five, and Yosemite Creek
+fourteen. There are but two other lake-bearing affluents of the Merced,
+viz., the South Fork with fifteen, and Cascade Creek with five, both of
+which unite with the main trunk below Yosemite.
+
+[Illustration: LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS.]
+
+The Merced River, as a whole, is remarkably like an elm-tree, and it
+requires but little effort on the part of the imagination to picture it
+standing upright, with all its lakes hanging upon its spreading
+branches, the topmost eighty miles in height. Now add all the other
+lake-bearing rivers of the Sierra, each in its place, and you will have
+a truly glorious spectacle,--an avenue the length and width of the
+range; the long, slender, gray shafts of the main trunks, the milky way
+of arching branches, and the silvery lakes, all clearly defined and
+shining on the sky. How excitedly such an addition to the scenery would
+be gazed at! Yet these lakeful rivers are still more excitingly
+beautiful and impressive in their natural positions to those who have
+the eyes to see them as they lie imbedded in their meadows and forests
+and glacier-sculptured rocks.
+
+When a mountain lake is born,--when, like a young eye, it first opens to
+the light,--it is an irregular, expressionless crescent, inclosed in
+banks of rock and ice,--bare, glaciated rock on the lower side, the
+rugged snout of a glacier on the upper. In this condition it remains for
+many a year, until at length, toward the end of some auspicious cluster
+of seasons, the glacier recedes beyond the upper margin of the basin,
+leaving it open from shore to shore for the first time, thousands of
+years after its conception beneath the glacier that excavated its basin.
+The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its pure depths; the winds
+ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun fills it with throbbing spangles,
+while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless
+shores,--sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at night its
+only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the
+glacier continues to recede, and numerous rills, still younger than the
+lake itself, bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, giving
+rise to margin-rings and plats of soil. To these fresh soil-beds come
+many a waiting plant. First, a hardy carex with arching leaves and a
+spike of brown flowers; then, as the seasons grow warmer, and the
+soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take their appointed places,
+and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies, dodecatheons, violets,
+honeyworts, and many a lowly moss. Shrubs also hasten in time to the new
+gardens,--kalmia with its glossy leaves and purple flowers, the arctic
+willow, making soft woven carpets, together with the heathy bryanthus
+and cassiope, the fairest and dearest of them all. Insects now enrich
+the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed by the
+ouzel, which is the first bird to visit a glacier lake, as the sedge is
+the first of plants.
+
+So the young lake grows in beauty, becoming more and more humanly
+lovable from century to century. Groves of aspen spring up, and hardy
+pines, and the Hemlock Spruce, until it is richly overshadowed and
+embowered. But while its shores are being enriched, the soil-beds creep
+out with incessant growth, contracting its area, while the lighter
+mud-particles deposited on the bottom cause it to grow constantly
+shallower, until at length the last remnant of the lake
+vanishes,--closed forever in ripe and natural old age. And now its
+feeding-stream goes winding on without halting through the new gardens
+and groves that have taken its place.
+
+The length of the life of any lake depends ordinarily upon the capacity
+of its basin, as compared with the carrying power of the streams that
+flow into it, the character of the rocks over which these streams flow,
+and the relative position of the lake toward other lakes. In a series
+whose basins lie in the same ca�on, and are fed by one and the same main
+stream, the uppermost will, of course, vanish first unless some other
+lake-filling agent comes in to modify the result; because at first it
+receives nearly all of the sediments that the stream brings down, only
+the finest of the mud-particles being carried through the highest of the
+series to the next below. Then the next higher, and the next would be
+successively filled, and the lowest would be the last to vanish. But
+this simplicity as to duration is broken in upon in various ways,
+chiefly through the action of side-streams that enter the lower lakes
+direct. For, notwithstanding many of these side tributaries are quite
+short, and, during late summer, feeble, they all become powerful
+torrents in springtime when the snow is melting, and carry not only sand
+and pine-needles, but large trunks and boulders tons in weight, sweeping
+them down their steeply inclined channels and into the lake basins with
+astounding energy. Many of these side affluents also have the advantage
+of access to the main lateral moraines of the vanished glacier that
+occupied the ca�on, and upon these they draw for lake-filling material,
+while the main trunk stream flows mostly over clean glacier pavements,
+where but little moraine matter is ever left for them to carry. Thus a
+small rapid stream with abundance of loose transportable material within
+its reach may fill up an extensive basin in a few centuries, while a
+large perennial trunk stream, flowing over clean, enduring pavements,
+though ordinarily a hundred times larger, may not fill a smaller basin
+in thousands of years.
+
+The comparative influence of great and small streams as lake-fillers is
+strikingly illustrated in Yosemite Valley, through which the Merced
+flows. The bottom of the valley is now composed of level meadow-lands
+and dry, sloping soil-beds planted with oak and pine, but it was once a
+lake stretching from wall to wall and nearly from one end of the valley
+to the other, forming one of the most beautiful cliff-bound sheets of
+water that ever existed in the Sierra. And though never perhaps seen by
+human eye, it was but yesterday, geologically speaking, since it
+disappeared, and the traces of its existence are still so fresh, it may
+easily be restored to the eye of imagination and viewed in all its
+grandeur, about as truly and vividly as if actually before us. Now we
+find that the detritus which fills this magnificent basin was not
+brought down from the distant mountains by the main streams that
+converge here to form the river, however powerful and available for the
+purpose at first sight they appear; but almost wholly by the small local
+tributaries, such as those of Indian Ca�on, the Sentinel, and the Three
+Brothers, and by a few small residual glaciers which lingered in the
+shadows of the walls long after the main trunk glacier had receded
+beyond the head of the valley.
+
+Had the glaciers that once covered the range been melted at once,
+leaving the entire surface bare from top to bottom simultaneously, then
+of course all the lakes would have come into existence at the same time,
+and the highest, other circumstances being equal, would, as we have
+seen, be the first to vanish. But because they melted gradually from the
+foot of the range upward, the lower lakes were the first to see the
+light and the first to be obliterated. Therefore, instead of finding the
+lakes of the present day at the foot of the range, we find them at the
+top. Most of the lower lakes vanished thousands of years before those
+now brightening the alpine landscapes were born. And in general, owing
+to the deliberation of the upward retreat of the glaciers, the lowest of
+the existing lakes are also the oldest, a gradual transition being
+apparent throughout the entire belt, from the older, forested,
+meadow-rimmed and contracted forms all the way up to those that are new
+born, lying bare and meadowless among the highest peaks.
+
+[Illustration: THE DEATH OF A LAKE.]
+
+A few small lakes unfortunately situated are extinguished suddenly by a
+single swoop of an avalanche, carrying down immense numbers of trees,
+together with the soil they were growing upon. Others are obliterated by
+land-slips, earthquake taluses, etc., but these lake-deaths compared
+with those resulting from the deliberate and incessant deposition of
+sediments, may be termed accidental. Their fate is like that of trees
+struck by lightning.
+
+The lake-line is of course still rising, its present elevation being
+about 8000 feet above sea-level; somewhat higher than this toward the
+southern extremity of the range, lower toward the northern, on account
+of the difference in time of the withdrawal of the glaciers, due to
+difference in climate. Specimens occur here and there considerably below
+this limit, in basins specially protected from inwashing detritus, or
+exceptional in size. These, however, are not sufficiently numerous to
+make any marked irregularity in the line. The highest I have yet found
+lies at an elevation of about 12,000 feet, in a glacier womb, at the
+foot of one of the highest of the summit peaks, a few miles to the north
+of Mount Hitter. The basins of perhaps twenty-five or thirty are still
+in process of formation beneath the few lingering glaciers, but by the
+time they are born, an equal or greater number will probably have died.
+Since the beginning of the close of the ice-period the whole number in
+the range has perhaps never been greater than at present.
+
+A rough approximation to the average duration of these mountain lakes
+may be made from data already suggested, but I cannot stop here to
+present the subject in detail. I must also forego, in the mean time, the
+pleasure of a full discussion of the interesting question of lake-basin
+formation, for which fine, clear, demonstrative material abounds in
+these mountains. In addition to what has been already given on the
+subject, I will only make this one statement. Every lake in the Sierra
+is a glacier lake. Their basins were not merely remodeled and scoured
+out by this mighty agent, but in the first place were eroded from the
+solid.
+
+I must now make haste to give some nearer views of representative
+specimens lying at different elevations on the main lake-belt, confining
+myself to descriptions of the features most characteristic of each.
+
+
+SHADOW LAKE
+
+This is a fine specimen of the oldest and lowest of the existing lakes.
+It lies about eight miles above Yosemite Valley, on the main branch of
+the Merced, at an elevation of about 7350 feet above the sea; and is
+everywhere so securely cliff-bound that without artificial trails only
+wild animals can get down to its rocky shores from any direction. Its
+original length was about a mile and a half; now it is only half a mile
+in length by about a fourth of a mile in width, and over the lowest
+portion of the basin ninety-eight feet deep. Its crystal waters are
+clasped around on the north and south by majestic granite walls
+sculptured in true Yosemitic style into domes, gables, and battlemented
+headlands, which on the south come plunging down sheer into deep water,
+from a height of from 1500 to 2000 feet. The South Lyell glacier eroded
+this magnificent basin out of solid porphyritic granite while forcing
+its way westward from the summit fountains toward Yosemite, and the
+exposed rocks around the shores, and the projecting bosses of the walls,
+ground and burnished beneath the vast ice-flood, still glow with silvery
+radiance, notwithstanding the innumerable corroding storms that have
+fallen upon them. The general conformation of the basin, as well as the
+moraines laid along the top of the walls, and the grooves and scratches
+on the bottom and sides, indicate in the most unmistakable manner the
+direction pursued by this mighty ice-river, its great depth, and the
+tremendous energy it exerted in thrusting itself into and out of the
+basin; bearing down with superior pressure upon this portion of its
+channel, because of the greater declivity, consequently eroding it
+deeper than the other portions about it, and producing the lake-bowl as
+the necessary result.
+
+With these magnificent ice-characters so vividly before us it is not
+easy to realize that the old glacier that made them vanished tens of
+centuries ago; for, excepting the vegetation that has sprung up, and the
+changes effected by an earthquake that hurled rock-avalanches from the
+weaker headlands, the basin as a whole presents the same appearance that
+it did when first brought to light. The lake itself, however, has
+undergone marked changes; one sees at a glance that it is growing old.
+More than two thirds of its original area is now dry land, covered with
+meadow-grasses and groves of pine and fir, and the level bed of alluvium
+stretching across from wall to wall at the head is evidently growing out
+all along its lakeward margin, and will at length close the lake
+forever.
+
+Every lover of fine wildness would delight to saunter on a summer day
+through the flowery groves now occupying the filled-up portion of the
+basin. The curving shore is clearly traced by a ribbon of white sand
+upon which the ripples play; then comes a belt of broad-leafed sedges,
+interrupted here and there by impenetrable tangles of willows; beyond
+this there are groves of trembling aspen; then a dark, shadowy belt of
+Two-leaved Pine, with here and there a round carex meadow ensconced
+nest-like in its midst; and lastly, a narrow outer margin of majestic
+Silver Fir 200 feet high. The ground beneath the trees is covered with a
+luxuriant crop of grasses, chiefly triticum, bromus, and calamagrostis,
+with purple spikes and panicles arching to one's shoulders; while the
+open meadow patches glow throughout the summer with showy
+flowers,--heleniums, goldenrods, erigerons, lupines, castilleias, and
+lilies, and form favorite hiding and feeding-grounds for bears and deer.
+
+The rugged south wall is feathered darkly along the top with an imposing
+array of spirey Silver Firs, while the rifted precipices all the way
+down to the water's edge are adorned with picturesque old junipers,
+their cinnamon-colored bark showing finely upon the neutral gray of the
+granite. These, with a few venturesome Dwarf Pines and Spruces, lean out
+over fissured ribs and tablets, or stand erect back in shadowy niches,
+in an indescribably wild and fearless manner. Moreover, the
+white-flowered Douglas spiraea and dwarf evergreen oak form graceful
+fringes along the narrower seams, wherever the slightest hold can be
+effected. Rock-ferns, too, are here, such as allosorus, pellaea, and
+cheilanthes, making handsome rosettes on the drier fissures; and the
+delicate maidenhair, cistoperis, and woodsia hide back in mossy
+grottoes, moistened by some trickling rill; and then the orange
+wall-flower holds up its showy panicles here and there in the sunshine,
+and bahia makes bosses of gold. But, notwithstanding all this plant
+beauty, the general impression in looking across the lake is of stern,
+unflinching rockiness; the ferns and flowers are scarcely seen, and not
+one fiftieth of the whole surface is screened with plant life.
+
+The sunnier north wall is more varied in sculpture, but the general tone
+is the same. A few headlands, flat-topped and soil-covered, support
+clumps of cedar and pine; and up-curving tangles of chinquapin and
+live-oak, growing on rough earthquake taluses, girdle their bases. Small
+streams come cascading down between them, their foaming margins
+brightened with gay primulas, gilias, and mimuluses. And close along the
+shore on this side there is a strip of rocky meadow enameled with
+buttercups, daisies, and white violets, and the purple-topped grasses
+out on its beveled border dip their leaves into the water.
+
+The lower edge of the basin is a dam-like swell of solid granite,
+heavily abraded by the old glacier, but scarce at all cut into as yet by
+the outflowing stream, though it has flowed on unceasingly since the
+lake came into existence.
+
+As soon as the stream is fairly over the lake-lip it breaks into
+cascades, never for a moment halting, and scarce abating one jot of its
+glad energy, until it reaches the next filled-up basin, a mile below.
+Then swirling and curving drowsily through meadow and grove, it breaks
+forth anew into gray rapids and falls, leaping and gliding in glorious
+exuberance of wild bound and dance down into another and yet another
+filled-up lake basin. Then, after a long rest in the levels of Little
+Yosemite, it makes its grandest display in the famous Nevada Fall. Out
+of the clouds of spray at the foot of the fall the battered, roaring
+river gropes its way, makes another mile of cascades and rapids, rests a
+moment in Emerald Pool, then plunges over the grand cliff of the Vernal
+Fall, and goes thundering and chafing down a boulder-choked gorge of
+tremendous depth and wildness into the tranquil reaches of the old
+Yosemite lake basin.
+
+The color-beauty about Shadow Lake during the Indian summer is much
+richer than one could hope to find in so young and so glacial a
+wilderness. Almost every leaf is tinted then, and the golden-rods are in
+bloom; but most of the color is given by the ripe grasses, willows, and
+aspens. At the foot of the lake you stand in a trembling aspen grove,
+every leaf painted like a butterfly, and away to right and left round
+the shores sweeps a curving ribbon of meadow, red and brown dotted with
+pale yellow, shading off here and there into hazy purple. The walls,
+too, are dashed with bits of bright color that gleam out on the neutral
+granite gray. But neither the walls, nor the margin meadow, nor yet the
+gay, fluttering grove in which you stand, nor the lake itself, flashing
+with spangles, can long hold your attention; for at the head of the lake
+there is a gorgeous mass of orange-yellow, belonging to the main aspen
+belt of the basin, which seems the very fountain whence all the color
+below it had flowed, and here your eye is filled and fixed. This
+glorious mass is about thirty feet high, and extends across the basin
+nearly from wall to wall. Rich bosses of willow flame in front of it,
+and from the base of these the brown meadow comes forward to the water's
+edge, the whole being relieved against the unyielding green of the
+coniferae, while thick sun-gold is poured over all.
+
+During these blessed color-days no cloud darkens the sky, the winds are
+gentle, and the landscape rests, hushed everywhere, and indescribably
+impressive. A few ducks are usually seen sailing on the lake, apparently
+more for pleasure than anything else, and the ouzels at the head of the
+rapids sing always; while robins, grosbeaks, and the Douglas squirrels
+are busy in the groves, making delightful company, and intensifying the
+feeling of grateful sequestration without ruffling the deep, hushed calm
+and peace.
+
+This autumnal mellowness usually lasts until the end of November. Then
+come days of quite another kind. The winter clouds grow, and bloom, and
+shed their starry crystals on every leaf and rock, and all the colors
+vanish like a sunset. The deer gather and hasten down their well-known
+trails, fearful of being snow-bound. Storm succeeds storm, heaping snow
+on the cliffs and meadows, and bending the slender pines to the ground
+in wide arches, one over the other, clustering and interlacing like
+lodged wheat. Avalanches rush and boom from the shelving heights, piling
+immense heaps upon the frozen lake, and all the summer glory is buried
+and lost. Yet in the midst of this hearty winter the sun shines warm at
+times, calling the Douglas squirrel to frisk in the snowy pines and seek
+out his hidden stores; and the weather is never so severe as to drive
+away the grouse and little nut-hatches and chickadees.
+
+Toward May, the lake begins to open. The hot sun sends down innumerable
+streams over the cliffs, streaking them round and round with foam. The
+snow slowly vanishes, and the meadows show tintings of green. Then
+spring comes on apace; flowers and flies enrich the air and the sod, and
+the deer come back to the upper groves like birds to an old nest.
+
+I first discovered this charming lake in the autumn of 1872, while on my
+way to the glaciers at the head of the river. It was rejoicing then in
+its gayest colors, untrodden, hidden in the glorious wildness like
+unmined gold. Year after year I walked its shores without discovering
+any other trace of humanity than the remains of an Indian camp-fire, and
+the thigh-bones of a deer that had been broken to get at the marrow. It
+lies out of the regular ways of Indians, who love to hunt in more
+accessible fields adjacent to trails. Their knowledge of deer-haunts had
+probably enticed them here some hunger-time when they wished to make
+sure of a feast; for hunting in this lake-hollow is like hunting in a
+fenced park. I had told the beauty of Shadow Lake only to a few friends,
+fearing it might come to be trampled and "improved" like Yosemite. On my
+last visit, as I was sauntering along the shore on the strip of sand
+between the water and sod, reading the tracks of the wild animals that
+live here, I was startled by a human track, which I at once saw belonged
+to some shepherd; for each step was turned out 35� or 40� from the
+general course pursued, and was also run over in an uncertain sprawling
+fashion at the heel, while a row of round dots on the right indicated
+the staff that shepherds carry. None but a shepherd could make such a
+track, and after tracing it a few minutes I began to fear that he might
+be seeking pasturage; for what else could he be seeking? Returning from
+the glaciers shortly afterward, nay worst fears were realized. A trail
+had been made down the mountain-side from the north, and all the gardens
+and meadows were destroyed by a horde of hoofed locusts, as if swept by
+a fire. The money-changers were in the temple.
+
+
+ORANGE LAKE
+
+Besides these larger ca�on lakes, fed by the main ca�on streams, there
+are many smaller ones lying aloft on the top of rock benches, entirely
+independent of the general drainage channels, and of course drawing
+their supplies from a very limited area. Notwithstanding they are mostly
+small and shallow, owing to their immunity from avalanche detritus and
+the inwashings of powerful streams, they often endure longer than others
+many times larger but less favorably situated. When very shallow they
+become dry toward the end of summer; but because their basins are ground
+out of seamless stone they suffer no loss save from evaporation alone;
+and the great depth of snow that falls, lasting into June, makes their
+dry season short in any case.
+
+Orange Lake is a fair illustration of this bench form. It lies in the
+middle of a beautiful glacial pavement near the lower margin of the
+lake-line, about a mile and a half to the northwest of Shadow Lake. It
+is only about 100 yards in circumference. Next the water there is a
+girdle of carices with wide overarching leaves, then in regular order a
+shaggy ruff of huckleberry bushes, a zone of willows with here and there
+a bush of the Mountain Ash, then a zone of aspens with a few pines
+around the outside. These zones are of course concentric, and together
+form a wall beyond which the naked ice-burnished granite stretches away
+in every direction, leaving it conspicuously relieved, like a bunch of
+palms in a desert.
+
+In autumn, when the colors are ripe, the whole circular grove, at a
+little distance, looks like a big handful of flowers set in a cup to be
+kept fresh--a tuft of goldenrods. Its feeding-streams are exceedingly
+beautiful, notwithstanding their inconstancy and extreme shallowness.
+They have no channel whatever, and consequently are left free to spread
+in thin sheets upon the shining granite and wander at will. In many
+places the current is less than a fourth of an inch deep, and flows with
+so little friction it is scarcely visible. Sometimes there is not a
+single foam-bell, or drifting pine-needle, or irregularity of any sort
+to manifest its motion. Yet when observed narrowly it is seen to form a
+web of gliding lacework exquisitely woven, giving beautiful reflections
+from its minute curving ripples and eddies, and differing from the
+water-laces of large cascades in being everywhere transparent. In
+spring, when the snow is melting, the lake-bowl is brimming full, and
+sends forth quite a large stream that slips glassily for 200 yards or
+so, until it comes to an almost vertical precipice 800 feet high, down
+which it plunges in a fine cataract; then it gathers its scattered
+waters and goes smoothly over folds of gently dipping granite to its
+confluence with the main ca�on stream. During the greater portion of the
+year, however, not a single water sound will you hear either at head or
+foot of the lake, not oven the whispered lappings of ripple-waves along
+the shore; for the winds are fenced out. But the deep mountain silence
+is sweetened now and then by birds that stop here to rest and drink on
+their way across the ca�on.
+
+
+LAKE STAKE KING
+
+A beautiful variety of the bench-top lakes occurs just where the great
+lateral moraines of the main glaciers have been shoved forward in
+outswelling concentric rings by small residual tributary glaciers.
+Instead of being encompassed by a narrow ring of trees like Orange Lake,
+these lie embosomed in dense moraine woods, so dense that in seeking
+them you may pass them by again and again, although you may know nearly
+where they lie concealed.
+
+[Illustration: LAKE STARR KING.]
+
+Lake Starr King, lying to the north of the cone of that name, above the
+Little Yosemite Valley, is a fine specimen of this variety. The ouzels
+pass it by, and so do the ducks; they could hardly get into it if they
+would, without plumping straight down inside the circling trees.
+
+Yet these isolated gems, lying like fallen fruit detached from the
+branches, are not altogether without inhabitants and joyous, animating
+visitors. Of course fishes cannot get into them, and this is generally
+true of nearly every glacier lake in the range, but they are all well
+stocked with happy frogs. How did the frogs get into them in the first
+place? Perhaps their sticky spawn was carried in on the feet of ducks or
+other birds, else their progenitors must have made some exciting
+excursions through the woods and up the sides of the ca�ons. Down in the
+still, pure depths of these hidden lakelets you may also find the larvae
+of innumerable insects and a great variety of beetles, while the air
+above them is thick with humming wings, through the midst of which
+fly-catchers are constantly darting. And in autumn, when the
+huckleberries are ripe, bands of robins and grosbeaks come to feast,
+forming altogether delightful little byworlds for the naturalist.
+
+Pushing our way upward toward the axis of the range, we find lakes in
+greater and greater abundance, and more youthful in aspect. At an
+elevation of about 9000 feet above sea-level they seem to have arrived
+at middle age,--that is, their basins seem to be about half filled with
+alluvium. Broad sheets of meadow-land are seen extending into them,
+imperfect and boggy in many places and more nearly level than those of
+the older lakes below them, and the vegetation of their shores is of
+course more alpine. Kalmia, lodum, and cassiope fringe the meadow rocks,
+while the luxuriant, waving groves, so characteristic of the lower
+lakes, are represented only by clumps of the Dwarf Pine and Hemlock
+Spruce. These, however, are oftentimes very picturesquely grouped on
+rocky headlands around the outer rim of the meadows, or with still more
+striking effect crown some rocky islet.
+
+Moreover, from causes that we cannot stop here to explain, the cliffs
+about these middle-aged lakes are seldom of the massive Yosemite type,
+but are more broken, and less sheer, and they usually stand back,
+leaving the shores comparatively free; while the few precipitous rocks
+that do come forward and plunge directly into deep water are seldom more
+than three or four hundred feet high.
+
+I have never yet met ducks in any of the lakes of this kind, but the
+ouzel is never wanting where the feeding-streams are perennial. Wild
+sheep and deer may occasionally be seen on the meadows, and very rarely
+a bear. One might camp on the rugged shores of these bright fountains
+for weeks, without meeting any animal larger than the marmots that
+burrow beneath glacier boulders along the edges of the meadows.
+
+The highest and youngest of all the lakes lie nestled in glacier wombs.
+At first sight, they seem pictures of pure bloodless desolation,
+miniature arctic seas, bound in perpetual ice and snow, and overshadowed
+by harsh, gloomy, crumbling precipices. Their waters are keen
+ultramarine blue in the deepest parts, lively grass-green toward the
+shore shallows and around the edges of the small bergs usually floating
+about in them. A few hardy sedges, frost-pinched every night, are
+occasionally found making soft sods along the sun-touched portions of
+their shores, and when their northern banks slope openly to the south,
+and are soil-covered, no matter how coarsely, they are sure to be
+brightened with flowers. One lake in particular now comes to mind which
+illustrates the floweriness of the sun-touched banks of these icy gems.
+Close up under the shadow of the Sierra Matterhorn, on the eastern slope
+of the range, lies one of the iciest of these glacier lakes at an
+elevation of about 12,000 feet. A short, ragged-edged glacier crawls
+into it from the south, and on the opposite side it is embanked and
+dammed by a series of concentric terminal moraines, made by the glacier
+when it entirely filled the basin. Half a mile below lies a second lake,
+at a height of 11,500 feet, about as cold and as pure as a snow-crystal.
+The waters of the first come gurgling down into it over and through the
+moraine dam, while a second stream pours into it direct from a glacier
+that lies to the southeast. Sheer precipices of crystalline snow rise
+out of deep water on the south, keeping perpetual winter on that side,
+but there is a fine summery spot on the other, notwithstanding the lake
+is only about 300 yards wide. Here, on August 25, 1873, I found a
+charming company of flowers, not pinched, crouching dwarfs, scarce able
+to look up, but warm and juicy, standing erect in rich cheery color and
+bloom. On a narrow strip of shingle, close to the water's edge, there
+were a few tufts of carex gone to seed; and a little way back up the
+rocky bank at the foot of a crumbling wall so inclined as to absorb and
+radiate as well as reflect a considerable quantity of sun-heat, was the
+garden, containing a thrifty thicket of Cowania covered with large
+yellow flowers; several bushes of the alpine ribes with berries nearly
+ripe and wildly acid; a few handsome grasses belonging to two distinct
+species, and one goldenrod; a few hairy lupines and radiant spragueas,
+whose blue and rose-colored flowers were set off to fine advantage amid
+green carices; and along a narrow seam in the very warmest angle of the
+wall a perfectly gorgeous fringe of _Epilobium obcordatum_ with
+flowers an inch wide, crowded together in lavish profusion, and colored
+as royal a purple as ever was worn by any high-bred plant of the
+tropics; and best of all, and greatest of all, a noble thistle in full
+bloom, standing erect, head and shoulders above his companions, and
+thrusting out his lances in sturdy vigor as if growing on a Scottish
+brae. All this brave warm bloom among the raw stones, right in the face
+of the onlooking glaciers.
+
+As far as I have been able to find out, these upper lakes are
+snow-buried in winter to a depth of about thirty-five or forty feet, and
+those most exposed to avalanches, to a depth of even a hundred feet or
+more. These last are, of course, nearly lost to the landscape. Some
+remain buried for years, when the snowfall is exceptionally great, and
+many open only on one side late in the season. The snow of the closed
+side is composed of coarse granules compacted and frozen into a firm,
+faintly stratified mass, like the _n�v�_ of a glacier. The lapping
+waves of the open portion gradually undermine and cause it to break off
+in large masses like icebergs, which gives rise to a precipitous front
+like the discharging wall of a glacier entering the sea. The play of the
+lights among the crystal angles of these snow-cliffs, the pearly white
+of the outswelling bosses, the bergs drifting in front, aglow in the sun
+and edged with green water, and the deep blue disk of the lake itself
+extending to your feet,--this forms a picture that enriches all your
+afterlife, and is never forgotten. But however perfect the season and
+the day, the cold incompleteness of these young lakes is always keenly
+felt. We approach them with a kind of mean caution, and steal
+unconfidingly around their crystal shores, dashed and ill at ease, as if
+expecting to hear some forbidding voice. But the love-songs of the
+ouzels and the love-looks of the daisies gradually reassure us, and
+manifest the warm fountain humanity that pervades the coldest and most
+solitary of them all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+THE GLACIER MEADOWS
+
+After the lakes on the High Sierra come the glacier meadows. They are
+smooth, level, silky lawns, lying embedded in the upper forests, on the
+floors of the valleys, and along the broad backs of the main dividing
+ridges, at a height of about 8000 to 9500 feet above the sea.
+
+They are nearly as level as the lakes whose places they have taken, and
+present a dry, even surface free from rock-heaps, mossy bogginess, and
+the frowsy roughness of rank, coarse-leaved, weedy, and shrubby
+vegetation. The sod is close and fine, and so complete that you cannot
+see the ground; and at the same time so brightly enameled with flowers
+and butterflies that it may well be called a garden-meadow, or
+meadow-garden; for the plushy sod is in many places so crowded with
+gentians, daisies, ivesias, and various species of orthocarpus that the
+grass is scarcely noticeable, while in others the flowers are only
+pricked in here and there singly, or in small ornamental rosettes.
+
+The most influential of the grasses composing the sod is a delicate
+calamagrostis with fine filiform leaves, and loose, airy panicles that
+seem to float above the flowery lawn like a purple mist. But, write as I
+may, I cannot give anything like an adequate idea of the exquisite
+beauty of these mountain carpets as they lie smoothly outspread in the
+savage wilderness. What words are fine enough to picture them I to what
+shall we liken them? The flowery levels of the prairies of the old West,
+the luxuriant savannahs of the South, and the finest of cultivated
+meadows are coarse in comparison. One may at first sight compare them
+with the carefully tended lawns of pleasure-grounds; for they are as
+free from weeds as they, and as smooth, but here the likeness ends; for
+these wild lawns, with all their exquisite fineness, have no trace of
+that painful, licked, snipped, repressed appearance that pleasure-ground
+lawns are apt to have even when viewed at a distance. And, not to
+mention the flowers with which they are brightened, their grasses are
+very much finer both in color and texture, and instead of lying flat and
+motionless, matted together like a dead green cloth, they respond to the
+touches of every breeze, rejoicing in pure wildness, blooming and
+fruiting in the vital light.
+
+Glacier meadows abound throughout all the alpine and subalpine regions
+of the Sierra in still greater numbers than the lakes. Probably from
+2500 to 3000 exist between latitude 36� 30' and 39�, distributed, of
+course, like the lakes, in concordance with all the other glacial
+features of the landscape.
+
+On the head waters of the rivers there are what are called "Big
+Meadows," usually about from five to ten miles long. These occupy the
+basins of the ancient ice-seas, where many tributary glaciers came
+together to form the grand trunks. Most, however, are quite small,
+averaging perhaps but little more than three fourths of a mile in
+length.
+
+One of the very finest of the thousands I have enjoyed lies hidden in an
+extensive forest of the Two-leaved Pine, on the edge of the basin of the
+ancient Tuolumne Mer de Glace, about eight miles to the west of Mount
+Dana.
+
+Imagine yourself at the Tuolumne Soda Springs on the bank of the river,
+a day's journey above Yosemite Valley. You set off northward through a
+forest that stretches away indefinitely before you, seemingly unbroken
+by openings of any kind. As soon as you are fairly into the woods, the
+gray mountain-peaks, with their snowy gorges and hollows, are lost to
+view. The ground is littered with fallen trunks that lie crossed and
+recrossed like storm-lodged wheat; and besides this close forest of
+pines, the rich moraine soil supports a luxuriant growth of
+ribbon-leaved grasses--bromus, triticum, calamagrostis, agrostis, etc.,
+which rear their handsome spikes and panicles above your waist. Making
+your way through the fertile wilderness,--finding lively bits of
+interest now and then in the squirrels and Clark crows, and perchance in
+a deer or bear,--after the lapse of an hour or two vertical bars of
+sunshine are seen ahead between the brown shafts of the pines, showing
+that you are approaching an open space, and then you suddenly emerge
+from the forest shadows upon a delightful purple lawn lying smooth and
+free in the light like a lake. This is a glacier meadow. It is about a
+mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile wide. The trees come
+pressing forward all around in close serried ranks, planting their feet
+exactly on its margin, and holding themselves erect, strict and orderly
+like soldiers on parade; thus bounding the meadow with exquisite
+precision, yet with free curving lines such as Nature alone can draw.
+With inexpressible delight you wade out into the grassy sun-lake,
+feeling yourself contained in one of Nature's most sacred chambers,
+withdrawn from the sterner influences of the mountains, secure from all
+intrusion, secure from yourself, free in the universal beauty. And
+notwithstanding the scene is so impressively spiritual, and you seem
+dissolved in it, yet everything about you is beating with warm,
+terrestrial, human love and life delightfully substantial and familiar.
+The resiny pines are types of health and steadfastness; the robins
+feeding on the sod belong to the same species you have known since
+childhood; and surely these daisies, larkspurs, and goldenrods are the
+very friend-flowers of the old home garden. Bees hum as in a harvest
+noon, butterflies waver above the flowers, and like them you lave in the
+vital sunshine, too richly and homogeneously joy-filled to be capable of
+partial thought. You are all eye, sifted through and through with light
+and beauty. Sauntering along the brook that meanders silently through
+the meadow from the east, special flowers call you back to
+discriminating consciousness. The sod comes curving down to the water's
+edge, forming bossy outswelling banks, and in some places overlapping
+countersunk boulders and forming bridges. Here you find mats of the
+curious dwarf willow scarce an inch high, yet sending up a multitude of
+gray silky catkins, illumined here and there with, the purple cups and
+bells of bryanthus and vaccinium.
+
+Go where you may, you everywhere find the lawn divinely beautiful, as if
+Nature had fingered and adjusted every plant this very day. The floating
+grass panicles are scarcely felt in brushing through their midst, so
+flue are they, and none of the flowers have tall or rigid stalks. In the
+brightest places you find three species of gentians with different
+shades of blue, daisies pure as the sky, silky leaved ivesias with warm
+yellow flowers, several species of orthocarpus with blunt, bossy spikes,
+red and purple and yellow; the alpine goldenrod, pentstemon, and clover,
+fragrant and honeyful, with their colors massed and blended. Parting the
+grasses and looking more closely you may trace the branching of their
+shining stems, and note the marvelous beauty of their mist of flowers,
+the glumes and pales exquisitely penciled, the yellow dangling stamens,
+and feathery pistils. Beneath the lowest leaves you discover a fairy
+realm of mosses,--hypnum, dicranum, polytriclium, and many
+others,--their precious spore-cups poised daintily on polished shafts,
+curiously hooded, or open, showing the richly ornate peristomas worn
+like royal crowns. Creeping liverworts are here also in abundance, and
+several rare species of fungi, exceedingly small, and frail, and
+delicate, as if made only for beauty. Caterpillars, black beetles, and
+ants roam the wilds of this lower world, making their way through
+miniature groves and thickets like bears in a thick wood.
+
+And how rich, too, is the life of the sunny air! Every leaf and flower
+seems to have its winged representative overhead. Dragon-flies shoot in
+vigorous zigzags through the dancing swarms, and a rich profusion of
+butterflies--the leguminosae of insects--make a fine addition to the
+general show. Many of these last are comparatively small at this
+elevation, and as yet almost unknown to science; but every now and then
+a familiar vanessa or papilio comes sailing past. Humming-birds, too,
+are quite common here, and the robin is always found along the margin of
+the stream, or out in the shallowest portions of the sod, and sometimes
+the grouse and mountain quail, with their broods of precious fluffy
+chickens. Swallows skim the grassy lake from end to end, fly-catchers
+come and go in fitful flights from the tops of dead spars, while
+woodpeckers swing across from side to side in graceful festoon
+curves,--birds, insects, and flowers all in their own way telling a deep
+summer joy.
+
+The influences of pure nature seem to be so little known as yet, that it
+is generally supposed that complete pleasure of this kind, permeating
+one's very flesh and bones, unfits the student for scientific pursuits
+in which cool judgment and observation are required. But the effect is
+just the opposite. Instead of producing a dissipated condition, the mind
+is fertilized and stimulated and developed like sun-fed plants. All that
+we have seen here enables us to see with surer vision the fountains
+among the summit-peaks to the east whence flowed the glaciers that
+ground soil for the surrounding forest; and down at the foot of the
+meadow the moraine which formed the dam which gave rise to the lake that
+occupied this basin before the meadow was made; and around the margin
+the stones that were shoved back and piled up into a rude wall by the
+expansion of the lake ice during long bygone winters; and along the
+sides of the streams the slight hollows of the meadow which mark those
+portions of the old lake that were the last to vanish.
+
+I would fain ask my readers to linger awhile in this fertile wilderness,
+to trace its history from its earliest glacial beginnings, and learn
+what we may of its wild inhabitants and visitors. How happy the birds
+are all summer and some of them all winter; how the pouched marmots
+drive tunnels under the snow, and how fine and brave a life the
+slandered coyote lives here, and the deer and bears! But, knowing well
+the difference between reading and seeing, I will only ask attention to
+some brief sketches of its varying aspects as they are presented
+throughout the more marked seasons of the year.
+
+The summer life we have been depicting lasts with but little abatement
+until October, when the night frosts begin to sting, bronzing the
+grasses, and ripening the leaves of the creeping heathworts along the
+banks of the stream to reddish purple and crimson; while the flowers
+disappear, all save the goldenrods and a few daisies, that continue to
+bloom on unscathed until the beginning of snowy winter. In still nights
+the grass panicles and every leaf and stalk are laden with frost
+crystals, through which the morning sunbeams sift in ravishing splendor,
+transforming each to a precious diamond radiating the colors of the
+rainbow. The brook shallows are plaited across and across with slender
+lances of ice, but both these and the grass crystals are melted before
+midday, and, notwithstanding the great elevation of the meadow, the
+afternoons are still warm enough to revive the chilled butterflies and
+call them out to enjoy the late-flowering goldenrods. The divine
+alpenglow flushes the surrounding forest every evening, followed by a
+crystal night with hosts of lily stars, whose size and brilliancy cannot
+be conceived by those who have never risen above the lowlands.
+
+Thus come and go the bright sun-days of autumn, not a cloud in the sky,
+week after week until near December. Then comes a sudden change. Clouds
+of a peculiar aspect with a slow, crawling gait gather and grow in the
+azure, throwing out satiny fringes, and becoming gradually darker until
+every lake-like rift and opening is closed and the whole bent firmament
+is obscured in equal structureless gloom. Then comes the snow, for the
+clouds are ripe, the meadows of the sky are in bloom, and shed their
+radiant blossoms like an orchard in the spring. Lightly, lightly they
+lodge in the brown grasses and in the tasseled needles of the pines,
+falling hour after hour, day after day, silently, lovingly,--all the
+winds hushed,--glancing and circling hither, thither, glinting against
+one another, rays interlocking in flakes as large as daisies; and then
+the dry grasses, and the trees, and the stones are all equally abloom
+again. Thunder-showers occur here during the summer months, and
+impressive it is to watch the coming of the big transparent drops, each
+a small world in itself,--one unbroken ocean without islands hurling
+free through the air like planets through space. But still more
+impressive to me is the coming of the snow-flowers,--falling stars,
+winter daisies,--giving bloom to all the ground alike. Raindrops blossom
+brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow
+comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.
+
+The later snow-storms are oftentimes accompanied by winds that break up
+the crystals, when the temperature is low, into single petals and
+irregular dusty fragments; but there is comparatively little drifting on
+the meadow, so securely is it embosomed in the woods. From December to
+May, storm succeeds storm, until the snow is about fifteen or twenty
+feet deep, but the surface is always as smooth as the breast of a bird.
+
+Hushed now is the life that so late was beating warmly. Most of the
+birds have gone down below the snow-line, the plants sleep, and all the
+fly-wings are folded. Yet the sun beams gloriously many a cloudless day
+in midwinter, casting long lance shadows athwart the dazzling expanse.
+In June small flecks of the dead, decaying sod begin to appear,
+gradually widening and uniting with one another, covered with creeping
+rags of water during the day, and ice by night, looking as hopeless and
+unvital as crushed rocks just emerging from the darkness of the glacial
+period. Walk the meadow now! Scarce the memory of a flower will you
+find. The ground seems twice dead. Nevertheless, the annual resurrection
+is drawing near. The life-giving sun pours his floods, the last
+snow-wreath melts, myriads of growing points push eagerly through the
+steaming mold, the birds come back, new wings fill the air, and fervid
+summer life comes surging on, seemingly yet more glorious than before.
+
+This is a perfect meadow, and under favorable circumstances exists
+without manifesting any marked changes for centuries. Nevertheless, soon
+or late it must inevitably grow old and vanish. During the calm Indian
+summer, scarce a sand-grain moves around its banks, but in flood-times
+and storm-times, soil is washed forward upon it and laid in successive
+sheets around its gently sloping rim, and is gradually extended to the
+center, making it dryer. Through a considerable period the meadow
+vegetation is not greatly affected thereby, for it gradually rises with
+the rising ground, keeping on the surface like water-plants rising on
+the swell of waves. But at length the elevation of the meadow-land goes
+on so far as to produce too dry a soil for the specific meadow-plants,
+when, of course, they have to give up their places to others fitted for
+the new conditions. The most characteristic of the newcomers at this
+elevation above the sea are principally sun-loving gilias, eriogonae,
+and compositae, and finally forest-trees. Henceforward the obscuring
+changes are so manifold that the original lake-meadow can be unveiled
+and seen only by the geologist.
+
+Generally speaking, glacier lakes vanish more slowly than the meadows
+that succeed them, because, unless very shallow, a greater quantity of
+material is required to fill up their basins and obliterate them than is
+required to render the surface of the meadow too high and dry for meadow
+vegetation. Furthermore, owing to the weathering to which the adjacent
+rocks are subjected, material of the finer sort, susceptible of
+transportation by rains and ordinary floods, is more abundant during the
+meadow period than during the lake period. Yet doubtless many a fine
+meadow favorably situated exists in almost prime beauty for thousands of
+years, the process of extinction being exceedingly slow, as we reckon
+time. This is especially the case with meadows circumstanced like the
+one we have described--embosomed in deep woods, with the ground rising
+gently away from it all around, the network of tree-roots in which all
+the ground is clasped preventing any rapid torrential washing. But, in
+exceptional cases, beautiful lawns formed with great deliberation are
+overwhelmed and obliterated at once by the action of land-slips,
+earthquake avalanches, or extraordinary floods, just as lakes are.
+
+In those glacier meadows that take the places of shallow lakes which
+have been fed by feeble streams, glacier mud and fine vegetable humus
+enter largely into the composition of the soil; and on account of the
+shallowness of this soil, and the seamless, water-tight, undrained
+condition of the rock-basins, they are usually wet, and therefore
+occupied by tall grasses and sedges, whose coarse appearance offers a
+striking contrast to that of the delicate lawn-making kind described
+above. These shallow-soiled meadows are oftentimes still further
+roughened and diversified by partially buried moraines and swelling
+bosses of the bed-rock, which, with the trees and shrubs growing upon
+them, produce a striking effect as they stand in relief like islands in
+the grassy level, or sweep across in rugged curves from one forest wall
+to the other.
+
+Throughout the upper meadow region, wherever water is sufficiently
+abundant and low in temperature, in basins secure from flood-washing,
+handsome bogs are formed with a deep growth of brown and yellow sphagnum
+picturesquely ruined with patches of kalmia and ledum which ripen masses
+of beautiful color in the autumn. Between these cool, spongy bogs and
+the dry, flowery meadows there are many interesting varieties which are
+graduated into one another by the varied conditions already alluded to,
+forming a series of delightful studies.
+
+
+HANGING MEADOWS
+
+Another, very well-marked and interesting kind of meadow, differing
+greatly both in origin and appearance from the lake-meadows, is found
+lying aslant upon moraine-covered hillsides trending in the direction of
+greatest declivity, waving up and down over rock heaps and ledges, like
+rich green ribbons brilliantly illumined with tall flowers. They occur
+both in the alpine and subalpine regions in considerable numbers, and
+never fail to make telling features in the landscape. They are often a
+mile or more in length, but never very wide--usually from thirty to
+fifty yards. When the mountain or ca�on side on which, they lie dips at
+the required angle, and other conditions are at the same time favorable,
+they extend from above the timber line to the bottom of a ca�on or lake
+basin, descending in fine, fluent lines like cascades, breaking here and
+there into a kind of spray on large boulders, or dividing and flowing
+around on either side of some projecting islet. Sometimes a noisy stream
+goes brawling down through them, and again, scarcely a drop of water is
+in sight. They owe their existence, however, to streams, whether visible
+or invisible, the wildest specimens being found where some perennial
+fountain, as a glacier or snowbank or moraine spring sends down its
+waters across a rough sheet of soil in a dissipated web of feeble,
+oozing rivulets. These conditions give rise to a meadowy vegetation,
+whose extending roots still more obstruct the free flow of the waters,
+and tend to dissipate them out over a yet wider area. Thus the moraine
+soil and the necessary moisture requisite for the better class of meadow
+plants are at times combined about as perfectly as if smoothly outspread
+on a level surface. Where the soil happens to be composed of the finer
+qualities of glacial detritus and the water is not in excess, the
+nearest approach is made by the vegetation to that of the lake-meadow.
+But where, as is more commonly the case, the soil is coarse and
+bouldery, the vegetation is correspondingly rank. Tall, wide-leaved
+grasses take their places along the sides, and rushes and nodding
+carices in the wetter portions, mingled with the most beautiful and
+imposing flowers,--orange lilies and larkspurs seven or eight feet high,
+lupines, senecios, aliums, painted-cups, many species of mimulus and
+pentstemon, the ample boat-leaved _veratrum alba_, and the
+magnificent alpine columbine, with spurs an inch and a half long. At an
+elevation of from seven to nine thousand feet showy flowers frequently
+form the bulk of the vegetation; then the hanging meadows become hanging
+gardens.
+
+In rare instances we find an alpine basin the bottom of which is a
+perfect meadow, and the sides nearly all the way round, rising in gentle
+curves, are covered with moraine soil, which, being saturated with
+melting snow from encircling fountains, gives rise to an almost
+continuous girdle of down-curving meadow vegetation that blends
+gracefully into the level meadow at the bottom, thus forming a grand,
+smooth, soft, meadow-lined mountain nest. It is in meadows of this sort
+that the mountain beaver (_Haplodon_) loves to make his home,
+excavating snug chambers beneath the sod, digging canals, turning the
+underground waters from channel to channel to suit his convenience, and
+feeding the vegetation.
+
+Another kind of meadow or bog occurs on densely timbered hillsides where
+small perennial streams have been dammed at short intervals by fallen
+trees. Still another kind is found hanging down smooth, flat precipices,
+while corresponding leaning meadows rise to meet them.
+
+There are also three kinds of small pot-hole meadows one of which is
+found along the banks of the main streams, another on the summits of
+rocky ridges, and the third on glacier pavements, all of them
+interesting in origin and brimful of plant beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+THE FORESTS
+
+The coniferous forests of the Sierra are the grandest and most beautiful
+in the world, and grow in a delightful climate on the most interesting
+and accessible of mountain-ranges, yet strange to say they are not well
+known. More than sixty years ago David Douglas, an enthusiastic botanist
+and tree lover, wandered alone through fine sections of the Sugar Pine
+and Silver Fir woods wild with delight. A few years later, other
+botanists made short journeys from the coast into the lower woods. Then
+came the wonderful multitude of miners into the foot-hill zone, mostly
+blind with gold-dust, soon followed by "sheepmen," who, with wool over
+their eyes, chased their flocks through all the forest belts from one
+end of the range to the other. Then the Yosemite Valley was discovered,
+and thousands of admiring tourists passed through sections of the lower
+and middle zones on their way to that wonderful park, and gained fine
+glimpses of the Sugar Pines and Silver Firs along the edges of dusty
+trails and roads. But few indeed, strong and free with eyes undimmed
+with care, have gone far enough and lived long enough with the trees to
+gain anything like a loving conception of their grandeur and
+significance as manifested in the harmonies of their distribution and
+varying aspects throughout the seasons, as they stand arrayed in their
+winter garb rejoicing in storms, putting forth their fresh leaves in the
+spring while steaming with resiny fragrance, receiving the
+thunder-showers of summer, or reposing heavy-laden with ripe cones in
+the rich sungold of autumn. For knowledge of this kind one must dwell
+with the trees and grow with them, without any reference to time in the
+almanac sense.
+
+The distribution of the general forest in belts is readily perceived.
+These, as we have seen, extend in regular order from one extremity of
+the range to the other; and however dense and somber they may appear in
+general views, neither on the rocky heights nor down in the leafiest
+hollows will you find anything to remind you of the dank, malarial
+selvas of the Amazon and Orinoco, with, their "boundless contiguity of
+shade," the monotonous uniformity of the Deodar forests of the Himalaya,
+the Black Forest of Europe, or the dense dark woods of Douglas Spruce
+where rolls the Oregon. The giant pines, and firs, and Sequoias hold
+their arms open to the sunlight, rising above one another on the
+mountain benches, marshaled in glorious array, giving forth the utmost
+expression of grandeur and beauty with inexhaustible variety and
+harmony.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST.]
+
+The inviting openness of the Sierra woods is one of their most
+distinguishing characteristics. The trees of all the species stand more
+or less apart in groves, or in small, irregular groups, enabling one to
+find a way nearly everywhere, along sunny colonnades and through
+openings that have a smooth, park-like surface, strewn with brown
+needles and burs. Now you cross a wild garden, now a meadow, now a
+ferny, willowy stream; and ever and anon you emerge from all the groves
+and flowers upon some granite pavement or high, bare ridge commanding
+superb views above the waving sea of evergreens far and near.
+
+One would experience but little difficulty in riding on horseback
+through the successive belts all the way up to the storm-beaten fringes
+of the icy peaks. The deep ca�ons, however, that extend from the axis of
+the range, cut the belts more or less completely into sections, and
+prevent the mounted traveler from tracing them lengthwise.
+
+This simple arrangement in zones and sections brings the forest, as a
+whole, within the comprehension of every observer. The different species
+are ever found occupying the same relative positions to one another, as
+controlled by soil, climate, and the comparative vigor of each species
+in taking and holding the ground; and so appreciable are these
+relations, one need never be at a loss in determining, within a few
+hundred feet, the elevation above sea-level by the trees alone; for,
+notwithstanding some of the species range upward for several thousand
+feet, and all pass one another more or less, yet even those possessing
+the greatest vertical range are available in this connection, in as much
+as they take on new forms corresponding with the variations in altitude.
+
+Crossing the treeless plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin from the
+west and reaching the Sierra foot-hills, you enter the lower fringe of
+the forest, composed of small oaks and pines, growing so far apart that
+not one twentieth of the surface of the ground is in shade at clear
+noonday. After advancing fifteen or twenty miles, and making an ascent
+of from two to three thousand feet, you reach the lower margin of the
+main pine belt, composed of the gigantic Sugar Pine, Yellow Pine,
+Incense Cedar, and Sequoia. Next you come to the magnificent Silver Fir
+belt, and lastly to the upper pine belt, which sweeps up the rocky
+acclivities of the summit peaks in a dwarfed, wavering fringe to a
+height of from ten to twelve thousand feet.
+
+[Illustration: EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA.]
+
+This general order of distribution, with reference to climate dependent
+on elevation, is perceived at once, but there are other harmonies, as
+far-reaching in this connection, that become manifest only after patient
+observation and study. Perhaps the most interesting of these is the
+arrangement of the forests in long, curving bands, braided together into
+lace-like patterns, and outspread in charming variety. The key to this
+beautiful harmony is the ancient glaciers; where they flowed the trees
+followed, tracing their wavering courses along ca�ons, over ridges, and
+over high, rolling plateaus. The Cedars of Lebanon, says Hooker, are
+growing upon one of the moraines of an ancient glacier. All the forests
+of the Sierra are growing upon moraines. But moraines vanish like the
+glaciers that make them. Every storm that falls upon them wastes them,
+cutting gaps, disintegrating boulders, and carrying away their decaying
+material into new formations, until at length they are no longer
+recognizable by any save students, who trace their transitional forms
+down from the fresh moraines still in process of formation, through
+those that are more and more ancient, and more and more obscured by
+vegetation and all kinds of post-glacial weathering.
+
+Had the ice-sheet that once covered all the range been melted
+simultaneously from the foot-hills to the summits, the flanks would, of
+course, have been left almost bare of soil, and these noble forests
+would be wanting. Many groves and thickets would undoubtedly have grown
+up on lake and avalanche beds, and many a fair flower and shrub would
+have found food and a dwelling-place in weathered nooks and crevices,
+but the Sierra as a whole would have been a bare, rocky desert.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST.]
+
+It appears, therefore, that the Sierra forests in general indicate the
+extent and positions of the ancient moraines as well as they do lines of
+climate. For forests, properly speaking, cannot exist without soil; and,
+since the moraines have been deposited upon the solid rock, and only
+upon elected places, leaving a considerable portion of the old glacial
+surface bare, we find luxuriant forests of pine and fir abruptly
+terminated by scored and polished pavements on which not even a moss is
+growing, though soil alone is required to fit them for the growth of
+trees 200 feet in height.
+
+
+THE NUT PINE
+(_Pinus Sabiniana_)
+
+The Nut Pine, the first conifer met in ascending the range from the
+west, grows only on the torrid foothills, seeming to delight in the most
+ardent sun-heat, like a palm; springing up here and there singly, or in
+scattered groups of five or six, among scrubby White Oaks and thickets
+of ceanothus and manzanita; its extreme upper limit being about 4000
+feet above the sea, its lower about from 500 to 800 feet.
+
+This tree is remarkable for its airy, widespread, tropical appearance,
+which suggests a region of palms, rather than cool, resiny pine woods.
+No one would take it at first sight to be a conifer of any kind, it is
+so loose in habit and so widely branched, and its foliage is so thin and
+gray. Full-grown specimens are from forty to fifty feet in height, and
+from two to three feet in diameter. The trunk usually divides into three
+or four main branches, about fifteen and twenty feet from the ground,
+which, after bearing away from one another, shoot straight up and form
+separate summits; while the crooked subordinate branches aspire, and
+radiate, and droop in ornamental sprays. The slender, grayish-green
+needles are from eight to twelve inches long, loosely tasseled, and
+inclined to droop in handsome curves, contrasting with the stiff,
+dark-colored trunk and branches in a very striking manner. No other tree
+of my acquaintance, so substantial in body, is in its foliage so thin
+and so pervious to the light. The sunbeams sift through even the
+leafiest trees with scarcely any interruption, and the weary, heated
+traveler finds but little protection in their shade.
+
+[Illustration: NUT PINE (PINUS SABINIANA).]
+
+The generous crop of nutritious nuts which the Nut Pine yields makes it
+a favorite with Indians, bears, and squirrels. The cones are most
+beautiful, measuring from five to eight inches in length, and not much
+less in thickness, rich chocolate-brown in color, and protected by
+strong, down-curving hooks Which terminate the scales. Nevertheless, the
+little Douglas squirrel can open them. Indians gathering the ripe nuts
+make a striking picture. The men climb the trees like bears and beat off
+the cones with sticks, or recklessly cut off the more fruitful branches
+with hatchets, while the squaws gather the big, generous cones, and
+roast them until the scales open sufficiently to allow the hard-shelled
+seeds to be beaten out. Then, in the cool evenings, men, women, and
+children, with their capacity for dirt greatly increased by the soft
+resin with which they are all bedraggled, form circles around
+camp-fires, on the bank of the nearest stream, and lie in easy
+independence cracking nuts and laughing and chattering, as heedless of
+the future as the squirrels.
+
+
+_Pinus tuberculata_
+
+This curious little pine is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000
+feet, growing in close, willowy groves. It is exceedingly slender and
+graceful in habit, although trees that chance to stand alone outside the
+groves sweep forth long, curved branches, producing a striking contrast
+to the ordinary grove form. The foliage is of the same peculiar
+gray-green color as that of the Nut Pine, and is worn about as loosely,
+so that the body of the tree is scarcely obscured by it.
+
+[Illustration: THE GROVE FORM. THE ISOLATED FORM (PINUS TUBERCULATA).]
+
+At the age of seven or eight years it begins to bear cones, not on
+branches, but on the main axis, and, as they never fall off, the trunk
+is soon picturesquely dotted with them. The branches also become
+fruitful after they attain sufficient size. The average size of the
+older trees is about thirty or forty feet in height, and twelve to
+fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are about four inches long,
+exceedingly hard, and covered with a sort of silicious varnish and gum,
+rendering them impervious to moisture, evidently with a view to the
+careful preservation of the seeds.
+
+No other conifer in the range is so closely restricted to special
+localities. It is usually found apart, standing deep in chaparral on
+sunny hill-and ca�on-sides where there is but little depth of soil, and,
+where found at all, it is quite plentiful; but the ordinary traveler,
+following carriage-roads and trails, may ascend the range many times
+without meeting it.
+
+While exploring the lower portion of the Merced Ca�on I found a lonely
+miner seeking his fortune in a quartz vein on a wild mountain-side
+planted with this singular tree. He told me that he called it the
+Hickory Pine, because of the whiteness and toughness of the wood. It is
+so little known, however, that it can hardly be said to have a common
+name. Most mountaineers refer to it as "that queer little pine-tree
+covered all over with burs." In my studies of this species I found a
+very interesting and significant group of facts, whose relations will be
+seen almost as soon as stated:
+
+1st. All the trees in the groves I examined, however unequal in size,
+are of the same age.
+
+2d. Those groves are all planted on dry hillsides covered with
+chaparral, and therefore are liable to be swept by fire.
+
+3d. There are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves,
+but there is always a fine, hopeful crop springing up on the ground once
+occupied by any grove that has been destroyed by the burning of the
+chaparral.
+
+4th. The cones never fall off and never discharge their seeds until the
+tree or branch to which they belong dies.
+
+[Illustration: LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN
+CHARACTER OF WOODS.]
+
+A full discussion of the bearing of these facts upon one another would
+perhaps be out of place here, but I may at least call attention to the
+admirable adaptation of the tree to the fire-swept regions where alone
+it is found. After a grove has been destroyed, the ground is at once
+sown lavishly with all the seeds ripened during its whole life, which
+seem to have been carefully held in store with reference to such a
+calamity. Then a young grove immediately springs up, giving beauty for
+ashes.
+
+
+SUGAR PINE
+(_Pinus Lambertiana_)
+
+This is the noblest pine yet discovered, surpassing all others not
+merely in size but also in kingly beauty and majesty.
+
+It towers sublimely from every ridge and ca�on of the range, at an
+elevation of from three to seven thousand feet above the sea, attaining
+most perfect development at a height of about 5000 feet.
+
+Full-grown specimens are commonly about 220 feet high, and from six to
+eight feet in diameter near the ground, though some grand old patriarch
+is occasionally met that has enjoyed five or six centuries of storms,
+and attained a thickness of ten or even twelve feet, living on
+undecayed, sweet and fresh in every fiber.
+
+In southern Oregon, where it was first discovered by David Douglas, on
+the head waters of the Umpqua, it attains still grander dimensions, one
+specimen having been measured that was 245 feet high, and over eighteen
+feet in diameter three feet from the ground. The discoverer was the
+Douglas for whom the noble Douglas Spruce is named, and many other
+plants which will keep his memory sweet and fresh as long as trees and
+flowers are loved. His first visit to the Pacific Coast was made in the
+year 1825. The Oregon Indians watched him with curiosity as he wandered
+in the woods collecting specimens, and, unlike the fur-gathering
+strangers they had hitherto known, caring nothing about trade. And when
+at length they came to know him better, and saw that from year to year
+the growing things of the woods and prairies were his only objects of
+pursuit, they called him "The Man of Grass," a title of which he was
+proud. During his first summer on the waters of the Columbia he made
+Fort Vancouver his headquarters, making excursions from this Hudson Bay
+post in every direction. On one of his long trips he saw in an Indian's
+pouch some of the seeds of a new species of pine which he learned were
+obtained from a very large tree far to the southward of the Columbia. At
+the end of the next summer, returning to Fort Vancouver after the
+setting in of the winter rains, bearing in mind the big pine he had
+heard of, he set out on an excursion up the Willamette Valley in search
+of it; and how he fared, and what dangers and hardships he endured, are
+best told in his own journal, from which I quote as follows:
+
+    _October_ 26, 1826. Weather dull. Cold and cloudy. When my
+    friends in England are made acquainted with my travels I fear they
+    will think I have told them nothing but my miseries.... I quitted
+    my camp early in the morning to survey the neighboring country,
+    leaving my guide to take charge of the horses until my return in
+    the evening. About an hour's walk from the camp I met an Indian,
+    who on perceiving me instantly strung his bow, placed on his left
+    arm a sleeve of raccoon skin and stood on the defensive. Being
+    quite sure that conduct was prompted by fear and not by hostile
+    intentions, the poor fellow having probably never seen such a being
+    as myself before, I laid my gun at my feet on the ground and waved
+    my hand for him to come to me, which he did slowly and with great
+    caution. I then made him place his bow and quiver of arrows beside
+    my gun, and striking a light gave him a smoke out of my own pipe
+    and a present of a few beads. With my pencil I made a rough sketch
+    of the cone and pine tree which I wanted to obtain, and drew his
+    attention to it, when he instantly pointed with his hand to the
+    hills fifteen or twenty miles distant towards the south; and when I
+    expressed my intention of going thither, cheerfully set out to
+    accompany me. At midday I reached my long-wished-for pines, and
+    lost no time in examining them and endeavoring to collect specimens
+    and seeds. New and strange things seldom fail to make strong
+    impressions, and are therefore frequently over-rated; so that, lest
+    I should never see my friends in England to inform them verbally of
+    this most beautiful and immensely grand tree, I shall here state
+    the dimensions of the largest I could find among several that had
+    been blown down by the wind. At 3 feet from the ground its
+    circumference is 57 feet 9 inches; at 134 feet, 17 feet 5 inches;
+    the extreme length 245 feet.... As it was impossible either to
+    climb the tree or hew it down, I endeavored to knock off the cones
+    by firing at them with ball, when the report of my gun brought
+    eight Indians, all of them painted with red earth, armed with bows,
+    arrows, bone-tipped spears, and flint-knives. They appeared
+    anything but friendly. I explained to them what I wanted, and they
+    seemed satisfied and sat down to smoke; but presently I saw one of
+    them string his bow, and another sharpen his flint knife with a
+    pair of wooden pincers and suspend it off the wrist of his right
+    hand. Further testimony of their intentions was unnecessary. To
+    save myself by flight was impossible, so without hesitation I
+    stepped back about five paces, cocked my gun, drew one of the
+    pistols out of my belt, and holding it in my left hand and the gun
+    in my right, showed myself determined to fight for my life. As much
+    as possible I endeavored to preserve my coolness, and thus we stood
+    looking at one another without making any movement or uttering a
+    word for perhaps ten minutes, when one at last, who seemed to be
+    the leader, gave a sign that they wished for some tobacco; this I
+    signified that they should have if they fetched a quantity of
+    cones. They went off immediately in search of them, and no sooner
+    were they all out of sight than I picked up my three cones and some
+    twigs of the trees and made the quickest possible retreat, hurrying
+    back to the camp, which I reached before dusk.... I now write lying
+    on the grass with my gun cocked beside me, and penning these lines
+    by the light of my Columbian candle, namely, an ignited piece of
+    rosin-wood.
+
+This grand pine discovered under such, exciting circumstances Douglas
+named in honor of his friend Dr. Lambert of London.
+
+The trunk is a smooth, round, delicately tapered shaft, mostly without
+limbs, and colored rich purplish-brown, usually enlivened with tufts of
+yellow lichen. At the top of this magnificent bole, long, curving
+branches sweep gracefully outward and downward, sometimes forming a
+palm-like crown, but far more nobly impressive than any palm crown I
+ever beheld. The needles are about three inches long, finely tempered
+and arranged in rather close tassels at the ends of slender branchlets
+that clothe the long, outsweeping limbs. How well they sing in the wind,
+and how strikingly harmonious an effect is made by the immense
+cylindrical cones that depend loosely from the ends of the main
+branches! No one knows what Nature can do in the way of pine-burs until
+he has seen those of the Sugar Pine. They are commonly from fifteen to
+eighteen inches long, and three in diameter; green, shaded with dark
+purple on their sunward sides. They are ripe in September and October.
+Then the flat scales open and the seeds take wing, but the empty cones
+become still more beautiful and effective, for their diameter is nearly
+doubled by the spreading of the scales, and their color changes to a
+warm yellowish-brown; while they remain swinging on the tree all the
+following winter and summer, and continue effectively beautiful even on
+the ground many years after they fall. The wood is deliciously fragrant,
+and fine in grain and texture; it is of a rich cream-yellow, as if
+formed of condensed sunbeams. _Retinospora obtusa, Siebold_, the
+glory of Eastern forests, is called "Fu-si-no-ki" (tree of the sun) by
+the Japanese; the Sugar Pine is the sun-tree of the Sierra.
+Unfortunately it is greatly prized by the lumbermen, and in accessible
+places is always the first tree in the woods to feel their steel. But
+the regular lumbermen, with their saw-mills, have been, less generally
+destructive thus far than the shingle-makers. The wood splits freely,
+and there is a constant demand for the shingles. And because an ax, and
+saw, and frow are all the capital required for the business, many of
+that drifting, unsteady class of men so large in California engage in it
+for a few months in the year. When prospectors, hunters, ranch hands,
+etc., touch their "bottom dollar" and find themselves out of employment,
+they say, "Well, I can at least go to the Sugar Pines and make
+shingles." A few posts are set in the ground, and a single length cut
+from the first tree felled produces boards enough for the walls and roof
+of a cabin; all the rest the lumberman makes is for sale, and he is
+speedily independent. No gardener or haymaker is more sweetly perfumed
+than these rough mountaineers while engaged in this business, but the
+havoc they make is most deplorable.
+
+[Illustration: SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE.]
+
+The sugar, from which the common name is derived, is to my taste the
+best of sweets--better than maple sugar. It exudes from the heart-wood,
+where wounds have been made, either by forest fires, or the ax, in the
+shape of irregular, crisp, candy-like kernels, which are crowded
+together in masses of considerable size, like clusters of resin-beads.
+When fresh, it is perfectly white and delicious, but, because most of
+the wounds on which it is found have been made by fire, the exuding sap
+is stained on the charred surface, and the hardened sugar becomes brown.
+Indians are fond of it, but on account of its laxative properties only
+small quantities may be eaten. Bears, so fond of sweet things in
+general, seem never to taste it; at least I have failed to find any
+trace of their teeth in this connection.
+
+No lover of trees will ever forget his first meeting with the Sugar
+Pine, nor will he afterward need a poet to call him to "listen what the
+pine-tree saith." In most pine-trees there is a sameness of expression,
+which, to most people, is apt to become monotonous; for the typical
+spiry form, however beautiful, affords but little scope for appreciable
+individual character. The Sugar Pine is as free from conventionalities
+of form and motion as any oak. No two are alike, even to the most
+inattentive observer; and, notwithstanding they are ever tossing out
+their immense arms in what might seem most extravagant gestures, there
+is a majesty and repose about them that precludes all possibility of the
+grotesque, or even picturesque, in their general expression. They are
+the priests of pines, and seem ever to be addressing the surrounding
+forest. The Yellow Pine is found growing with them on warm hillsides,
+and the White Silver Fir on cool northern slopes; but, noble as these
+are, the Sugar Pine is easily king, and spreads his arms above them in
+blessing while they rock and wave in sign of recognition. The main
+branches are sometimes found to be forty feet in length, yet
+persistently simple, seldom dividing at all, excepting near the end; but
+anything like a bare cable appearance is prevented by the small,
+tasseled branchlets that extend all around them; and when these superb
+limbs sweep out symmetrically on all sides, a crown sixty or seventy
+feet wide is formed, which, gracefully poised on the summit of the noble
+shaft, and filled with sunshine, is one of the most glorious forest
+objects conceivable. Commonly, however, there is a great preponderance
+of limbs toward the east, away from the direction of the prevailing
+winds.
+
+No other pine seems to me so unfamiliar and self-contained. In
+approaching it, we feel as if in the presence of a superior being, and
+begin to walk with a light step, holding our breath. Then, perchance,
+while we gaze awe-stricken, along comes a merry squirrel, chattering and
+laughing, to break the spell, running up the trunk with no ceremony, and
+gnawing off the cones as if they were made only for him; while the
+carpenter-woodpecker hammers away at the bark, drilling holes in which
+to store his winter supply of acorns.
+
+[Illustration: YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES.]
+
+Although so wild and unconventional when full-grown, the Sugar Pine is a
+remarkably proper tree in youth. The old is the most original and
+independent in appearance of all the Sierra evergreens; the young is the
+most regular,--a strict follower of coniferous fashions,--slim, erect,
+with leafy, supple branches kept exactly in place, each tapering in
+outline and terminating in a spiry point. The successive transitional
+forms presented between the cautious neatness of youth and bold freedom
+of maturity offer a delightful study. At the age of fifty or sixty
+years, the shy, fashionable form begins to be broken up. Specialized
+branches push out in the most unthought-of places, and bend with the
+great cones, at once marking individual character, and this being
+constantly augmented from year to year by the varying action of the
+sunlight, winds, snow-storms, etc., the individuality of the tree is
+never again lost in the general forest.
+
+The most constant companion of this species is the Yellow Pine, and a
+worthy companion it is.
+
+[Illustration: FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE.]
+
+The Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, Sequoia, and the White Silver Fir are
+also more or less associated with it; but on many deep-soiled
+mountain-sides, at an elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, it
+forms the bulk of the forest, filling every swell and hollow and
+down-plunging ravine. The majestic crowns, approaching each other in
+bold curves, make a glorious canopy through which the tempered sunbeams
+pour, silvering the needles, and gilding the massive boles, and flowery,
+park-like ground, into a scene of enchantment.
+
+On the most sunny slopes the white-flowered fragrant chamoebatia is
+spread like a carpet, brightened during early summer with the crimson
+Sarcodes, the wild rose, and innumerable violets and gilias. Not even in
+the shadiest nooks will you find any rank, untidy weeds or unwholesome
+darkness. On the north sides of ridges the boles are more slender, and
+the ground is mostly occupied by an underbrush of hazel, ceanothus, and
+flowering dogwood, but never so densely as to prevent the traveler from
+sauntering where he will; while the crowning branches are never
+impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and never so interblended as to
+lose their individuality.
+
+View the forest from beneath or from some commanding ridge-top; each
+tree presents a study in itself, and proclaims the surpassing grandeur
+of the species.
+
+
+YELLOW, OR SILVER PINE
+(_Pinus ponderosa_)
+
+The Silver, or Yellow, Pine, as it is commonly called, ranks second
+among the pines of the Sierra as a lumber tree, and almost rivals the
+Sugar Pine in stature and nobleness of port. Because of its superior
+powers of enduring variations of climate and soil, it has a more
+extensive range than any other conifer growing on the Sierra. On the
+western slope it is first met at an elevation of about 2000 feet, and
+extends nearly to the upper limit of the timber line. Thence, crossing
+the range by the lowest passes, it descends to the eastern base, and
+pushes out for a considerable distance into the hot volcanic plains,
+growing bravely upon well-watered moraines, gravelly lake basins, arctic
+ridges, and torrid lava-beds; planting itself upon the lips of craters,
+flourishing vigorously even there, and tossing ripe cones among the
+ashes and cinders of Nature's hearths.
+
+The average size of full-grown trees on the western slope, where it is
+associated with the Sugar Pine, is a little less than 200 feet in height
+and from five to six feet in diameter, though specimens may easily be
+found that are considerably larger. I measured one, growing at an
+elevation of 4000 feet in the valley of the Merced, that is a few inches
+over eight feet in diameter, and 220 feet high.
+
+Where there is plenty of free sunshine and other conditions are
+favorable, it presents a striking contrast in form to the Sugar Pine,
+being a symmetrical spire, formed of a straight round trunk, clad with
+innumerable branches that are divided over and over again. About one
+half of the trunk is commonly branchless, but where it grows at all
+close, three fourths or more become naked; the tree presenting then a
+more slender and elegant shaft than any other tree in the woods. The
+bark is mostly arranged in massive plates, some of them measuring four
+or five feet in length by eighteen inches in width, with a thickness of
+three or four inches, forming a quite marked and distinguishing feature.
+The needles are of a fine, warm, yellow-green color, six to eight inches
+long, firm and elastic, and crowded in handsome, radiant tassels on the
+upturning ends of the branches. The cones are about three or four inches
+long, and two and a half wide, growing in close, sessile clusters among
+the leaves.
+
+[Illustration: PINUS PONDEROSA.]
+
+The species attains its noblest form in filled-up lake basins,
+especially in those of the older yosemites, and so prominent a part does
+it form of their groves that it may well be called the Yosemite Pine.
+Ripe specimens favorably situated are almost always 200 feet or more in
+height, and the branches clothe the trunk nearly to the ground, as seen
+in the illustration.
+
+The Jeffrey variety attains its finest development in the northern
+portion of the range, in the wide basins of the McCloud and Pitt rivers,
+where it forms magnificent forests scarcely invaded by any other tree.
+It differs from the ordinary form in size, being only about half as
+tall, and in its redder and more closely furrowed bark, grayish-green
+foliage, less divided branches, and larger cones; but intermediate forms
+come in which make a clear separation impossible, although some
+botanists regard it as a distinct species. It is this variety that
+climbs storm-swept ridges, and wanders out among the volcanoes of the
+Great Basin. Whether exposed to extremes of heat or cold, it is dwarfed
+like every other tree, and becomes all knots and angles, wholly unlike
+the majestic forms we have been sketching. Old specimens, bearing cones
+about as big as pineapples, may sometimes be found clinging to rifted
+rocks at an elevation of seven or eight thousand feet, whose highest
+branches scarce reach above one's shoulders.
+
+[Illustration: SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH. (THE FORM GROWING IN YOSEMITE
+VALLEY.)]
+
+I have oftentimes feasted on the beauty of these noble trees when they
+were towering in all their winter grandeur, laden with snow--one mass of
+bloom; in summer, too, when the brown, staminate clusters hang thick
+among the shimmering needles, and the big purple burs are ripening in
+the mellow light; but it is during cloudless wind-storms that these
+colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like
+willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when
+the sun shines upon them at the required angle, entire groves glow as if
+every leaf were burnished silver. The fall of tropic light on the royal
+crown of a palm is a truly glorious spectacle, the fervid sun-flood
+breaking upon the glossy leaves in long lance-rays, like mountain water
+among boulders. But to me there is something more impressive in the fall
+of light upon these Silver Pines. It seems beaten to the finest dust,
+and is shed off in myriads of minute sparkles that seem to come from the
+very heart of the trees, as if, like rain falling upon fertile soil, it
+had been absorbed, to reappear in flowers of light.
+
+This species also gives forth the finest music to the wind. After
+listening to it in all kinds of winds, night and day, season after
+season, I think I could approximate to my position on the mountains by
+this pine-music alone. If you would catch the tones of separate needles,
+climb a tree. They are well tempered, and give forth no uncertain sound,
+each standing out, with no interference excepting during heavy gales;
+then you may detect the click of one needle upon another, readily
+distinguishable from their free, wing-like hum. Some idea of their
+temper may be drawn from the fact that, notwithstanding they are so
+long, the vibrations that give rise to the peculiar shimmering of the
+light are made at the rate of about two hundred and fifty per minute.
+
+When a Sugar Pine and one of this species equal in size are observed
+together, the latter is seen to be far more simple in manners, more
+lithely graceful, and its beauty is of a kind more easily appreciated;
+but then, it is, on the other hand, much less dignified and original in
+demeanor. The Silver Pine seems eager to shoot aloft. Even while it is
+drowsing in autumn sun-gold, you may still detect a skyward aspiration.
+But the Sugar Pine seems too unconsciously noble, and too complete in
+every way, to leave room for even a heavenward care.
+
+
+DOUGLAS SPRUCE
+(_Pseudotsuga Douglasii_)
+
+This tree is the king of the spruces, as the Sugar Pine is king of
+pines. It is by far the most majestic spruce I ever beheld in any
+forest, and one of the largest and longest lived of the giants that
+flourish throughout the main pine belt, often attaining a height of
+nearly 200 feet, and a diameter of six or seven. Where the growth is not
+too close, the strong, spreading branches come more than halfway down
+the trunk, and these are hung with innumerable slender, swaying sprays,
+that are handsomely feathered with the short leaves which radiate at
+right angles all around them. This vigorous spruce is ever beautiful,
+welcoming the mountain winds and the snow as well as the mellow summer
+light, and maintaining its youthful freshness undiminished from century
+to century through a thousand storms.
+
+It makes its finest appearance in the months of June and July. The rich
+brown buds with which its sprays are tipped swell and break about this
+time, revealing the young leaves, which at first are bright yellow,
+making the tree appear as if covered with gay blossoms; while the
+pendulous bracted cones with their shell-like scales are a constant
+adornment.
+
+The young trees are mostly gathered into beautiful family groups, each
+sapling exquisitely symmetrical. The primary branches are whorled
+regularly around the axis, generally in fives, while each is draped with
+long, feathery sprays, that descend in curves as free and as finely
+drawn as those of falling water.
+
+In Oregon and Washington it grows in dense forests, growing tall and
+mast-like to a height of 300 feet, and is greatly prized as a lumber
+tree. But in the Sierra it is scattered among other trees, or forms
+small groves, seldom ascending higher than 5500 feet, and never making
+what would be called a forest. It is not particular in its choice of
+soil--wet or dry, smooth or rocky, it makes out to live well on them
+all. Two of the largest specimens I have measured are in Yosemite
+Valley, one of which is more than eight feet in diameter, and is growing
+upon the terminal moraine of the residual glacier that occupied the
+South Fork Canon; the other is nearly as large, growing upon angular
+blocks of granite that have been shaken from the precipitous front of
+the Liberty Cap near the Nevada Fall. No other tree seems so capable of
+adapting itself to earthquake taluses, and many of these rough
+boulder-slopes are occupied by it almost exclusively, especially in
+yosemite gorges moistened by the spray of waterfalls.
+
+
+INCENSE CEDAR
+(_Libocedrus decurrens_)
+
+The Incense Cedar is another of the giants quite generally distributed
+throughout this portion of the forest, without exclusively occupying any
+considerable area, or even making extensive groves. It ascends to about
+5000 feet on the warmer hillsides, and reaches the climate most
+congenial to it at about from 3000 to 4000 feet, growing vigorously at
+this elevation on all kinds of soil, and in particular it is capable of
+enduring more moisture about its roots than any of its companions,
+excepting only the Sequoia.
+
+The largest specimens are about 150 feet high, and seven feet in
+diameter. The bark is brown, of a singularly rich tone very attractive
+to artists, and the foliage is tinted with a warmer yellow than that of
+any other evergreen in the woods. Casting your eye over the general
+forest from some ridge-top, the color alone of its spiry summits is
+sufficient to identify it in any company.
+
+In youth, say up to the age of seventy or eighty years, no other tree
+forms so strictly tapered a cone from top to bottom. The branches swoop
+outward and downward in bold curves, excepting the younger ones near the
+top, which aspire, while the lowest droop to the ground, and all spread
+out in flat, ferny plumes, beautifully fronded, and imbricated upon one
+another. As it becomes older, it grows strikingly irregular and
+picturesque. Large special branches put out at right angles from the
+trunk, form big, stubborn elbows, and then shoot up parallel with the
+axis. Very old trees are usually dead at the top, the main axis
+protruding above ample masses of green plumes, gray and lichen-covered,
+and drilled full of acorn holes by the woodpeckers. The plumes are
+exceedingly beautiful; no waving fern-frond in shady dell is more
+unreservedly beautiful in form and texture, or half so inspiring in
+color and spicy fragrance. In its prime, the whole tree is thatched with
+them, so that they shed off rain and snow like a roof, making fine
+mansions for storm-bound birds and mountaineers. But if you would see
+the _Libocedrus_ in all its glory, you must go to the woods in
+winter. Then it is laden with myriads of four-sided staminate cones
+about the size of wheat grains,--winter wheat,--producing a golden
+tinge, and forming a noble illustration of Nature's immortal vigor and
+virility. The fertile cones are about three fourths of an inch long,
+borne on the outside of the plumy branchlets, where they serve to enrich
+still more the surpassing beauty of this grand winter-blooming
+goldenrod.
+
+[Illustration: INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME.]
+
+
+WHITE SILVER FIR
+(_Abies concolor_)
+
+[Illustration: FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS. TWO SEQUOIAS IN THE
+FOREGROUND ON THE LEFT.]
+
+We come now to the most regularly planted of all the main forest belts,
+composed almost exclusively of two noble firs--_A. concolor_ and
+_A. magnifica_. It extends with no marked interruption for 450
+miles, at an elevation of from 5000 to nearly 9000 feet above the sea.
+In its youth _A. concolor_ is a charmingly symmetrical tree with
+branches regularly whorled in level collars around its whitish-gray
+axis, which terminates in a strong, hopeful shoot. The leaves are in two
+horizontal rows, along branchlets that commonly are less than eight
+years old, forming handsome plumes, pinnated like the fronds of ferns.
+The cones are grayish-green when ripe, cylindrical, about from three to
+four inches long by one and a half to two inches wide, and stand upright
+on the upper branches.
+
+Full-grown trees, favorably situated as to soil and exposure, are about
+200 feet high, and five or six feet in diameter near the ground, though
+larger specimens are by no means rare.
+
+As old age creeps on, the bark becomes rougher and grayer, the branches
+lose their exact regularity, many are snow-bent or broken off, and the
+main axis often becomes double or otherwise irregular from accidents to
+the terminal bud or shoot; but throughout all the vicissitudes of its
+life on the mountains, come what may, the noble grandeur of the species
+is patent to every eye.
+
+
+MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR, OR RED FIR
+(_Abies magnifica_)
+
+This is the most charmingly symmetrical of all the giants of the Sierra
+woods, far surpassing its companion species in this respect, and easily
+distinguished from it by the purplish-red bark, which is also more
+closely furrowed than that of the white, and by its larger cones, more
+regularly whorled and fronded branches, and by its leaves, which are
+shorter, and grow all around the branchlets and point upward.
+
+In size, these two Silver Firs are about equal, the _magnifica_
+perhaps a little the taller. Specimens from 200 to 250 feet high are not
+rare on well-ground moraine soil, at an elevation of from 7500 to 8500
+feet above sea-level. The largest that I measured stands back three
+miles from the brink of the north wall of Yosemite Valley. Fifteen years
+ago it was 240 feet high, with a diameter of a little more than five
+feet.
+
+Happy the man with the freedom and the love to climb one of these superb
+trees in full flower and fruit. How admirable the forest-work of Nature
+is then seen to be, as one makes his way up through the midst of the
+broad, fronded branches, all arranged in exquisite order around the
+trunk, like the whorled leaves of lilies, and each branch and branchlet
+about as strictly pinnate as the most symmetrical fern-frond. The
+staminate cones are seen growing straight downward from the under side
+of the young branches in lavish profusion, making fine purple clusters
+amid the grayish-green foliage. On the topmost branches the fertile
+cones are set firmly on end like small casks. They are about six inches
+long, three wide, covered with a fine gray down, and streaked with
+crystal balsam that seems to have been poured upon each cone from above.
+
+Both the Silver Firs live 250 years or more when the conditions about
+them are at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may often be seen,
+heavily storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising
+generation, with a protecting grove of saplings pressing close around
+his feet, each dressed with such loving care that not a leaf seems
+wanting. Other companies are made up of trees near the prime of life,
+exquisitely harmonized to one another in form and gesture, as if Nature
+had culled them one by one with nice discrimination from all the rest of
+the woods.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR.]
+
+It is from this tree, called Red Fir by the lumberman, that mountaineers
+always cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate as to be within
+its limits. Two rows of the plushy branches overlapping along the
+middle, and a crescent of smaller plumes mixed with ferns and flowers
+for a pillow, form the very best bed imaginable. The essences of the
+pressed leaves seem to fill every pore of one's body, the sounds of
+falling water make a soothing hush, while the spaces between the grand
+spires afford noble openings through which to gaze dreamily into the
+starry sky. Even in the matter of sensuous ease, any combination of
+cloth, steel springs, and feathers seems vulgar in comparison.
+
+The fir woods are delightful sauntering-grounds at any time of year, but
+most so in autumn. Then the noble trees are hushed in the hazy light,
+and drip with balsam; the cones are ripe, and the seeds, with their
+ample purple wings, mottle the air like flocks of butterflies; while
+deer feeding in the flowery openings between the groves, and birds and
+squirrels in the branches, make a pleasant stir which enriches the deep,
+brooding calm of the wilderness, and gives a peculiar impressiveness to
+every tree. No wonder the enthusiastic Douglas went wild with joy when
+he first discovered this species. Even in the Sierra, where so many
+noble evergreens challenge admiration, we linger among these colossal
+firs with fresh love, and extol their beauty again and again, as if no
+other in the world could henceforth claim our regard.
+
+[Illustration: SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND
+TENAYA GLACIERS.]
+
+It is in these woods the great granite domes rise that are so striking
+and characteristic a feature of the Sierra. And here too we find the
+best of the garden meadows. They lie level on the tops of the dividing
+ridges, or sloping on the sides of them, embedded in the magnificent
+forest. Some of these meadows are in great part occupied by
+_Veratrumalba_, which here grows rank and tall, with boat-shaped
+leaves thirteen inches long and twelve inches wide, ribbed like those of
+cypripedium. Columbine grows on the drier margins with tall larkspurs
+and lupines waist-deep in grasses and sedges; several species of
+castilleia also make a bright show in beds of blue and white violets and
+daisies. But the glory of these forest meadows is a lily--_L. parvum_.
+The flowers are orange-colored and quite small, the smallest I ever saw
+of the true lilies; but it is showy nevertheless, for it is seven to
+eight feet high and waves magnificent racemes of ten to twenty flowers
+or more over one's head, while it stands out in the open ground with
+just enough of grass and other plants about it to make a fringe for
+its feet and show it off to best advantage.
+
+A dry spot a little way back from the margin of a Silver Fir lily garden
+makes a glorious campground, especially where the slope is toward the
+east and opens a view of the distant peaks along the summit of the
+range. The tall lilies are brought forward in all their glory by the
+light of your blazing camp-fire, relieved against the outer darkness,
+and the nearest of the trees with their whorled branches tower above you
+like larger lilies, and the sky seen through the garden opening seems
+one vast meadow of white lily stars.
+
+In the morning everything is joyous and bright, the delicious purple of
+the dawn changes softly to daffodil yellow and white; while the sunbeams
+pouring through the passes between the peaks give a margin of gold to
+each of them. Then the spires of the firs in the hollows of the middle
+region catch the glow, and your camp grove is filled with light. The
+birds begin to stir, seeking sunny branches on the edge of the meadow
+for sun-baths after the cold night, and looking for their breakfasts,
+every one of them as fresh as a lily and as charmingly arrayed.
+Innumerable insects begin to dance, the deer withdraw from the open
+glades and ridge-tops to their leafy hiding-places in the chaparral, the
+flowers open and straighten their petals as the dew vanishes, every
+pulse beats high, every life-cell rejoices, the very rocks seem to
+tingle with life, and God is felt brooding over everything great and
+small.
+
+
+BIG TREE
+(_Sequoia gigantea_)
+
+Between the heavy pine and Silver Fir belts we find the Big Tree, the
+king of all the conifers in the world, "the noblest of a noble race." It
+extends in a widely interrupted belt from a small grove on the middle
+fork of the American River to the head of Deer Creek, a distance of
+about 260 miles, the northern limit being near the thirty-ninth
+parallel, the southern a little below the thirty-sixth, and the
+elevation of the belt above the sea varies from about 5000 to 8000 feet.
+From the American River grove to the forest on King's River the species
+occurs only in small isolated groups so sparsely distributed along the
+belt that three of the gaps in it are from forty to sixty miles wide.
+But from King's River southward the Sequoia is not restricted to mere
+groves, but extends across the broad rugged basins of the Kaweah and
+Tule rivers in noble forests, a distance of nearly seventy miles, the
+continuity of this part of the belt being broken only by deep ca�ons.
+The Fresno, the largest of the northern groves, occupies an area of
+three or four square miles, a short distance to the southward of the
+famous Mariposa Grove. Along the beveled rim of the ca�on of the south
+fork of King's River there is a majestic forest of Sequoia about six
+miles long by two wide. This is the northernmost assemblage of Big Trees
+that may fairly be called a forest. Descending the precipitous divide
+between the King's River and Kaweah you enter the grand forests that
+form the main continuous portion of the belt. Advancing southward the
+giants become more and more irrepressibly exuberant, heaving their
+massive crowns into the sky from every ridge and slope, and waving
+onward in graceful compliance with the complicated topography of the
+region. The finest of the Kaweah section of the belt is on the broad
+ridge between Marble Creek and the middle fork, and extends from the
+granite headlands overlooking the hot plains to within a few miles of
+the cool glacial fountains of the summit peaks. The extreme upper limit
+of the belt is reached between the middle and south forks of the Kaweah
+at an elevation of 8400 feet. But the finest block of Big Tree forest in
+the entire belt is on the north fork of Tule River. In the northern
+groves there are comparatively few young trees or saplings. But here for
+every old, storm-stricken giant there are many in all the glory of prime
+vigor, and for each of these a crowd of eager, hopeful young trees and
+saplings growing heartily on moraines, rocky ledges, along watercourses,
+and in the moist alluvium of meadows, seemingly in hot pursuit of
+eternal life.
+
+But though the area occupied by the species increases so much from north
+to south there is no marked increase in the size of the trees. A height
+of 275 feet and a diameter near the ground of about 20 feet is perhaps
+about the average size of full-grown trees favorably situated; specimens
+25 feet in diameter are not very rare, and a few are nearly 300 feet
+high. In the Calaveras Grove there are four trees over 300 feet in
+height, the tallest of which by careful measurement is 325 feet. The
+largest I have yet met in the course of my explorations is a majestic
+old scarred monument in the King's River forest. It is 35 feet 8 inches
+in diameter inside the bark four feet from the ground. Under the most
+favorable conditions these giants probably live 5000 years or more,
+though few of even the larger trees are more than half as old. I never
+saw a Big Tree that had died a natural death; barring accidents they
+seem to be immortal, being exempt from all the diseases that afflict and
+kill other trees. Unless destroyed by man, they live on indefinitely
+until burned, smashed by lightning, or cast down by storms, or by the
+giving way of the ground on which they stand. The age of one that was
+felled in the Calaveras Grove, for the sake of having its stump for a
+dancing-floor, was about 1300 years, and its diameter, measured across
+the stump, 24 feet inside the bark. Another that was cut down in the
+King's River forest was about the same size, but nearly a thousand years
+older (2200 years), though not a very old-looking tree. It was felled to
+procure a section for exhibition, and thus an opportunity was given to
+count its annual rings of growth. The colossal scarred monument in the
+King's River forest mentioned above is burned half through, and I spent
+a day in making an estimate of its age, clearing away the charred
+surface with an ax and carefully counting the annual rings with the aid
+of a pocket-lens. The wood-rings in the section I laid bare were so
+involved and contorted in some places that I was not able to determine
+its age exactly, but I counted over 4000 rings, which showed that this
+tree was in its prime, swaying in the Sierra winds, when Christ walked
+the earth. No other tree in the world, as far as I know, has looked down
+on so many centuries as the Sequoia, or opens such impressive and
+suggestive views into history.
+
+So exquisitely harmonious and finely balanced are even the very
+mightiest of these monarchs of the woods in all their proportions and
+circumstances there never is anything overgrown or monstrous-looking
+about them. On coming in sight of them for the first time, you are
+likely to say, "Oh, see what beautiful, noble-looking trees are towering
+there among the firs and pines!"--their grandeur being in the mean time
+in great part invisible, but to the living eye it will be manifested
+sooner or later, stealing slowly on the senses, like the grandeur of
+Niagara, or the lofty Yosemite domes. Their great size is hidden from
+the inexperienced observer as long as they are seen at a distance in one
+harmonious view. When, however, you approach them and walk round them,
+you begin to wonder at their colossal size and seek a measuring-rod.
+These giants bulge considerably at the base, but not more than is
+required for beauty and safety; and the only reason that this bulging
+seems in some cases excessive is that only a comparatively small section
+of the shaft is seen at once in near views. One that I measured in the
+King's River forest was 25 feet in diameter at the ground, and 10 feet
+in diameter 200 feet above the ground, showing that the taper of the
+trunk as a whole is charmingly fine. And when you stand back far enough
+to see the massive columns from the swelling instep to the lofty summit
+dissolving in a dome of verdure, you rejoice in the unrivaled display of
+combined grandeur and beauty. About a hundred feet or more of the trunk
+is usually branchless, but its massive simplicity is relieved by the
+bark furrows, which instead of making an irregular network run evenly
+parallel, like the fluting of an architectural column, and to some
+extent by tufts of slender sprays that wave lightly in the winds and
+cast flecks of shade, seeming to have been pinned on here and there for
+the sake of beauty only. The young trees have slender simple branches
+down to the ground, put on with strict regularity, sharply aspiring at
+the top, horizontal about half-way down, and drooping in handsome curves
+at the base. By the time the sapling is five or six hundred years old
+this spiry, feathery, juvenile habit merges into the firm, rounded dome
+form of middle age, which in turn takes on the eccentric picturesqueness
+of old age. No other tree in the Sierra forest has foliage so densely
+massed or presents outlines so firmly drawn and so steadily subordinate
+to a special type. A knotty ungovernable-looking branch five to eight
+feet thick may be seen pushing out abruptly from the smooth trunk, as if
+sure to throw the regular curve into confusion, but as soon as the
+general outline is reached it stops short and dissolves in spreading
+bosses of law-abiding sprays, just as if every tree were growing beneath
+some huge, invisible bell-glass, against whose sides every branch was
+being pressed and molded, yet somehow indulging in so many small
+departures from the regular form that there is still an appearance of
+freedom.
+
+The foliage of the saplings is dark bluish-green in color, while the
+older trees ripen to a warm brownish-yellow tint like Libocedrus. The
+bark is rich cinnamon-brown, purplish in young trees and in shady
+portions of the old, while the ground is covered with brown leaves and
+burs forming color-masses of extraordinary richness, not to mention the
+flowers and underbrush that rejoice about them in their seasons. Walk
+the Sequoia woods at any time of year and you will say they are the most
+beautiful and majestic on earth. Beautiful and impressive contrasts meet
+you everywhere: the colors of tree and flower, rock and sky, light and
+shade, strength and frailty, endurance and evanescence, tangles of
+supple hazel-bushes, tree-pillars about as rigid as granite domes, roses
+and violets, the smallest of their kind, blooming around the feet of the
+giants, and rugs of the lowly chamaebatia where the sunbeams fall. Then
+in winter the trees themselves break forth in bloom, myriads of small
+four-sided staminate cones crowd the ends of the slender sprays,
+coloring the whole tree, and when ripe dusting the air and the ground
+with golden pollen. The fertile cones are bright grass-green, measuring
+about two inches in length by one and a half in thickness, and are made
+up of about forty firm rhomboidal scales densely packed, with from five
+to eight seeds at the base of each. A single cone, therefore, contains
+from two to three hundred seeds, which are about a fourth of an inch
+long by three sixteenths wide, including a thin, flat margin that makes
+them go glancing and wavering in their fall like a boy's kite. The
+fruitfulness of Sequoia may be illustrated by two specimen branches one
+and a half and two inches in diameter on which I counted 480 cones. No
+other Sierra conifer produces nearly so many seeds. Millions are ripened
+annually by a single tree, and in a fruitful year the product of one of
+the northern groves would be enough to plant all the mountain-ranges of
+the world. Nature takes care, however, that not one seed in a million
+shall germinate at all, and of those that do perhaps not one in ten
+thousand is suffered to live through the many vicissitudes of storm,
+drought, fire, and snow-crushing that beset their youth.
+
+The Douglas squirrel is the happy harvester of most of the Sequoia
+cones. Out of every hundred perhaps ninety fall to his share, and unless
+cut off by his ivory sickle they shake out their seeds and remain on the
+tree for many years. Watching the squirrels at their harvest work in the
+Indian summer is one of the most delightful diversions imaginable. The
+woods are calm and the ripe colors are blazing in all their glory; the
+cone-laden trees stand motionless in the warm, hazy air, and you may see
+the crimson-crested woodcock, the prince of Sierra woodpeckers, drilling
+some dead limb or fallen trunk with his bill, and ever and anon filling
+the glens with his happy cackle. The humming-bird, too, dwells in these
+noble woods, and may oftentimes be seen glancing among the flowers or
+resting wing-weary on some leafless twig; here also are the familiar
+robin of the orchards, and the brown and grizzly bears so obviously
+fitted for these majestic solitudes; and the Douglas squirrel, making
+more hilarious, exuberant, vital stir than all the bears, birds, and
+humming wings together.
+
+As soon as any accident happens to the crown of these Sequoias, such as
+being stricken off by lightning or broken by storms, then the branches
+beneath the wound, no matter how situated, seem to be excited like a
+colony of bees that have lost their queen, and become anxious to repair
+the damage. Limbs that have grown outward for centuries at right angles
+to the trunk begin to turn upward to assist in making a new crown, each
+speedily assuming the special form of true summits. Even in the case of
+mere stumps, burned half through, some mere ornamental tuft will try to
+go aloft and do its best as a leader in forming a new head.
+
+Groups of two or three of these grand trees are often found standing
+close together, the seeds from which they sprang having probably grown
+on ground cleared for their reception by the fall of a large tree of a
+former generation. These patches of fresh, mellow soil beside the
+upturned roots of the fallen giant may be from forty to sixty feet wide,
+and they are speedily occupied by seedlings. Out of these
+seedling-thickets perhaps two or three may become trees, forming those
+close groups called "three graces," "loving couples," etc. For even
+supposing that the trees should stand twenty or thirty feet apart while
+young, by the time they are full-grown their trunks will touch and crowd
+against each other and even appear as one in some cases.
+
+It is generally believed that this grand Sequoia was once far more
+widely distributed over the Sierra; but after long and careful study I
+have come to the conclusion that it never was, at least since the close
+of the glacial period, because a diligent search along the margins of
+the groves, and in the gaps between, fails to reveal a single trace of
+its previous existence beyond its present bounds. Notwithstanding, I
+feel confident that if every Sequoia in the range were to die to-day,
+numerous monuments of their existence would remain, of so imperishable a
+nature as to be available for the student more than ten thousand years
+hence.
+
+In the first place we might notice that no species of coniferous tree in
+the range keeps its individuals so well together as Sequoia; a mile is
+perhaps the greatest distance of any straggler from the main body, and
+all of those stragglers that have come under my observation are young,
+instead of old monumental trees, relics of a more extended growth.
+
+Again, Sequoia trunks frequently endure for centuries after they fall. I
+have a specimen block, cut from a fallen trunk, which is hardly
+distinguishable from specimens cut from living trees, although the old
+trunk-fragment from which it was derived has lain in the damp forest
+more than 380 years, probably thrice as long. The time measure in the
+case is simply this: when the ponderous trunk to which the old vestige
+belonged fell, it sunk itself into the ground, thus making a long,
+straight ditch, and in the middle of this ditch a Silver Fir is growing
+that is now four feet in diameter and 380 years old, as determined by
+cutting it half through and counting the rings, thus demonstrating that
+the remnant of the trunk that made the ditch has lain on the ground
+_more_ than 380 years. For it is evident that to find the whole
+time, we must add to the 380 years the time that the vanished portion of
+the trunk lay in the ditch before being burned out of the way, plus the
+time that passed before the seed from which the monumental fir sprang
+fell into the prepared soil and took root. Now, because Sequoia trunks
+are never wholly consumed in one forest fire, and those fires recur only
+at considerable intervals, and because Sequoia ditches after being
+cleared are often left unplanted for centuries, it becomes evident that
+the trunk remnant in question may probably have lain a thousand years or
+more. And this instance is by no means a rare one.
+
+But admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been once covered
+with Sequoia every tree may have fallen, and every trunk may have been
+burned or buried, leaving not a remnant, many of the ditches made by the
+fall of the ponderous trunks, and the bowls made by their upturning
+roots, would remain patent for thousands of years after the last vestige
+of the trunks that made them had vanished. Much of this ditch-writing
+would no doubt be quickly effaced by the flood-action of overflowing
+streams and rain-washing; but no inconsiderable portion would remain
+enduringly engraved on ridge-tops beyond such destructive action; for,
+where all the conditions are favorable, it is almost imperishable.
+_Now these historic ditches and root bowls occur in all the present
+Sequoia groves and forests, but as far as I have observed, not the
+faintest vestige of one presents itself outside of them_.
+
+We therefore conclude that the area covered by Sequoia has not been
+diminished during the last eight or ten thousand years, and probably not
+at all in post-glacial times.
+
+_Is the species verging to extinction? What are its relations to
+climate, soil, and associated trees?_
+
+All the phenomena bearing on these questions also throw light, as we
+shall endeavor to show, upon the peculiar distribution of the species,
+and sustain the conclusion already arrived at on the question of
+extension.
+
+In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are few young trees or
+saplings growing up around the failing old ones to perpetuate the race,
+and in as much as those aged Sequoias, so nearly childless, are the only
+ones commonly known, the species, to most observers, seems doomed to
+speedy extinction, as being nothing more than an expiring remnant,
+vanquished in the so-called struggle for life by pines and firs that
+have driven it into its last strongholds in moist glens where climate is
+exceptionally favorable. But the language of the majestic continuous
+forests of the south creates a very different impression. No tree of all
+the forest is more enduringly established in concordance with climate
+and soil. It grows heartily everywhere--on moraines, rocky ledges, along
+watercourses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows, with a
+multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the aged,
+seemingly abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. For
+every old storm-stricken tree, there is one or more in all the glory of
+prime; and for each of these many young trees and crowds of exuberant
+saplings. So that if all the trees of any section of the main Sequoia
+forest were ranged together according to age, a very promising curve
+would be presented, all the way up from last year's seedlings to giants,
+and with the young and middle-aged portion of the curve many times
+longer than the old portion. Even as far north as the Fresno, I counted
+536 saplings and seedlings growing promisingly upon a piece of rough
+avalanche soil not exceeding two acres in area. This soil bed is about
+seven years old, and has been seeded almost simultaneously by pines,
+firs, Libocedrus, and Sequoia, presenting a simple and instructive
+illustration of the struggle for life among the rival species; and it
+was interesting to note that the conditions thus far affecting them have
+enabled the young Sequoias to gain a marked advantage.
+
+In every instance like the above I have observed that the seedling
+Sequoia is capable of growing on both drier and wetter soil than its
+rivals, but requires more sunshine than they; the latter fact being
+clearly shown wherever a Sugar Pine or fir is growing in close contact
+with a Sequoia of about equal age and size, and equally exposed to the
+sun; the branches of the latter in such cases are always less leafy.
+Toward the south, however, where the Sequoia becomes _more_
+exuberant and numerous, the rival trees become _less_ so; and where
+they mix with Sequoias, they mostly grow up beneath them, like slender
+grasses among stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of sandy flood-soil I
+counted ninety-four Sequoias, from one to twelve feet high, on a patch,
+of ground once occupied by four large Sugar Pines which lay crumbling
+beneath them,--an instance of conditions which have enabled Sequoias to
+crowd out the pines.
+
+I also noted eighty-six vigorous saplings upon a piece of fresh ground
+prepared for their reception by fire. Thus fire, the great destroyer of
+Sequoia, also furnishes bare virgin ground, one of the conditions
+essential for its growth from the seed. Fresh ground is, however,
+furnished in sufficient quantities for the constant renewal of the
+forests without fire, viz., by the fall of old trees. The soil is thus
+upturned and mellowed, and many trees are planted for every one that
+falls. Land-slips and floods also give rise to bare virgin ground; and a
+tree now and then owes its existence to a burrowing wolf or squirrel,
+but the most regular supply of fresh soil is furnished by the fall of
+aged trees.
+
+The climatic changes in progress in the Sierra, bearing on the tenure of
+tree life, are entirely misapprehended, especially as to the time and
+the means employed by Nature in effecting them. It is constantly
+asserted in a vague way that the Sierra was vastly wetter than now, and
+that the increasing drought will of itself extinguish Sequoia, leaving
+its ground to other trees supposed capable of nourishing in a drier
+climate. But that Sequoia can and does grow on as dry ground as any of
+its present rivals, is manifest in a thousand places. "Why, then," it
+will be asked, "are Sequoias always found in greatest abundance in
+well-watered places where streams are exceptionally abundant?" Simply
+because a growth of Sequoias creates those streams. The thirsty
+mountaineer knows well that in every Sequoia grove he will find running
+water, but it is a mistake to suppose that the water is the cause of the
+grove being there; on the contrary, the grove is the cause of the water
+being there. Drain off the water and the trees will remain, but cut off
+the trees, and the streams will vanish. Never was cause more completely
+mistaken for effect than in the case of these related phenomena of
+Sequoia woods and perennial streams, and I confess that at first I
+shared in the blunder.
+
+When attention is called to the method of Sequoia stream-making, it will
+be apprehended at once. The roots of this immense tree fill the ground,
+forming a thick sponge that absorbs and holds back the rains and melting
+snows, only allowing them to ooze and flow gently. Indeed, every fallen
+leaf and rootlet, as well as long clasping root, and prostrate trunk,
+may be regarded as a dam hoarding the bounty of storm-clouds, and
+dispensing it as blessings all through the summer, instead of allowing
+it to go headlong in short-lived floods. Evaporation is also checked by
+the dense foliage to a greater extent than by any other Sierra tree, and
+the air is entangled in masses and broad sheets that are quickly
+saturated; while thirsty winds are not allowed to go sponging and
+licking along the ground.
+
+So great is the retention of water in many places in the main belt, that
+bogs and meadows are created by the killing of the trees. A single trunk
+falling across a stream in the woods forms a dam 200 feet long, and from
+ten to thirty feet high, giving rise to a pond which kills the trees
+within its reach. These dead trees fall in turn, thus making a clearing,
+while sediments gradually accumulate changing the pond into a bog, or
+meadow, for a growth of carices and sphagnum. In some instances a series
+of small bogs or meadows rise above one another on a hillside, which are
+gradually merged into one another, forming sloping bogs, or meadows,
+which make striking features of Sequoia woods, and since all the trees
+that have fallen into them have been preserved, they contain records of
+the generations that have passed since they began to form.
+
+Since, then, it is a fact that thousands of Sequoias are growing
+thriftily on what is termed dry ground, and even clinging like mountain
+pines to rifts in granite precipices; and since it has also been shown
+that the extra moisture found in connection with the denser growths is
+an effect of their presence, instead of a cause of their presence, then
+the notions as to the former extension of the species and its near
+approach to extinction, based upon its supposed dependence on greater
+moisture, are seen to be erroneous.
+
+The decrease in the rain- and snow-fall since the close of the glacial
+period in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed. The highest
+post-glacial watermarks are well preserved in all the upper river
+channels, and they are not greatly higher than the spring floodmarks of
+the present; showing conclusively that no extraordinary decrease has
+taken place in the volume of the upper tributaries of post-glacial
+Sierra streams since they came into existence. But in the mean time,
+eliminating all this complicated question of climatic change, the plain
+fact remains that _the present rain- and snow-fall is abundantly
+sufficient for the luxuriant growth of Sequoia forests_. Indeed, all
+my observations tend to show that in a prolonged drought the Sugar Pines
+and firs would perish before the Sequoia, not alone because of the
+greater longevity of individual trees, but because the species can
+endure more drought, and make the most of whatever moisture falls.
+
+Again, if the restriction and irregular distribution of the species be
+interpreted as a result of the desiccation of the range, then instead of
+increasing as it does in individuals toward the south where the rainfall
+is less, it should diminish.
+
+If, then, the peculiar distribution of Sequoia has not been governed by
+superior conditions of soil as to fertility or moisture, by what has it
+been governed?
+
+In the course of my studies I observed that the northern groves, the
+only ones I was at first acquainted with, were located on just those
+portions of the general forest soil-belt that were first laid bare
+toward the close of the glacial period when the ice-sheet began to break
+up into individual glaciers. And while searching the wide basin of the
+San Joaquin, and trying to account for the absence of Sequoia where
+every condition seemed favorable for its growth, it occured to me that
+this remarkable gap in the Sequoia belt is located exactly in the basin
+of the vast ancient _mer de glace_ of the San Joaquin and King's
+River basins, which poured its frozen floods to the plain, fed by the
+snows that fell on more than fifty miles of the summit. I then perceived
+that the next great gap in the belt to the northward, forty miles wide,
+extending between the Calaveras and Tuolumne groves, occurs in the basin
+of the great ancient _mer de glace_ of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus
+basins, and that the smaller gap between the Merced and Mariposa groves
+occurs in the basin of the smaller glacier of the Merced. _The wider
+the ancient glacier, the wider the corresponding gap in the Sequoia
+belt_.
+
+Finally, pursuing my investigations across the basins of the Kaweah and
+Tule, I discovered that the Sequoia belt attained its greatest
+development just where, owing to the topographical peculiarities of the
+region, the ground had been most perfectly protected from the main
+ice-rivers that continued to pour past from the summit fountains long
+after the smaller local glaciers had been melted.
+
+Taking now a general view of the belt, beginning at the south, we see
+that the majestic ancient glaciers were shed off right and left down the
+valleys of Kern and King's rivers by the lofty protective spurs
+outspread embracingly above the warm Sequoia-filled basins of the Kaweah
+and Tule. Then, next northward, occurs the wide Sequoia-less channel, or
+basin, of the ancient San Joaquin and King's River _mer de glace_;
+then the warm, protected spots of Fresno and Mariposa groves; then the
+Sequoia-less channel of the ancient Merced glacier; next the warm,
+sheltered ground of the Merced and Tuolumne groves; then the
+Sequoia-less channel of the grand ancient _mer de glace_ of the
+Tuolumne and Stanislaus; then the warm old ground of the Calaveras and
+Stanislaus groves. It appears, therefore, that just where, at a certain
+period in the history of the Sierra, the glaciers were not, there the
+Sequoia is, and just where the glaciers were, there the Sequoia is not.
+
+What the other conditions may have been that enabled Sequoia to
+establish itself upon these oldest and warmest portions of the main
+glacial soil-belt, I cannot say. I might venture to state, however, in
+this connection, that since the Sequoia forests present a more and more
+ancient aspect as they extend southward, I am inclined to think that the
+species was distributed from the south, while the Sugar Pine, its great
+rival in the northern groves, seems to have come around the head of the
+Sacramento valley and down the Sierra from the north; consequently, when
+the Sierra soil-beds were first thrown open to preemption on the melting
+of the ice-sheet, the Sequoia may have established itself along the
+available portions of the south half of the range prior to the arrival
+of the Sugar Pine, while the Sugar Pine took possession of the north
+half prior to the arrival of Sequoia.
+
+But however much uncertainty may attach to this branch of the question,
+there are no obscuring shadows upon the grand general relationship we
+have pointed out between the present distribution of Sequoia and the
+ancient glaciers of the Sierra. And when we bear in mind that all the
+present forests of the Sierra are young, growing on moraine soil
+recently deposited, and that the flank of the range itself, with all its
+landscapes, is new-born, recently sculptured, and brought to the light
+of day from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial winter, then a
+thousand lawless mysteries disappear, and broad harmonies take their
+places.
+
+But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial
+history of this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was
+more widely distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial
+epoch; that its present forests are scarcely past prime, if, indeed,
+they have reached prime; that the post-glacial day of the species is
+probably not half done; yet, when from a wider outlook the vast
+antiquity of the genus is considered, and its ancient richness in
+species and individuals; comparing our Sierra Giant and _Sequoia
+sempervirens_ of the Coast Range, the only other living species of
+Sequoia, with the twelve fossil species already discovered and described
+by Heer and Lesquereux, some of which seem to have flourished over vast
+areas in the Arctic regions and in Europe and our own territories,
+during tertiary and cretaceous times,--then indeed it becomes plain that
+our two surviving species, restricted to narrow belts within the limits
+of California, are mere remnants of the genus, both as to species and
+individuals, and that they probably are verging to extinction. But the
+verge of a period beginning in cretaceous times may have a breadth of
+tens of thousands of years, not to mention the possible existence of
+conditions calculated to multiply and re�xtend both species and
+individuals. This, however, is a branch of the question into which I do
+not now purpose to enter.
+
+In studying the fate of our forest king, we have thus far considered the
+action of purely natural causes only; but, unfortunately, _man_ is
+in the woods, and waste and pure destruction are making rapid headway.
+If the importance of forests were at all understood, even from an
+economic standpoint, their preservation would call forth the most
+watchful attention of government. Only of late years by means of forest
+reservations has the simplest groundwork for available legislation been
+laid, while in many of the finest groves every species of destruction is
+still moving on with accelerated speed.
+
+In the course of my explorations I found no fewer than five mills
+located on or near the lower edge of the Sequoia belt, all of which were
+cutting considerable quantities of Big Tree lumber. Most of the Fresno
+group are doomed to feed the mills recently erected near them, and a
+company of lumbermen are now cutting the magnificent forest on King's
+River. In these milling operations waste far exceeds use, for after the
+choice young manageable trees on any given spot have been felled, the
+woods are fired to clear the ground of limbs and refuse with reference
+to further operations, and, of course, most of the seedlings and
+saplings are destroyed.
+
+These mill ravages, however, are small as compared with the
+comprehensive destruction caused by "sheepmen." Incredible numbers of
+sheep are driven to the mountain pastures every summer, and their course
+is ever marked by desolation. Every wild garden is trodden down, the
+shrubs are stripped of leaves as if devoured by locusts, and the woods
+are burned. Running fires are set everywhere, with a view to clearing
+the ground of prostrate trunks, to facilitate the movements of the
+flocks and improve the pastures. The entire forest belt is thus swept
+and devastated from one extremity of the range to the other, and, with
+the exception of the resinous _Pinus contorta_, Sequoia suffers
+most of all. Indians burn off the underbrush in certain localities to
+facilitate deer-hunting, mountaineers and lumbermen carelessly allow
+their camp-fires to run; but the fires of the sheepmen, or
+_muttoneers_, form more than ninety per cent. of all destructive
+fires that range the Sierra forests.
+
+It appears, therefore, that notwithstanding our forest king might live
+on gloriously in Nature's keeping, it is rapidly vanishing before the
+fire and steel of man; and unless protective measures be speedily
+invented and applied, in a few decades, at the farthest, all that will be
+left of _Sequoia gigantea_ will be a few hacked and scarred
+monuments.
+
+
+TWO-LEAVED, OR TAMARACK, PINE
+(_Pinus contorta_, var._Marrayana_)
+
+This species forms the bulk of the alpine forests, extending along the
+range, above the fir zone, up to a height of from 8000 to 9500 feet
+above the sea, growing in beautiful order upon moraines that are
+scarcely changed as yet by post-glacial weathering. Compared with the
+giants of the lower zones, this is a small tree, seldom attaining a
+height of a hundred feet. The largest specimen I ever measured was
+ninety feet in height, and a little over six in diameter four feet from
+the ground. The average height of mature trees throughout the entire
+belt is probably not far from fifty or sixty feet, with a diameter of
+two feet. It is a well-proportioned, rather handsome little pine, with
+grayish-brown bark, and crooked, much-divided branches, which cover the
+greater portion of the trunk, not so densely, however, as to prevent its
+being seen. The lower limbs curve downward, gradually take a horizontal
+position about half-way up the trunk, then aspire more and more toward
+the summit, thus forming a sharp, conical top. The foliage is short and
+rigid, two leaves in a fascicle, arranged in comparatively long,
+cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough, up-curving branchlets. The
+cones are about two inches long, growing in stiff clusters among the
+needles, without making any striking effect, except while very young,
+when they are of a vivid crimson color, and the whole tree appears to be
+dotted with brilliant flowers. The sterile cones are still more showy,
+on account of their great abundance, often giving a reddish-yellow tinge
+to the whole mass of the foliage, and filling the air with pollen.
+
+No other pine on the range is so regularly planted as this one. Moraine
+forests sweep along the sides of the high, rocky valleys for miles
+without interruption; still, strictly speaking, they are not dense, for
+flecks of sunshine and flowers find their way into the darkest places,
+where the trees grow tallest and thickest. Tall, nutritious grasses are
+specially abundant beneath them, growing over all the ground, in
+sunshine and shade, over extensive areas like a farmer's crop, and
+serving as pasture for the multitude of sheep that are driven from the
+arid plains every summer as soon as the snow is melted.
+
+The Two-leaved Pine, more than any other, is subject to destruction by
+fire. The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled with resin, as though it
+had been showered down upon it like rain, so that even the green trees
+catch fire readily, and during strong winds whole forests are destroyed,
+the flames leaping from tree to tree, forming one continuous belt of
+roaring fire that goes surging and racing onward above the bending
+woods, like the grass-fires of a prairie. During the calm, dry season of
+Indian summer, the fire creeps quietly along the ground, feeding on the
+dry needles and burs; then, arriving at the foot of a tree, the resiny
+bark is ignited, and the heated air ascends in a powerful current,
+increasing in velocity, and dragging the flames swiftly upward; then the
+leaves catch fire, and an immense column of flame, beautifully spired on
+the edges, and tinted a rose-purple hue, rushes aloft thirty or forty
+feet above the top of the tree, forming a grand spectacle, especially on
+a dark night. It lasts, however, only a few seconds, vanishing with
+magical rapidity, to be succeeded by others along the fire-line at
+irregular intervals for weeks at a time--tree after tree flashing and
+darkening, leaving the trunks and branches hardly scarred. The heat,
+however, is sufficient to kill the trees, and in a few years the bark
+shrivels and falls off. Belts miles in extent are thus killed and left
+standing with the branches on, peeled and rigid, appearing gray in the
+distance, like misty clouds. Later the branches drop off, leaving a
+forest of bleached spars. At length the roots decay, and the forlorn
+trunks are blown down during some storm, and piled one upon another
+encumbering the ground until they are consumed by the next fire, and
+leave it ready for a fresh crop.
+
+The endurance of the species is shown by its wandering occasionally out
+over the lava plains with the Yellow Pine, and climbing moraineless
+mountain-sides with the Dwarf Pine, clinging to any chance support in
+rifts and crevices of storm-beaten rocks--always, however, showing the
+effects of such hardships in every feature.
+
+Down in sheltered lake hollows, on beds of rich alluvium, it varies so
+far from the common form as frequently to be taken for a distinct
+species. Here it grows in dense sods, like grasses, from forty to eighty
+feet high, bending all together to the breeze and whirling in eddying
+gusts more lithely than any other tree in the woods. I have frequently
+found specimens fifty feet high less than five inches in diameter. Being
+thus slender, and at the same time well clad with leafy boughs, it is
+oftentimes bent to the ground when laden with soft snow, forming
+beautiful arches in endless variety, some of which last until the
+melting of the snow in spring.
+
+
+MOUNTAIN PINE
+(_Pinus monticola_)
+
+The Mountain Pine is king of the alpine woods, brave, hardy, and
+long-lived, towering grandly above its companions, and becoming stronger
+and more imposing just where other species begin to crouch and
+disappear. At its best it is usually about ninety feet high and five or
+six in diameter, though a specimen is often met considerably larger than
+this. The trunk is as massive and as suggestive of enduring strength as
+that of an oak. About two thirds of the trunk is commonly free of limbs,
+but close, fringy tufts of sprays occur all the way down, like those
+which adorn the colossal shafts of Sequoia. The bark is deep
+reddish-brown upon trees that occupy exposed situations near its upper
+limit, and furrowed rather deeply, the main furrows running nearly
+parallel with each other, and connected by conspicuous cross furrows,
+which, with one exception, are, as far as I have noticed, peculiar to
+this species.
+
+The cones are from four to eight inches long, slender, cylindrical, and
+somewhat curved, resembling those of the common White Pine of the
+Atlantic coast. They grow in clusters of about from three to six or
+seven, becoming pendulous as they increase in weight, chiefly by the
+bending of the branches.
+
+This species is nearly related to the Sugar Pine, and, though not half
+so tall, it constantly suggests its noble relative in the way that it
+extends its long arms and in general habit. The Mountain Pine is first
+met on the upper margin of the fir zone, growing singly in a subdued,
+inconspicuous form, in what appear as chance situations, without making
+much impression on the general forest. Continuing up through the
+Two-leaved Pines in the same scattered growth, it begins to show its
+character, and at an elevation of about 10,000 feet attains its noblest
+development near the middle of the range, tossing its tough arms in the
+frosty air, welcoming storms and feeding on them, and reaching the grand
+old age of 1000 years.
+
+
+JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR
+(_Juniperus occidentalis_)
+
+The Juniper is pre�minently a rock tree, occupying the baldest domes and
+pavements, where there is scarcely a handful of soil, at a height of
+from 7000 to 9500 feet. In such situations the trunk is frequently over
+eight feet in diameter, and not much more in height. The top is almost
+always dead in old trees, and great stubborn limbs push out horizontally
+that are mostly broken and bare at the ends, but densely covered and
+embedded here and there with bossy mounds of gray foliage. Some are mere
+weathered stumps, as broad as long, decorated with a few leafy sprays,
+reminding one of the crumbling towers of some ancient castle
+scantily draped with ivy. Only upon the head waters of the Carson have I
+found this species established on good moraine soil. Here it flourishes
+with the Silver and Two-leaved Pines, in great beauty and luxuriance,
+attaining a height of from forty to sixty feet, and manifesting but
+little of that rocky angularity so characteristic a feature throughout
+the greater portion, of its range. Two of the largest, growing at the
+head of Hope Valley, measured twenty-nine feet three inches and
+twenty-five feet six inches in circumference, respectively, four feet
+from the ground. The bark is of a bright cinnamon color, and, in thrifty
+trees, beautifully braided and reticulated, flaking off in thin,
+lustrous ribbons that are sometimes used by Indians for tent-matting.
+Its fine color and odd picturesqueness always catch an artist's eye, but
+to me the Juniper seems a singularly dull and taciturn tree, never
+speaking to one's heart. I have spent many a day and night in its
+company, in all kinds of weather, and have ever found it silent, cold,
+and rigid, like a column of ice. Its broad stumpiness, of course,
+precludes all possibility of waving, or even shaking; but it is not this
+rocky steadfastness that constitutes its silence. In calm, sun-days the
+Sugar Pine preaches the grandeur of the mountains like an apostle
+without moving a leaf.
+
+[Illustration: JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR.]
+
+On level rocks it dies standing, and wastes insensibly out of existence
+like granite, the wind exerting about as little control over it alive or
+dead as it does over a glacier boulder. Some are undoubtedly over 2000
+years old. All the trees of the alpine woods suffer, more or less, from
+avalanches, the Two-leaved Pine most of all. Gaps two or three hundred
+yards wide, extending from the upper limit of the tree-line to the
+bottoms of valleys and lake basins, are of common occurrence in all the
+upper forests, resembling the clearings of settlers in the old
+backwoods. Scarcely a tree is spared, even the soil is scraped away,
+while the thousands of uprooted pines and spruces are piled upon one
+another heads downward, and tucked snugly in along the sides of the
+clearing in two windrows, like lateral moraines. The pines lie with
+branches wilted and drooping like weeds. Not so the burly junipers.
+After braving in silence the storms of perhaps a dozen or twenty
+centuries, they seem in this, their last calamity, to become somewhat
+communicative, making sign of a very unwilling acceptance of their fate,
+holding themselves well up from the ground on knees and elbows,
+seemingly ill at ease, and anxious, like stubborn wrestlers, to rise
+again.
+
+
+HEMLOCK SPRUCE
+(_Tsuga Pattoniana_)
+
+The Hemlock Spruce is the most singularly beautiful of all the
+California coniferae. So slender is its axis at the top, that it bends
+over and droops like the stalk of a nodding lily. The branches droop
+also, and divide into innumerable slender, waving sprays, which are
+arranged in a varied, eloquent harmony that is wholly indescribable. Its
+cones are purple, and hang free, in the form of little tassels two
+inches long from all the sprays from top to bottom. Though exquisitely
+delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best where the snow lies
+deepest, far up in the region of storms, at an elevation of from 9000 to
+9500 feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it is capable of growing
+considerably higher, say 10,500 feet. The tallest specimens, growing in
+sheltered hollows somewhat beneath the heaviest wind-currents, are from
+eighty to a hundred feet high, and from two to four feet in diameter.
+The very largest specimen I ever found was nineteen feet seven inches in
+circumference four feet from the ground, growing on the edge of Lake
+Hollow, at an elevation of 9250 feet above the level of the sea. At the
+age of twenty or thirty years it becomes fruitful, and hangs out its
+beautiful purple cones at the ends of the slender sprays, where they
+swing free in the breeze, and contrast delightfully with the cool green
+foliage. They are translucent when young, and their beauty is delicious.
+After they are fully ripe, they spread their shell-like scales and allow
+the brown-winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while the empty cones
+remain to beautify the tree until the coming of a fresh crop.
+
+[Illustration: STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH.]
+
+The staminate cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in
+bright clusters, yellow, and rose, and crimson. Those of the Hemlock
+Spruce are the most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue
+flowers, each on a slender stem.
+
+Under all conditions, sheltered or storm-beaten, well-fed or ill-fed,
+this tree is singularly graceful in habit. Even at its highest limit
+upon exposed ridge-tops, though compelled to crouch in dense thickets,
+huddled close together, as if for mutual protection, it still manages to
+throw out its sprays in irrepressible loveliness; while on well-ground
+moraine soil it develops a perfectly tropical luxuriance of foliage and
+fruit, and is the very loveliest tree in the forest; poised in thin
+white sunshine, clad with branches from head to foot, yet not in the
+faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in unassuming majesty,
+drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its race,
+loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven and joyously
+receptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like sensitive
+tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it. No other of our alpine
+conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches yield to
+the mountains' gentlest breath; yet is it strong to meet the wildest
+onsets of the gale,--strong not in resistance, but compliance, bowing,
+snow-laden, to the ground, gracefully accepting burial month after month
+in the darkness beneath the heavy mantle of winter.
+
+When the first soft snow begins to fall, the flakes lodge in the leaves,
+weighing down the branches against the trunk. Then the axis bends yet
+lower and lower, until the slender top touches the ground, thus forming
+a fine ornamental arch. The snow still falls lavishly, and the whole
+tree is at length buried, to sleep and rest in its beautiful grave as
+though dead. Entire groves of young trees, from ten to forty feet high,
+are thus buried every winter like slender grasses. But, like the violets
+and daisies which the heaviest snows crush not, they are safe. It is as
+though this were only Nature's method of putting her darlings to sleep
+instead of leaving them exposed to the biting storms of winter.
+
+Thus warmly wrapped they await the summer resurrection. The snow becomes
+soft in the sunshine, and freezes at night, making the mass hard and
+compact, like ice, so that during the months of April and May you can
+ride a horse over the prostrate groves without catching sight of a
+single leaf. At length the down-pouring sunshine sets them free. First
+the elastic tops of the arches begin to appear, then one branch after
+another, each springing loose with a gentle rustling sound, and at
+length the whole tree, with the assistance of the winds, gradually
+unbends and rises and settles back into its place in the warm air, as
+dry and feathery and fresh as young ferns just out of the coil.
+
+Some of the finest groves I have yet found are on the southern slopes of
+Lassen's Butte. There are also many charming companies on the head
+waters of the Tuolumne, Merced, and San Joaquin, and, in general, the
+species is so far from being rare that you can scarcely fail to find
+groves of considerable extent in crossing the range, choose what pass
+you may. The Mountain Pine grows beside it, and more frequently the
+two-leaved species; but there are many beautiful groups, numbering 1000
+individuals, or more, without a single intruder.
+
+I wish I had space to write more of the surpassing beauty of this
+favorite spruce. Every tree-lover is sure to regard it with special
+admiration; apathetic mountaineers, even, seeking only game or gold,
+stop to gaze on first meeting it, and mutter to themselves: "That's a
+mighty pretty tree," some of them adding, "d----d pretty!" In autumn,
+when its cones are ripe, the little striped tamias, and the Douglas
+squirrel, and the Clark crow make a happy stir in its groves. The deer
+love to lie down beneath its spreading branches; bright streams from the
+snow that is always near ripple through its groves, and bryanthus
+spreads precious carpets in its shade. But the best words only hint its
+charms. Come to the mountains and see.
+
+
+DWARF PINE
+(_Pinus albicaulis_)
+
+This species forms the extreme edge of the timber line throughout nearly
+the whole extent of the range on both flanks. It is first met growing in
+company with _Pinus contorta_, var. _Murrayana_, on the upper margin of
+the belt, as an erect tree from fifteen to thirty feet high and from one
+to two feet in thickness; thence it goes straggling up the flanks of the
+summit peaks, upon moraines or crumbling ledges, wherever it can obtain
+a foothold, to an elevation of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, where it
+dwarfs to a mass of crumpled, prostrate branches, covered with slender,
+upright shoots, each tipped with a short, close-packed tassel of leaves.
+The bark is smooth and purplish, in some places almost white. The
+fertile cones grow in rigid clusters upon the upper branches, dark
+chocolate in color while young, and bear beautiful pearly seeds about
+the size of peas, most of which are eaten by two species of tamias and
+the notable Clark crow. The staminate cones occur in clusters, about an
+inch wide, down among the leaves, and, as they are colored bright
+rose-purple, they give rise to a lively, flowery appearance little
+looked for in such a tree.
+
+[Illustration: GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES.]
+
+Pines are commonly regarded as sky-loving trees that must necessarily
+aspire or die. This species forms a marked exception, creeping lowly, in
+compliance with the most rigorous demands of climate, yet enduring
+bravely to a more advanced age than many of its lofty relatives in the
+sun-lands below. Seen from a distance, it would never be taken for a
+tree of any kind. Yonder, for example, is Cathedral Peak, some three
+miles away, with a scattered growth of this pine creeping like mosses
+over the roof and around the beveled edges of the north gable, nowhere
+giving any hint of an ascending axis. When approached quite near it
+still appears matted and heathy, and is so low that one experiences no
+great difficulty in walking over the top of it. Yet it is seldom
+absolutely prostrate, at its lowest usually attaining a height of three
+or four feet, with a main trunk, and branches outspread and intertangled
+above it, as if in ascending they had been checked by a ceiling, against
+which they had grown and been compelled to spread horizontally. The
+winter snow is indeed such a ceiling, lasting half the year; while the
+pressed, shorn surface is made yet smoother by violent winds, armed with
+cutting sand-grains, that beat down any shoot that offers to rise much
+above the general level, and carve the dead trunks and branches in
+beautiful patterns.
+
+During stormy nights I have often camped snugly beneath the interlacing
+arches of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for
+centuries, make fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers, such
+as deer and wild sheep, who paw out oval hollows and lie beneath the
+larger trees in safe and comfortable concealment.
+
+[Illustration: A DWARF PINE.]
+
+The longevity of this lowly dwarf is far greater than would be guessed.
+Here, for example, is a specimen, growing at an elevation of 10,700
+feet, which seems as though it might be plucked up by the roots, for it
+is only three and a half inches in diameter, and its topmost tassel is
+hardly three feet above the ground. Cutting it half through and counting
+the annual rings with the aid of a lens, we find its age to be no less
+than 255 years. Here is another telling specimen about the same height,
+426 years old, whose trunk is only six inches in diameter; and one of
+its supple branchlets, hardly an eighth of an inch in diameter inside
+the bark, is seventy-five years old, and so filled with oily balsam, and
+so well seasoned by storms, that we may tie it in knots like a
+whip-cord.
+
+
+WHITE PINE
+(_Pinus flexilis_)
+
+This species is widely distributed throughout the Rocky Mountains, and
+over all the higher of the many ranges of the Great Basin, between the
+Wahsatch Mountains and the Sierra, where it is known as White Pine. In
+the Sierra it is sparsely scattered along the eastern flank, from Bloody
+Ca�on southward nearly to the extremity of the range, opposite the
+village of Lone Pine, nowhere forming any appreciable portion of the
+general forest. From its peculiar position, in loose, straggling
+parties, it seems to have been derived from the Basin ranges to the
+eastward, where it is abundant.
+
+It is a larger tree than the Dwarf Pine. At an elevation of about 9000
+feet above the sea, it often attains a height of forty or fifty feet,
+and a diameter of from three to five feet. The cones open freely when
+ripe, and are twice as large as those of the _albicaulis_, and the
+foliage and branches are more open, having a tendency to sweep out in
+free, wild curves, like those of the Mountain Pine, to which it is
+closely allied. It is seldom found lower than 9000 feet above sea-level,
+but from this elevation it pushes upward over the roughest ledges to the
+extreme limit of tree-growth, where, in its dwarfed, storm-crushed
+condition, it is more like the white-barked species.
+
+Throughout Utah and Nevada it is one of the principal timber-trees,
+great quantities being cut every year for the mines. The famous White
+Pine Mining District, White Pine City, and the White Pine Mountains have
+derived their names from it.
+
+
+NEEDLE PINE
+(_Pinus aristata_)
+
+This species is restricted in the Sierra to the southern portion of the
+range, about the head waters of Kings and Kern rivers, where it forms
+extensive forests, and in some places accompanies the Dwarf Pine to the
+extreme limit of tree-growth.
+
+It is first met at an elevation of between 9000 and 10,000 feet, and
+runs up to 11,000 without seeming to suffer greatly from the climate or
+the leanness of the soil. It is a much finer tree than the Dwarf Pine.
+Instead of growing in clumps and low, heathy mats, it manages in some
+way to maintain an erect position, and usually stands single. Wherever
+the young trees are at all sheltered, they grow up straight and arrowy,
+with delicately tapered bole, and ascending branches terminated with
+glossy, bottle-brush tassels. At middle age, certain limbs are
+specialized and pushed far out for the bearing of cones, after the
+manner of the Sugar Pine; and in old age these branches droop and cast
+about in every direction, giving rise to very picturesque effects. The
+trunk becomes deep brown and rough, like that of the Mountain Pine,
+while the young cones are of a strange, dull, blackish-blue color,
+clustered on the upper branches. When ripe they are from three to four
+inches long, yellowish brown, resembling in every way those of the
+Mountain Pine. Excepting the Sugar Pine, no tree on the mountains is so
+capable of individual expression, while in grace of form and movement it
+constantly reminds one of the Hemlock Spruce.
+
+[Illustration: OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES.]
+
+The largest specimen I measured was a little over five feet in diameter
+and ninety feet in height, but this is more than twice the ordinary
+size.
+
+This species is common throughout the Rocky Mountains and most of the
+short ranges of the Great Basin, where it is called the Fox-tail Pine,
+from its long dense leaf-tassels. On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and
+Golden Gate ranges it is quite abundant. About a foot or eighteen inches
+of the ends of the branches is densely packed with stiff outstanding
+needles which radiate like an electric fox or squirrel's tail. The
+needles have a glossy polish, and the sunshine sifting through them
+makes them burn with silvery luster, while their number and elastic
+temper tell delightfully in the winds. This tree is here still more
+original and picturesque than in the Sierra, far surpassing not only its
+companion conifers in this respect, but also the most noted of the
+lowland oaks. Some stand firmly erect, feathered with radiant tassels
+down to the ground, forming slender tapering towers of shining verdure;
+others, with two or three specialized branches pushed out at right
+angles to the trunk and densely clad with tasseled sprays, take the form
+of beautiful ornamental crosses. Again in the same woods you find trees
+that are made up of several boles united near the ground, spreading at
+the sides in a plane parallel to the axis of the mountain, with the
+elegant tassels hung in charming order between them, making a harp held
+against the main wind lines where they are most effective in playing the
+grand storm harmonies. And besides these there are many variable arching
+forms, alone or in groups, with innumerable tassels drooping beneath the
+arches or radiant above them, and many lowly giants of no particular
+form that have braved the storms of a thousand years. But whether old or
+young, sheltered or exposed to the wildest gales, this tree is ever
+found irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque, and offers a richer
+and more varied series of forms to the artist than any other conifer I
+know of.
+
+
+NUT PINE
+(_Pinus monophylla_)
+
+The Nut Pine covers or rather dots the eastern flank of the Sierra, to
+which it is mostly restricted, in grayish, bush-like patches, from the
+margin of the sage-plains to an elevation of from 7000 to 8000 feet.
+
+A more contentedly fruitful and unaspiring conifer could not be
+conceived. All the species we have been sketching make departures more
+or less distant from the typical spire form, but none goes so far as
+this. Without any apparent exigency of climate or soil, it remains near
+the ground, throwing out crooked, divergent branches like an orchard
+apple-tree, and seldom pushes a single shoot higher than fifteen or
+twenty feet above the ground.
+
+The average thickness of the trunk is, perhaps, about ten or twelve
+inches. The leaves are mostly undivided, like round awls, instead of
+being separated, like those of other pines, into twos and threes and
+fives. The cones are green while growing, and are usually found over all
+the tree, forming quite a marked feature as seen against the bluish-gray
+foliage. They are quite small, only about two inches in length, and give
+no promise of edible nuts; but when we come to open them, we find that
+about half the entire bulk of the cone is made up of sweet, nutritious
+seeds, the kernels of which are nearly as large as those of hazel-nuts.
+
+This is undoubtedly the most important food-tree on the Sierra, and
+furnishes the Mono, Carson, and Walker River Indians with more and
+better nuts than all the other species taken together. It is the
+Indians' own tree, and many a white man have they killed for cutting it
+down.
+
+In its development Nature seems to have aimed at the formation of as
+great a fruit-bearing surface as possible. Being so low and accessible,
+the cones are readily beaten off with poles, and the nuts procured by
+roasting them until the scales open. In bountiful seasons a single
+Indian will gather thirty or forty bushels of them--a fine squirrelish
+employment.
+
+Of all the conifers along the eastern base of the Sierra, and on all the
+many mountain groups and short ranges of the Great Basin, this foodful
+little pine is the commonest tree, and the most important. Nearly every
+mountain is planted with it to a height of from 8000 to 9000 feet above
+the sea. Some are covered from base to summit by this one species, with
+only a sparse growth of juniper on the lower slopes to break the
+continuity of its curious woods, which, though dark-looking at a
+distance, are almost shadeless, and have none of the damp, leafy glens
+and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods. Tens of thousands of
+acres occur in continuous belts. Indeed, viewed comprehensively the
+entire Basin seems to be pretty evenly divided into level plains dotted
+with sage-bushes and mountain-chains covered with Nut Pines. No slope is
+too rough, none too dry, for these bountiful orchards of the red man.
+
+The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It
+furnishes charcoal and timber for the mines, and, with the juniper,
+supplies the ranches with fuel and rough fencing. In fruitful seasons
+the nut crop is perhaps greater than the California wheat crop, which
+exerts so much influence throughout the food markets of the world. When,
+the crop is ripe, the Indians make ready the long beating-poles; bags,
+baskets, mats, and sacks are collected; the women out at service among
+the settlers, washing or drudging, assemble at the family huts; the men
+leave their ranch work; old and young, all are mounted on ponies and
+start in great glee to the nut-lands, forming curiously picturesque
+cavalcades; flaming scarfs and calico skirts stream loosely over the
+knotty ponies, two squaws usually astride of each, with baby midgets
+bandaged in baskets slung on their backs or balanced on the saddle-bow;
+while nut-baskets and water-jars project from each side, and the long
+beating-poles make angles in every direction. Arriving at some
+well-known central point where grass and water are found, the squaws
+with baskets, the men with poles ascend the ridges to the laden trees,
+followed by the children. Then the beating begins right merrily, the
+burs fly in every direction, rolling down the slopes, lodging here and
+there against rocks and sage-bushes, chased and gathered by the women
+and children with fine natural gladness. Smoke-columns speedily mark the
+joyful scene of their labors as the roasting-fires are kindled, and, at
+night, assembled in gay circles garrulous as jays, they begin the first
+nut feast of the season.
+
+The nuts are about half an inch long and a quarter of an inch in
+diameter, pointed at the top, round at the base, light brown in general
+color, and, like many other pine seeds, handsomely dotted with purple,
+like birds' eggs. The shells are thin and may be crushed between the
+thumb and finger. The kernels are white, becoming brown by roasting, and
+are sweet to every palate, being eaten by birds, squirrels, dogs,
+horses, and men. Perhaps less than one bushel in a thousand of the whole
+crop is ever gathered. Still, besides supplying their own wants, in
+times of plenty the Indians bring large quantities to market; then they
+are eaten around nearly every fireside in the State, and are even fed to
+horses occasionally instead of barley.
+
+Of other trees growing on the Sierra, but forming a very small part of
+the general forest, we may briefly notice the following:
+
+_Chamoecyparis Lawsoniana_ is a magnificent tree in the coast
+ranges, but small in the Sierra. It is found only well to the northward
+along the banks of cool streams on the upper Sacramento toward Mount
+Shasta. Only a few trees of this species, as far as I have seen, have as
+yet gained a place in the Sierra woods. It has evidently been derived
+from the coast range by way of the tangle of connecting mountains at the
+head of the Sacramento Valley.
+
+In shady dells and on cool stream banks of the northern Sierra we also
+find the Yew (_Taxus brevifolia_).
+
+The interesting Nutmeg Tree (_Torreya Californica_) is sparsely
+distributed along the western flank of the range at an elevation of
+about 4000 feet, mostly in gulches and ca�ons. It is a small, prickly
+leaved, glossy evergreen, like a conifer, from twenty to fifty feet
+high, and one to two feet in diameter. The fruit resembles a green-gage
+plum, and contains one seed, about the size of an acorn, and like a
+nutmeg, hence the common name. The wood is fine-grained and of a
+beautiful, creamy yellow color like box, sweet-scented when dry, though
+the green leaves emit a disagreeable odor.
+
+_Betula occidentalis_, the only birch, is a small, slender tree
+restricted to the eastern flank of the range along stream-sides below
+the pine-belt, especially in Owen's Valley.
+
+Alder, Maple, and Nuttall's Flowering Dogwood make beautiful bowers over
+swift, cool streams at an elevation of from 3000 to 5000 feet, mixed
+more or less with willows and cottonwood; and above these in lake basins
+the aspen forms fine ornamental groves, and lets its light shine
+gloriously in the autumn months.
+
+The Chestnut Oak (_Quercus densiflora_) seems to have come from the
+coast range around the head of the Sacramento Valley, like the
+_Chamaecyparis_, but as it extends southward along the lower edge
+of the main pine-belt it grows smaller until it finally dwarfs to a mere
+chaparral bush. In the coast mountains it is a fine, tall, rather
+slender tree, about from sixty to seventy-five feet high, growing with
+the grand _Sequoia sempervirens_, or Redwood. But unfortunately it
+is too good to live, and is now being rapidly destroyed for tan-bark.
+
+Besides the common Douglas Oak and the grand _Quercus Wislizeni_ of
+the foot-hills, and several small ones that make dense growths of
+chaparral, there are two mountain-oaks that grow with the pines up to an
+elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, and greatly enhance the
+beauty of the yosemite parks. These are the Mountain Live Oak and the
+Kellogg Oak, named in honor of the admirable botanical pioneer of
+California. Kellogg's Oak (_Quercus Kelloggii_) is a firm, bright,
+beautiful tree, reaching a height of sixty feet, four to seven feet in
+diameter, with wide-spreading branches, and growing at an elevation of
+from 3000 to 5000 feet in sunny valleys and flats among the evergreens,
+and higher in a dwarfed state. In the cliff-bound parks about 4000 feet
+above the sea it is so abundant and effective it might fairly be called
+the Yosemite Oak. The leaves make beautiful masses of purple in the
+spring, and yellow in ripe autumn; while its acorns are eagerly gathered
+by Indians, squirrels, and woodpeckers. The Mountain Live Oak (_Q.
+Chrysolepis_) is a tough, rugged mountaineer of a tree, growing
+bravely and attaining noble dimensions on the roughest earthquake
+taluses in deep ca�ons and yosemite valleys. The trunk is usually short,
+dividing near the ground into great, wide-spreading limbs, and these
+again into a multitude of slender sprays, many of them cord-like and
+drooping to the ground, like those of the Great White Oak of the
+lowlands (_Q. lobata_). The top of the tree where there is plenty
+of space is broad and bossy, with a dense covering of shining leaves,
+making delightful canopies, the complicated system of gray, interlacing,
+arching branches as seen from beneath being exceedingly rich and
+picturesque. No other tree that I know dwarfs so regularly and
+completely as this under changes of climate due to changes in elevation.
+At the foot of a ca�on 4000 feet above the sea you may find magnificent
+specimens of this oak fifty feet high, with craggy, bulging trunks, five
+to seven feet in diameter, and at the head of the ca�on, 2500 feet
+higher, a dense, soft, low, shrubby growth of the same species, while
+all the way up the ca�on between these extremes of size and habit a
+perfect gradation may be traced. The largest I have seen was fifty feet
+high, eight feet in diameter, and about seventy-five feet in spread. The
+trunk was all knots and buttresses, gray like granite, and about as
+angular and irregular as the boulders on which it was growing--a type of
+steadfast, unwedgeable strength.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
+(_Sciurus Douglasii_)
+
+The Douglas Squirrel is by far the most interesting and influential of
+the California sciuridae, surpassing every other species in force of
+character, numbers, and extent of range, and in the amount of influence
+he brings to bear upon the health and distribution of the vast forests
+he inhabits.
+
+Go where you will throughout the noble woods of the Sierra Nevada, among
+the giant pines and spruces of the lower zones, up through the towering
+Silver Firs to the storm-bent thickets of the summit peaks, you
+everywhere find this little squirrel the master-existence. Though only a
+few inches long, so intense is his fiery vigor and restlessness, he
+stirs every grove with wild life, and makes himself more important than
+even the huge bears that shuffle through the tangled underbrush beneath
+him. Every wind is fretted by his voice, almost every bole and branch
+feels the sting of his sharp feet. How much the growth of the trees is
+stimulated by this means it is not easy to learn, but his action in
+manipulating their seeds is more appreciable. Nature has made him master
+forester and committed most of her coniferous crops to his paws.
+Probably over fifty per cent. of all the cones ripened on the Sierra are
+cut off and handled by the Douglas alone, and of those of the Big Trees
+perhaps ninety per cent. pass through his hands: the greater portion is
+of course stored away for food to last during the winter and spring, but
+some of them are tucked separately into loosely covered holes, where
+some of the seeds germinate and become trees. But the Sierra is only one
+of the many provinces over which he holds sway, for his dominion extends
+over all the Redwood Belt of the Coast Mountains, and far northward
+throughout the majestic forests of Oregon, Washington, and British
+Columbia. I make haste to mention these facts, to show upon how
+substantial a foundation the importance I ascribe to him rests.
+
+The Douglas is closely allied to the Red Squirrel or Chickaree of the
+eastern woods. Ours may be a lineal descendant of this species,
+distributed westward to the Pacific by way of the Great Lakes and the
+Rocky Mountains, and thence southward along our forested ranges. This
+view is suggested by the fact that our species becomes redder and more
+Chickaree-like in general, the farther it is traced back along the
+course indicated above. But whatever their relationship, and the
+evolutionary forces that have acted upon them, the Douglas is now the
+larger and more beautiful animal.
+
+From the nose to the root of the tail he measures about eight inches;
+and his tail, which he so effectively uses in interpreting his feelings,
+is about six inches in length. He wears dark bluish-gray over the back
+and half-way down the sides, bright buff on the belly, with a stripe of
+dark gray, nearly black, separating the upper and under colors; this
+dividing stripe, however, is not very sharply defined. He has long black
+whiskers, which gives him a rather fierce look when observed closely,
+strong claws, sharp as fish-hooks, and the brightest of bright eyes,
+full of telling speculation.
+
+A King's River Indian told me that they call him "Pillillooeet," which,
+rapidly pronounced with the first syllable heavily accented, is not
+unlike the lusty exclamation he utters on his way up a tree when
+excited. Most mountaineers in California call him the Pine Squirrel; and
+when I asked an old trapper whether he knew our little forester, he
+replied with brightening countenance: "Oh, yes, of course I know him;
+everybody knows him. When I'm huntin' in the woods, I often find out
+where the deer are by his barkin' at 'em. I call 'em Lightnin'
+Squirrels, because they're so mighty quick and peert."
+
+All the true squirrels are more or less birdlike in speech and
+movements; but the Douglas is pre�minently so, possessing, as he does,
+every attribute peculiarly squirrelish enthusiastically concentrated. He
+is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his
+favorite evergreens crisp and glossy and undiseased as a sunbeam. Give
+him wings and he would outfly any bird in the woods. His big gray cousin
+is a looser animal, seemingly light enough to float on the wind; yet
+when leaping from limb to limb, or out of one tree-top to another, he
+sometimes halts to gather strength, as if making efforts concerning the
+upshot of which he does not always feel exactly confident. But the
+Douglas, with his denser body, leaps and glides in hidden strength,
+seemingly as independent of common muscles as a mountain stream. He
+threads the tasseled branches of the pines, stirring their needles like
+a rustling breeze; now shooting across openings in arrowy lines; now
+launching in curves, glinting deftly from side to side in sudden
+zigzags, and swirling in giddy loops and spirals around the knotty
+trunks; getting into what seem to be the most impossible situations
+without sense of danger; now on his haunches, now on his head; yet ever
+graceful, and punctuating his most irrepressible outbursts of energy
+with little dots and dashes of perfect repose. He is, without exception,
+the wildest animal I ever saw,--a fiery, sputtering little bolt of life,
+luxuriating in quick oxygen and the woods' best juices. One can hardly
+think of such a creature being dependent, like the rest of us, on
+climate and food. But, after all, it requires no long acquaintance to
+learn he is human, for he works for a living. His busiest time is in the
+Indian summer. Then he gathers burs and hazel-nuts like a plodding
+farmer, working continuously every day for hours; saying not a word;
+cutting off the ripe cones at the top of his speed, as if employed by
+the job, and examining every branch in regular order, as if careful that
+not one should escape him; then, descending, he stores them away beneath
+logs and stumps, in anticipation of the pinching hunger days of winter.
+He seems himself a kind of coniferous fruit,--both fruit and flower. The
+resiny essences of the pines pervade every pore of his body, and eating
+his flesh is like chewing gum.
+
+One never tires of this bright chip of nature,--this brave little voice
+crying in the wilderness,--of observing his many works and ways, and
+listening to his curious language. His musical, piny gossip is as savory
+to the ear as balsam to the palate; and, though he has not exactly the
+gift of song, some of his notes are as sweet as those of a
+linnet--almost flute-like in softness, while others prick and tingle
+like thistles. He is the mocking-bird of squirrels, pouring forth mixed
+chatter and song like a perennial fountain; barking like a dog,
+screaming like a hawk, chirping like a blackbird or a sparrow; while in
+bluff, audacious noisiness he is a very jay.
+
+[Illustration: TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE
+WHEN SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR.]
+
+In descending the trunk of a tree with the intention of alighting on the
+ground, he preserves a cautious silence, mindful, perhaps, of foxes and
+wildcats; but while rocking safely at home in the pine-tops there is no
+end to his capers and noise; and woe to the gray squirrel or chipmunk
+that ventures to set foot on his favorite tree! No matter how slyly they
+trace the furrows of the bark, they are speedily discovered, and kicked
+down-stairs with comic vehemence, while a torrent of angry notes comes
+rushing from his whiskered lips that sounds remarkably like swearing. He
+will even attempt at times to drive away dogs and men, especially if he
+has had no previous knowledge of them. Seeing a man for the first time,
+he approaches nearer and nearer, until within a few feet; then, with an
+angry outburst, he makes a sudden rush, all teeth and eyes, as if about
+to eat you up. But, finding that the big, forked animal doesn't scare,
+he prudently beats a retreat, and sets himself up to reconnoiter on some
+overhanging branch, scrutinizing every movement you make with ludicrous
+solemnity. Gathering courage, he ventures down the trunk again, churring
+and chirping, and jerking nervously up and down in curious loops, eyeing
+you all the time, as if snowing off and demanding your admiration.
+Finally, growing calmer, he settles down in a comfortable posture on
+some horizontal branch commanding a good view, and beats time with his
+tail to a steady "Chee-up! chee-up!" or, when somewhat less excited,
+"Pee-ah!" with the first syllable keenly accented, and the second drawn
+out like the scream of a hawk,--repeating this slowly and more
+emphatically at first, then gradually faster, until a rate of about 150
+words a minute is reached; usually sitting all the time on his haunches,
+with paws resting on his breast, which pulses visibly with each word. It
+is remarkable, too, that, though articulating distinctly, he keeps his
+mouth shut most of the time, and speaks through his nose. I have
+occasionally observed him even eating Sequoia seeds and nibbling a
+troublesome flea, without ceasing or in any way confusing his "Pee-ah!
+pee-ah!" for a single moment.
+
+While ascending trees all his claws come into play, but in descending
+the weight of his body is sustained chiefly by those of the hind feet;
+still in neither case do his movements suggest effort, though if you are
+near enough you may see the bulging strength of his short, bear-like
+arms, and note his sinewy fists clinched in the bark.
+
+Whether going up or down, he carries his tail extended at full length in
+line with his body, unless it be required for gestures. But while
+running along horizontal limbs or fallen trunks, it is frequently folded
+forward over the back, with the airy tip daintily upcurled. In cool
+weather it keeps him warm. Then, after he has finished his meal, you may
+see him crouched close on some level limb with his tail-robe neatly
+spread and reaching forward to his ears, the electric, outstanding hairs
+quivering in the breeze like pine-needles. But in wet or very cold
+weather he stays in his nest, and while curled up there his comforter is
+long enough to come forward around his nose. It is seldom so cold,
+however, as to prevent his going out to his stores when hungry.
+
+Once as I lay storm-bound on the upper edge of the timber line on Mount
+Shasta, the thermometer nearly at zero and the sky thick with driving
+snow, a Douglas came bravely out several times from one of the lower
+hollows of a Dwarf Pine near my camp, faced the wind without seeming to
+feel it much, frisked lightly about over the mealy snow, and dug his way
+down to some hidden seeds with wonderful precision, as if to his eyes
+the thick snow-covering were glass.
+
+No other of the Sierra animals of my acquaintance is better fed, not
+even the deer, amid abundance of sweet herbs and shrubs, or the mountain
+sheep, or omnivorous bears. His food consists of grass-seeds, berries,
+hazel-nuts, chinquapins, and the nuts and seeds of all the coniferous
+trees without exception,--Pine, Fir, Spruce, Libocedrus, Juniper, and
+Sequoia,--he is fond of them all, and they all agree with him, green or
+ripe. No cone is too large for him to manage, none so small as to be
+beneath his notice. The smaller ones, such as those of the Hemlock, and
+the Douglas Spruce, and the Two-leaved Pine, he cuts off and eats on a
+branch of the tree, without allowing them to fall; beginning at the
+bottom of the cone and cutting away the scales to expose the seeds; not
+gnawing by guess, like a bear, but turning them round and round in
+regular order, in compliance with their spiral arrangement.
+
+When thus employed, his location in the tree is betrayed by a dribble of
+scales, shells, and seed-wings, and, every few minutes, by the fall of
+the stripped axis of the cone. Then of course he is ready for another,
+and if you are watching you may catch a glimpse of him as he glides
+silently out to the end of a branch and see him examining the
+cone-clusters until he finds one to his mind; then, leaning over, pull
+back the springy needles out of his way, grasp the cone with his paws to
+prevent its falling, snip it off in an incredibly short time, seize it
+with jaws grotesquely stretched, and return to his chosen seat near the
+trunk. But the immense size of the cones of the Sugar Pine--from fifteen
+to twenty inches in length--and those of the Jeffrey variety of the
+Yellow Pine compel him to adopt a quite different method. He cuts them
+off without attempting to hold them, then goes down and drags them from
+where they have chanced to fall up to the bare, swelling ground around
+the instep of the tree, where he demolishes them in the same methodical
+way, beginning at the bottom and following the scale-spirals to the top.
+
+[Illustration: SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE. (NAT. SIZE.)]
+
+From a single Sugar Pine cone he gets from two to four hundred seeds
+about half the size of a hazel-nut, so that in a few minutes he can
+procure enough to last a week. He seems, however, to prefer those of the
+two Silver First above all others; perhaps because they are most easily
+obtained, as the scales drop off when ripe without needing to be cut.
+Both species are filled with an exceedingly pungent, aromatic oil, which
+spices all his flesh, and is of itself sufficient to account for his
+lightning energy.
+
+You may easily know this little workman by his chips. On sunny hillsides
+around the principal trees they lie in big piles,--bushels and
+basketfuls of them, all fresh and clean, making the most beautiful
+kitchen-middens imaginable. The brown and yellow scales and nut-shells
+are as abundant and as delicately penciled and tinted as the shells
+along the sea-shore; while the beautiful red and purple seed-wings
+mingled with them would lead one to fancy that innumerable butterflies
+had there met their fate.
+
+He feasts on all the species long before they are ripe, but is wise
+enough to wait until they are matured before he gathers them into his
+barns. This is in October and November, which with him are the two
+busiest months of the year. All kinds of burs, big and little, are now
+cut off and showered down alike, and the ground is speedily covered with
+them. A constant thudding and bumping is kept up; some of the larger
+cones chancing to fall on old logs make the forest re�cho with the
+sound. Other nut-eaters less industrious know well what is going on, and
+hasten to carry away the cones as they fall. But however busy the
+harvester may be, he is not slow to descry the pilferers below, and
+instantly leaves his work to drive them away. The little striped tamias
+is a thorn in his flesh, stealing persistently, punish him as he may.
+The large Gray Squirrel gives trouble also, although the Douglas has
+been accused of stealing from him. Generally, however, just the opposite
+is the case.
+
+The excellence of the Sierra evergreens is well known to nurserymen
+throughout the world, consequently there is considerable demand for the
+seeds. The greater portion of the supply has hitherto been procured by
+chopping down the trees in the more accessible sections of the forest
+alongside of bridle-paths that cross the range. Sequoia seeds at first
+brought from twenty to thirty dollars per pound, and therefore were
+eagerly sought after. Some of the smaller fruitful trees were cut down
+in the groves not protected by government, especially those of Fresno
+and King's River. Most of the Sequoias, however, are of so gigantic a
+size that the seedsmen have to look for the greater portion of their
+supplies to the Douglas, who soon learns he is no match for these
+freebooters. He is wise enough, however, to cease working the instant he
+perceives them, and never fails to embrace every opportunity to recover
+his burs whenever they happen to be stored in any place accessible to
+him, and the busy seedsman often finds on returning to camp that the
+little Douglas has exhaustively spoiled the spoiler. I know one
+seed-gatherer who, whenever he robs the squirrels, scatters wheat or
+barley beneath the trees as conscience-money.
+
+The want of appreciable life remarked by so many travelers in the Sierra
+forests is never felt at this time of year. Banish all the humming
+insects and the birds and quadrupeds, leaving only Sir Douglas, and the
+most solitary of our so-called solitudes would still throb with ardent
+life. But if you should go impatiently even into the most populous of
+the groves on purpose to meet him, and walk about looking up among the
+branches, you would see very little of him. But lie down at the foot of
+one of the trees and straightway he will come. For, in the midst of the
+ordinary forest sounds, the falling of burs, piping of quails, the
+screaming of the Clark Crow, and the rustling of deer and bears among
+the chaparral, he is quick to detect your strange footsteps, and will
+hasten to make a good, close inspection of you as soon as you are still.
+First, you may hear him sounding a few notes of curious inquiry, but
+more likely the first intimation of his approach will be the prickly
+sounds of his feet as he descends the tree overhead, just before he
+makes his savage onrush to frighten you and proclaim your presence to
+every squirrel and bird in the neighborhood. If you remain perfectly
+motionless, he will come nearer and nearer, and probably set your flesh
+a-tingle by frisking across your body. Once, while I was seated at the
+foot of a Hemlock Spruce in one of the most inaccessible of the San
+Joaquin yosemites engaged in sketching, a reckless fellow came up behind
+me, passed under my bended arm, and jumped on my paper. And one warm
+afternoon, while an old friend of mine was reading out in the shade of
+his cabin, one of his Douglas neighbors jumped from the gable upon his
+head, and then with admirable assurance ran down over his shoulder and
+on to the book he held in his hand.
+
+Our Douglas enjoys a large social circle; for, besides his numerous
+relatives, _Sciurus fossor, Tamias quadrivitatus, T. Townsendii,
+Spermophilus Beccheyi, S. Douglasii_, he maintains intimate relations
+with the nut-eating birds, particularly the Clark Crow (_Picicorvus
+columbianus_) and the numerous woodpeckers and jays. The two
+spermophiles are astonishingly abundant in the lowlands and lower
+foot-hills, but more and more sparingly distributed up through the
+Douglas domains,--seldom venturing higher than six or seven thousand
+feet above the level of the sea. The gray sciurus ranges but little
+higher than this. The little striped tamias alone is associated with him
+everywhere. In the lower and middle zones, where they all meet, they are
+tolerably harmonious--a happy family, though very amusing skirmishes may
+occasionally be witnessed. Wherever the ancient glaciers have spread
+forest soil there you find our wee hero, most abundant where depth of
+soil and genial climate have given rise to a corresponding luxuriance in
+the trees, but following every kind of growth up the curving moraines to
+the highest glacial fountains.
+
+Though I cannot of course expect all my readers to sympathize fully in
+my admiration of this little animal, few, I hope, will think this sketch
+of his life too long. I cannot begin to tell here how much he has
+cheered my lonely wanderings during all the years I have been pursuing
+my studies in these glorious wilds; or how much unmistakable humanity I
+have found in him. Take this for example: One calm, creamy Indian summer
+morning, when the nuts were ripe, I was camped in the upper pine-woods
+of the south fork of the San Joaquin, where the squirrels seemed to be
+about as plentiful as the ripe burs. They were taking an early breakfast
+before going to their regular harvest-work. While I was busy with my own
+breakfast I heard the thudding fall of two or three heavy cones from a
+Yellow Pine near me. I stole noiselessly forward within about twenty
+feet of the base of it to observe. In a few moments down came the
+Douglas. The breakfast-burs he had cut off had rolled on the gently
+sloping ground into a clump of ceanothus bushes, but he seemed to know
+exactly where they were, for he found them at once, apparently without
+searching for them. They were more than twice as heavy as himself, but
+after turning them into the right position for getting a good hold with
+his long sickle-teeth he managed to drag them up to the foot of the tree
+from which he had cut them, moving backward. Then seating himself
+comfortably, he held them on end, bottom up, and demolished them at his
+ease. A good deal of nibbling had to be done before he got anything to
+eat, because the lower scales are barren, but when he had patiently
+worked his way up to the fertile ones he found two sweet nuts at the
+base of each, shaped like trimmed hams, and spotted purple like birds'
+eggs. And notwithstanding these cones were dripping with soft balsam,
+and covered with prickles, and so strongly put together that a boy would
+be puzzled to cut them open with a jack-knife, he accomplished his meal
+with easy dignity and cleanliness, making less effort apparently than a
+man would in eating soft cookery from a plate.
+
+Breakfast done, I whistled a tune for him before he went to work,
+curious to see how he would be affected by it. He had not seen me all
+this while; but the instant I began to whistle he darted up the tree
+nearest to him, and came out on a small dead limb opposite me, and
+composed himself to listen. I sang and whistled more than a dozen airs,
+and as the music changed his eyes sparkled, and he turned his head
+quickly from side to side, but made no other response. Other squirrels,
+hearing the strange sounds, came around on all sides, also chipmunks and
+birds. One of the birds, a handsome, speckle-breasted thrush, seemed
+even more interested than the squirrels. After listening for awhile on
+one of the lower dead sprays of a pine, he came swooping forward within
+a few feet of my face, and remained fluttering in the air for half a
+minute or so, sustaining himself with whirring wing-beats, like a
+humming-bird in front of a flower, while I could look into his eyes and
+see his innocent wonder.
+
+By this time my performance must have lasted nearly half an hour. I sang
+or whistled "Bonnie Boon," "Lass o' Gowrie," "O'er the Water to
+Charlie," "Bonnie Woods o' Cragie Lee," etc., all of which seemed to be
+listened to with bright interest, my first Douglas sitting patiently
+through it all, with his telling eyes fixed upon me until I ventured to
+give the "Old Hundredth," when he screamed his Indian name,
+Pillillooeet, turned tail, and darted with ludicrous haste up the tree
+out of sight, his voice and actions in the case leaving a somewhat
+profane impression, as if he had said, "I'll be hanged if you get me to
+hear anything so solemn and unpiny." This acted as a signal for the
+general dispersal of the whole hairy tribe, though the birds seemed
+willing to wait further developments, music being naturally more in
+their line.
+
+What there can be in that grand old church-tune that is so offensive to
+birds and squirrels I can't imagine. A year or two after this High
+Sierra concert, I was sitting one fine day on a hill in the Coast Range
+where the common Ground Squirrels were abundant. They were very shy on
+account of being hunted so much; but after I had been silent and
+motionless for half an hour or so they began to venture out of their
+holes and to feed on the seeds of the grasses and thistles around me as
+if I were no more to be feared than a tree-stump. Then it occurred to me
+that this was a good opportunity to find out whether they also disliked
+"Old Hundredth." Therefore I began to whistle as nearly as I could
+remember the same familiar airs that had pleased the mountaineers of the
+Sierra. They at once stopped eating, stood erect, and listened patiently
+until I came to "Old Hundredth," when with ludicrous haste every one of
+them rushed to their holes and bolted in, their feet twinkling in the
+air for a moment as they vanished.
+
+No one who makes the acquaintance of our forester will fail to admire
+him; but he is far too self-reliant and warlike ever to be taken for a
+darling.
+
+How long the life of a Douglas Squirrel may be, I don't know. The young
+seem to sprout from knot-holes, perfect from the first, and as enduring
+as their own trees. It is difficult, indeed, to realize that so
+condensed a piece of sun-fire should ever become dim or die at all. He
+is seldom killed by hunters, for he is too small to encourage much of
+their attention, and when pursued in settled regions becomes excessively
+shy, and keeps close in the furrows of the highest trunks, many of which
+are of the same color as himself. Indian boys, however, lie in wait with
+unbounded patience to shoot them with arrows. In the lower and middle
+zones a few fall a prey to rattlesnakes. Occasionally he is pursued by
+hawks and wildcats, etc. But, upon the whole, he dwells safely in the
+deep bosom of the woods, the most highly favored of all his happy tribe.
+May his tribe increase!
+
+[Illustration: TRYING THE BOW.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS
+
+The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are
+measured and bestowed with love on the forests to develop their strength
+and beauty. However restricted the scope of other forest influences,
+that of the winds is universal. The snow bends and trims the upper
+forests every winter, the lightning strikes a single tree here and
+there, while avalanches mow down thousands at a swoop as a gardener
+trims out a bed of flowers. But the winds go to every tree, fingering
+every leaf and branch and furrowed bole; not one is forgotten; the
+Mountain Pine towering with outstretched arms on the rugged buttresses
+of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring tenant of the dells;
+they seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in
+lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as
+required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing
+through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean;
+the winds blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable
+beauty and harmony as the sure result.
+
+[Illustration: A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS. (AFTER A SKETCH
+BY THE AUTHOR.)]
+
+After one has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses
+before a mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a
+crash that shakes the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the
+lowest thickset trees, could ever have found a period sufficiently
+stormless to establish themselves; or, once established, that they
+should not, sooner or later, have been blown down. But when the storm is
+over, and we behold the same forests tranquil again, towering fresh and
+unscathed in erect majesty, and consider what centuries of storms have
+fallen upon them since they were first planted,--hail, to break the
+tender seedlings; lightning, to scorch and shatter; snow, winds, and
+avalanches, to crush and overwhelm,--while the manifest result of all
+this wild storm-culture is the glorious perfection we behold; then faith
+in Nature's forestry is established, and we cease to deplore the
+violence of her most destructive gales, or of any other storm-implement
+whatsoever.
+
+There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never blown down, so
+long as they continue in sound health. These are the Juniper and the
+Dwarf Pine of the summit peaks. Their stiff, crooked roots grip the
+storm-beaten ledges like eagles' claws, while their lithe, cord-like
+branches bend round compliantly, offering but slight holds for winds,
+however violent. The other alpine conifers--the Needle Pine, Mountain
+Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruce--are never thinned out by this
+agent to any destructive extent, on account of their admirable toughness
+and the closeness of their growth. In general the same is true of the
+giants of the lower zones. The kingly Sugar Pine, towering aloft to a
+height of more than 200 feet, offers a fine mark to storm-winds; but it
+is not densely foliaged, and its long, horizontal arms swing round
+compliantly in the blast, like tresses of green, fluent algae in a
+brook; while the Silver Firs in most places keep their ranks well
+together in united strength. The Yellow or Silver Pine is more
+frequently overturned than any other tree on the Sierra, because its
+leaves and branches form a larger mass in proportion to its height,
+while in many places it is planted sparsely, leaving open lanes through
+which storms may enter with full force. Furthermore, because it is
+distributed along the lower portion of the range, which was the first to
+be left bare on the breaking up of the ice-sheet at the close of the
+glacial winter, the soil it is growing upon has been longer exposed to
+post-glacial weathering, and consequently is in a more crumbling,
+decayed condition than the fresher soils farther up the range, and
+therefore offers a less secure anchorage for the roots.
+
+While exploring the forest zones of Mount Shasta, I discovered the path
+of a hurricane strewn with thousands of pines of this species. Great and
+small had been uprooted or wrenched off by sheer force, making a clean
+gap, like that made by a snow avalanche. But hurricanes capable of doing
+this class of work are rare in the Sierra, and when we have explored the
+forests from one extremity of the range to the other, we are compelled
+to believe that they are the most beautiful on the face of the earth,
+however we may regard the agents that have made them so.
+
+There is always something deeply exciting, not only in the sounds of
+winds in the woods, which exert more or less influence over every mind,
+but in their varied waterlike flow as manifested by the movements of the
+trees, especially those of the conifers. By no other trees are they
+rendered so extensively and impressively visible, not even by the lordly
+tropic palms or tree-ferns responsive to the gentlest breeze. The waving
+of a forest of the giant Sequoias is indescribably impressive and
+sublime, but the pines seem to me the best interpreters of winds. They
+are mighty waving goldenrods, ever in tune, singing and writing
+wind-music all their long century lives. Little, however, of this noble
+tree-waving and tree-music will you see or hear in the strictly alpine
+portion of the forests. The burly Juniper, whose girth sometimes more
+than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it
+grows. The slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine stream out in
+wavering ripples, but the tallest and slenderest are far too unyielding
+to wave even in the heaviest gales. They only shake in quick, short
+vibrations. The Hemlock Spruce, however, and the Mountain Pine, and some
+of the tallest thickets of the Two-leaved species bow in storms with
+considerable scope and gracefulness. But it is only in the lower and
+middle zones that the meeting of winds and woods is to be seen in all
+its grandeur.
+
+One of the most beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever enjoyed in the
+Sierra occurred in December, 1874, when I happened to be exploring one
+of the tributary valleys of the Yuba River. The sky and the ground and
+the trees had been thoroughly rain-washed and were dry again. The day
+was intensely pure, one of those incomparable bits of California winter,
+warm and balmy and full of white sparkling sunshine, redolent of all the
+purest influences of the spring, and at the same time enlivened with one
+of the most bracing wind-storms conceivable. Instead of camping out, as
+I usually do, I then chanced to be stopping at the house of a friend.
+But when the storm began to sound, I lost no time in pushing out into
+the woods to enjoy it. For on such occasions Nature has always something
+rare to show us, and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than
+one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof.
+
+It was still early morning when I found myself fairly adrift. Delicious
+sunshine came pouring over the hills, lighting the tops of the pines,
+and setting free a steam of summery fragrance that contrasted strangely
+with the wild tones of the storm. The air was mottled with pine-tassels
+and bright green plumes, that went flashing past in the sunlight like
+birds pursued. But there was not the slightest dustiness, nothing less
+pure than leaves, and ripe pollen, and flecks of withered bracken and
+moss. I heard trees falling for hours at the rate of one every two or
+three minutes; some uprooted, partly on account of the loose,
+water-soaked condition of the ground; others broken straight across,
+where some weakness caused by fire had determined the spot. The gestures
+of the various trees made a delightful study. Young Sugar Pines, light
+and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the ground; while
+the grand old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been tried in a
+hundred storms, waved solemnly above them, their long, arching branches
+streaming fluently on the gale, and every needle thrilling and ringing
+and shedding off keen lances of light like a diamond. The Douglas
+Spruces, with long sprays drawn out in level tresses, and needles massed
+in a gray, shimmering glow, presented a most striking appearance as they
+stood in bold relief along the hilltops. The madro�os in the dells, with
+their red bark and large glossy leaves tilted every way, reflected the
+sunshine in throbbing spangles like those one so often sees on the
+rippled surface of a glacier lake. But the Silver Pines were now the
+most impressively beautiful of all. Colossal spires 200 feet in height
+waved like supple golden-rods chanting and bowing low as if in worship,
+while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into
+one continuous blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such
+that the most steadfast monarch of them all rocked down to its roots
+with a motion plainly perceptible when one leaned against it. Nature was
+holding high festival, and every fiber of the most rigid giants thrilled
+with glad excitement.
+
+I drifted on through the midst of this passionate music and motion,
+across many a glen, from ridge to ridge; often halting in the lee of a
+rock for shelter, or to gaze and listen. Even when the grand anthem had
+swelled to its highest pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones
+of individual trees,--Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak,--and
+even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet.
+Each was expressing itself in its own way,--singing its own song, and
+making its own peculiar gestures,--manifesting a richness of variety to
+be found in no other forest I have yet seen. The coniferous woods of
+Canada, and the Carolinas, and Florida, are made up of trees that
+resemble one another about as nearly as blades of grass, and grow close
+together in much the same way. Coniferous trees, in general, seldom
+possess individual character, such as is manifest among Oaks and Elms.
+But the California forests are made up of a greater number of distinct
+species than any other in the world. And in them we find, not only a
+marked differentiation into special groups, but also a marked
+individuality in almost every tree, giving rise to storm effects
+indescribably glorious.
+
+Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through copses of hazel
+and ceanothus, I gained the summit of the highest ridge in the
+neighborhood; and then it occurred to me that it would be a fine thing
+to climb one of the trees to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear close
+to the Aeolian music of its topmost needles. But under the circumstances
+the choice of a tree was a serious matter. One whose instep was not very
+strong seemed in danger of being blown down, or of being struck by
+others in case they should fall; another was branchless to a
+considerable height above the ground, and at the same time too large to
+be grasped with arms and legs in climbing; while others were not
+favorably situated for clear views. After cautiously casting about, I
+made choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that were
+growing close together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed
+likely to fall unless all the rest fell with it. Though comparatively
+young, they were about 100 feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were
+rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy. Being accustomed to climb trees in
+making botanical studies, I experienced no difficulty in reaching the
+top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so noble an exhilaration
+of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in the passionate
+torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and round,
+tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves,
+while I clung with muscles firm braced, like a bobolink on a reed.
+
+In its widest sweeps my tree-top described an arc of from twenty to
+thirty degrees, but I felt sure of its elastic temper, having seen
+others of the same species still more severely tried--bent almost to the
+ground indeed, in heavy snows--without breaking a fiber. I was therefore
+safe, and free to take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the excited
+forest from my superb outlook. The view from here must be extremely
+beautiful in any weather. Now my eye roved over the piny hills and dales
+as over fields of waving grain, and felt the light running in ripples
+and broad swelling undulations across the valleys from ridge to ridge,
+as the shining foliage was stirred by corresponding waves of air.
+Oftentimes these waves of reflected light would break up suddenly into a
+kind of beaten foam, and again, after chasing one another in regular
+order, they would seem to bend forward in concentric curves, and
+disappear on some hillside, like sea-waves on a shelving shore. The
+quantity of light reflected from the bent needles was so great as to
+make whole groves appear as if covered with snow, while the black
+shadows beneath the trees greatly enhanced the effect of the silvery
+splendor.
+
+Excepting only the shadows there was nothing somber in all this wild sea
+of pines. On the contrary, notwithstanding this was the winter season,
+the colors were remarkably beautiful. The shafts of the pine and
+libocedrus were brown and purple, and most of the foliage was well
+tinged with yellow; the laurel groves, with the pale undersides of their
+leaves turned upward, made masses of gray; and then there was many a
+dash of chocolate color from clumps of manzanita, and jet of vivid
+crimson from the bark of the madro�os, while the ground on the
+hillsides, appearing here and there through openings between the groves,
+displayed masses of pale purple and brown.
+
+The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with this wild
+exuberance of light and motion. The profound bass of the naked branches
+and boles booming like waterfalls; the quick, tense vibrations of the
+pine-needles, now rising to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a
+silky murmur; the rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen
+metallic click of leaf on leaf--all this was heard in easy analysis when
+the attention was calmly bent.
+
+The varied gestures of the multitude were seen to fine advantage, so
+that one could recognize the different species at a distance of several
+miles by this means alone, as well as by their forms and colors, and the
+way they reflected the light. All seemed strong and comfortable, as if
+really enjoying the storm, while responding to its most enthusiastic
+greetings. We hear much nowadays concerning the universal struggle for
+existence, but no struggle in the common meaning of the word was
+manifest here; no recognition of danger by any tree; no deprecation; but
+rather an invincible gladness as remote from exultation as from fear.
+
+I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the
+music by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was
+streaming past. The fragrance of the woods was less marked than that
+produced during warm rain, when so many balsamic buds and leaves are
+steeped like tea; but, from the chafing of resiny branches against each
+other, and the incessant attrition of myriads of needles, the gale was
+spiced to a very tonic degree. And besides the fragrance from these
+local sources there were traces of scents brought from afar. For this
+wind came first from the sea, rubbing against its fresh, briny waves,
+then distilled through the redwoods, threading rich ferny gulches, and
+spreading itself in broad undulating currents over many a
+flower-enameled ridge of the coast mountains, then across the golden
+plains, up the purple foot-hills, and into these piny woods with the
+varied incense gathered by the way.
+
+Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we
+may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents
+alone. Mariners detect the flowery perfume of land-winds far at sea, and
+sea-winds carry the fragrance of dulse and tangle far inland, where it
+is quickly recognized, though mingled with the scents of a thousand
+land-flowers. As an illustration of this, I may tell here that I
+breathed sea-air on the Firth of Forth, in Scotland, while a boy; then
+was taken to Wisconsin, where I remained nineteen years; then, without
+in all this time having breathed one breath of the sea, I walked
+quietly, alone, from the middle of the Mississippi Valley to the Gulf of
+Mexico, on a botanical excursion, and while in Florida, far from the
+coast, my attention wholly bent on the splendid tropical vegetation
+about me, I suddenly recognized a sea-breeze, as it came sifting through
+the palmettos and blooming vine-tangles, which at once awakened and set
+free a thousand dormant associations, and made me a boy again in
+Scotland, as if all the intervening years had been annihilated.
+
+Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear them in mind; but
+few care to look at the winds, though far more beautiful and sublime,
+and though they become at times about as visible as flowing water. When
+the north winds in winter are making upward sweeps over the curving
+summits of the High Sierra, the fact is sometimes published with flying
+snow-banners a mile long. Those portions of the winds thus embodied can
+scarce be wholly invisible, even to the darkest imagination. And when
+we look around over an agitated forest, we may see something of the wind
+that stirs it, by its effects upon the trees. Yonder it descends in a
+rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the bending pines from hill
+to hill. Nearer, we see detached plumes and leaves, now speeding by on
+level currents, now whirling in eddies, or, escaping over the edges of
+the whirls, soaring aloft on grand, upswelling domes of air, or tossing
+on flame-like crests. Smooth, deep currents, cascades, falls, and
+swirling eddies, sing around every tree and leaf, and over all the
+varied topography of the region with telling changes of form, like
+mountain rivers conforming to the features of their channels.
+
+After tracing the Sierra streams from their fountains to the plains,
+marking where they bloom white in falls, glide in crystal plumes, surge
+gray and foam-filled in boulder-choked gorges, and slip through the
+woods in long, tranquil reaches--after thus learning their language and
+forms in detail, we may at length hear them chanting all together in one
+grand anthem, and comprehend them all in clear inner vision, covering
+the range like lace. But even this spectacle is far less sublime and not
+a whit more substantial than what we may behold of these storm-streams
+of air in the mountain woods.
+
+We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never
+occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that
+trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not
+extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back
+again, are only little more than tree-wavings--many of them not so much.
+
+When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through
+the calming woods. The storm-tones died away, and, turning toward the
+east, I beheld the countless hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil,
+towering above one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout
+audience. The setting sun filled them with amber light, and seemed to
+say, while they listened, "My peace I give unto you."
+
+As I gazed on the impressive scene, all the so-called ruin of the storm
+was forgotten, and never before did these noble woods appear so fresh,
+so joyous, so immortal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+THE RIVER FLOODS
+
+The Sierra rivers are flooded every spring by the melting of the snow as
+regularly as the famous old Nile. They begin to rise in May, and in June
+high-water mark is reached. But because the melting does not go on
+rapidly over all the fountains, high and low, simultaneously, and the
+melted snow is not reinforced at this time of year by rain, the spring
+floods are seldom very violent or destructive. The thousand falls,
+however, and the cascades in the ca�ons are then in full bloom, and sing
+songs from one end of the range to the other. Of course the snow on the
+lower tributaries of the rivers is first melted, then that on the higher
+fountains most exposed to sunshine, and about a month later the cooler,
+shadowy fountains send down their treasures, thus allowing the main
+trunk streams nearly six weeks to get their waters hurried through the
+foot-hills and across the lowlands to the sea. Therefore very violent
+spring floods are avoided, and will be as long as the shading,
+restraining forests last. The rivers of the north half of the range are
+still less subject to sudden floods, because their upper fountains in
+great part lie protected from the changes of the weather beneath thick
+folds of lava, just as many of the rivers of Alaska lie beneath folds of
+ice, coming to the light farther down the range in large springs, while
+those of the high Sierra lie on the surface of solid granite, exposed to
+every change of temperature. More than ninety per cent. of the water
+derived from the snow and ice of Mount Shasta is at once absorbed and
+drained away beneath the porous lava folds of the mountain, where
+mumbling and groping in the dark they at length find larger fissures and
+tunnel-like caves from which they emerge, filtered and cool, in the form
+of large springs, some of them so large they give birth to rivers that
+set out on their journeys beneath the sun without any visible
+intermediate period of childhood. Thus the Shasta River issues from a
+large lake-like spring in Shasta Valley, and about two thirds of the
+volume of the McCloud River gushes forth suddenly from the face of a
+lava bluff in a roaring spring seventy-five yards wide.
+
+These spring rivers of the north are of course shorter than those of the
+south whose tributaries extend up to the tops of the mountains. Fall
+River, an important tributary of the Pitt or Upper Sacramento, is only
+about ten miles long, and is all falls, cascades, and springs from its
+head to its confluence with the Pitt. Bountiful springs, charmingly
+embowered, issue from the rocks at one end of it, a snowy fall a hundred
+and eighty feet high thunders at the other, and a rush of crystal rapids
+sing and dance between. Of course such streams are but little affected
+by the weather. Sheltered from evaporation their flow is nearly as full
+in the autumn as in the time of general spring floods. While those of
+the high Sierra diminish to less than the hundredth part of their
+springtime prime, shallowing in autumn to a series of silent pools among
+the rocks and hollows of their channels, connected by feeble, creeping
+threads of water, like the sluggish sentences of a tired writer,
+connected by a drizzle of "ands" and "buts." Strange to say, the
+greatest floods occur in winter, when one would suppose all the wild
+waters would be muffled and chained in frost and snow. The same long,
+all-day storms of the so-called Rainy Season in California, that give
+rain to the lowlands, give dry frosty snow to the mountains. But at rare
+intervals warm rains and warm winds invade the mountains and push back
+the snow line from 2000 feet to 8000, or even higher, and then come the
+big floods.
+
+I was usually driven down out of the High Sierra about the end of
+November, but the winter of 1874 and 1875 was so warm and calm that I
+was tempted to seek general views of the geology and topography of the
+basin of Feather River in January. And I had just completed a hasty
+survey of the region, and made my way down to winter quarters, when one
+of the grandest flood-storms that I ever saw broke on the mountains. I
+was then in the edge of the main forest belt at a small foot-hill town
+called Knoxville, on the divide between the waters of the Feather and
+Yuba rivers. The cause of this notable flood was simply a sudden and
+copious fall of warm wind and rain on the basins of these rivers at a
+time when they contained a considerable quantity of snow. The rain was
+so heavy and long-sustained that it was, of itself, sufficient to make a
+good wild flood, while the snow which the warm wind and rain melted on
+the upper and middle regions of the basins was sufficient to make
+another flood equal to that of the rain. Now these two distinct harvests
+of flood waters were gathered simultaneously and poured out on the plain
+in one magnificent avalanche. The basins of the Yuba and Feather, like
+many others of the Sierra, are admirably adapted to the growth of floods
+of this kind. Their many tributaries radiate far and wide, comprehending
+extensive areas, and the tributaries are steeply inclined, while the
+trunks are comparatively level. While the flood-storm was in progress
+the thermometer at Knoxville ranged between 44� and 50�; and when warm
+wind and warm rain fall simultaneously on snow contained in basins like
+these, both the rain and that portion of the snow which the rain and
+wind melt are at first sponged up and held back until the combined mass
+becomes sludge, which at length, suddenly dissolving, slips and descends
+all together to the trunk channel; and since the deeper the stream the
+faster it flows, the flooded portion of the current above overtakes the
+slower foot-hill portion below it, and all sweeping forward together
+with a high, overcurling front, debouches on the open plain with a
+violence and suddenness that at first seem wholly unaccountable. The
+destructiveness of the lower portion of this particular flood was
+somewhat augmented by mining gravel in the river channels, and by levees
+which gave way after having at first restrained and held back the
+accumulating waters. These exaggerating conditions did not, however,
+greatly influence the general result, the main effect having been caused
+by the rare combination of flood factors indicated above. It is a pity
+that but few people meet and enjoy storms so noble as this in their
+homes in the mountains, for, spending themselves in the open levels of
+the plains, they are likely to be remembered more by the bridges and
+houses they carry away than by their beauty or the thousand blessings
+they bring to the fields and gardens of Nature.
+
+On the morning of the flood, January 19th, all the Feather and Yuba
+landscapes were covered with running water, muddy torrents filled every
+gulch and ravine, and the sky was thick with rain. The pines had long
+been sleeping in sunshine; they were now awake, roaring and waving with
+the beating storm, and the winds sweeping along the curves of hill and
+dale, streaming through the woods, surging and gurgling on the tops of
+rocky ridges, made the wildest of wild storm melody.
+
+It was easy to see that only a small part of the rain reached the ground
+in the form of drops. Most of it was thrashed into dusty spray like that
+into which small waterfalls are divided when they dash on shelving
+rocks. Never have I seen water coming from the sky in denser or more
+passionate streams. The wind chased the spray forward in choking drifts,
+and compelled me again and again to seek shelter in the dell copses and
+back of large trees to rest and catch my breath. Wherever I went, on
+ridges or in hollows, enthusiastic water still flashed and gurgled about
+my ankles, recalling a wild winter flood in Yosemite when a hundred
+waterfalls came booming and chanting together and filled the grand
+valley with a sea-like roar.
+
+After drifting an hour or two in the lower woods, I set out for the
+summit of a hill 900 feet high, with a view to getting as near the heart
+of the storm as possible. In order to reach it I had to cross Dry Creek,
+a tributary of the Yuba that goes crawling along the base of the hill on
+the northwest. It was now a booming river as large as the Tuolumne at
+ordinary stages, its current brown with mining-mud washed down from many
+a "claim," and mottled with sluice-boxes, fence-rails, and logs that had
+long lain above its reach. A slim foot-bridge stretched across it, now
+scarcely above the swollen current. Here I was glad to linger, gazing
+and listening, while the storm was in its richest mood--the gray
+rain-flood above, the brown river-flood beneath. The language of the
+river was scarcely less enchanting than that of the wind and rain; the
+sublime overboom of the main bouncing, exulting current, the swash and
+gurgle of the eddies, the keen dash and clash of heavy waves breaking
+against rocks, and the smooth, downy hush of shallow currents feeling
+their way through the willow thickets of the margin. And amid all this
+varied throng of sounds I heard the smothered bumping and rumbling of
+boulders on the bottom as they were shoving and rolling forward against
+one another in a wild rush, after having lain still for probably 100
+years or more.
+
+The glad creek rose high above its banks and wandered from its channel
+out over many a briery sand-flat and meadow. Alders and willows
+waist-deep were bearing up against the current with nervous trembling
+gestures, as if afraid of being carried away, while supple branches
+bending confidingly, dipped lightly and rose again, as if stroking the
+wild waters in play. Leaving the bridge and passing on through the
+storm-thrashed woods, all the ground seemed to be moving. Pine-tassels,
+flakes of bark, soil, leaves, and broken branches were being swept
+forward, and many a rock-fragment, weathered from exposed ledges, was
+now receiving its first rounding and polishing in the wild streams of
+the storm. On they rushed through every gulch and hollow, leaping,
+gliding, working with a will, and rejoicing like living creatures.
+
+Nor was the flood confined to the ground. Every tree had a water system
+of its own spreading far and wide like miniature Amazons and
+Mississippis.
+
+Toward midday, cloud, wind, and rain reached their highest development.
+The storm was in full bloom, and formed, from my commanding outlook on
+the hilltop, one of the most glorious views I ever beheld. As far as the
+eye could reach, above, beneath, around, wind-driven rain filled the air
+like one vast waterfall. Detached clouds swept imposingly up the valley,
+as if they were endowed with independent motion and had special work to
+do in replenishing the mountain wells, now rising above the pine-tops,
+now descending into their midst, fondling their arrowy spires and
+soothing every branch and leaf with gentleness in the midst of all the
+savage sound and motion. Others keeping near the ground glided behind
+separate groves, and brought them forward into relief with admirable
+distinctness; or, passing in front, eclipsed whole groves in succession,
+pine after pine melting in their gray fringes and bursting forth again
+seemingly clearer than before.
+
+The forms of storms are in great part measured, and controlled by the
+topography of the regions where they rise and over which they pass.
+When, therefore, we attempt to study them from the valleys, or from gaps
+and openings of the forest, we are confounded by a multitude of separate
+and apparently antagonistic impressions. The bottom of the storm is
+broken up into innumerable waves and currents that surge against the
+hillsides like sea-waves against a shore, and these, reacting on the
+nether surface of the storm, erode immense cavernous hollows and ca�ons,
+and sweep forward the resulting detritus in long trains, like the
+moraines of glaciers. But, as we ascend, these partial, confusing
+effects disappear and the phenomena are beheld united and harmonious.
+
+The longer I gazed into the storm, the more plainly visible it became.
+The drifting cloud detritus gave it a kind of visible body, which
+explained many perplexing phenomena, and published its movements in
+plain terms, while the texture of the falling mass of rain rounded it
+out and rendered it more complete. Because raindrops differ in size they
+fall at different velocities and overtake and clash against one another,
+producing mist and spray. They also, of course, yield unequal compliance
+to the force of the wind, which gives rise to a still greater degree of
+interference, and passionate gusts sweep off clouds of spray from the
+groves like that torn from wave-tops in a gale. All these factors of
+irregularity in density, color, and texture of the general rain mass
+tend to make it the more appreciable and telling. It is then seen as one
+grand flood rushing over bank and brae, bending the pines like weeds,
+curving this way and that, whirling in huge eddies in hollows and dells,
+while the main current pours grandly over all, like ocean currents over
+the landscapes that lie hidden at the bottom of the sea.
+
+I watched the gestures of the pines while the storm was at its height,
+and it was easy to see that they were not distressed. Several large
+Sugar Pines stood near the thicket in which I was sheltered, bowing
+solemnly and tossing their long arms as if interpreting the very words
+of the storm while accepting its wildest onsets with passionate
+exhilaration. The lions were feeding. Those who have observed sunflowers
+feasting on sunshine during the golden days of Indian summer know that
+none of their gestures express thankfulness. Their celestial food is too
+heartily given, too heartily taken to leave room for thanks. The pines
+were evidently accepting the benefactions of the storm in the same
+whole-souled manner; and when I looked down among the budding hazels,
+and still lower to the young violets and fern-tufts on the rocks, I
+noticed the same divine methods of giving and taking, and the same
+exquisite adaptations of what seems an outbreak of violent and
+uncontrollable force to the purposes of beautiful and delicate life.
+Calms like sleep come upon landscapes, just as they do on people and
+trees, and storms awaken them in the same way. In the dry midsummer of
+the lower portion of the range the withered hills and valleys seem to
+lie as empty and expressionless as dead shells on a shore. Even the
+highest mountains may be found occasionally dull and uncommunicative as
+if in some way they had lost countenance and shrunk to less than half
+their real stature. But when the lightnings crash and echo in the
+ca�ons, and the clouds come down wreathing and crowning their bald snowy
+heads, every feature beams with expression and they rise again in all
+their imposing majesty.
+
+Storms are fine speakers, and tell all they know, but their voices of
+lightning, torrent, and rushing wind are much less numerous than the
+nameless still, small voices too low for human ears; and because we are
+poor listeners we fail to catch much that is fairly within reach. Our
+best rains are heard mostly on roofs, and winds in chimneys; and when by
+choice or compulsion we are pushed into the heart of a storm, the
+confusion made by cumbersome equipments and nervous haste and mean fear,
+prevent our hearing any other than the loudest expressions. Yet we may
+draw enjoyment from storm sounds that are beyond hearing, and storm
+movements we cannot see. The sublime whirl of planets around their suns
+is as silent as raindrops oozing in the dark among the roots of plants.
+In this great storm, as in every other, there were tones and gestures
+inexpressibly gentle manifested in the midst of what is called violence
+and fury, but easily recognized by all who look and listen for them. The
+rain brought out the colors of the woods with delightful freshness, the
+rich brown of the bark of the trees and the fallen burs and leaves and
+dead ferns; the grays of rocks and lichens; the light purple of swelling
+buds, and the warm yellow greens of the libocedrus and mosses. The air
+was steaming with delightful fragrance, not rising and wafting past in
+separate masses, but diffused through all the atmosphere. Pine woods are
+always fragrant, but most so in spring when the young tassels are
+opening and in warm weather when the various gums and balsams are
+softened by the sun. The wind was now chafing their innumerable needles
+and the warm rain was steeping them. Monardella grows here in large beds
+in the openings, and there is plenty of laurel in dells and manzanita on
+the hillsides, and the rosy, fragrant chamoebatia carpets the ground
+almost everywhere. These, with the gums and balsams of the woods, form
+the main local fragrance-fountains of the storm. The ascending clouds of
+aroma wind-rolled and rain-washed became pure like light and traveled
+with the wind as part of it. Toward the middle of the afternoon the main
+flood cloud lifted along its western border revealing a beautiful
+section of the Sacramento Valley some twenty or thirty miles away,
+brilliantly sun-lighted and glistering with rain-sheets as if paved with
+silver. Soon afterward a jagged bluff-like cloud with a sheer face
+appeared over the valley of the Yuba, dark-colored and roughened with
+numerous furrows like some huge lava-table. The blue Coast Range was
+seen stretching along the sky like a beveled wall, and the somber,
+craggy Marysville Buttes rose impressively out of the flooded plain like
+islands out of the sea. Then the rain began to abate and I sauntered
+down through the dripping bushes reveling in the universal vigor and
+freshness that inspired all the life about me. How clean and unworn and
+immortal the woods seemed to be!--the lofty cedars in full bloom laden
+with golden pollen and their washed plumes shining; the pines rocking
+gently and settling back into rest, and the evening sunbeams spangling
+on the broad leaves of the madro�os, their tracery of yellow boughs
+relieved against dusky thickets of Chestnut Oak; liverworts,
+lycopodiums, ferns were exulting in glorious revival, and every moss
+that had ever lived seemed to be coming crowding back from the dead to
+clothe each trunk and stone in living green. The steaming ground seemed
+fairly to throb and tingle with life; smilax, fritillaria, saxifrage,
+and young violets were pushing up as if already conscious of the summer
+glory, and innumerable green and yellow buds were peeping and smiling
+everywhere.
+
+As for the birds and squirrels, not a wing or tail of them was to be
+seen while the storm was blowing. Squirrels dislike wet weather more
+than cats do; therefore they were at home rocking in their dry nests.
+The birds were hiding in the dells out of the wind, some of the
+strongest of them pecking at acorns and manzanita berries, but most were
+perched on low twigs, their breast feathers puffed out and keeping one
+another company through the hard time as best they could.
+
+When I arrived at the village about sundown, the good people bestirred
+themselves, pitying my bedraggled condition as if I were some benumbed
+castaway snatched from the sea, while I, in turn, warm with excitement
+and reeking like the ground, pitied them for being dry and defrauded of
+all the glory that Nature had spread round about them that day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS
+
+The weather of spring and summer in the middle region of the Sierra is
+usually well flecked with rains and light dustings of snow, most of
+which are far too obviously joyful and life-giving to be regarded as
+storms; and in the picturesque beauty and clearness of outlines of their
+clouds they offer striking contrasts to those boundless, all-embracing
+cloud-mantles of the storms of winter. The smallest and most perfectly
+individualized specimens present a richly modeled cumulous cloud rising
+above the dark woods, about 11 A.M., swelling with a visible motion
+straight up into the calm, sunny sky to a height of 12,000 to 14,000
+feet above the sea, its white, pearly bosses relieved by gray and pale
+purple shadows in the hollows, and showing outlines as keenly defined as
+those of the glacier-polished domes. In less than an hour it attains
+full development and stands poised in the blazing sunshine like some
+colossal mountain, as beautiful in form and finish as if it were to
+become a permanent addition to the landscape. Presently a thunderbolt
+crashes through the crisp air, ringing like steel on steel, sharp and
+clear, its startling detonation breaking into a spray of echoes against
+the cliffs and ca�on walls. Then down comes a cataract of rain. The big
+drops sift through the pine-needles, plash and patter on the granite
+pavements, and pour down the sides of ridges and domes in a network of
+gray, bubbling rills. In a few minutes the cloud withers to a mesh of
+dim filaments and disappears, leaving the sky perfectly clear and
+bright, every dust-particle wiped and washed out of it. Everything is
+refreshed and invigorated, a steam of fragrance rises, and the storm is
+finished--one cloud, one lightning-stroke, and one dash of rain. This is
+the Sierra mid-summer thunder-storm reduced to its lowest terms. But
+some of them attain much larger proportions, and assume a grandeur and
+energy of expression hardly surpassed by those bred in the depths of
+winter, producing those sudden floods called "cloud-bursts," which are
+local, and to a considerable extent periodical, for they appear nearly
+every day about the same time for weeks, usually about eleven o'clock,
+and lasting from five minutes to an hour or two. One soon becomes so
+accustomed to see them that the noon sky seems empty and abandoned
+without them, as if Nature were forgetting something. When the glorious
+pearl and alabaster clouds of these noonday storms are being built I
+never give attention to anything else. No mountain or mountain-range,
+however divinely clothed with light, has a more enduring charm than
+those fleeting mountains of the sky--floating fountains bearing water
+for every well, the angels of the streams and lakes; brooding in the
+deep azure, or sweeping softly along the ground over ridge and dome,
+over meadow, over forest, over garden and grove; lingering with cooling
+shadows, refreshing every flower, and soothing rugged rock-brows with a
+gentleness of touch and gesture wholly divine.
+
+The most beautiful and imposing of the summer storms rise just above the
+upper edge of the Silver Fir zone, and all are so beautiful that it is
+not easy to choose any one for particular description. The one that I
+remember best fell on the mountains near Yosemite Valley, July 19, 1869,
+while I was encamped in the Silver Fir woods. A range of bossy cumuli
+took possession of the sky, huge domes and peaks rising one beyond
+another with deep ca�ons between them, bending this way and that in long
+curves and reaches, interrupted here and there with white upboiling
+masses that looked like the spray of waterfalls. Zigzag lances of
+lightning followed each other in quick succession, and the thunder was
+so gloriously loud and massive it seemed as if surely an entire mountain
+was being shattered at every stroke. Only the trees were touched,
+however, so far as I could see,--a few firs 200 feet high, perhaps, and
+five to six feet in diameter, were split into long rails and slivers
+from top to bottom and scattered to all points of the compass. Then came
+the rain in a hearty flood, covering the ground and making it shine with
+a continuous sheet of water that, like a transparent film or skin,
+fitted closely down over all the rugged anatomy of the landscape.
+
+It is not long, geologically speaking, since the first raindrop fell on
+the present landscapes of the Sierra; and in the few tens of thousands
+of years of stormy cultivation they have been blest with, how beautiful
+they have become! The first rains fell on raw, crumbling moraines and
+rocks without a plant. Now scarcely a drop can fail to find a beautiful
+mark: on the tops of the peaks, on the smooth glacier pavements, on the
+curves of the domes, on moraines full of crystals, on the thousand forms
+of yosemitic sculpture with their tender beauty of balmy, flowery
+vegetation, laving, plashing, glinting, pattering; some falling softly
+on meadows, creeping out of sight, seeking and finding every thirsty
+rootlet, some through the spires of the woods, sifting in dust through
+the needles, and whispering good cheer to each of them; some falling
+with blunt tapping sounds, drumming on the broad leaves of veratrum,
+cypripedium, saxifrage; some falling straight into fragrant corollas,
+kissing the lips of lilies, glinting on the sides of crystals, on
+shining grains of gold; some falling into the fountains of snow to swell
+their well-saved stores; some into the lakes and rivers, patting the
+smooth glassy levels, making dimples and bells and spray, washing the
+mountain windows, washing the wandering winds; some plashing into the
+heart of snowy falls and cascades as if eager to join in the dance and
+the song and beat the foam yet finer. Good work and happy work for the
+merry mountain raindrops, each one of them a brave fall in itself,
+rushing from the cliffs and hollows of the clouds into the cliffs and
+hollows of the mountains; away from the thunder of the sky into the
+thunder of the roaring rivers. And how far they have to go, and how many
+cups to fill--cassiope-cups, holding half a drop, and lake basins
+between the hills, each replenished with equal care--every drop God's
+messenger sent on its way with glorious pomp and display of
+power--silvery new-born stars with lake and river, mountain and
+valley--all that the landscape holds--reflected in their crystal depths.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+THE WATER-OUZEL
+
+The waterfalls of the Sierra are frequented by only one bird,--the Ouzel
+or Water Thrush (_Cinclus Mexicanus_, SW.). He is a singularly
+joyous and lovable little fellow, about the size of a robin, clad in a
+plain waterproof suit of bluish gray, with a tinge of chocolate on the
+head and shoulders. In form he is about as smoothly plump and compact as
+a pebble that has been whirled in a pot-hole, the flowing contour of his
+body being interrupted only by his strong feet and bill, the crisp
+wing-tips, and the up-slanted wren-like tail. Among all the countless
+waterfalls I have met in the course of ten years' exploration in the
+Sierra, whether among the icy peaks, or warm foot-hills, or in the
+profound yosemitic ca�ons of the middle region, not one was found
+without its Ouzel. No ca�on is too cold for this little bird, none too
+lonely, provided it be rich in falling water. Find a fall, or cascade,
+or rushing rapid, anywhere upon a clear stream, and there you will
+surely find its complementary Ouzel, flitting about in the spray, diving
+in foaming eddies, whirling like a leaf among beaten foam-bells; ever
+vigorous and enthusiastic, yet self-contained, and neither seeking nor
+shunning your company.
+
+[Illustration: WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING.]
+
+If disturbed while dipping about in the margin shallows, he either sets
+off with a rapid whir to some other feeding-ground up or down the
+stream, or alights on some half-submerged rock or snag out in the
+current, and immediately begins to nod and courtesy like a wren, turning
+his head from side to side with many other odd dainty movements that
+never fail to fix the attention of the observer.
+
+He is the mountain streams' own darling, the humming-bird of blooming
+waters, loving rocky ripple-slopes and sheets of foam as a bee loves
+flowers, as a lark loves sunshine and meadows. Among all the mountain
+birds, none has cheered me so much in my lonely wanderings,--none so
+unfailingly. For both in winter and summer he sings, sweetly, cheerily,
+independent alike of sunshine and of love, requiring no other
+inspiration than the stream on which he dwells. While water sings, so
+must he, in heat or cold, calm or storm, ever attuning his voice in sure
+accord; low in the drought of summer and the drought of winter, but
+never silent.
+
+During the golden days of Indian summer, after most of the snow has been
+melted, and the mountain streams have become feeble,--a succession of
+silent pools, linked together by shallow, transparent currents and
+strips of silvery lacework,--then the song of the Ouzel is at its lowest
+ebb. But as soon as the winter clouds have bloomed, and the mountain
+treasuries are once more replenished with snow, the voices of the
+streams and ouzels increase in strength and richness until the flood
+season of early summer. Then the torrents chant their noblest anthems,
+and then is the flood-time of our songster's melody. As for weather,
+dark days and sun days are the same to him. The voices of most
+song-birds, however joyous, suffer a long winter eclipse; but the Ouzel
+sings on through all the seasons and every kind of storm. Indeed no
+storm can be more violent than those of the waterfalls in the midst of
+which he delights to dwell. However dark and boisterous the weather,
+snowing, blowing, or cloudy, all the same he sings, and with never a
+note of sadness. No need of spring sunshine to thaw _his_ song, for
+it never freezes. Never shall you hear anything wintry from _his_
+warm breast; no pinched cheeping, no wavering notes between sorrow and
+joy; his mellow, fluty voice is ever tuned to downright gladness, as
+free from dejection as cock-crowing.
+
+It is pitiful to see wee frost-pinched sparrows on cold mornings in the
+mountain groves shaking the snow from their feathers, and hopping about
+as if anxious to be cheery, then hastening back to their hidings out of
+the wind, puffing out their breast-feathers over their toes, and
+subsiding among the leaves, cold and breakfastless, while the snow
+continues to fall, and there is no sign of clearing. But the Ouzel never
+calls forth a single touch of pity; not because he is strong to endure,
+but rather because he seems to live a charmed life beyond the reach of
+every influence that makes endurance necessary.
+
+One wild winter morning, when Yosemite Valley was swept its length from
+west to east by a cordial snow-storm, I sallied forth to see what I
+might learn and enjoy. A sort of gray, gloaming-like darkness filled the
+valley, the huge walls were out of sight, all ordinary sounds were
+smothered, and even the loudest booming of the falls was at times buried
+beneath the roar of the heavy-laden blast. The loose snow was already
+over five feet deep on the meadows, making extended walks impossible
+without the aid of snow-shoes. I found no great difficulty, however, in
+making my way to a certain ripple on the river where one of my ouzels
+lived. He was at home, busily gleaning his breakfast among the pebbles
+of a shallow portion of the margin, apparently unaware of anything
+extraordinary in the weather. Presently he flew out to a stone against
+which the icy current was beating, and turning his back to the wind,
+sang as delightfully as a lark in springtime.
+
+After spending an hour or two with my favorite, I made my way across the
+valley, boring and wallowing through the drifts, to learn as definitely
+as possible how the other birds were spending their time. The Yosemite
+birds are easily found during the winter because all of them excepting
+the Ouzel are restricted to the sunny north side of the valley, the
+south side being constantly eclipsed by the great frosty shadow of the
+wall. And because the Indian Ca�on groves, from their peculiar exposure,
+are the warmest, the birds congregate there, more especially in severe
+weather.
+
+I found most of the robins cowering on the lee side of the larger
+branches where the snow could not fall upon them, while two or three of
+the more enterprising were making desperate efforts to reach the
+mistletoe berries by clinging nervously to the under side of the
+snow-crowned masses, back downward, like woodpeckers. Every now and then
+they would dislodge some of the loose fringes of the snow-crown, which
+would come sifting down on them and send them screaming back to camp,
+where they would subside among their companions with a shiver, muttering
+in low, querulous chatter like hungry children.
+
+Some of the sparrows were busy at the feet of the larger trees gleaning
+seeds and benumbed insects, joined now and then by a robin weary of his
+unsuccessful attempts upon the snow-covered berries. The brave
+woodpeckers were clinging to the snowless sides of the larger boles and
+overarching branches of the camp trees, making short nights from side to
+side of the grove, pecking now and then at the acorns they had stored in
+the bark, and chattering aimlessly as if unable to keep still, yet
+evidently putting in the time in a very dull way, like storm-bound
+travelers at a country tavern. The hardy nut-hatches were threading the
+open furrows of the trunks in their usual industrious manner, and
+uttering their quaint notes, evidently less distressed than their
+neighbors. The Steller jays were of course making more noisy stir than
+all the other birds combined; ever coming and going with loud bluster,
+screaming as if each had a lump of melting sludge in his throat, and
+taking good care to improve the favorable opportunity afforded by the
+storm to steal from the acorn stores of the woodpeckers. I also noticed
+one solitary gray eagle braving the storm on the top of a tall
+pine-stump just outside the main grove. He was standing bolt upright
+with his back to the wind, a tuft of snow piled on his square shoulders,
+a monument of passive endurance. Thus every snow-bound bird seemed more
+or less uncomfortable if not in positive distress.
+
+The storm was reflected in every gesture, and not one cheerful note, not
+to say song, came from a single bill; their cowering, joyless endurance
+offering a striking contrast to the spontaneous, irrepressible gladness
+of the Ouzel, who could no more help exhaling sweet song than a rose
+sweet fragrance. He _must_ sing though the heavens fall. I remember
+noticing the distress of a pair of robins during the violent earthquake
+of the year 1872, when the pines of the Valley, with strange movements,
+flapped and waved their branches, and beetling rock-brows came
+thundering down to the meadows in tremendous avalanches. It did not
+occur to me in the midst of the excitement of other observations to look
+for the ouzels, but I doubt not they were singing straight on through it
+all, regarding the terrible rock-thunder as fearlessly as they do the
+booming of the waterfalls.
+
+What may be regarded as the separate songs of the Ouzel are exceedingly
+difficult of description, because they are so variable and at the same
+time so confluent. Though I have been acquainted with my favorite ten
+years, and during most of this time have heard him sing nearly every
+day, I still detect notes and strains that seem new to me. Nearly all of
+his music is sweet and tender, lapsing from his round breast like water
+over the smooth lip of a pool, then breaking farther on into a sparkling
+foam of melodious notes, which, glow with subdued enthusiasm, yet
+without expressing much of the strong, gushing ecstasy of the bobolink
+or skylark.
+
+The more striking strains are perfect arabesques of melody, composed of
+a few full, round, mellow notes, embroidered with delicate trills which
+fade and melt in long slender cadences. In a general way his music is
+that of the streams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of
+the falls are in it, the trills of rapids, the gurgling of margin
+eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of
+separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses and falling into tranquil
+pools.
+
+The Ouzel never sings in chorus with other birds, nor with his kind, but
+only with the streams. And like flowers that bloom beneath the surface
+of the ground, some of our favorite's best song-blossoms never rise
+above the surface of the heavier music of the water. I have often
+observed him singing in the midst of beaten spray, his music completely
+buried beneath the water's roar; yet I knew he was surely singing by his
+gestures and the movements of his bill.
+
+His food, as far as I have noticed, consists of all kinds of water
+insects, which in summer are chiefly procured along shallow margins.
+Here he wades about ducking his head under water and deftly turning over
+pebbles and fallen leaves with his bill, seldom choosing to go into deep
+water where he has to use his wings in diving.
+
+He seems to be especially fond of the larvae; of mosquitos, found in
+abundance attached to the bottom of smooth rock channels where the
+current is shallow. When feeding in such places he wades up-stream, and
+often while his head is under water the swift current is deflected
+upward along the glossy curves of his neck and shoulders, in the form of
+a clear, crystalline shell, which fairly incloses him like a bell-glass,
+the shell being broken and re-formed as he lifts and dips his head;
+while ever and anon he sidles out to where the too powerful current
+carries him off his feet; then he dexterously rises on the wing and goes
+gleaning again in shallower places.
+
+But during the winter, when the stream-banks are embossed in snow, and
+the streams themselves are chilled nearly to the freezing-point, so that
+the snow falling into them in stormy weather is not wholly dissolved,
+but forms a thin, blue sludge, thus rendering the current opaque--then
+he seeks the deeper portions of the main rivers, where he may dive to
+clear water beneath the sludge. Or he repairs to some open lake or
+mill-pond, at the bottom of which he feeds in safety.
+
+When thus compelled to betake himself to a lake, he does not plunge into
+it at once like a duck, but always alights in the first place upon some
+rock or fallen pine along the shore. Then flying out thirty or forty
+yards, more or less, according to the character of the bottom, he
+alights with a dainty glint on the surface, swims about, looks down,
+finally makes up his mind, and disappears with a sharp stroke of his
+wings. After feeding for two or three minutes he suddenly reappears,
+showers the water from his wings with one vigorous shake, and rises
+abruptly into the air as if pushed up from beneath, comes back to his
+perch, sings a few minutes, and goes out to dive again; thus coming and
+going, singing and diving at the same place for hours.
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL.]
+
+The Ouzel is usually found singly; rarely in pairs, excepting during the
+breeding season, and _very_ rarely in threes or fours. I once
+observed three thus spending a winter morning in company, upon a small
+glacier lake, on the Upper Merced, about 7500 feet above the level of
+the sea. A storm had occurred during the night, but the morning sun
+shone unclouded, and the shadowy lake, gleaming darkly in its setting of
+fresh snow, lay smooth and motionless as a mirror. My camp chanced to be
+within a few feet of the water's edge, opposite a fallen pine, some of
+the branches of which leaned out over the lake. Here my three dearly
+welcome visitors took up their station, and at once began to embroider
+the frosty air with their delicious melody, doubly delightful to me that
+particular morning, as I had been somewhat apprehensive of danger in
+breaking my way down through the snow-choked ca�ons to the lowlands.
+
+The portion of the lake bottom selected for a feeding-ground lies at a
+depth of fifteen or twenty feet below the surface, and is covered with a
+short growth of algae and other aquatic plants,--facts I had previously
+determined while sailing over it on a raft. After alighting on the
+glassy surface, they occasionally indulged in a little play, chasing one
+another round about in small circles; then all three would suddenly dive
+together, and then come ashore and sing.
+
+The Ouzel seldom swims more than a few yards on the surface, for, not
+being web-footed, he makes rather slow progress, but by means of his
+strong, crisp wings he swims, or rather flies, with celerity under the
+surface, often to considerable distances. But it is in withstanding the
+force of heavy rapids that his strength of wing in this respect is most
+strikingly manifested. The following may be regarded as a fair
+illustration of his power of sub-aquatic flight. One stormy morning in
+winter when the Merced River was blue and green with unmelted snow, I
+observed one of my ouzels perched on a snag out in the midst of a
+swift-rushing rapid, singing cheerily, as if everything was just to his
+mind; and while I stood on the bank admiring him, he suddenly plunged
+into the sludgy current, leaving his song abruptly broken off. After
+feeding a minute or two at the bottom, and when one would suppose that
+he must inevitably be swept far down-stream, he emerged just where he
+went down, alighted on the same snag, showered the water-beads from his
+feathers, and continued his unfinished song, seemingly in tranquil ease
+as if it had suffered no interruption.
+
+[Illustration: OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT.]
+
+The Ouzel alone of all birds dares to enter a white torrent. And though
+strictly terrestrial in structure, no other is so inseparably related
+to water, not even the duck, or the bold ocean albatross, or the
+stormy-petrel. For ducks go ashore as soon as they finish feeding in
+undisturbed places, and very often make long flights over land from lake
+to lake or field to field. The same is true of most other aquatic birds.
+But the Ouzel, born on the brink of a stream, or on a snag or boulder
+in the midst of it, seldom leaves it for a single moment. For,
+notwithstanding he is often on the wing, he never flies overland, but
+whirs with, rapid, quail-like beat above the stream, tracing all its
+windings. Even when the stream is quite small, say from five to ten feet
+wide, he seldom shortens his flight by crossing a bend, however abrupt
+it may be; and even when disturbed by meeting some one on the bank, he
+prefers to fly over one's head, to dodging out over the ground. When,
+therefore, his flight along a crooked stream is viewed endwise, it
+appears most strikingly wavered--a description on the air of every curve
+with lightning-like rapidity.
+
+The vertical curves and angles of the most precipitous torrents he
+traces with the same rigid fidelity, swooping down the inclines of
+cascades, dropping sheer over dizzy falls amid the spray, and ascending
+with the same fearlessness and ease, seldom seeking to lessen the
+steepness of the acclivity by beginning to ascend before reaching the
+base of the fall. No matter though it may be several hundred feet in
+height he holds straight on, as if about to dash headlong into the
+throng of booming rockets, then darts abruptly upward, and, after
+alighting at the top of the precipice to rest a moment, proceeds to feed
+and sing. His flight is solid and impetuous, without any intermission of
+wing-beats,--one homogeneous buzz like that of a laden bee on its way
+home. And while thus buzzing freely from fall to fall, he is frequently
+heard giving utterance to a long outdrawn train of unmodulated notes, in
+no way connected with his song, but corresponding closely with his
+flight in sustained vigor.
+
+Were the flights of all the ouzels in the Sierra traced on a chart, they
+would indicate the direction of the flow of the entire system of ancient
+glaciers, from about the period of the breaking up of the ice-sheet
+until near the close of the glacial winter; because the streams which
+the ouzels so rigidly follow are, with the unimportant exceptions of a
+few side tributaries, all flowing in channels eroded for them out of the
+solid flank of the range by the vanished glaciers,--the streams tracing
+the ancient glaciers, the ouzels tracing the streams. Nor do we find so
+complete compliance to glacial conditions in the life of any other
+mountain bird, or animal of any kind. Bears frequently accept the
+pathways laid down by glaciers as the easiest to travel; but they often
+leave them and cross over from ca�on to ca�on. So also, most of the
+birds trace the moraines to some extent, because the forests are growing
+on them. But they wander far, crossing the ca�ons from grove to grove,
+and draw exceedingly angular and complicated courses.
+
+The Ouzel's nest is one of the most extraordinary pieces of bird
+architecture I ever saw, odd and novel in design, perfectly fresh and
+beautiful, and in every way worthy of the genius of the little builder.
+It is about a foot in diameter, round and bossy in outline, with a
+neatly arched opening near the bottom, somewhat like an old-fashioned
+brick oven, or Hottentot's hut. It is built almost exclusively of green
+and yellow mosses, chiefly the beautiful fronded hypnum that covers the
+rocks and old drift-logs in the vicinity of waterfalls. These are deftly
+interwoven, and felted together into a charming little hut; and so
+situated that many of the outer mosses continue to flourish as if they
+had not been plucked. A few fine, silky-stemmed grasses are occasionally
+found interwoven with the mosses, but, with the exception of a thin
+layer lining the floor, their presence seems accidental, as they are of
+a species found growing with the mosses and are probably plucked with
+them. The site chosen for this curious mansion is usually some little
+rock-shelf within reach of the lighter particles of the spray of a
+waterfall, so that its walls are kept green and growing, at least during
+the time of high water.
+
+No harsh lines are presented by any portion of the nest as seen in
+place, but when removed from its shelf, the back and bottom, and
+sometimes a portion of the top, is found quite sharply angular, because
+it is made to conform to the surface of the rock upon which and against
+which it is built, the little architect always taking advantage of
+slight crevices and protuberances that may chance to offer, to render
+his structure stable by means of a kind of gripping and dovetailing.
+
+In choosing a building-spot, concealment does not seem to be taken into
+consideration; yet notwithstanding the nest is large and guilelessly
+exposed to view, it is far from being easily detected, chiefly because
+it swells forward like any other bulging moss-cushion growing naturally
+in such situations. This is more especially the case where the nest is
+kept fresh by being well sprinkled. Sometimes these romantic little huts
+have their beauty enhanced by rock-ferns and grasses that spring up
+around the mossy walls, or in front of the door-sill, dripping with
+crystal beads.
+
+Furthermore, at certain hours of the day, when the sunshine is poured
+down at the required angle, the whole mass of the spray enveloping the
+fairy establishment is brilliantly irised; and it is through so glorious
+a rainbow atmosphere as this that some of our blessed ouzels obtain
+their first peep at the world.
+
+Ouzels seem so completely part and parcel of the streams they inhabit,
+they scarce suggest any other origin than the streams themselves; and
+one might almost be pardoned in fancying they come direct from the
+living waters, like flowers from the ground. At least, from whatever
+cause, it never occurred to me to look for their nests until more than a
+year after I had made the acquaintance of the birds themselves, although
+I found one the very day on which I began the search. In making my way
+from Yosemite to the glaciers at the heads of the Merced and Tuolumne
+rivers, I camped in a particularly wild and romantic portion of the
+Nevada ca�on where in previous excursions I had never failed to enjoy
+the company of my favorites, who were attracted here, no doubt, by the
+safe nesting-places in the shelving rocks, and by the abundance of food
+and falling water. The river, for miles above and below, consists of a
+succession of small falls from ten to sixty feet in height, connected by
+flat, plume-like cascades that go flashing from fall to fall, free and
+almost channelless, over waving folds of glacier-polished granite.
+
+On the south side of one of the falls, that portion of the precipice
+which is bathed by the spray presents a series of little shelves and
+tablets caused by the development of planes of cleavage in the granite,
+and by the consequent fall of masses through the action of the water.
+"Now here," said I, "of all places, is the most charming spot for an
+Ouzel's nest." Then carefully scanning the fretted face of the precipice
+through the spray, I at length noticed a yellowish moss-cushion, growing
+on the edge of a level tablet within five or six feet of the outer folds
+of the fall. But apart from the fact of its being situated where one
+acquainted with the lives of ouzels would fancy an Ouzel's nest ought to
+be, there was nothing in its appearance visible at first sight, to
+distinguish it from other bosses of rock-moss similarly situated with
+reference to perennial spray; and it was not until I had scrutinized it
+again and again, and had removed my shoes and stockings and crept along
+the face of the rock within eight or ten feet of it, that I could decide
+certainly whether it was a nest or a natural growth.
+
+In these moss huts three or four eggs are laid, white like foam-bubbles;
+and well may the little birds hatched from them sing water songs, for
+they hear them all their lives, and even before they are born.
+
+I have often observed the young just out of the nest making their odd
+gestures, and seeming in every way as much at home as their experienced
+parents, like young bees on their first excursions to the flower fields.
+No amount of familiarity with people and their ways seems to change them
+in the least. To all appearance their behavior is just the same on
+seeing a man for the first time, as when they have seen him frequently.
+
+[Illustration: THE OUZEL AT HOME.]
+
+On the lower reaches of the rivers where mills are built, they sing on
+through the din of the machinery, and all the noisy confusion of dogs,
+cattle, and workmen. On one occasion, while a wood-chopper was at work
+on the river-bank, I observed one cheerily singing within reach of the
+flying chips. Nor does any kind of unwonted disturbance put him in bad
+humor, or frighten him out of calm self-possession. In passing through a
+narrow gorge, I once drove one ahead of me from rapid to rapid,
+disturbing him four times in quick succession where he could not very
+well fly past me on account of the narrowness of the channel. Most birds
+under similar circumstances fancy themselves pursued, and become
+suspiciously uneasy; but, instead of growing nervous about it, he made
+his usual dippings, and sang one of his most tranquil strains. When
+observed within a few yards their eyes are seen to express remarkable
+gentleness and intelligence; but they seldom allow so near a view unless
+one wears clothing of about the same color as the rocks and trees, and
+knows how to sit still. On one occasion, while rambling along the shore
+of a mountain lake, where the birds, at least those born that season,
+had never seen a man, I sat down to rest on a large stone close to the
+water's edge, upon which it seemed the ouzels and sandpipers were in the
+habit of alighting when they came to feed on that part of the shore, and
+some of the other birds also, when they came down to wash or drink. In a
+few minutes, along came a whirring Ouzel and alighted on the stone
+beside me, within reach of my hand. Then suddenly observing me, he
+stooped nervously as if about to fly on the instant, but as I remained
+as motionless as the stone, he gained confidence, and looked me steadily
+in the face for about a minute, then flew quietly to the outlet and
+began to sing. Next came a sandpiper and gazed at me with much the same
+guileless expression of eye as the Ouzel. Lastly, down with a swoop came
+a Steller's jay out of a fir-tree, probably with the intention of
+moistening his noisy throat. But instead of sitting confidingly as my
+other visitors had done, he rushed off at once, nearly tumbling heels
+over head into the lake in his suspicious confusion, and with loud
+screams roused the neighborhood.
+
+Love for song-birds, with their sweet human voices, appears to be more
+common and unfailing than love for flowers. Every one loves flowers to
+some extent, at least in life's fresh morning, attracted by them as
+instinctively as humming-birds and bees. Even the young Digger Indians
+have sufficient love for the brightest of those found growing on the
+mountains to gather them and braid them, as decorations for the hair.
+And I was glad to discover, through the few Indians that could be
+induced to talk on the subject, that they have names for the wild rose
+and the lily, and other conspicuous flowers, whether available as food
+or otherwise. Most men, however, whether savage or civilized, become
+apathetic toward all plants that have no other apparent use than the use
+of beauty. But fortunately one's first instinctive love of song-birds is
+never wholly obliterated, no matter what the influences upon our lives
+may be. I have often been delighted to see a pure, spiritual glow come
+into the countenances of hard business-men and old miners, when a
+song-bird chanced to alight near them. Nevertheless, the little mouthful
+of meat that swells out the breasts of some song-birds is too often the
+cause of their death. Larks and robins in particular are brought to
+market in hundreds. But fortunately the Ouzel has no enemy so eager to
+eat his little body as to follow him into the mountain solitudes. I
+never knew him to be chased even by hawks.
+
+An acquaintance of mine, a sort of foot-hill mountaineer, had a pet cat,
+a great, dozy, overgrown creature, about as broad-shouldered as a lynx.
+During the winter, while the snow lay deep, the mountaineer sat in his
+lonely cabin among the pines smoking his pipe and wearing the dull time
+away. Tom was his sole companion, sharing his bed, and sitting beside
+him on a stool with much the same drowsy expression of eye as his
+master. The good-natured bachelor was content with his hard fare of
+soda-bread and bacon, but Tom, the only creature in the world
+acknowledging dependence on him, must needs be provided with fresh meat.
+Accordingly he bestirred himself to contrive squirrel-traps, and waded
+the snowy woods with his gun, making sad havoc among the few winter
+birds, sparing neither robin, sparrow, nor tiny nuthatch, and the
+pleasure of seeing Tom eat and grow fat was his great reward.
+
+One cold afternoon, while hunting along the river-bank, he noticed a
+plain-feathered little bird skipping about in the shallows, and
+immediately raised his gun. But just then the confiding songster began
+to sing, and after listening to his summery melody the charmed hunter
+turned away, saying, "Bless your little heart, I can't shoot you, not
+even for Tom."
+
+[Illustration: YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CA�ON.]
+
+Even so far north as icy Alaska, I have found my glad singer. When I was
+exploring the glaciers between Mount Fairweather and the Stikeen River,
+one cold day in November, after trying in vain to force a way through
+the innumerable icebergs of Sum Dum Bay to the great glaciers at the
+head of it, I was weary and baffled and sat resting in my canoe
+convinced at last that I would have to leave this part of my work for
+another year. Then I began to plan my escape to open water before the
+young ice which was beginning to form should shut me in. While I thus
+lingered drifting with the bergs, in the midst of these gloomy
+forebodings and all the terrible glacial desolation and grandeur, I
+suddenly heard the well-known whir of an Ouzel's wings, and, looking up,
+saw my little comforter coming straight across the ice from the shore.
+In a second or two he was with me, flying three times round my head with
+a happy salute, as if saying, "Cheer up, old friend; you see I'm here,
+and all's well." Then he flew back to the shore, alighted on the topmost
+jag of a stranded iceberg, and began to nod and bow as though he were on
+one of his favorite boulders in the midst of a sunny Sierra cascade.
+
+The species is distributed all along the mountain-ranges of the Pacific
+Coast from Alaska to Mexico, and east to the Rocky Mountains.
+Nevertheless, it is as yet comparatively little known. Audubon and
+Wilson did not meet it. Swainson was, I believe, the first naturalist to
+describe a specimen from Mexico. Specimens were shortly afterward
+procured by Drummond near the sources of the Athabasca River, between
+the fifty-fourth and fifty-sixth parallels; and it has been collected by
+nearly all of the numerous exploring expeditions undertaken of late
+through our Western States and Territories; for it never fails to engage
+the attention of naturalists in a very particular manner.
+
+Such, then, is our little cinclus, beloved of every one who is so
+fortunate as to know him. Tracing on strong wing every curve of the most
+precipitous torrents from one extremity of the Sierra to the other; not
+fearing to follow them through their darkest gorges and coldest
+snow-tunnels; acquainted with every waterfall, echoing their divine
+music; and throughout the whole of their beautiful lives interpreting
+all that we in our unbelief call terrible in the utterances of torrents
+and storms, as only varied expressions of God's eternal love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+THE WILD SHEEP
+(_Ovis montana_)
+
+The wild sheep ranks highest among the animal mountaineers of the
+Sierra. Possessed of keen sight and scent, and strong limbs, he dwells
+secure amid the loftiest summits, leaping unscathed from crag to crag,
+up and down the fronts of giddy precipices, crossing foaming torrents
+and slopes of frozen snow, exposed to the wildest storms, yet
+maintaining a brave, warm life, and developing from generation to
+generation in perfect strength and beauty.
+
+Nearly all the lofty mountain-chains of the globe are inhabited by wild
+sheep, most of which, on account of the remote and all but inaccessible
+regions where they dwell, are imperfectly known as yet. They are
+classified by different naturalists under from five to ten distinct
+species or varieties, the best known being the burrhel of the Himalaya
+(_Ovis burrhel_, Blyth); the argali, the large wild sheep of
+central and northeastern Asia (_O. ammon_, Linn., or _Caprovis
+argali_); the Corsican mouflon (_O. musimon_, Pal.); the aoudad
+of the mountains of northern Africa (_Ammotragus tragelaphus_); and
+the Rocky Mountain bighorn (_O. montana_, Cuv.). To this last-named
+species belongs the wild sheep of the Sierra. Its range, according to
+the late Professor Baird of the Smithsonian Institution, extends "from
+the region of the upper Missouri and Yellowstone to the Rocky Mountains
+and the high grounds adjacent to them on the eastern slope, and as far
+south as the Rio Grande. Westward it extends to the coast ranges of
+Washington, Oregon, and California, and follows the highlands some
+distance into Mexico."[1] Throughout the vast region bounded on the east
+by the Wahsatch Mountains and on the west by the Sierra there are more
+than a hundred subordinate ranges and mountain groups, trending north
+and south, range beyond range, with summits rising from eight to twelve
+thousand feet above the level of the sea, probably all of which,
+according to my own observations, is, or has been, inhabited by this
+species.
+
+Compared with the argali, which, considering its size and the vast
+extent of its range, is probably the most important of all the wild
+sheep, our species is about the same size, but the horns are less
+twisted and less divergent. The more important characteristics are,
+however, essentially the same, some of the best naturalists maintaining
+that the two are only varied forms of one species. In accordance with
+this view, Cuvier conjectures that since central Asia seems to be the
+region where the sheep first appeared, and from which it has been
+distributed, the argali may have been distributed over this continent
+from Asia by crossing Bering Strait on ice. This conjecture is not so
+ill founded as at first sight would appear; for the Strait is only about
+fifty miles wide, is interrupted by three islands, and is jammed with
+ice nearly every winter. Furthermore the argali is abundant on the
+mountains adjacent to the Strait at East Cape, where it is well known to
+the Tschuckchi hunters and where I have seen many of their horns.
+
+On account of the extreme variability of the sheep under culture, it is
+generally supposed that the innumerable domestic breeds have all been
+derived from the few wild species; but the whole question is involved in
+obscurity. According to Darwin, sheep have been domesticated from a very
+ancient period, the remains of a small breed, differing from any now
+known, having been found in the famous Swiss lake-dwellings.
+
+Compared with the best-known domestic breeds, we find that our wild
+species is much larger, and, instead of an all-wool garment, wears a
+thick over-coat of hair like that of the deer, and an under-covering of
+fine wool. The hair, though rather coarse, is comfortably soft and
+spongy, and lies smooth, as if carefully tended with comb and brush. The
+predominant color during most of the year is brownish-gray, varying to
+bluish-gray in the autumn; the belly and a large, conspicuous patch on
+the buttocks are white; and the tail, which is very short, like that of
+a deer, is black, with a yellowish border. The wool is white, and grows
+in beautiful spirals down out of sight among the shining hair, like
+delicate climbing vines among stalks of corn.
+
+The horns of the male are of immense size, measuring in their greater
+diameter from five to six and a half inches, and from two and a half to
+three feet in length around the curve. They are yellowish-white in
+color, and ridged transversely, like those of the domestic ram. Their
+cross-section near the base is somewhat triangular in outline, and
+flattened toward the tip. Rising boldly from the top of the head, they
+curve gently backward and outward, then forward and outward, until about
+three fourths of a circle is described, and until the flattened, blunt
+tips are about two feet or two and a half feet apart. Those of the
+female are flattened throughout their entire length, are less curved
+than those of the male, and much smaller, measuring less than a foot
+along the curve.
+
+A ram and ewe that I obtained near the Modoc lava-beds, to the northeast
+of Mount Shasta, measured as follows:
+
+                                             _Ram.       Ewe._
+                                          _ft. in.     ft. in._
+  Height at shoulders                       3   6       3   0
+  Girth around shoulders                    3  11       3   3-3/4
+  Length from nose to root of tail          5  10-1/4   4   3-1/2
+  Length of ears                            0   4-3/4   0   5
+  Length of tail                            0   4-1/2   0   4-1/2
+  Length of horns around curve              2   9       0  11-1/2
+  Distance across from tip to tip of horns  2   5-1/2
+  Circumference of horns at base            1   4       0   6
+
+The measurements of a male obtained in the Rocky Mountains by Audubon
+vary but little as compared with the above. The weight of his specimen
+was 344 pounds,[2] which is, perhaps, about an average for full-grown
+males. The females are about a third lighter.
+
+Besides these differences in size, color, hair, etc., as noted above, we
+may observe that the domestic sheep, in a general way, is expressionless,
+like a dull bundle of something only half alive, while the wild is as
+elegant and graceful as a deer, every movement manifesting admirable
+strength and character. The tame is timid; the wild is bold. The tame
+is always more or less ruffled and dirty; while the wild is as smooth
+and clean as the flowers of his mountain pastures.
+
+The earliest mention that I have been able to find of the wild sheep in
+America is by Father Picolo, a Catholic missionary at Monterey, in the
+year 1797, who, after describing it, oddly enough, as "a kind of deer
+with a sheep-like head, and about as large as a calf one or two years
+old," naturally hurries on to remark: "I have eaten of these beasts;
+their flesh is very tender and delicious." Mackenzie, in his northern
+travels, heard the species spoken of by the Indians as "white buffaloes."
+And Lewis and Clark tell us that, in a time of great scarcity on the
+head waters of the Missouri, they saw plenty of wild sheep, but they
+were "too shy to be shot."
+
+A few of the more energetic of the Pah Ute Indians hunt the wild sheep
+every season among the more accessible sections of the High Sierra, in
+the neighborhood of passes, where, from having been pursued, they have
+become extremely wary; but in the rugged wilderness of peaks and ca�ons,
+where the foaming tributaries of the San Joaquin and King's rivers take
+their rise, they fear no hunter save the wolf, and are more guileless
+and approachable than their tame kindred.
+
+While engaged in the work of exploring high regions where they delight
+to roam I have been greatly interested in studying their habits. In the
+months of November and December, and probably during a considerable
+portion of midwinter, they all flock together, male and female, old and
+young. I once found a complete band of this kind numbering upward of
+fifty, which, on being alarmed, went bounding away across a jagged
+lava-bed at admirable speed, led by a majestic old ram, with the lambs
+safe in the middle of the flock.
+
+In spring and summer, the full-grown rams form separate bands of from
+three to twenty, and are usually found feeding along the edges of
+glacier meadows, or resting among the castle-like crags of the high
+summits; and whether quietly feeding, or scaling the wild cliffs, their
+noble forms and the power and beauty of their movements never fail to
+strike the beholder with lively admiration.
+
+Their resting-places seem to be chosen with reference to sunshine and a
+wide outlook, and most of all to safety. Their feeding-grounds are among
+the most beautiful of the wild gardens, bright with daisies and gentians
+and mats of purple bryanthus, lying hidden away on rocky headlands and
+ca�on sides, where sunshine is abundant, or down in the shady glacier
+valleys, along the banks of the streams and lakes, where the plushy sod
+is greenest. Here they feast all summer, the happy wanderers, perhaps
+relishing the beauty as well as the taste of the lovely flora on which
+they feed.
+
+[Illustration: SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA.]
+
+When the winter storms set in, loading their highland pastures with
+snow, then, like the birds, they gather and go to lower climates,
+usually descending the eastern flank of the range to the rough, volcanic
+table-lands and treeless ranges of the Great Basin adjacent to the
+Sierra. They never make haste, however, and seem to have no dread of
+storms, many of the strongest only going down leisurely to bare,
+wind-swept ridges, to feed on bushes and dry bunch-grass, and then
+returning up into the snow. Once I was snow-bound on Mount Shasta for
+three days, a little below the timber line. It was a dark and stormy
+time, well calculated to test the skill and endurance of mountaineers.
+The snow-laden gale drove on night and day in hissing, blinding floods,
+and when at length it began to abate, I found that a small band of wild
+sheep had weathered the storm in the lee of a clump of Dwarf Pines a few
+yards above my storm-nest, where the snow was eight or ten feet deep. I
+was warm back of a rock, with blankets, bread, and fire. My brave
+companions lay in the snow, without food, and with only the partial
+shelter of the short trees, yet they made no sign of suffering or
+faint-heartedness.
+
+In the months of May and June, the wild sheep bring forth their young in
+solitary and almost inaccessible crags, far above the nesting-rocks of
+the eagle. I have frequently come upon the beds of the ewes and lambs at
+an elevation of from 12,000 to 13,000 feet above sea-level. These beds
+are simply oval-shaped hollows, pawed out among loose, disintegrating
+rock-chips and sand, upon some sunny spot commanding a good outlook, and
+partially sheltered from the winds that sweep those lofty peaks almost
+without intermission. Such is the cradle of the little mountaineer,
+aloft in the very sky; rocked in storms, curtained in clouds, sleeping
+in thin, icy air; but, wrapped in his hairy coat, and nourished by a
+strong, warm mother, defended from the talons of the eagle and the teeth
+of the sly coyote, the bonny lamb grows apace. He soon learns to nibble
+the tufted rock-grasses and leaves of the white spirsea; his horns begin
+to shoot, and before summer is done he is strong and agile, and goes
+forth with the flock, watched by the same divine love that tends the
+more helpless human lamb in its cradle by the fireside.
+
+Nothing is more commonly remarked by noisy, dusty trail-travelers in
+the Sierra than the want of animal life--no song-birds, no deer, no
+squirrels, no game of any kind, they say. But if such could only go away
+quietly into the wilderness, sauntering afoot and alone with natural
+deliberation, they would soon learn that these mountain mansions are not
+without inhabitants, many of whom, confiding and gentle, would not try
+to shun their acquaintance.
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM (DOMESTIC).]
+
+In the fall of 1873 I was tracing the South Fork of the San Joaquin up
+its wild ca�on to its farthest glacier fountains. It was the season of
+alpine Indian summer. The sun beamed lovingly; the squirrels were
+nutting in the pine-trees, butterflies hovered about the last of the
+goldenrods, the willow and maple thickets were yellow, the meadows
+brown, and the whole sunny, mellow landscape glowed like a countenance
+in the deepest and sweetest repose. On my way over the glacier-polished
+rocks along the river, I came to an expanded portion of the ca�on, about
+two miles long and half a mile wide, which formed a level park inclosed
+with picturesque granite walls like those of Yosemite Valley. Down
+through the middle of it poured the beautiful river shining and
+spangling in the golden light, yellow groves on its banks, and strips of
+brown meadow; while the whole park was astir with wild life, some of
+which even the noisiest and least observing of travelers must have seen
+had they been with me. Deer, with their supple, well-grown fawns,
+bounded from thicket to thicket as I advanced; grouse kept rising from
+the brown grass with a great whirring of wings, and, alighting on the
+lower branches of the pines and poplars, allowed a near approach, as if
+curious to see me. Farther on, a broad-shouldered wildcat showed
+himself, coming out of a grove, and crossing the river on a flood-jamb
+of logs, halting for a moment to look back. The bird-like tamias frisked
+about my feet everywhere among the pine-needles and seedy grass-tufts;
+cranes waded the shallows of the river-bends, the kingfisher rattled
+from perch to perch, and the blessed ouzel sang amid the spray of every
+cascade. Where may lonely wanderer find a more interesting family of
+mountain-dwellers, earth-born companions and fellow-mortals? It was
+afternoon when I joined them, and the glorious landscape began to fade
+in the gloaming before I awoke from their enchantment. Then I sought a
+camp-ground on the river-bank, made a cupful of tea, and lay down to
+sleep on a smooth place among the yellow leaves of an aspen grove. Next
+day I discovered yet grander landscapes and grander life. Following the
+river over huge, swelling rock-bosses through a majestic ca�on, and past
+innumerable cascades, the scenery in general became gradually wilder and
+more alpine. The Sugar Pine and Silver Firs gave place to the hardier
+Cedar and Hemlock Spruce. The ca�on walls became more rugged and bare,
+and gentians and arctic daisies became more abundant in the gardens and
+strips of meadow along the streams. Toward the middle of the afternoon I
+came to another valley, strikingly wild and original in all its
+features, and perhaps never before touched by human foot. As regards
+area of level bottom-land, it is one of the very smallest of the
+Yosemite type, but its walls are sublime, rising to a height of from
+2000 to 4000 feet above the river. At the head of the valley the main
+ca�on forks, as is found to be the case in all yosemites. The formation
+of this one is due chiefly to the action of two great glaciers, whose
+fountains lay to the eastward, on the flanks of Mounts Humphrey and
+Emerson and a cluster of nameless peaks farther south.
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP.]
+
+The gray, boulder-chafed river was singing loudly through the valley,
+but above its massy roar I heard the booming of a waterfall, which drew
+me eagerly on; and just as I emerged from the tangled groves and
+brier-thickets at the head of the valley, the main fork of the river
+came in sight, falling fresh from its glacier fountains in a snowy
+cascade, between granite walls 2000 feet high. The steep incline down
+which the glad waters thundered seemed to bar all farther progress. It
+was not long, however, before I discovered a crooked seam in the rock,
+by which I was enabled to climb to the edge of a terrace that crosses
+the ca�on, and divides the cataract nearly in the middle. Here I sat
+down to take breath and make some entries in my note-book, taking
+advantage, at the same time, of my elevated position above the trees to
+gaze back over the valley into the heart of the noble landscape, little
+knowing the while what neighbors were near.
+
+After spending a few minutes in this way, I chanced to look across the
+fall, and there stood three sheep quietly observing me. Never did the
+sudden appearance of a mountain, or fall, or human friend more forcibly
+seize and rivet my attention. Anxiety to observe accurately held me
+perfectly still. Eagerly I marked the flowing undulations of their firm,
+braided muscles, their strong legs, ears, eyes, heads, their graceful
+rounded necks, the color of their hair, and the bold, upsweeping curves
+of their noble horns. When they moved I watched every gesture, while
+they, in no wise disconcerted either by my attention or by the
+tumultuous roar of the water, advanced deliberately alongside the
+rapids, between the two divisions of the cataract, turning now and then
+to look at me. Presently they came to a steep, ice-burnished acclivity,
+which they ascended by a succession of quick, short, stiff-legged leaps,
+reaching the top without a struggle. This was the most startling feat of
+mountaineering I had ever witnessed, and, considering only the mechanics
+of the thing, my astonishment could hardly have been greater had they
+displayed wings and taken to flight. "Surefooted" mules on such ground
+would have fallen and rolled like loosened boulders. Many a time, where
+the slopes are far lower, I have been compelled to take off my shoes and
+stockings, tie them to my belt, and creep barefooted, with the utmost
+caution. No wonder then, that I watched the progress of these animal
+mountaineers with keen sympathy, and exulted in the boundless
+sufficiency of wild nature displayed in their invention, construction,
+and keeping. A few minutes later I caught sight of a dozen more in one
+band, near the foot of the upper fall. They were standing on the same
+side of the river with me, only twenty-five or thirty yards away,
+looking as unworn and perfect as if created on the spot. It appeared by
+their tracks, which I had seen in the Little Yosemite, and by their
+present position, that when I came up the ca�on they were all feeding
+together down in the valley, and in their haste to reach high
+ground, where they could look about them to ascertain the nature of the
+strange disturbance, they were divided, three ascending on one side the
+river, the rest on the other.
+
+The main band, headed by an experienced chief, now began to cross the
+wild rapids between the two divisions of the cascade. This was another
+exciting feat; for, among all the varied experiences of mountaineers,
+the crossing of boisterous, rock-dashed torrents is found to be one of
+the most trying to the nerves. Yet these fine fellows walked fearlessly
+to the brink, and jumped from boulder to boulder, holding themselves in
+easy poise above the whirling, confusing current, as if they were doing
+nothing extraordinary.
+
+[Illustration: CROSSING A CA�ON STREAM.]
+
+In the immediate foreground of this rare picture there was a fold of
+ice-burnished granite, traversed by a few bold lines in which rock-ferns
+and tufts of bryanthus were growing, the gray ca�on walls on the sides,
+nobly sculptured and adorned with brown cedars and pines; lofty peaks in
+the distance, and in the middle ground the snowy fall, the voice and
+soul of the landscape; fringing bushes beating time to its
+thunder-tones, the brave sheep in front of it, their gray forms slightly
+obscured in the spray, yet standing out in good, heavy relief against
+the close white water, with their huge horns rising like the upturned
+roots of dead pine-trees, while the evening sunbeams streaming up the
+ca�on colored all the picture a rosy purple and made it glorious. After
+crossing the river, the dauntless climbers, led by their chief, at once
+began to scale the ca�on wall, turning now right, now left, in long,
+single file, keeping well apart out of one another's way, and leaping in
+regular succession from crag to crag, now ascending slippery
+dome-curves, now walking leisurely along the edges of precipices,
+stopping at times to gaze down at me from some flat-topped rock, with
+heads held aslant, as if curious to learn what I thought about it, or
+whether I was likely to follow them. After reaching the top of the wall,
+which, at this place, is somewhere between 1500 and 2000 feet high, they
+were still visible against the sky as they lingered, looking down in
+groups of twos or threes.
+
+Throughout the entire ascent they did not make a single awkward step, or
+an unsuccessful effort of any kind. I have frequently seen tame sheep in
+mountains jump upon a sloping rock-surface, hold on tremulously a few
+seconds, and fall back baffled and irresolute. But in the most trying
+situations, where the slightest want or inaccuracy would have been
+fatal, these always seemed to move in comfortable reliance on their
+strength and skill, the limits of which they never appeared to know.
+Moreover, each one of the flock, while following the guidance of the
+most experienced, yet climbed with intelligent independence as a perfect
+individual, capable of separate existence whenever it should wish or be
+compelled to withdraw from the little clan. The domestic sheep, on the
+contrary, is only a fraction of an animal, a whole flock being required
+to form an individual, just as numerous flowerets are required to make
+one complete sunflower.
+
+Those shepherds who, in summer, drive their flocks to the mountain
+pastures, and, while watching them night and day, have seen them
+frightened by bears and storms, and scattered like wind-driven chaff,
+will, in some measure, be able to appreciate the self-reliance and
+strength and noble individuality of Nature's sheep.
+
+Like the Alp-climbing ibex of Europe, our mountaineer is said to plunge
+headlong down the faces of sheer precipices, and alight on his big
+horns. I know only two hunters who claim to have actually witnessed this
+feat; I never was so fortunate. They describe the act as a diving
+head-foremost. The horns are so large at the base that they cover the
+upper portion of the head down nearly to a level with the eyes, and the
+skull is exceedingly strong. I struck an old, bleached specimen on Mount
+Ritter a dozen blows with my ice-ax without breaking it. Such skulls
+would not fracture very readily by the wildest rock-diving, but other
+bones could hardly be expected to hold together in such a performance;
+and the mechanical difficulties in the way of controlling their
+movements, after striking upon an irregular surface, are, in themselves,
+sufficient to show this boulder-like method of progression to be
+impossible, even in the absence of all other evidence on the subject;
+moreover, the ewes follow wherever the rams may lead, although their
+horns are mere spikes. I have found many pairs of the horns of the old
+rams considerably battered, doubtless a result of fighting. I was
+particularly interested in the question, after witnessing the
+performances of this San Joaquin band upon the glaciated rocks at the
+foot of the falls; and as soon as I procured specimens and examined
+their feet, all the mystery disappeared. The secret, considered in
+connection with exceptionally strong muscles, is simply this: the wide
+posterior portion of the bottom of the foot, instead of wearing down and
+becoming flat and hard, like the feet of tame sheep and horses, bulges
+out in a soft, rubber-like pad or cushion, which not only grips and
+holds well on smooth rocks, but fits into small cavities, and down upon
+or against slight protuberances. Even the hardest portions of the edge
+of the hoof are comparatively soft and elastic; furthermore, the toes
+admit of an extraordinary amount of both lateral and vertical movement,
+allowing the foot to accommodate itself still more perfectly to the
+irregularities of rock surfaces, while at the same time increasing the
+gripping power.
+
+At the base of Sheep Rock, one of the winter strongholds of the Shasta
+flocks, there lives a stock-raiser who has had the advantage of
+observing the movements of wild sheep every winter; and, in the course
+of a conversation with him on the subject of their diving habits, he
+pointed to the front of a lava headland about 150 feet high, which is
+only eight or ten degrees out of the perpendicular. "There," said he, "I
+followed a band of them fellows to the back of that rock yonder, and
+expected to capture them all, for I thought I had a dead thing on them.
+I got behind them on a narrow bench that runs along the face of the wall
+near the top and comes to an end where they couldn't get away without
+falling and being killed; but they jumped off, and landed all right, as
+if that were the regular thing with them."
+
+"What!" said I, "jumped 150 feet perpendicular! Did you see them do it?"
+
+"No," he replied, "I didn't see them going down, for I was behind them;
+but I saw them go off over the brink, and then I went below and found
+their tracks where they struck on the loose rubbish at the bottom. They
+just _sailed right off_, and landed on their feet right side up.
+That is the kind of animal _they_ is--beats anything else that goes
+on four legs."
+
+[Illustration: WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE.]
+
+On another occasion, a flock that was pursued by hunters retreated to
+another portion of this same cliff where it is still higher, and, on
+being followed, they were seen jumping down in perfect order, one behind
+another, by two men who happened to be chopping where they had a fair
+view of them and could watch their progress from top to bottom of the
+precipice. Both ewes and rams made the frightful descent without
+evincing any extraordinary concern, hugging the rock closely, and
+controlling the velocity of their half falling, half leaping movements
+by striking at short intervals and holding back with their cushioned,
+rubber feet upon small ledges and roughened inclines until near the
+bottom, when they "sailed off" into the free air and alighted on their
+feet, but with their bodies so nearly in a vertical position that they
+appeared to be diving.
+
+It appears, therefore, that the methods of this wild mountaineering
+become clearly comprehensible as soon as we make ourselves acquainted
+with the rocks, and the kind of feet and muscles brought to bear upon
+them.
+
+The Modoc and Pah Ute Indians are, or rather have been, the most
+successful hunters of the wild sheep in the regions that have come under
+my own observation. I have seen large numbers of heads and horns in the
+caves of Mount Shasta and the Modoc lava-beds, where the Indians had
+been feasting in stormy weather; also in the ca�ons of the Sierra
+opposite Owen's Valley; while the heavy obsidian arrow-heads found on
+some of the highest peaks show that this warfare has long been going on.
+
+In the more accessible ranges that stretch across the desert regions of
+western Utah and Nevada, considerable numbers of Indians used to hunt in
+company like packs of wolves, and being perfectly acquainted with the
+topography of their hunting-grounds, and with the habits and instincts
+of the game, they were pretty successful. On the tops of nearly every
+one of the Nevada mountains that I have visited, I found small,
+nest-like inclosures built of stones, in which, as I afterward learned,
+one or more Indians would lie in wait while their companions scoured the
+ridges below, knowing that the alarmed sheep would surely run to the
+summit, and when they could be made to approach with the wind they were
+shot at short range.
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP.]
+
+Still larger bands of Indians used to make extensive hunts upon some
+dominant mountain much frequented by the sheep, such as Mount Grant on
+the Wassuck Range to the west of Walker Lake. On some particular spot,
+favorably situated with reference to the well-known trails of the sheep,
+they built a high-walled corral, with long guiding wings diverging from
+the gateway; and into this inclosure they sometimes succeeded in driving
+the noble game. Great numbers of Indians were of course required, more,
+indeed, than they could usually muster, counting in squaws, children,
+and all; they were compelled, therefore, to build rows of dummy hunters
+out of stones, along the ridge-tops which they wished to prevent the
+sheep from crossing. And, without discrediting the sagacity of the game,
+these dummies were found effective; for, with a few live Indians moving
+about excitedly among them, they could hardly be distinguished at a
+little distance from men, by any one not in the secret. The whole
+ridge-top then seemed to be alive with hunters.
+
+The only animal that may fairly be regarded as a companion or rival of
+the sheep is the so-called Rocky Mountain goat (_Aplocerus montana_,
+Rich.), which, as its name indicates, is more antelope than goat. He,
+too, is a brave and hardy climber, fearlessly crossing the wildest
+summits, and braving the severest storms, but he is shaggy, short-legged,
+and much less dignified in demeanor than the sheep. His jet-black horns
+are only about five or six inches in length, and the long, white hair
+with which he is covered obscures the expression of his limbs. I have
+never yet seen a single specimen in the Sierra, though possibly a few
+flocks may have lived on Mount Shasta a comparatively short time ago.
+
+The ranges of these two mountaineers are pretty distinct, and they see
+but little of each other; the sheep being restricted mostly to the dry,
+inland mountains; the goat or chamois to the wet, snowy glacier-laden
+mountains of the northwest coast of the continent in Oregon, Washington,
+British Columbia, and Alaska. Probably more than 200 dwell on the icy,
+volcanic cone of Mount Rainier; and while I was exploring the glaciers
+of Alaska I saw flocks of these admirable mountaineers nearly every day,
+and often followed their trails through the mazes of bewildering
+crevasses, in which they are excellent guides.
+
+Three species of deer are found in California,--the black-tailed,
+white-tailed, and mule deer. The first mentioned (_Cervus Columbianus_)
+is by far the most abundant, and occasionally meets the sheep during
+the summer on high glacier meadows, and along the edge of the timber
+line; but being a forest animal, seeking shelter and rearing its young
+in dense thickets, it seldom visits the wild sheep in its higher homes.
+The antelope, though not a mountaineer, is occasionally met in winter
+by the sheep while feeding along the edges of the sage-plains and bare
+volcanic hills to the east of the Sierra. So also is the mule deer,
+which is almost restricted in its range to this eastern region. The
+white-tailed species belongs to the coast ranges.
+
+Perhaps no wild animal in the world is without enemies, but highlanders,
+as a class, have fewer than lowlanders. The wily panther, slipping and
+crouching among long grass and bushes, pounces upon the antelope and
+deer, but seldom crosses the bald, craggy thresholds of the sheep.
+Neither can the bears be regarded as enemies; for, though they seek to
+vary their every-day diet of nuts and berries by an occasional meal of
+mutton, they prefer to hunt tame and helpless flocks. Eagles and
+coyotes, no doubt, capture an unprotected lamb at times, or some
+unfortunate beset in deep, soft snow, but these cases are little more
+than accidents. So, also, a few perish in long-continued snow-storms,
+though, in all my mountaineering, I have not found more than five or six
+that seemed to have met their fate in this way. A little band of three
+were discovered snow-bound in Bloody Canon a few years ago, and were
+killed with an ax by mountaineers, who chanced to be crossing the range
+in winter.
+
+Man is the most dangerous enemy of all, but even from him our brave
+mountain-dweller has little to fear in the remote solitudes of the High
+Sierra. The golden plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin were lately
+thronged with bands of elk and antelope, but, being fertile and
+accessible, they were required for human pastures. So, also, are many of
+the feeding-grounds of the deer--hill, valley, forest, and meadow--but
+it will be long before man will care to take the highland castles of the
+sheep. And when we consider here how rapidly entire species of noble
+animals, such as the elk, moose, and buffalo, are being pushed to the
+very verge of extinction, all lovers of wildness will rejoice with me in
+the rocky security of _Ovis montana_, the bravest of all the Sierra
+mountaineers.
+
+
+[1] Pacific Railroad Survey, Vol. VIII, page 678.
+
+[2] Audubon and Bachman's "Quadrupeds of North America."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS
+
+Murphy's camp is a curious old mining-town in Calaveras County, at an
+elevation of 2400 feet above the sea, situated like a nest in the center
+of a rough, gravelly region, rich in gold. Granites, slates, lavas,
+limestone, iron ores, quartz veins, auriferous gravels, remnants of dead
+fire-rivers and dead water-rivers are developed here side by side within
+a radius of a few miles, and placed invitingly open before the student
+like a book, while the people and the region beyond the camp furnish
+mines of study of never-failing interest and variety.
+
+When I discovered this curious place, I was tracing the channels of the
+ancient pre-glacial rivers, instructive sections of which have been laid
+bare here and in the adjacent regions by the miners. Rivers, according
+to the poets, "go on forever"; but those of the Sierra are young as yet
+and have scarcely learned the way down to the sea; while at least one
+generation of them have died and vanished together with most of the
+basins they drained. All that remains of them to tell their history is a
+series of interrupted fragments of channels, mostly choked with gravel,
+and buried beneath broad, thick sheets of lava. These are known as the
+"Dead Rivers of California," and the gravel deposited in them is
+comprehensively called the "Blue Lead." In some places the channels of
+the present rivers trend in the same direction, or nearly so, as those
+of the ancient rivers; but, in general, there is little correspondence
+between them, the entire drainage having been changed, or, rather, made
+new. Many of the hills of the ancient landscapes have become hollows,
+and the old hollows have become hills. Therefore the fragmentary
+channels, with their loads of auriferous gravel, occur in all kinds of
+unthought-of places, trending obliquely, or even at right angles to the
+present drainage, across the tops of lofty ridges or far beneath them,
+presenting impressive illustrations of the magnitude of the changes
+accomplished since those ancient streams were annihilated. The last
+volcanic period preceding the regeneration of the Sierra landscapes
+seems to have come on over all the range almost simultaneously, like the
+glacial period, notwithstanding lavas of different age occur together in
+many places, indicating numerous periods of activity in the Sierra
+fire-fountains. The most important of the ancient river-channels in this
+region is a section that extends from the south side of the town beneath
+Coyote Creek and the ridge beyond it to the Ca�on of the Stanislaus; but
+on account of its depth below the general surface of the present valleys
+the rich gold gravels it is known to contain cannot be easily worked on
+a large scale. Their extraordinary richness may be inferred from the
+fact that many claims were profitably worked in them by sinking shafts
+to a depth of 200 feet or more, and hoisting the dirt by a windlass.
+Should the dip of this ancient channel be such as to make the Stanislaus
+Ca�on available as a dump, then the grand deposit might be worked by the
+hydraulic method, and although a long, expensive tunnel would be
+required, the scheme might still prove profitable, for there is
+"millions in it."
+
+The importance of these ancient gravels as gold fountains is well known
+to miners. Even the superficial placers of the present streams have
+derived much of their gold from them. According to all accounts, the
+Murphy placers have been very rich--"terrific rich," as they say here.
+The hills have been cut and scalped, and every gorge and gulch and
+valley torn to pieces and disemboweled, expressing a fierce and
+desperate energy hard to understand. Still, any kind of effort-making is
+better than inaction, and there is something sublime in seeing men
+working in dead earnest at anything, pursuing an object with
+glacier-like energy and persistence. Many a brave fellow has recorded a
+most eventful chapter of life on these Calaveras rocks. But most of the
+pioneer miners are sleeping now, their wild day done, while the few
+survivors linger languidly in the washed-out gulches or sleepy village
+like harried bees around the ruins of their hive. "We have no industry
+left _now_," they told me, "and no men; everybody and everything
+hereabouts has gone to decay. We are only bummers--out of the game, a
+thin scatterin' of poor, dilapidated cusses, compared with what we used
+to be in the grand old gold-days. We were giants then, and you can look
+around here and see our tracks." But although these lingering pioneers
+are perhaps more exhausted than the mines, and about as dead as the dead
+rivers, they are yet a rare and interesting set of men, with much gold
+mixed with the rough, rocky gravel of their characters; and they
+manifest a breeding and intelligence little looked for in such
+surroundings as theirs. As the heavy, long-continued grinding of the
+glaciers brought out the features of the Sierra, so the intense
+experiences of the gold period have brought out the features of these
+old miners, forming a richness and variety of character little known as
+yet. The sketches of Bret Harte, Hayes, and Miller have not exhausted
+this field by any means. It is interesting to note the extremes possible
+in one and the same character: harshness and gentleness, manliness and
+childishness, apathy and fierce endeavor. Men who, twenty years ago,
+would not cease their shoveling to save their lives, now play in the
+streets with children. Their long, Micawber-like waiting after the
+exhaustion of the placers has brought on an exaggerated form of dotage.
+I heard a group of brawny pioneers in the street eagerly discussing the
+quantity of tail required for a boy's kite; and one graybeard undertook
+the sport of flying it, volunteering the information that he was a boy,
+"always was a boy, and d--n a man who was not a boy inside, however
+ancient outside!" Mines, morals, politics, the immortality of the soul,
+etc., were discussed beneath shade-trees and in saloons, the time for
+each being governed apparently by the temperature. Contact with Nature,
+and the habits of observation acquired in gold-seeking, had made them
+all, to some extent, collectors, and, like wood-rats, they had gathered
+all kinds of odd specimens into their cabins, and now required me to
+examine them. They were themselves the oddest and most interesting
+specimens. One of them offered to show me around the old diggings,
+giving me fair warning before setting out that I might not like him,
+"because," said he, "people say I'm eccentric. I notice everything, and
+gather beetles and snakes and anything that's queer; and so some don't
+like me, and call me eccentric. I'm always trying to find out things.
+Now, there's a weed; the Indians eat it for greens. What do you call
+those long-bodied flies with big heads?" "Dragon-flies," I suggested.
+"Well, their jaws work sidewise, instead of up and down, and
+grasshoppers' jaws work the same way, and therefore I think they are the
+same species. I always notice everything like that, and just because I
+do, they say I'm eccentric," etc.
+
+Anxious that I should miss none of the wonders of their old gold-field,
+the good people had much to say about the marvelous beauty of Cave City
+Cave, and advised me to explore it. This I was very glad to do, and
+finding a guide who knew the way to the mouth of it, I set out from
+Murphy the next morning.
+
+The most beautiful and extensive of the mountain caves of California
+occur in a belt of metamorphic limestone that is pretty generally
+developed along the western flank of the Sierra from the McCloud River
+on the north to the Kaweah on the south, a distance of over 400 miles,
+at an elevation of from 2000 to 7000 feet above the sea. Besides this
+regular belt of caves, the California landscapes are diversified by long
+imposing ranks of sea-caves, rugged and variable in architecture, carved
+in the coast headlands and precipices by centuries of wave-dashing; and
+innumerable lava-caves, great and small, originating in the unequal
+flowing and hardening of the lava sheets in which they occur, fine
+illustrations of which are presented in the famous Modoc Lava Beds, and
+around the base of icy Shasta. In this comprehensive glance we may also
+notice the shallow wind-worn caves in stratified sandstones along the
+margins of the plains; and the cave-like recesses in the Sierra slates
+and granites, where bears and other mountaineers find shelter during the
+fall of sudden storms. In general, however, the grand massive uplift of
+the Sierra, as far as it has been laid-bare to observation, is about as
+solid and caveless as a boulder.
+
+Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very
+abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps
+prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing,
+therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the
+sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or
+in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns
+underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those
+out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return
+to common every-day beauty.
+
+Our way from Murphy's to the cave lay across a series of picturesque,
+moory ridges in the chaparral region between the brown foot-hills and
+the forests, a flowery stretch of rolling hill-waves breaking here and
+there into a kind of rocky foam on the higher summits, and sinking into
+delightful bosky hollows embowered with vines. The day was a fine
+specimen of California summer, pure sunshine, unshaded most of the time
+by a single cloud. As the sun rose higher, the heated air began to flow
+in tremulous waves from every southern slope. The sea-breeze that
+usually comes up the foot-hills at this season, with cooling on its
+wings, was scarcely perceptible. The birds were assembled beneath leafy
+shade, or made short, languid flights in search of food, all save the
+majestic buzzard; with broad wings outspread he sailed the warm air
+unwearily from ridge to ridge, seeming to enjoy the fervid sunshine like
+a butterfly. Squirrels, too, whose spicy ardor no heat or cold may
+abate, were nutting among the pines, and the innumerable hosts of the
+insect kingdom were throbbing and wavering unwearied as sunbeams.
+
+This brushy, berry-bearing region used to be a deer and bear pasture,
+but since the disturbances of the gold period these fine animals have
+almost wholly disappeared. Here, also, once roamed the mastodon and
+elephant, whose bones are found entombed in the river gravels and
+beneath thick folds of lava. Toward noon, as we were riding slowly over
+bank and brae, basking in the unfeverish sun-heat, we witnessed the
+upheaval of a new mountain-range, a Sierra of clouds abounding in
+landscapes as truly sublime and beautiful--if only we have a mind to
+think so and eyes to see--as the more ancient rocky Sierra beneath it,
+with its forests and waterfalls; reminding us that, as there is a lower
+world of caves, so, also, there is an upper world of clouds. Huge, bossy
+cumuli developed with astonishing rapidity from mere buds, swelling with
+visible motion into colossal mountains, and piling higher, higher, in
+long massive ranges, peak beyond peak, dome over dome, with many a
+picturesque valley and shadowy cave between; while the dark firs and
+pines of the upper benches of the Sierra were projected against their
+pearl bosses with exquisite clearness of outline. These cloud mountains
+vanished in the azure as quickly as they were developed, leaving no
+detritus; but they were not a whit less real or interesting on this
+account. The more enduring hills over which we rode were vanishing as
+surely as they, only not so fast, a difference which is great or small
+according to the standpoint from which it is contemplated.
+
+At the bottom of every dell we found little homesteads embosomed in wild
+brush and vines wherever the recession of the hills left patches of
+arable ground. These secluded flats are settled mostly by Italians and
+Germans, who plant a few vegetables and grape-vines at odd times, while
+their main business is mining and prospecting. In spite of all the
+natural beauty of these dell cabins, they can hardly be called homes.
+They are only a better kind of camp, gladly abandoned whenever the
+hoped-for gold harvest has been gathered. There is an air of profound
+unrest and melancholy about the best of them. Their beauty is thrust
+upon them by exuberant Nature, apart from which they are only a few logs
+and boards rudely jointed and without either ceiling or floor, a rough
+fireplace with corresponding cooking utensils, a shelf-bed, and stool.
+The ground about them is strewn with battered prospecting-pans, picks,
+sluice-boxes, and quartz specimens from many a ledge, indicating the
+trend of their owners' hard lives.
+
+The ride from Murphy's to the cave is scarcely two hours long, but we
+lingered among quartz-ledges and banks of dead river gravel until long
+after noon. At length emerging from a narrow-throated gorge, a small
+house came in sight set in a thicket of fig-trees at the base of a
+limestone hill. "That," said my guide, pointing to the house, "is Cave
+City, and the cave is in that gray hill." Arriving at the one house of
+this one-house city, we were boisterously welcomed by three drunken men
+who had come to town to hold a spree. The mistress of the house tried to
+keep order, and in reply to our inquiries told us that the cave guide
+was then in the cave with a party of ladies. "And must we wait until he
+returns?" we asked. No, that was unnecessary; we might take candles and
+go into the cave alone, provided we shouted from time to time so as to
+be found by the guide, and were careful not to fall over the rocks or
+into the dark pools. Accordingly taking a trail from the house, we were
+led around the base of the hill to the mouth of the cave, a small
+inconspicuous archway, mossy around the edges and shaped like the door
+of a water-ouzel's nest, with no appreciable hint or advertisement of
+the grandeur of the many crystal chambers within. Lighting our candles,
+which seemed to have no illuminating power in the thick darkness, we
+groped our way onward as best we could along narrow lanes and alleys,
+from chamber to chamber, around rustic columns and heaps of fallen
+rocks, stopping to rest now and then in particularly beautiful
+places--fairy alcoves furnished with admirable variety of shelves and
+tables, and round bossy stools covered with sparkling crystals. Some of
+the corridors were muddy, and in plodding along these we seemed to be in
+the streets of some prairie village in spring-time. Then we would come
+to handsome marble stairways conducting right and left into upper
+chambers ranged above one another three or four stories high, floors,
+ceilings, and walls lavishly decorated with innumerable crystalline
+forms. After thus wandering exploringly, and alone for a mile or so,
+fairly enchanted, a murmur of voices and a gleam of light betrayed the
+approach of the guide and his party, from whom, when they came up, we
+received a most hearty and natural stare, as we stood half concealed in
+a side recess among stalagmites. I ventured to ask the dripping,
+crouching company how they had enjoyed their saunter, anxious to learn
+how the strange sunless scenery of the underworld had impressed them.
+"Ah, it's nice! It's splendid!" they all replied and echoed. "The Bridal
+Chamber back here is just glorious! This morning we came down from the
+Calaveras Big Tree Grove, and the trees are nothing to it." After making
+this curious comparison they hastened sunward, the guide promising to
+join us shortly on the bank of a deep pool, where we were to wait for
+him. This is a charming little lakelet of unknown depth, never yet
+stirred by a breeze, and its eternal calm excites the imagination even
+more profoundly than the silvery lakes of the glaciers rimmed with
+meadows and snow and reflecting sublime mountains.
+
+Our guide, a jolly, rollicking Italian, led us into the heart of the
+hill, up and down, right and left, from chamber to chamber more and more
+magnificent, all a-glitter like a glacier cave with icicle-like
+stalactites and stalagmites combined in forms of indescribable beauty.
+We were shown one large room that was occasionally used as a
+dancing-hall; another that was used as a chapel, with natural pulpit and
+crosses and pews, sermons in every stone, where a priest had said mass.
+Mass-saying is not so generally developed in connection with natural
+wonders as dancing. One of the first conceits excited by the giant
+Sequoias was to cut one of them down and dance on its stump. We have
+also seen dancing in the spray of Niagara; dancing in the famous Bower
+Cave above Coulterville; and nowhere have I seen so much dancing as in
+Yosemite. A dance on the inaccessible South Dome would likely follow the
+making of an easy way to the top of it.
+
+It was delightful to witness here the infinite deliberation of Nature,
+and the simplicity of her methods in the production of such mighty
+results, such perfect repose combined with restless enthusiastic energy.
+Though cold and bloodless as a landscape of polar ice, building was
+going on in the dark with incessant activity. The archways and ceilings
+were everywhere hung with down-growing crystals, like inverted groves of
+leafless saplings, some of them large, others delicately attenuated,
+each tipped with a single drop of water, like the terminal bud of a
+pine-tree. The only appreciable sounds were the dripping and tinkling of
+water failing into pools or faintly plashing on the crystal floors.
+
+In some places the crystal decorations are arranged in graceful flowing
+folds deeply plicated like stiff silken drapery. In others straight
+lines of the ordinary stalactite forms are combined with reference to
+size and tone in a regularly graduated system like the strings of a harp
+with musical tones corresponding thereto; and on these stone harps we
+played by striking the crystal strings with a stick. The delicious
+liquid tones they gave forth seemed perfectly divine as they sweetly
+whispered and wavered through the majestic halls and died away in
+faintest cadence,--the music of fairy-land. Here we lingered and
+reveled, rejoicing to find so much music in stony silence, so much
+splendor in darkness, so many mansions in the depths of the mountains,
+buildings ever in process of construction, yet ever finished, developing
+from perfection to perfection, profusion without overabundance; every
+particle visible or invisible in glorious motion, marching to the music
+of the spheres in a region regarded as the abode of eternal stillness
+and death.
+
+The outer chambers of mountain caves are frequently selected as homes by
+wild beasts. In the Sierra, however, they seem to prefer homes and
+hiding-places in chaparral and beneath shelving precipices, as I have
+never seen their tracks in any of the caves. This is the more remarkable
+because notwithstanding the darkness and oozing water there is nothing
+uncomfortably cellar-like or sepulchral about them.
+
+When we emerged into the bright landscapes of the sun everything looked
+brighter, and we felt our faith in Nature's beauty strengthened, and saw
+more clearly that beauty is universal and immortal, above, beneath, on
+land and sea, mountain and plain, in heat and cold, light and darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+THE BEE-PASTURES
+
+When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its
+entire length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy
+Sierra to the ocean.
+
+Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin
+wilderness--through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers,
+along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain,
+park and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the
+mountains--throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber
+line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish, abundance. Here they grew more or
+less apart in special sheets and patches of no great size, there in
+broad, flowing folds hundreds of miles in length--zones of polleny
+forests, zones of flowery chaparral, stream-tangles of rubus and wild
+rose, sheets of golden composite, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of
+bryanthus and clover, and so on, certain species blooming somewhere all
+the year round.
+
+But of late years plows and sheep have made sad havoc in these glorious
+pastures, destroying tens of thousands of the flowery acres like a fire,
+and banishing many species of the best honey-plants to rocky cliffs and
+fence-corners, while, on the other hand, cultivation thus far has given
+no adequate compensation, at least in kind; only acres of alfalfa for
+miles of the richest wild pasture, ornamental roses and honeysuckles
+around cottage doors for cascades of wild roses in the dells, and small,
+square orchards and orange-groves for broad mountain-belts of chaparral.
+
+The Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March,
+April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so
+marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a
+distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred
+flowers at every step. Mints, gilias, nemophilas, castilleias, and
+innumerable compositae were so crowded together that, had ninety-nine
+per cent. of them been taken away, the plain would still have seemed to
+any but Californians extravagantly flowery. The radiant, honeyful
+corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another, glowed
+in the living light like a sunset sky--one sheet of purple and gold,
+with the bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it from the
+north, the San Joaquin from the south, and their many tributaries
+sweeping in at right angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into
+sections fringed with trees.
+
+Along the rivers there is a strip of bottom-land, countersunk beneath
+the general level, and wider toward the foot-hills, where magnificent
+oaks, from three to eight feet in diameter, cast grateful masses of
+shade over the open, prairie-like levels. And close along the water's
+edge there was a fine jungle of tropical luxuriance, composed of
+wild-rose and bramble bushes and a great variety of climbing vines,
+wreathing and interlacing the branches and trunks of willows and alders,
+and swinging across from summit to summit in heavy festoons. Here the
+wild bees reveled in fresh bloom long after the flowers of the drier
+plain had withered and gone to seed. And in midsummer, when the
+"blackberries" were ripe, the Indians came from the mountains to
+feast--men, women, and babies in long, noisy trains, often joined by the
+farmers of the neighborhood, who gathered this wild fruit with
+commendable appreciation of its superior flavor, while their home
+orchards were full of ripe peaches, apricots, nectarines, and figs, and
+their vineyards were laden with grapes. But, though these luxuriant,
+shaggy river-beds were thus distinct from the smooth, treeless plain,
+they made no heavy dividing lines in general views. The whole appeared
+as one continuous sheet of bloom bounded only by the mountains.
+
+When I first saw this central garden, the most extensive and regular of
+all the bee-pastures of the State, it seemed all one sheet of plant
+gold, hazy and vanishing in the distance, distinct as a new map along
+the foot-hills at my feet.
+
+Descending the eastern slopes of the Coast Range through beds of gilias
+and lupines, and around many a breezy hillock and bush-crowned headland,
+I at length waded out into the midst of it. All the ground was covered,
+not with grass and green leaves, but with radiant corollas, about
+ankle-deep next the foot-hills, knee-deep or more five or six miles out.
+Here were bahia, madia, madaria, burrielia, chrysopsis, corethrogyne,
+grindelia, etc., growing in close social congregations of various shades
+of yellow, blending finely with the purples of clarkia, orthocarpus, and
+oenothera, whose delicate petals were drinking the vital sunbeams
+without giving back any sparkling glow.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA.]
+
+Because so long a period of extreme drought succeeds the rainy season,
+most of the vegetation is composed of annuals, which spring up
+simultaneously, and bloom together at about the same height above the
+ground, the general surface being but slightly ruffled by the taller
+phacelias, pentstemons, and groups of _Salvia carduacea_, the king of
+the mints.
+
+Sauntering in any direction, hundreds of these happy sun-plants brushed
+against my feet at every step, and closed over them as if I were wading
+in liquid gold. The air was sweet with fragrance, the larks sang their
+blessed songs, rising on the wing as I advanced, then sinking out of
+sight in the polleny sod, while myriads of wild bees stirred the lower
+air with their monotonous hum--monotonous, yet forever fresh and sweet
+as every-day sunshine. Hares and spermophiles showed themselves in
+considerable numbers in shallow places, and small bands of antelopes
+were almost constantly in sight, gazing curiously from some slight
+elevation, and then bounding swiftly away with unrivaled grace of
+motion. Yet I could discover no crushed flowers to mark their track,
+nor, indeed, any destructive action of any wild foot or tooth whatever.
+
+The great yellow days circled by uncounted, while I drifted toward the
+north, observing the countless forms of life thronging about me, lying
+down almost anywhere on the approach of night. And what glorious
+botanical beds I had! Oftentimes on awaking I would find several new
+species leaning over me and looking me full in the face, so that my
+studies would begin before rising.
+
+About the first of May I turned eastward, crossing the San Joaquin River
+between the mouths of the Tuolumne and Merced, and by the time I had
+reached the Sierra foot-hills most of the vegetation had gone to seed
+and become as dry as hay.
+
+All the seasons of the great plain are warm or temperate, and
+bee-flowers are never wholly wanting; but the grand springtime--the
+annual resurrection--is governed by the rains, which usually set in
+about the middle of November or the beginning of December. Then the
+seeds, that for six months have lain on the ground dry and fresh as if
+they had been gathered into barns, at once unfold their treasured life.
+The general brown and purple of the ground, and the dead vegetation of
+the preceding year, give place to the green of mosses and liverworts and
+myriads of young leaves. Then one species after another comes into
+flower, gradually overspreading the green with yellow and purple, which
+lasts until May.
+
+The "rainy season" is by no means a gloomy, soggy period of constant
+cloudiness and rain. Perhaps nowhere else in North America, perhaps in
+the world, are the months of December, January, February, and March so
+full of bland, plant-building sunshine. Referring to my notes of the
+winter and spring of 1868-69, every day of which I spent out of doors,
+on that section of the plain lying between the Tuolumne and Merced
+rivers, I find that the first rain of the season fell on December 18th.
+January had only six rainy days--that is, days on which rain fell;
+February three, March five, April three, and May three, completing the
+so-called rainy season, which was about an average one. The ordinary
+rain-storm of this region is seldom very cold or violent. The winds,
+which in settled weather come from the northwest, veer round into the
+opposite direction, the sky fills gradually and evenly with one general
+cloud, from which, the rain falls steadily, often for days in
+succession, at a temperature of about 45� or 50�.
+
+More than seventy-five per cent. of all the rain of this season came
+from the northwest, down the coast over southeastern Alaska, British
+Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, though the local winds of these
+circular storms blow from the southeast. One magnificent local storm
+from the northwest fell on March 21. A massive, round-browed cloud came
+swelling and thundering over the flowery plain in most imposing majesty,
+its bossy front burning white and purple in the full blaze of the sun,
+while warm rain poured from its ample fountains like a cataract, beating
+down flowers and bees, and flooding the dry watercourses as suddenly as
+those of Nevada are flooded by the so-called "cloudbursts." But in less
+than half an hour not a trace of the heavy, mountain-like cloud-structure
+was left in the sky, and the bees were on the wing, as if nothing more
+gratefully refreshing could have been sent them.
+
+By the end of January four species of plants were in flower, and five or
+six mosses had already adjusted their hoods and were in the prime of
+life; but the flowers were not sufficiently numerous as yet to affect
+greatly the general green of the young leaves. Violets made their
+appearance in the first week of February, and toward the end of this
+month the warmer portions of the plain were already golden with myriads
+of the flowers of rayed composite.
+
+This was the full springtime. The sunshine grew warmer and richer, new
+plants bloomed every day; the air became more tuneful with humming
+wings, and sweeter with the fragrance of the opening flowers. Ants and
+ground squirrels were getting ready for their summer work, rubbing their
+benumbed limbs, and sunning themselves on the husk-piles before their
+doors, and spiders were busy mending their old webs, or weaving new
+ones.
+
+In March, the vegetation was more than doubled in depth and color;
+claytonia, calandrinia, a large white gilia, and two nemophilas were in
+bloom, together with a host of yellow composite, tall enough now to bend
+in the wind and show wavering ripples of shade.
+
+In April, plant-life, as a whole, reached its greatest height, and the
+plain, over all its varied surface, was mantled with a close, furred
+plush of purple and golden corollas. By the end of this month, most of
+the species had ripened their seeds, but undecayed, still seemed to be
+in bloom from the numerous corolla-like involucres and whorls of chaffy
+scales of the composite. In May, the bees found in flower only a few
+deep-set liliaceous plants and eriogonums.
+
+June, July, August, and September is the season of rest and sleep,--a
+winter of dry heat,--followed in October by a second outburst of bloom
+at the very driest time of the year. Then, after the shrunken mass of
+leaves and stalks of the dead vegetation crinkle and turn to dust
+beneath the foot, as if it had been baked in an oven, _Hemizonia
+virgata_, a slender, unobtrusive little plant, from six inches to three
+feet high, suddenly makes its appearance in patches miles in extent,
+like a resurrection of the bloom of April. I have counted upward of 3000
+flowers, five eighths of an inch in diameter, on a single plant. Both
+its leaves and stems are so slender as to be nearly invisible, at a
+distance of a few yards, amid so showy a multitude of flowers. The ray
+and disk flowers are both yellow, the stamens purple, and the texture of
+the rays is rich and velvety, like the petals of garden pansies. The
+prevailing wind turns all the heads round to the southeast, so that in
+facing northwestward we have the flowers looking us in the face. In my
+estimation, this little plant, the last born of the brilliant host of
+compositae that glorify the plain, is the most interesting of all. It
+remains in flower until November, uniting with two or three species of
+wiry eriogonums, which continue the floral chain around December to the
+spring flowers of January. Thus, although the main bloom and honey
+season is only about three months long, the floral circle, however thin
+around some of the hot, rainless months, is never completely broken.
+
+How long the various species of wild bees have lived in this
+honey-garden, nobody knows; probably ever since the main body of the
+present flora gained possession of the land, toward the close of the
+glacial period. The first brown honey-bees brought to California are
+said to have arrived in San Francisco in March, 1853. A bee-keeper by
+the name of Shelton purchased a lot, consisting of twelve swarms, from
+some one at Aspinwall, who had brought them from New York. When landed
+at San Francisco, all the hives contained live bees, but they finally
+dwindled to one hive, which was taken to San Jos�. The little immigrants
+flourished and multiplied in the bountiful pastures of the Santa Clara
+Valley, sending off three swarms the first season. The owner was killed
+shortly afterward, and in settling up his estate, two of the swarms were
+sold at auction for $105 and $110 respectively. Other importations were
+made, from time to time, by way of the Isthmus, and, though great pains
+were taken to insure success, about one half usually died on the way.
+Four swarms were brought safely across the plains in 1859, the hives
+being placed in the rear end of a wagon, which was stopped in the
+afternoon to allow the bees to fly and feed in the floweriest places
+that were within reach until dark, when the hives were closed.
+
+In 1855, two years after the time of the first arrivals from New York, a
+single swarm was brought over from San Jos�, and let fly in the Great
+Central Plain. Bee-culture, however, has never gained much attention
+here, notwithstanding the extraordinary abundance of honey-bloom, and
+the high price of honey during the early years. A few hives are found
+here and there among settlers who chanced to have learned something
+about the business before coming to the State. But sheep, cattle, grain,
+and fruit raising are the chief industries, as they require less skill
+and care, while the profits thus far have been greater. In 1856 honey
+sold here at from one and a half to two dollars per pound. Twelve years
+later the price had fallen to twelve and a half cents. In 1868 I sat
+down to dinner with a band of ravenous sheep-shearers at a ranch on the
+San Joaquin, where fifteen or twenty hives were kept, and our host
+advised us not to spare the large pan of honey he had placed on the
+table, as it was the cheapest article he had to offer. In all my walks,
+however, I have never come upon a regular bee-ranch in the Central
+Valley like those so common and so skilfully managed in the southern
+counties of the State. The few pounds of honey and wax produced are
+consumed at home, and are scarcely taken into account among the coarser
+products of the farm. The swarms that escape from their careless owners
+have a weary, perplexing time of it in seeking suitable homes. Most of
+them make their way to the foot-hills of the mountains, or to the trees
+that line the banks of the rivers, where some hollow log or trunk may be
+found. A friend of mine, while out hunting on the San Joaquin, came upon
+an old coon trap, hidden among some tall grass, near the edge of the
+river, upon which he sat down to rest. Shortly afterward his attention
+was attracted to a crowd of angry bees that were flying excitedly about
+his head, when he discovered that he was sitting upon their hive, which
+was found to contain more than 200 pounds of honey. Out in the broad,
+swampy delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, the little
+wanderers have been known to build their combs in a bunch of rushes, or
+stiff, wiry grass, only slightly protected from the weather, and in
+danger every spring of being carried away by floods. They have the
+advantage, however, of a vast extent of fresh pasture, accessible only
+to themselves.
+
+The present condition of the Grand Central Garden is very different from
+that we have sketched. About twenty years ago, when the gold placers had
+been pretty thoroughly exhausted, the attention of fortune-seekers--not
+home-seekers--was, in great part, turned away from the mines to the
+fertile plains, and many began experiments in a kind of restless, wild
+agriculture. A load of lumber would be hauled to some spot on the free
+wilderness, where water could be easily found, and a rude box-cabin
+built. Then a gang-plow was procured, and a dozen mustang ponies, worth
+ten or fifteen dollars apiece, and with these hundreds of acres were
+stirred as easily as if the land had been under cultivation for years,
+tough, perennial roots being almost wholly absent. Thus a ranch was
+established, and from these bare wooden huts, as centers of desolation,
+the wild flora vanished in ever-widening circles. But the arch
+destroyers are the shepherds, with their flocks of hoofed locusts,
+sweeping over the ground like a fire, and trampling down every rod that
+escapes the plow as completely as if the whole plain were a cottage
+garden-plot without a fence. But notwithstanding these destroyers, a
+thousand swarms of bees may be pastured here for every one now gathering
+honey. The greater portion is still covered every season with a
+repressed growth of bee-flowers, for most of the species are annuals,
+and many of them are not relished by sheep or cattle, while the rapidity
+of their growth enables them to develop and mature their seeds before
+any foot has time to crush them. The ground is, therefore, kept sweet,
+and the race is perpetuated, though only as a suggestive shadow of the
+magnificence of its wildness.
+
+The time will undoubtedly come when the entire area of this noble valley
+will be tilled like a garden, when the fertilizing waters of the
+mountains, now flowing to the sea, will be distributed to every acre,
+giving rise to prosperous towns, wealth, arts, etc. Then, I suppose,
+there will be few left, even among botanists, to deplore the vanished
+primeval flora. In the mean time, the pure waste going on--the wanton
+destruction of the innocents--is a sad sight to see, and the sun may
+well be pitied in being compelled to look on.
+
+The bee-pastures of the Coast Ranges last longer and are more varied
+than those of the great plain, on account of differences of soil and
+climate, moisture, and shade, etc. Some of the mountains are upward of
+4000 feet in height, and small streams, springs, oozy bogs, etc., occur
+in great abundance and variety in the wooded regions, while open parks,
+flooded with sunshine, and hill-girt valleys lying at different
+elevations, each with its own peculiar climate and exposure, possess the
+required conditions for the development of species and families of
+plants widely varied.
+
+Next the plain there is, first, a series of smooth hills, planted with a
+rich and showy vegetation that differs but little from that of the plain
+itself--as if the edge of the plain had been lifted and bent into
+flowing folds, with all its flowers in place, only toned down a little
+as to their luxuriance, and a few new species introduced, such as the
+hill lupines, mints, and gilias. The colors show finely when thus held
+to view on the slopes; patches of red, purple, blue, yellow, and white,
+blending around the edges, the whole appearing at a little distance like
+a map colored in sections.
+
+Above this lies the park and chaparral region, with oaks, mostly
+evergreen, planted wide apart, and blooming shrubs from three to ten
+feet high; manzanita and ceanothus of several species, mixed with
+rhamnus, cercis, pickeringia, cherry, amelanchier, and adenostoma, in
+shaggy, interlocking thickets, and many species of hosackia, clover,
+monardella, castilleia, etc., in the openings.
+
+The main ranges send out spurs somewhat parallel to their axes,
+inclosing level valleys, many of them quite extensive, and containing a
+great profusion of sun-loving bee-flowers in their wild state; but these
+are, in great part, already lost to the bees by cultivation.
+
+Nearer the coast are the giant forests of the redwoods, extending from
+near the Oregon line to Santa Cruz. Beneath the cool, deep shade of
+these majestic trees the ground is occupied by ferns, chiefly woodwardia
+and aspidiums, with only a few flowering plants--oxalis, trientalis,
+erythronium, fritillaria, smilax, and other shade-lovers. But all along
+the redwood belt there are sunny openings on hill-slopes looking to the
+south, where the giant trees stand back, and give the ground to the
+small sunflowers and the bees. Around the lofty redwood walls of these
+little bee-acres there is usually a fringe of Chestnut Oak, Laurel, and
+Madro�o, the last of which is a surpassingly beautiful tree, and a great
+favorite with the bees. The trunks of the largest specimens are seven or
+eight feet thick, and about fifty feet high; the bark red and chocolate
+colored, the leaves plain, large, and glossy, like those of _Magnolia
+grandiflora_, while the flowers are yellowish-white, and urn-shaped, in
+well-proportioned panicles, from five to ten inches long. When in full
+bloom, a single tree seems to be visited at times by a whole hive of
+bees at once, and the deep hum of such a multitude makes the listener
+guess that more than the ordinary work of honey-winning must be going
+on.
+
+How perfectly enchanting and care-obliterating are these withdrawn
+gardens of the woods--long vistas opening to the sea--sunshine sifting
+and pouring upon the flowery ground in a tremulous, shifting mosaic, as
+the light-ways in the leafy wall open and close with the swaying
+breeze--shining leaves and flowers, birds and bees, mingling together in
+springtime harmony, and soothing fragrance exhaling from a thousand
+thousand fountains! In these balmy, dissolving days, when the deep
+heart-beats of Nature are felt thrilling rocks and trees and everything
+alike, common business and friends are happily forgotten, and even the
+natural honey-work of bees, and the care of birds for their young, and
+mothers for their children, seem slightly out of place.
+
+To the northward, in Humboldt and the adjacent counties, whole hillsides
+are covered with rhododendron, making a glorious melody of bee-bloom in
+the spring. And the Western azalea, hardly less flowery, grows in massy
+thickets three to eight feet high around the edges of groves and woods
+as far south as San Luis Obispo, usually accompanied by manzanita; while
+the valleys, with their varying moisture and shade, yield a rich variety
+of the smaller honey-flowers, such as mentha, lycopus, micromeria,
+audibertia, trichostema, and other mints; with vaccinium, wild
+strawberry, geranium, calais, and goldenrod; and in the cool glens along
+the stream-banks, where the shade of trees is not too deep, spiraea,
+dog-wood, heteromeles, and calycanthus, and many species of rubus form
+interlacing tangles, some portion of which continues in bloom for
+months.
+
+Though the coast region was the first to be invaded and settled by white
+men, it has suffered less from a bee point of view than either of the
+other main divisions, chiefly, no doubt, because of the unevenness of
+the surface, and because it is owned and protected instead of lying
+exposed to the flocks of the wandering "sheepmen." These remarks apply
+more particularly to the north half of the coast. Farther south there is
+less moisture, less forest shade, and the honey flora is less varied.
+
+The Sierra region is the largest of the three main divisions of the
+bee-lands of the State, and the most regularly varied in its
+subdivisions, owing to their gradual rise from the level of the Central
+Plain to the alpine summits. The foot-hill region is about as dry and
+sunful, from the end of May until the setting in of the winter rains, as
+the plain. There are no shady forests, no damp glens, at all like those
+lying at the same elevations in the Coast Mountains. The social
+compositae of the plain, with a few added species, form the bulk of the
+herbaceous portion of the vegetation up to a height of 1500 feet or
+more, shaded lightly here and there with oaks and Sabine Pines, and
+interrupted by patches of ceanothus and buckeye. Above this, and just
+below the forest region, there is a dark, heath-like belt of chaparral,
+composed almost exclusively of _Adenostoma fasciculata_, a bush
+belonging to the rose family, from five to eight feet high, with small,
+round leaves in fascicles, and bearing a multitude of small white
+flowers in panicles on the ends of the upper branches. Where it occurs
+at all, it usually covers all the ground with a close, impenetrable
+growth, scarcely broken for miles.
+
+Up through the forest region, to a height of about 9000 feet above
+sea-level, there are ragged patches of manzanita, and five or six
+species of ceanothus, called deer-brush or California lilac. These are
+the most important of all the honey-bearing bushes of the Sierra.
+_Chamaebatia foliolosa_, a little shrub about a foot high, with flowers
+like the strawberry, makes handsome carpets beneath the pines, and seems
+to be a favorite with the bees; while pines themselves furnish unlimited
+quantities of pollen and honey-dew. The product of a single tree,
+ripening its pollen at the right time of year, would be sufficient for
+the wants of a whole hive. Along the streams there is a rich growth of
+lilies, larkspurs, pedicularis, castilleias, and clover. The alpine
+region contains the flowery glacier meadows, and countless small gardens
+in all sorts of places full of potentilla of several species, spraguea,
+ivesia, epilobium, and goldenrod, with beds of bryanthus and the
+charming cassiope covered with sweet bells. Even the tops of the
+mountains are blessed with flowers,--dwarf phlox, polemonium, ribes,
+hulsea, etc. I have seen wild bees and butterflies feeding at a height
+of 13,000 feet above the sea. Many, however, that go up these dangerous
+heights never come down again. Some, undoubtedly, perish in storms, and
+I have found thousands lying dead or benumbed on the surface of the
+glaciers, to which they had perhaps been attracted by the white glare,
+taking them for beds of bloom.
+
+From swarms that escaped their owners in the lowlands, the honey-bee is
+now generally distributed throughout the whole length of the Sierra, up
+to an elevation of 8000 feet above sea-level. At this height they
+flourish without care, though the snow every winter is deep. Even higher
+than this several bee-trees have been cut which contained over 200
+pounds of honey.
+
+The destructive action of sheep has not been so general on the mountain
+pastures as on those of the great plain, but in many places it has been
+more complete, owing to the more friable character of the soil, and its
+sloping position. The slant digging and down-raking action of hoofs on
+the steeper slopes of moraines has uprooted and buried many of the
+tender plants from year to year, without allowing them time to mature
+their seeds. The shrubs, too, are badly bitten, especially the various
+species of ceanothus. Fortunately, neither sheep nor cattle care to feed
+on the manzanita, spiraea, or adenostoma; and these fine honey-bushes
+are too stiff and tall, or grow in places too rough and inaccessible, to
+be trodden under foot. Also the ca�on walls and gorges, which form so
+considerable a part of the area of the range, while inaccessible to
+domestic sheep, are well fringed with honey-shrubs, and contain
+thousands of lovely bee-gardens, lying hid in narrow side-ca�ons and
+recesses fenced with avalanche taluses, and on the top of flat,
+projecting headlands, where only bees would think to look for them.
+
+But, on the other hand, a great portion of the woody plants that escape
+the feet and teeth of the sheep are destroyed by the shepherds by means
+of running fires, which are set everywhere during the dry autumn for the
+purpose of burning off the old fallen trunks and underbrush, with a view
+to improving the pastures, and making more open ways for the flocks.
+These destructive sheep-fires sweep through nearly the entire forest
+belt of the range, from one extremity to the other, consuming not only
+the underbrush, but the young trees and seedlings on which the
+permanence of the forests depends; thus setting in motion a long train
+of evils which will certainly reach far beyond bees and beekeepers.
+
+[Illustration: WILD BEE GARDEN.]
+
+The plow has not yet invaded the forest region to any appreciable
+extent, neither has it accomplished much in the foot-hills. Thousands of
+bee-ranches might be established along the margin of the plain, and up
+to a height of 4000 feet, wherever water could be obtained. The climate
+at this elevation admits of the making of permanent homes, and by moving
+the hives to higher pastures as the lower pass out of bloom, the annual
+yield of honey would be nearly doubled. The foot-hill pastures, as we
+have seen, fail about the end of May, those of the chaparral belt and
+lower forests are in full bloom in June, those of the upper and alpine
+region in July, August, and September. In Scotland, after the best of
+the Lowland bloom is past, the bees are carried in carts to the
+Highlands, and set free on the heather hills. In France, too, and in
+Poland, they are carried from pasture to pasture among orchards and
+fields in the same way, and along the rivers in barges to collect the
+honey of the delightful vegetation of the banks. In Egypt they are taken
+far up the Nile, and floated slowly home again, gathering the
+honey-harvest of the various fields on the way, timing their movements
+in accord with the seasons. Were similar methods pursued in California
+the productive season would last nearly all the year.
+
+The average elevation of the north half of the Sierra is, as we have
+seen, considerably less than that of the south half, and small streams,
+with the bank and meadow gardens dependent upon them, are less abundant.
+Around the head waters of the Yuba, Feather, and Pitt rivers, the
+extensive tablelands of lava are sparsely planted with pines, through
+which the sunshine reaches the ground with little interruption. Here
+flourishes a scattered, tufted growth of golden applopappus, linosyris,
+bahia, wyetheia, arnica, artemisia, and similar plants; with manzanita,
+cherry, plum, and thorn in ragged patches on the cooler hill-slopes. At
+the extremities of the Great Central Plain, the Sierra and Coast Ranges
+curve around and lock together in a labyrinth of mountains and valleys,
+throughout which their floras are mingled, making at the north, with its
+temperate climate and copious rainfall, a perfect paradise for bees,
+though, strange to say, scarcely a single regular bee-ranch has yet been
+established in it.
+
+Of all the upper flower fields of the Sierra, Shasta is the most
+honeyful, and may yet surpass in fame the celebrated honey hills of
+Hybla and hearthy Hymettus. Regarding this noble mountain from a bee
+point of view, encircled by its many climates, and sweeping aloft from
+the torrid plain into the frosty azure, we find the first 5000 feet from
+the summit generally snow-clad, and therefore about as honeyless as the
+sea. The base of this arctic region is girdled by a belt of crumbling
+lava measuring about 1000 feet in vertical breadth, and is mostly free
+from snow in summer. Beautiful lichens enliven the faces of the cliffs
+with their bright colors, and in some of the warmer nooks there are a
+few tufts of alpine daisies, wall-flowers and pentstemons; but,
+notwithstanding these bloom freely in the late summer, the zone as a
+whole is almost as honeyless as the icy summit, and its lower edge may
+be taken as the honey-line. Immediately below this comes the forest
+zone, covered with a rich growth of conifers, chiefly Silver Firs, rich
+in pollen and honey-dew, and diversified with countless garden openings,
+many of them less than a hundred yards across. Next, in orderly
+succession, comes the great bee zone. Its area far surpasses that of the
+icy summit and both the other zones combined, for it goes sweeping
+majestically around the entire mountain, with a breadth of six or seven
+miles and a circumference of nearly a hundred miles.
+
+Shasta, as we have already seen, is a fire-mountain created by a
+succession of eruptions of ashes and molten lava, which, flowing over
+the lips of its several craters, grew outward and upward like the trunk
+of a knotty exogenous tree. Then followed a strange contrast. The
+glacial winter came on, loading the cooling mountain with ice, which
+flowed slowly outward in every direction, radiating from the summit in
+the form of one vast conical glacier--a down-crawling mantle of ice upon
+a fountain of smoldering fire, crushing and grinding for centuries its
+brown, flinty lavas with incessant activity, and thus degrading and
+remodeling the entire mountain. When, at length, the glacial period
+began to draw near its close, the ice-mantle was gradually melted off
+around the bottom, and, in receding and breaking into its present
+fragmentary condition, irregular rings and heaps of moraine matter were
+stored upon its flanks. The glacial erosion of most of the Shasta lavas
+produces detritus, composed of rough, sub-angular boulders of moderate
+size and of porous gravel and sand, which yields freely to the
+transporting power of running water. Magnificent floods from the ample
+fountains of ice and snow working with sublime energy upon this prepared
+glacial detritus, sorted it out and carried down immense quantities from
+the higher slopes, and reformed it in smooth, delta-like beds around the
+base; and it is these flood-beds joined together that now form the main
+honey-zone of the old volcano.
+
+Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, has Mother
+Nature accomplished her beneficent designs--now a flood of fire, now a
+flood of ice, now a flood of water; and at length an outburst of organic
+life, a milky way of snowy petals and wings, girdling the rugged
+mountain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams beating against its
+sides had broken into a foam of plant-bloom and bees, as sea-waves break
+and bloom on a rock shore.
+
+In this flowery wilderness the bees rove and revel, rejoicing in the
+bounty of the sun, clambering eagerly through bramble and hucklebloom,
+ringing the myriad bells of the manzanita, now humming aloft among
+polleny willows and firs, now down on the ashy ground among gilias and
+buttercups, and anon plunging deep into snowy banks of cherry and
+buckthorn. They consider the lilies and roll into them, and, like
+lilies, they toil not, for they are impelled by sun-power, as
+water-wheels by water-power; and when the one has plenty of
+high-pressure water, the other plenty of sunshine, they hum and quiver
+alike. Sauntering in the Shasta bee-lands in the sun-days of summer, one
+may readily infer the time of day from the comparative energy of
+bee-movements alone--drowsy and moderate in the cool of the morning,
+increasing in energy with the ascending sun, and, at high noon,
+thrilling and quivering in wild ecstasy, then gradually declining again
+to the stillness of night. In my excursions among the glaciers I
+occasionally meet bees that are hungry, like mountaineers who venture
+too far and remain too long above the bread-line; then they droop and
+wither like autumn leaves. The Shasta bees are perhaps better fed than
+any others in the Sierra. Their field-work is one perpetual feast; but,
+however exhilarating the sunshine or bountiful the supply of flowers,
+they are always dainty feeders. Humming-moths and hummingbirds seldom
+set foot upon a flower, but poise on the wing in front of it, and reach
+forward as if they were sucking through straws. But bees, though, as
+dainty as they, hug their favorite flowers with profound cordiality, and
+push their blunt, polleny faces against them, like babies on their
+mother's bosom. And fondly, too, with eternal love, does Mother Nature
+clasp her small bee-babies, and suckle them, multitudes at once, on her
+warm Shasta breast.
+
+Besides the common honey-bee there are many other species here--fine
+mossy, burly fellows, who were nourished on the mountains thousands of
+sunny seasons before the advent of the domestic species. Among these are
+the bumblebees, mason-bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters.
+Butterflies, too, and moths of every size and pattern; some broad-winged
+like bats, flapping slowly, and sailing in easy curves; others like
+small, flying violets, shaking about loosely in short, crooked flights
+close to the flowers, feasting luxuriously night and day. Great numbers
+of deer also delight to dwell in the brushy portions of the
+bee-pastures.
+
+Bears, too, roam the sweet wilderness, their blunt, shaggy forms
+harmonizing well with the trees and tangled bushes, and with the bees,
+also, notwithstanding the disparity in size. They are fond of all good
+things, and enjoy them to the utmost, with but little troublesome
+discrimination--flowers and leaves as well as berries, and the bees
+themselves as well as their honey. Though the California bears have as
+yet had but little experience with honeybees, they often succeed in
+reaching their bountiful stores, and it seems doubtful whether bees
+themselves enjoy honey with so great a relish. By means of their
+powerful teeth and claws they can gnaw and tear open almost any hive
+conveniently accessible. Most honey-bees, however, in search of a home
+are wise enough to make choice of a hollow in a living tree, a
+considerable distance above the ground, when such places are to be had;
+then they are pretty secure, for though the smaller black and brown
+bears climb well, they are unable to break into strong hives while
+compelled to exert themselves to keep from falling, and at the same time
+to endure the stings of the fighting bees without having their paws free
+to rub them off. But woe to the black bumblebees discovered in their
+mossy nests in the ground! With a few strokes of their huge paws the
+bears uncover the entire establishment, and, before time is given for a
+general buzz, bees old and young, larvae, honey, stings, nest, and all
+are taken in one ravishing mouthful.
+
+Not the least influential of the agents concerned in the superior
+sweetness of the Shasta flora are its storms--storms I mean that are
+strictly local, bred and born on the mountain. The magical rapidity with
+which they are grown on the mountain-top, and bestow their charity in
+rain and snow, never fails to astonish the inexperienced lowlander.
+Often in calm, glowing days, while the bees are still on the wing, a
+storm-cloud may be seen far above in the pure ether, swelling its pearl
+bosses, and growing silently, like a plant. Presently a clear, ringing
+discharge of thunder is heard, followed by a rush of wind that comes
+sounding over the bending woods like the roar of the ocean, mingling
+raindrops, snow-flowers, honey-flowers, and bees in wild storm harmony.
+
+Still more impressive are the warm, reviving days of spring in the
+mountain pastures. The blood of the plants throbbing beneath the
+life-giving sunshine seems to be heard and felt. Plant growth goes on
+before our eyes, and every tree in the woods, and every bush and flower
+is seen as a hive of restless industry. The deeps of the sky are mottled
+with singing wings of every tone and color; clouds of brilliant
+chrysididae dancing and swirling in exquisite rhythm, golden-barred
+vespidae, dragon-flies, butterflies, grating cicadas, and jolly,
+rattling grasshoppers, fairly enameling the light.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.--WHITE SAGE.]
+
+On bright, crisp mornings a striking optical effect may frequently be
+observed from the shadows of the higher mountains while the sunbeams are
+pouring past overhead. Then every insect, no matter what may be its own
+proper color, burns white in the light. Gauzy-winged hymenoptera,
+moths, jet-black beetles, all are transfigured alike in pure, spiritual
+white, like snowflakes.
+
+In Southern California, where bee-culture has had so much skilful
+attention of late years, the pasturage is not more abundant, or more
+advantageously varied as to the number of its honey-plants and their
+distribution over mountain and plain, than that of many other portions
+of the State where the industrial currents flow in other channels. The
+famous White Sage (_Audibertia_), belonging to the mint family,
+flourishes here in all its glory, blooming in May, and yielding great
+quantities of clear, pale honey, which is greatly prized in every market
+it has yet reached. This species grows chiefly in the valleys and low
+hills. The Black Sage on the mountains is part of a dense, thorny
+chaparral, which is composed chiefly of adenostoma, ceanothus,
+manzanita, and cherry--not differing greatly from that of the southern
+portion of the Sierra, but more dense and continuous, and taller, and
+remaining longer in bloom. Stream-side gardens, so charming a feature of
+both the Sierra and Coast Mountains, are less numerous in Southern
+California, but they are exceedingly rich in honey-flowers, wherever
+found,--melilotus, columbine, collinsia, verbena, zauschneria, wild
+rose, honeysuckle, philadelphus, and lilies rising from the warm, moist
+dells in a very storm of exuberance. Wild buckwheat of many species is
+developed in abundance over the dry, sandy valleys and lower slopes of
+the mountains, toward the end of summer, and is, at this time, the main
+dependence of the bees, reinforced here and there by orange groves,
+alfalfa fields, and small home gardens.
+
+The main honey months, in ordinary seasons, are April, May, June, July,
+and August; while the other months are usually flowery enough to yield
+sufficient for the bees.
+
+According to Mr. J.T. Gordon, President of the Los Angeles County
+Bee-keepers' Association, the first bees introduced into the county were
+a single hive, which cost $150 in San Francisco, and arrived in
+September, 1854.[1] In April, of the following year, this hive sent out
+two swarms, which were sold for $100 each. From this small beginning the
+bees gradually multiplied to about 3000 swarms in the year 1873. In 1876
+it was estimated that there were between 15,000 and 20,000 hives in the
+county, producing an annual yield of about 100 pounds to the hive--in
+some exceptional cases, a much greater yield.
+
+In San Diego County, at the beginning of the season of 1878, there were
+about 24,000 hives, and the shipments from the one port of San Diego for
+the same year, from July 17 to November 10, were 1071 barrels, 15,544
+cases, and nearly 90 tons. The largest bee-ranches have about a thousand
+hives, and are carefully and skilfully managed, every scientific
+appliance of merit being brought into use. There are few bee-keepers,
+however, who own half as many as this, or who give their undivided
+attention to the business. Orange culture, at present, is heavily
+overshadowing every other business.
+
+A good many of the so-called bee-ranches of Los Angeles and San Diego
+counties are still of the rudest pioneer kind imaginable. A man
+unsuccessful in everything else hears the interesting story of the
+profits and comforts of bee-keeping, and concludes to try it; he buys a
+few colonies, or gets them, from some overstocked ranch on shares, takes
+them back to the foot of some ca�on, where the pasturage is fresh,
+squats on the land, with, or without, the permission of the owner, sets
+up his hives, makes a box-cabin for himself, scarcely bigger than a
+bee-hive, and awaits his fortune.
+
+Bees suffer sadly from famine during the dry years which occasionally
+occur in the southern and middle portions of the State. If the rainfall
+amounts only to three or four inches, instead of from twelve to twenty,
+as in ordinary seasons, then sheep and cattle die in thousands, and so
+do these small, winged cattle, unless they are carefully fed, or removed
+to other pastures. The year 1877 will long be remembered as
+exceptionally rainless and distressing. Scarcely a flower bloomed on the
+dry valleys away from the stream-sides, and not a single grain-field
+depending upon rain was reaped. The seed only sprouted, came up a little
+way, and withered. Horses, cattle, and sheep grew thinner day by day,
+nibbling at bushes and weeds, along the shallowing edges of streams,
+many of which were dried up altogether, for the first time since the
+settlement of the country.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE. CARDINAL
+FLOWER.]
+
+In the course of a trip I made during the summer of that year through
+Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles
+counties, the deplorable effects of the drought were everywhere
+visible--leafless fields, dead and dying cattle, dead bees, and
+half-dead people with dusty, doleful faces. Even the birds and squirrels
+were in distress, though their suffering was less painfully apparent
+than that of the poor cattle. These were falling one by one in slow,
+sure starvation along the banks of the hot, sluggish streams, while
+thousands of buzzards correspondingly fat were sailing above them, or
+standing gorged on the ground beneath the trees, waiting with easy faith
+for fresh carcasses. The quails, prudently considering the hard times,
+abandoned all thought of pairing. They were too poor to marry, and so
+continued in flocks all through the year without attempting to rear
+young. The ground-squirrels, though an exceptionally industrious and
+enterprising race, as every farmer knows, were hard pushed for a living;
+not a fresh leaf or seed was to be found save in the trees, whose bossy
+masses of dark green foliage presented a striking contrast to the ashen
+baldness of the ground beneath them. The squirrels, leaving their
+accustomed feeding-grounds, betook themselves to the leafy oaks to gnaw
+out the acorn stores of the provident woodpeckers, but the latter kept
+up a vigilant watch upon their movements. I noticed four woodpeckers in
+league against one squirrel, driving the poor fellow out of an oak that
+they claimed. He dodged round the knotty trunk from side to side, as
+nimbly as he could in his famished condition, only to find a sharp bill
+everywhere. But the fate of the bees that year seemed the saddest of
+all. In different portions of Los Angeles and San Diego counties, from
+one half to three fourths of them died of sheer starvation. Not less
+than 18,000 colonies perished in these two counties alone, while in the
+adjacent counties the death-rate was hardly less.
+
+[Illustration: WILD BUCKWHEAT.--A BEE RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS.]
+
+Even the colonies nearest to the mountains suffered this year, for the
+smaller vegetation on the foot-hills was affected by the drought almost
+as severely as that of the valleys and plains, and even the hardy,
+deep-rooted chaparral, the surest dependence of the bees, bloomed
+sparingly, while much of it was beyond reach. Every swarm could have
+been saved, however, by promptly supplying them with food when their own
+stores began to fail, and before they became enfeebled and discouraged;
+or by cutting roads back into the mountains, and taking them into the
+heart of the flowery chaparral. The Santa Lucia, San Rafael, San
+Gabriel, San Jacinto, and San Bernardino ranges are almost untouched as
+yet save by the wild bees. Some idea of their resources, and of the
+advantages and disadvantages they offer to bee-keepers, may be formed
+from an excursion that I made into the San Gabriel Range about the
+beginning of August of "the dry year." This range, containing most of
+the characteristic features of the other ranges just mentioned,
+overlooks the Los Angeles vineyards and orange groves from the north,
+and is more rigidly inaccessible in the ordinary meaning of the word
+than any other that I ever attempted to penetrate. The slopes are
+exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot, and they are covered with
+thorny bushes from five to ten feet high. With the exception of little
+spots not visible in general views, the entire surface is covered with
+them, massed in close hedge growth, sweeping gracefully down into every
+gorge and hollow, and swelling over every ridge and summit in shaggy,
+ungovernable exuberance, offering more honey to the acre for half the
+year than the most crowded clover-field. But when beheld from the open
+San Gabriel Valley, beaten with dry sunshine, all that was seen of the
+range seemed to wear a forbidding aspect. From base to summit all seemed
+gray, barren, silent, its glorious chaparral appearing like dry moss
+creeping over its dull, wrinkled ridges and hollows.
+
+Setting out from Pasadena, I reached the foot of the range about
+sundown; and being weary and heated with my walk across the shadeless
+valley, concluded to camp for the night. After resting a few moments, I
+began to look about among the flood-boulders of Eaton Creek for a
+camp-ground, when I came upon a strange, dark-looking man who had been
+chopping cord-wood. He seemed surprised at seeing me, so I sat down with
+him on the live-oak log he had been cutting, and made haste to give a
+reason for my appearance in his solitude, explaining that I was anxious
+to find out something about the mountains, and meant to make my way up
+Eaton Creek next morning. Then he kindly invited me to camp with him,
+and led me to his little cabin, situated at the foot of the mountains,
+where a small spring oozes out of a bank overgrown with wild-rose
+bushes. After supper, when the daylight was gone, he explained that he
+was out of candles; so we sat in the dark, while he gave me a sketch of
+his life in a mixture of Spanish and English. He was born in Mexico, his
+father Irish, his mother Spanish. He had been a miner, rancher,
+prospector, hunter, etc., rambling always, and wearing his life away in
+mere waste; but now he was going to settle down. His past life, he said,
+was of "no account," but the future was promising. He was going to "make
+money and marry a Spanish woman." People mine here for water as for
+gold. He had been running a tunnel into a spur of the mountain back of
+his cabin. "My prospect is good," he said, "and if I chance to strike a
+good, strong flow, I'll soon be worth $5000 or $10,000. For that flat
+out there," referring to a small, irregular patch of bouldery detritus,
+two or three acres in size, that had been deposited by Eaton Creek
+during some flood season,--"that flat is large enough for a nice
+orange-grove, and the bank behind the cabin will do for a vineyard, and
+after watering my own trees and vines I will have some water left to
+sell to my neighbors below me, down the valley. And then," he continued,
+"I can keep bees, and make money that way, too, for the mountains above
+here are just full of honey in the summer-time, and one of my neighbors
+down here says that he will let me have a whole lot of hives, on shares,
+to start with. You see I've a good thing; I'm all right now." All this
+prospective affluence in the sunken, boulder-choked flood-bed of a
+mountain-stream! Leaving the bees out of the count, most fortune-seekers
+would as soon think of settling on the summit of Mount Shasta. Next
+morning, wishing my hopeful entertainer good luck, I set out on my
+shaggy excursion.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT, SPANISH BAYONET.]
+
+About half an hour's walk above the cabin, I came to "The Fall," famous
+throughout the valley settlements as the finest yet discovered in the
+San Gabriel Mountains. It is a charming little thing, with a low, sweet
+voice, singing like a bird, as it pours from a notch in a short ledge,
+some thirty-five or forty feet into a round mirror-pool. The face of the
+cliff back of it, and on both sides, is smoothly covered and embossed
+with mosses, against which the white water shines out in showy relief,
+like a silver instrument in a velvet case. Hither come the San Gabriel
+lads and lassies, to gather ferns and dabble away their hot holidays in
+the cool water, glad to escape from their commonplace palm-gardens and
+orange-groves. The delicate maidenhair grows on fissured rocks within
+reach of the spray, while broad-leaved maples and sycamores cast soft,
+mellow shade over a rich profusion of bee-flowers, growing among
+boulders in front of the pool--the fall, the flowers, the bees, the
+ferny rocks, and leafy shade forming a charming little poem of wildness,
+the last of a series extending down the flowery slopes of Mount San
+Antonio through the rugged, foam-beaten bosses of the main Eaton Canon.
+
+From the base of the fall I followed the ridge that forms the western
+rim of the Eaton basin to the summit of one of the principal peaks,
+which is about 5000 feet above sea-level. Then, turning eastward, I
+crossed the middle of the basin, forcing a way over its many subordinate
+ridges and across its eastern rim, having to contend almost everywhere
+with the floweriest and most impenetrable growth of honey-bushes I had
+ever encountered since first my mountaineering began. Most of the Shasta
+chaparral is leafy nearly to the ground; here the main stems are naked
+for three or four feet, and interspiked with dead twigs, forming a stiff
+_chevaux de frise_ through which even the bears make their way with
+difficulty. I was compelled to creep for miles on all fours, and in
+following the bear-trails often found tufts of hair on the bushes where
+they had forced themselves through.
+
+For 100 feet or so above the fall the ascent was made possible only by
+tough cushions of club-moss that clung to the rock. Above this the ridge
+weathers away to a thin knife-blade for a few hundred yards, and thence
+to the summit of the range it carries a bristly mane of chaparral. Here
+and there small openings occur on rocky places, commanding fine views
+across the cultivated valley to the ocean. These I found by the tracks
+were favorite outlooks and resting-places for the wild animals--bears,
+wolves, foxes, wildcats, etc.--which abound here, and would have to be
+taken into account in the establishment of bee-ranches. In the deepest
+thickets I found wood-rat villages--groups of huts four to six feet
+high, built of sticks and leaves in rough, tapering piles, like musk-rat
+cabins. I noticed a good many bees, too, most of them wild. The tame
+honey-bees seemed languid and wing-weary, as if they had come all the
+way up from the flowerless valley.
+
+After reaching the summit I had time to make only a hasty survey of the
+basin, now glowing in the sunset gold, before hastening down into one of
+the tributary ca�ons in search, of water. Emerging from a particularly
+tedious breadth of chaparral, I found myself free and erect in a
+beautiful park-like grove of Mountain Live Oak, where the ground was
+planted with aspidiums and brier-roses, while the glossy foliage made a
+close canopy overhead, leaving the gray dividing trunks bare to show the
+beauty of their interlacing arches. The bottom of the ca�on was dry
+where I first reached it, but a bunch of scarlet mimulus indicated water
+at no great distance, and I soon discovered about a bucketful in a
+hollow of the rock. This, however, was full of dead bees, wasps,
+beetles, and leaves, well steeped and simmered, and would, therefore,
+require boiling and filtering through fresh charcoal before it could be
+made available. Tracing the dry channel about a mile farther down to its
+junction with a larger tributary ca�on, I at length discovered a lot of
+boulder pools, clear as crystal, brimming full, and linked together by
+glistening streamlets just strong enough to sing audibly. Flowers in
+full bloom adorned their margins, lilies ten feet high, larkspur,
+columbines, and luxuriant ferns, leaning and overarching in lavish
+abundance, while a noble old Live Oak spread its rugged arms over all.
+Here I camped, making my bed on smooth cobblestones.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-KEEPER'S CABIN.--BURRIELIA (ABOVE).--MADIA
+(BELOW).]
+
+Next day, in the channel of a tributary that heads on Mount San Antonio,
+I passed about fifteen or twenty gardens like the one in which I
+slept--lilies in every one of them, in the full pomp of bloom. My third
+camp was made near the middle of the general basin, at the head of a
+long system of cascades from ten to 200 feet high, one following the
+other in close succession down a rocky, inaccessible ca�on, making a
+total descent of nearly 1700 feet. Above the cascades the main stream
+passes through a series of open, sunny levels, the largest of which are
+about an acre in size, where the wild bees and their companions were
+feasting on a showy growth of zauschneria, painted cups, and monardella;
+and gray squirrels were busy harvesting the burs of the Douglas Spruce,
+the only conifer I met in the basin.
+
+The eastern slopes of the basin are in every way similar to those we
+have described, and the same may be said of other portions of the range.
+From the highest summit, far as the eye could reach, the landscape was
+one vast bee-pasture, a rolling wilderness of honey-bloom, scarcely
+broken by bits of forest or the rocky outcrops of hilltops and ridges.
+
+Behind the San Bernardino Range lies the wild "sage-brush country,"
+bounded on the east by the Colorado River, and extending in a general
+northerly direction to Nevada and along the eastern base of the Sierra
+beyond Mono Lake.
+
+The greater portion of this immense region, including Owen's Valley,
+Death Valley, and the Sink of the Mohave, the area of which is nearly
+one fifth that of the entire State, is usually regarded as a desert, not
+because of any lack in the soil, but for want of rain, and rivers
+available for irrigation. Very little of it, however, is desert in the
+eyes of a bee.
+
+Looking now over all the available pastures of California, it appears
+that the business of beekeeping is still in its infancy. Even in the
+more enterprising of the southern counties, where so vigorous a
+beginning has been made, less than a tenth of their honey resources have
+as yet been developed; while in the Great Plain, the Coast Ranges, the
+Sierra Nevada, and the northern region about Mount Shasta, the business
+can hardly be said to exist at all. What the limits of its developments
+in the future may be, with the advantages of cheaper transportation and
+the invention of better methods in general, it is not easy to guess.
+Nor, on the other hand, are we able to measure the influence on bee
+interests likely to follow the destruction of the forests, now rapidly
+falling before fire and the ax. As to the sheep evil, that can hardly
+become greater than it is at the present day. In short, notwithstanding
+the wide-spread deterioration and destruction of every kind already
+effected, California, with her incomparable climate and flora, is still,
+as far as I know, the best of all the bee-lands of the world.
+
+
+[1] Fifteen hives of Italian bees were introduced into Los Angeles
+County in 1855, and in 1876 they had increased to 500. The marked
+superiority claimed for them over the common species is now attracting
+considerable attention.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Mountains of California, by John Muir
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diff --git a/old/old/10012-8.zip b/old/old/10012-8.zip
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mountains of California, by John Muir
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Mountains of California
+
+Author: John Muir
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2003 [EBook #10012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Beth Trapaga and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA
+
+
+BY
+
+JOHN MUIR
+
+
+[Illustration: HOOFED LOCUSTS.]
+
+
+1894
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I THE SIERRA NEVADA
+  II THE GLACIERS
+ III THE SNOW
+  IV A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA
+   V THE PASSES
+  VI THE GLACIER LAKES
+ VII THE GLACIER MEADOWS
+VIII THE FORESTS
+  IX THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
+   X A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS
+  XI THE RIVER FLOODS
+ XII SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS
+XIII THE WATER-OUZEL
+ XIV THE WILD SHEEP
+  XV IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS
+ XVI THE BEE-PASTURES
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+HOOFED LOCUSTS
+MOUNT TAMALPAIS--NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE
+MOUNT SHASTA, LOOKING SOUTHWEST
+MOUNT HOOD
+MOUNT RAINIER FROM PARADISE VALLEY--NISQUALLY GLACIER
+MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY
+MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION BOUNDARY
+VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CANON
+LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS
+THE DEATH OF A LAKE
+LAKE STARR KING
+VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST
+EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA
+VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST
+NUT PINE
+THE GROVE FORM
+LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN CHARACTER OF WOODS
+SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE
+YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES
+FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE
+PINUS PONDEROSA
+SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH
+INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME
+FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS
+VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR
+SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA
+  GLACIERS
+JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR
+STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH
+GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES
+A DWARF PINE
+OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES
+TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE WHEN SHOWING
+  OFF TO A SPECTATOR
+SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE
+TRYING THE BOW
+A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS
+WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING
+ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL
+OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT
+THE OUZEL AT HOME
+YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CANON
+SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA
+HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM
+HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP
+CROSSING A CANON STREAM
+WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE
+INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP
+A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA
+WILD BEE GARDEN
+IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.--WHITE SAGE
+A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE.--CARDINAL FLOWER
+WILD BUCKWHEAT.--A BEE-RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS
+A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT.--SPANISH BAYONET
+A BEE-KEEPER'S CABIN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+THE SIERRA NEVADA
+
+Go where you may within the bounds of California, mountains are ever in
+sight, charming and glorifying every landscape. Yet so simple and
+massive is the topography of the State in general views, that the main
+central portion displays only one valley, and two chains of mountains
+which seem almost perfectly regular in trend and height: the Coast Range
+on the west side, the Sierra Nevada on the east. These two ranges coming
+together in curves on the north and south inclose a magnificent basin,
+with a level floor more than 400 miles long, and from 35 to 60 miles
+wide. This is the grand Central Valley of California, the waters of
+which have only one outlet to the sea through the Golden Gate. But with
+this general simplicity of features there is great complexity of hidden
+detail. The Coast Range, rising as a grand green barrier against the
+ocean, from 2000 to 8000 feet high, is composed of innumerable
+forest-crowned spurs, ridges, and rolling hill-waves which inclose a
+multitude of smaller valleys; some looking out through long,
+forest-lined vistas to the sea; others, with but few trees, to the
+Central Valley; while a thousand others yet smaller are embosomed and
+concealed in mild, round-browed hills, each, with its own climate, soil,
+and productions.
+
+Making your way through the mazes of the Coast Range to the summit of
+any of the inner peaks or passes opposite San Francisco, in the clear
+springtime, the grandest and most telling of all California landscapes
+is outspread before you. At your feet lies the great Central Valley
+glowing golden in the sunshine, extending north and south farther than
+the eye can reach, one smooth, flowery, lake-like bed of fertile soil.
+Along its eastern margin rises the mighty Sierra, miles in height,
+reposing like a smooth, cumulous cloud in the sunny sky, and so
+gloriously colored, and so luminous, it seems to be not clothed with
+light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.
+Along the top, and extending a good way down, you see a pale, pearl-gray
+belt of snow; and below it a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the
+extension of the forests; and along the base of the range a broad belt
+of rose-purple and yellow, where lie the minor's gold-fields and the
+foot-hill gardens. All these colored belts blending smoothly make a wall
+of light ineffably fine, and as beautiful as a rainbow, yet firm as
+adamant.
+
+When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, from the
+summit of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or
+plowed as yet, was one furred, rich sheet of golden compositae, and the
+luminous wall of the mountains shone in all its glory. Then it seemed to
+me the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the
+Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing
+and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the
+sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday radiance on the
+trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the alpenglow, and a thousand
+dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, it
+still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely
+beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen.
+
+The Sierra is about 500 miles long, 70 miles wide, and from 7000 to
+nearly 15,000 feet high. In general views no mark of man is visible on
+it, nor anything to suggest the richness of the life it cherishes, or
+the depth and grandeur of its sculpture. None of its magnificent
+forest-crowned ridges rises much above the general level to publish its
+wealth. No great valley or lake is seen, or river, or group of
+well-marked features of any kind, standing out in distinct pictures.
+Even the summit-peaks, so clear and high in the sky, seem comparatively
+smooth and featureless. Nevertheless, glaciers are still at work in the
+shadows of the peaks, and thousands of lakes and meadows shine and bloom
+beneath them, and the whole range is furrowed with canons to a depth of
+from 2000 to 5000 feet, in which once flowed majestic glaciers, and in
+which now flow and sing a band of beautiful rivers.
+
+Though of such stupendous depth, these famous canons are not raw,
+gloomy, jagged-walled gorges, savage and inaccessible. With rough
+passages here and there they still make delightful pathways for the
+mountaineer, conducting from the fertile lowlands to the highest icy
+fountains, as a kind of mountain streets full of charming life and
+light, graded and sculptured by the ancient glaciers, and presenting,
+throughout all their courses, a rich variety of novel and attractive
+scenery, the most attractive that has yet been discovered in the
+mountain-ranges of the world.
+
+In many places, especially in the middle region of the western flank of
+the range, the main canons widen into spacious valleys or parks,
+diversified like artificial landscape-gardens, with charming groves and
+meadows, and thickets of blooming bushes, while the lofty, retiring
+walls, infinitely varied in form and sculpture, are fringed with ferns,
+flowering-plants of many species, oaks, and evergreens, which find
+anchorage on a thousand narrow steps and benches; while the whole is
+enlivened and made glorious with rejoicing streams that come dancing and
+foaming over the sunny brows of the cliffs to join the shining river
+that flows in tranquil beauty down the middle of each one of them.
+
+The walls of these park valleys of the Yosemite kind are made up of
+rocks mountains in size, partly separated from each other by narrow
+gorges and side-canons; and they are so sheer in front, and so compactly
+built together on a level floor, that, comprehensively seen, the parks
+they inclose look like immense halls or temples lighted from above.
+Every rock seems to glow with life. Some lean back in majestic repose;
+others, absolutely sheer, or nearly so, for thousands of feet, advance
+their brows in thoughtful attitudes beyond their companions, giving
+welcome to storms and calms alike, seemingly conscious yet heedless of
+everything going on about them, awful in stern majesty, types of
+permanence, yet associated with beauty of the frailest and most fleeting
+forms; their feet set in pine-groves and gay emerald meadows, their
+brows in the sky; bathed in light, bathed in floods of singing water,
+while snow-clouds, avalanches, and the winds shine and surge and wreathe
+about them as the years go by, as if into these mountain mansions Nature
+had taken pains to gather her choicest treasures to draw her lovers into
+close and confiding communion with her.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT TAMALPAIS--NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE.]
+
+Here, too, in the middle region of deepest canons are the grandest
+forest-trees, the Sequoia, king of conifers, the noble Sugar and Yellow
+Pines, Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, and the Silver Firs, each a giant of
+its kind, assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all
+other coniferous forests in the world, both in the number of its species
+and in the size and beauty of its trees. The winds flow in melody
+through their colossal spires, and they are vocal everywhere with the
+songs of birds and running water. Miles of fragrant ceanothus and
+manzanita bushes bloom beneath them, and lily gardens and meadows, and
+damp, ferny glens in endless variety of fragrance and color, compelling
+the admiration of every observer. Sweeping on over ridge and valley,
+these noble trees extend a continuous belt from end to end of the range,
+only slightly interrupted by sheer-walled canons at intervals of about
+fifteen and twenty miles. Here the great burly brown bears delight to
+roam, harmonizing with the brown boles of the trees beneath which they
+feed. Deer, also, dwell here, and find food and shelter in the ceanothus
+tangles, with a multitude of smaller people. Above this region of
+giants, the trees grow smaller until the utmost limit of the timber line
+is reached on the stormy mountain-slopes at a height of from ten to
+twelve thousand feet above the sea, where the Dwarf Pine is so lowly and
+hard beset by storms and heavy snow, it is pressed into flat tangles,
+over the tops of which we may easily walk. Below the main forest belt
+the trees likewise diminish in size, frost and burning drought repressing
+and blasting alike.
+
+The rose-purple zone along the base of the range comprehends nearly all
+the famous gold region of California. And here it was that miners from
+every country under the sun assembled in a wild, torrent-like rush to
+seek their fortunes. On the banks of every river, ravine, and gully they
+have left their marks. Every gravel- and boulder-bed has been
+desperately riddled over and over again. But in this region the pick and
+shovel, once wielded with savage enthusiasm, have been laid away, and
+only quartz-mining is now being carried on to any considerable extent.
+The zone in general is made up of low, tawny, waving foot-hills,
+roughened here and there with brush and trees, and outcropping masses of
+slate, colored gray and red with lichens. The smaller masses of slate,
+rising abruptly from the dry, grassy sod in leaning slabs, look like
+ancient tombstones in a deserted burying-ground. In early spring, say
+from February to April, the whole of this foot-hill belt is a paradise
+of bees and flowers. Refreshing rains then fall freely, birds are busy
+building their nests, and the sunshine is balmy and delightful. But by
+the end of May the soil, plants, and sky seem to have been baked in an
+oven. Most of the plants crumble to dust beneath the foot, and the
+ground is full of cracks; while the thirsty traveler gazes with eager
+longing through the burning glare to the snowy summits looming like hazy
+clouds in the distance.
+
+The trees, mostly _Quercus Douglasii_ and _Pinus Sabiniana_,
+thirty to forty feet high, with thin, pale-green foliage, stand far
+apart and cast but little shade. Lizards glide about on the rocks
+enjoying a constitution that no drought can dry, and ants in amazing
+numbers, whose tiny sparks of life seem to burn the brighter with the
+increasing heat, ramble industriously in long trains in search of food.
+Crows, ravens, magpies--friends in distress--gather on the ground
+beneath the best shade-trees, panting with drooping wings and bills wide
+open, scarce a note from any of them during the midday hours. Quails,
+too, seek the shade during the heat of the day about tepid pools in the
+channels of the larger mid-river streams. Rabbits scurry from thicket to
+thicket among the ceanothus bushes, and occasionally a long-eared hare
+is seen cantering gracefully across the wider openings. The nights are
+calm and dewless during the summer, and a thousand voices proclaim the
+abundance of life, notwithstanding the desolating effect of dry sunshine
+on the plants and larger animals. The hylas make a delightfully pure and
+tranquil music after sunset; and coyotes, the little, despised dogs of
+the wilderness, brave, hardy fellows, looking like withered wisps of
+hay, bark in chorus for hours. Mining-towns, most of them dead, and a
+few living ones with bright bits of cultivation about them, occur at
+long intervals along the belt, and cottages covered with climbing roses,
+in the midst of orange and peach orchards, and sweet-scented hay-fields
+in fertile flats where water for irrigation may be had. But they are
+mostly far apart, and make scarce any mark in general views.
+
+Every winter the High Sierra and the middle forest region get snow in
+glorious abundance, and even the foot-hills are at times whitened. Then
+all the range looks like a vast beveled wall of purest marble. The rough
+places are then made smooth, the death and decay of the year is covered
+gently and kindly, and the ground seems as clean as the sky. And though
+silent in its flight from the clouds, and when it is taking its place on
+rock, or tree, or grassy meadow, how soon the gentle snow finds a voice!
+Slipping from the heights, gathering in avalanches, it booms and roars
+like thunder, and makes a glorious show as it sweeps down the
+mountain-side, arrayed in long, silken streamers and wreathing, swirling
+films of crystal dust.
+
+The north half of the range is mostly covered with floods of lava, and
+dotted with volcanoes and craters, some of them recent and perfect in
+form, others in various stages of decay. The south half is composed of
+granite nearly from base to summit, while a considerable number of
+peaks, in the middle of the range, are capped with metamorphic slates,
+among which are Mounts Dana and Gibbs to the east of Yosemite Valley.
+Mount Whitney, the culminating point of the range near its southern
+extremity, lifts its helmet-shaped crest to a height of nearly 14,700
+feet. Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a height of
+14,440 feet at the northern extremity, and forms a noble landmark for
+all the surrounding region within a radius of a hundred miles. Residual
+masses of volcanic rocks occur throughout most of the granitic southern
+portion also, and a considerable number of old volcanoes on the flanks,
+especially along the eastern base of the range near Mono Lake and
+southward. But it is only to the northward that the entire range, from
+base to summit, is covered with lava.
+
+From the summit of Mount Whitney only granite is seen. Innumerable peaks
+and spires but little lower than its own storm-beaten crags rise in
+groups like forest-trees, in full view, segregated by canons of
+tremendous depth and ruggedness. On Shasta nearly every feature in the
+vast view speaks of the old volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in
+Oregon, the icy volcanoes of Mount Pitt and the Three Sisters rise above
+the dark evergreen woods. Southward innumerable smaller craters and
+cones are distributed along the axis of the range and on each flank. Of
+these, Lassen's Butte is the highest, being nearly 11,000 feet above
+sea-level. Miles of its flanks are reeking and bubbling with hot
+springs, many of them so boisterous and sulphurous they seem over ready
+to become spouting geysers like those of the Yellowstone.
+
+The Cinder Cone near marks the most recent volcanic eruption in the
+Sierra. It is a symmetrical truncated cone about 700 feet high, covered
+with gray cinders and ashes, and has a regular unchanged crater on its
+summit, in which a few small Two-leaved Pines are growing. These show
+that the age of the cone is not less than eighty years. It stands
+between two lakes, which a short time ago were one. Before the cone was
+built, a flood of rough vesicular lava was poured into the lake, cutting
+it in two, and, overflowing its banks, the fiery flood advanced into the
+pine-woods, overwhelming the trees in its way, the charred ends of some
+of which may still be seen projecting from beneath the snout of the
+lava-stream where it came to rest. Later still there was an eruption of
+ashes and loose obsidian cinders, probably from the same vent, which,
+besides forming the Cinder Cone, scattered a heavy shower over the
+surrounding woods for miles to a depth of from six inches to several
+feet.
+
+The history of this last Sierra eruption is also preserved in the
+traditions of the Pitt River Indians. They tell of a fearful time of
+darkness, when the sky was black with ashes and smoke that threatened
+every living thing with death, and that when at length the sun appeared
+once more it was red like blood.
+
+Less recent craters in great numbers roughen the adjacent region; some
+of them with lakes in their throats, others overgrown with trees and
+flowers, Nature in these old hearths and firesides having literally
+given beauty for ashes. On the northwest side of Mount Shasta there is a
+subordinate cone about 3000 feet below the summit, which, has been
+active subsequent to the breaking up of the main ice-cap that once
+covered the mountain, as is shown by its comparatively unwasted crater
+and the streams of unglaciated lava radiating from it. The main summit
+is about a mile and a half in diameter, bounded by small crumbling peaks
+and ridges, among which we seek in vain for the outlines of the ancient
+crater.
+
+These ruinous masses, and the deep glacial grooves that flute the sides
+of the mountain, show that it has been considerably lowered and wasted
+by ice; how much we have no sure means of knowing. Just below the
+extreme summit hot sulphurous gases and vapor issue from irregular
+fissures, mixed with spray derived from melting snow, the last feeble
+expression of the mighty force that built the mountain. Not in one great
+convulsion was Shasta given birth. The crags of the summit and the
+sections exposed by the glaciers down the sides display enough of its
+internal framework to prove that comparatively long periods of
+quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which the
+cooling lavas ceased to flow, and became permanent additions to the bulk
+of the growing mountain. With alternate haste and deliberation eruption
+succeeded eruption till the old volcano surpassed even its present
+sublime height.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT SHASTA, LOOKING SOUTHWEST.]
+
+Standing on the icy top of this, the grandest of all the fire-mountains
+of the Sierra, we can hardly fail to look forward to its next eruption.
+Gardens, vineyards, homes have been planted confidingly on the flanks of
+volcanoes which, after remaining steadfast for ages, have suddenly
+blazed into violent action, and poured forth overwhelming floods of
+fire. It is known that more than a thousand years of cool calm have
+intervened between violent eruptions. Like gigantic geysers spouting
+molten rock instead of water, volcanoes work and rest, and we have no
+sure means of knowing whether they are dead when still, or only
+sleeping.
+
+Along the western base of the range a telling series of sedimentary
+rocks containing the early history of the Sierra are now being studied.
+But leaving for the present these first chapters, we see that only a
+very short geological time ago, just before the coming on of that
+winter of winters called the glacial period, a vast deluge of molten
+rocks poured from many a chasm and crater on the flanks and summit of
+the range, filling lake basins and river channels, and obliterating
+nearly every existing feature on the northern portion. At length these
+all-destroying floods ceased to flow. But while the great volcanic cones
+built up along the axis still burned and smoked, the whole Sierra passed
+under the domain of ice and snow. Then over the bald, featureless,
+fire-blackened mountains, glaciers began to crawl, covering them from
+the summits to the sea with a mantle of ice; and then with infinite
+deliberation the work went on of sculpturing the range anew. These
+mighty agents of erosion, halting never through unnumbered centuries,
+crushed and ground the flinty lavas and granites beneath their crystal
+folds, wasting and building until in the fullness of time the Sierra was
+born again, brought to light nearly as we behold it today, with glaciers
+and snow-crushed pines at the top of the range, wheat-fields and
+orange-groves at the foot of it.
+
+This change from icy darkness and death to life and beauty was slow, as
+we count time, and is still going on, north and south, over all the
+world wherever glaciers exist, whether in the form of distinct rivers,
+as in Switzerland, Norway, the mountains of Asia, and the Pacific Coast;
+or in continuous mantling folds, as in portions of Alaska, Greenland,
+Franz-Joseph-Land, Nova Zembla, Spitzbergen, and the lands about the
+South Pole. But in no country, as far as I know, may these majestic
+changes be studied to better advantage than in the plains and mountains
+of California.
+
+Toward the close of the glacial period, when the snow-clouds became less
+fertile and the melting waste of sunshine became greater, the lower
+folds of the ice-sheet in California, discharging fleets of icebergs
+into the sea, began to shallow and recede from the lowlands, and then
+move slowly up the flanks of the Sierra in compliance with the changes
+of climate. The great white mantle on the mountains broke up into a
+series of glaciers more or less distinct and river-like, with many
+tributaries, and these again were melted and divided into still smaller
+glaciers, until now only a few of the smallest residual topmost branches
+of the grand system exist on the cool slopes of the summit peaks.
+
+Plants and animals, biding their time, closely followed the retiring
+ice, bestowing quick and joyous animation on the new-born landscapes.
+Pine-trees marched up the sun-warmed moraines in long, hopeful files,
+taking the ground and establishing themselves as soon as it was ready
+for them; brown-spiked sedges fringed the shores of the newborn lakes;
+young rivers roared in the abandoned channels of the glaciers; flowers
+bloomed around the feet of the great burnished domes,--while with quick
+fertility mellow beds of soil, settling and warming, offered food to
+multitudes of Nature's waiting children, great and small, animals as
+well as plants; mice, squirrels, marmots, deer, bears, elephants, etc.
+The ground burst into bloom with magical rapidity, and the young forests
+into bird-song: life in every form warming and sweetening and growing
+richer as the years passed away over the mighty Sierra so lately
+suggestive of death and consummate desolation only.
+
+It is hard without long and loving study to realize the magnitude of the
+work done on these mountains during the last glacial period by glaciers,
+which are only streams of closely compacted snow-crystals. Careful study
+of the phenomena presented goes to show that the pre-glacial condition
+of the range was comparatively simple: one vast wave of stone in which a
+thousand mountains, domes, canons, ridges, etc., lay concealed. And in
+the development of these Nature chose for a tool not the earthquake or
+lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding
+rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered
+centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea. Laboring harmoniously in
+united strength they crushed and ground and wore away the rocks in their
+march, making vast beds of soil, and at the same time developed and
+fashioned the landscapes into the delightful variety of hill and dale
+and lordly mountain that mortals call beauty. Perhaps more than a mile
+in average depth has the range been thus degraded during the last
+glacial period,--a quantity of mechanical work almost inconceivably
+great. And our admiration must be excited again and again as we toil and
+study and learn that this vast job of rockwork, so far-reaching in its
+influences, was done by agents so fragile and small as are these flowers
+of the mountain clouds. Strong only by force of numbers, they carried
+away entire mountains, particle by particle, block by block, and cast
+them into the sea; sculptured, fashioned, modeled all the range, and
+developed its predestined beauty. All these new Sierra landscapes were
+evidently predestined, for the physical structure of the rocks on which
+the features of the scenery depend was acquired while they lay at least
+a mile deep below the pre-glacial surface. And it was while these
+features were taking form in the depths of the range, the particles of
+the rocks marching to their appointed places in the dark with reference
+to the coming beauty, that the particles of icy vapor in the sky
+marching to the same music assembled to bring them to the light. Then,
+after their grand task was done, these bands of snow-flowers, these
+mighty glaciers, were melted and removed as if of no more importance
+than dew destined to last but an hour. Few, however, of Nature's agents
+have left monuments so noble and enduring as they. The great granite
+domes a mile high, the canons as deep, the noble peaks, the Yosemite
+valleys, these, and indeed nearly all other features of the Sierra
+scenery, are glacier monuments.
+
+Contemplating the works of these flowers of the sky, one may easily
+fancy them endowed with life: messengers sent down to work in the
+mountain mines on errands of divine love. Silently flying through the
+darkened air, swirling, glinting, to their appointed places, they seem
+to have taken counsel together, saying, "Come, we are feeble; let us
+help one another. We are many, and together we will be strong. Marching
+in close, deep ranks, let us roll away the stones from these mountain
+sepulchers, and set the landscapes free. Let us uncover these clustering
+domes. Here let us carve a lake basin; there, a Yosemite Valley; here, a
+channel for a river with fluted steps and brows for the plunge of
+songful cataracts. Yonder let us spread broad sheets of soil, that man
+and beast may be fed; and here pile trains of boulders for pines and
+giant Sequoias. Here make ground for a meadow; there, for a garden and
+grove, making it smooth and fine for small daisies and violets and beds
+of heathy bryanthus, spicing it well with crystals, garnet feldspar, and
+zircon." Thus and so on it has oftentimes seemed to me sang and planned
+and labored the hearty snow-flower crusaders; and nothing that I can
+write can possibly exaggerate the grandeur and beauty of their work.
+Like morning mist they have vanished in sunshine, all save the few small
+companies that still linger on the coolest mountainsides, and, as
+residual glaciers, are still busily at work completing the last of the
+lake basins, the last beds of soil, and the sculpture of some of the
+highest peaks.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT HOOD.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+THE GLACIERS
+
+Of the small residual glaciers mentioned in the preceding chapter, I
+have found sixty-five in that portion of the range lying between
+latitude 36 deg. 30' and 39 deg.. They occur singly or in small groups on the
+north sides of the peaks of the High Sierra, sheltered beneath broad
+frosty shadows, in amphitheaters of their own making, where the snow,
+shooting down from the surrounding heights in avalanches, is most
+abundant. Over two thirds of the entire number lie between latitude 37 deg.
+and 38 deg., and form the highest fountains of the San Joaquin, Merced,
+Tuolumne, and Owen's rivers.
+
+The glaciers of Switzerland, like those of the Sierra, are mere wasting
+remnants of mighty ice-floods that once filled the great valleys and
+poured into the sea. So, also, are those of Norway, Asia, and South
+America. Even the grand continuous mantles of ice that still cover
+Greenland, Spitsbergen, Nova Zembla, Franz-Joseph-Land, parts of Alaska,
+and the south polar region are shallowing and shrinking. Every glacier
+in the world is smaller than it once was. All the world is growing
+warmer, or the crop of snow-flowers is diminishing. But in contemplating
+the condition of the glaciers of the world, we must bear in mind while
+trying to account for the changes going on that the same sunshine that
+wastes them builds them. Every glacier records the expenditure of an
+enormous amount of sun-heat in lifting the vapor for the snow of which
+it is made from the ocean to the mountains, as Tyndall strikingly shows.
+
+The number of glaciers in the Alps, according to the Schlagintweit
+brothers, is 1100, of which 100 may be regarded as primary, and the
+total area of ice, snow, and _neve_ is estimated at 1177 square
+miles, or an average for each glacier of little more than one square
+mile. On the same authority, the average height above sea-level at which
+they melt is about 7414 feet. The Grindelwald glacier descends below
+4000 feet, and one of the Mont Blanc glaciers reaches nearly as low a
+point. One of the largest of the Himalaya glaciers on the head waters of
+the Ganges does not, according to Captain Hodgson, descend below 12,914
+feet. The largest of the Sierra glaciers on Mount Shasta descends to
+within 9500 feet of the level of the sea, which, as far as I have
+observed, is the lowest point reached by any glacier within the bounds
+of California, the average height of all being not far from 11,000 feet.
+
+The changes that have taken place in the glacial conditions of the
+Sierra from the time of greatest extension is well illustrated by the
+series of glaciers of every size and form extending along the mountains
+of the coast to Alaska. A general exploration of this instructive region
+shows that to the north of California, through Oregon and Washington,
+groups of active glaciers still exist on all the high volcanic cones of
+the Cascade Range,--Mount Pitt, the Three Sisters, Mounts Jefferson,
+Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier, Baker, and others,--some of them of
+considerable size, though none of them approach the sea. Of these
+mountains Rainier, in Washington, is the highest and iciest. Its
+dome-like summit, between 14,000 and 15,000 feet high, is capped with
+ice, and eight glaciers, seven to twelve miles long, radiate from it as
+a center, and form the sources of the principal streams of the State.
+The lowest-descending of this fine group flows through beautiful forests
+to within 3500 feet of the sea-level, and sends forth a river laden with
+glacier mud and sand. On through British Columbia and southeastern
+Alaska the broad, sustained mountain-chain, extending along the coast,
+is generally glacier-bearing. The upper branches of nearly all the main
+canons and fiords are occupied by glaciers, which gradually increase in
+size, and descend lower until the high region between Mount Fairweather
+and Mount St. Elias is reached, where a considerable number discharge
+into the waters of the ocean. This is preeminently the ice-land of
+Alaska and of the entire Pacific Coast.
+
+Northward from here the glaciers gradually diminish in size and
+thickness, and melt at higher levels. In Prince William Sound and Cook's
+Inlet many fine glaciers are displayed, pouring from the surrounding
+mountains; but to the north of latitude 62 deg. few, if any, glaciers
+remain, the ground being mostly low and the snowfall light. Between
+latitude 56 deg. and 60 deg. there are probably more than 5000 glaciers, not
+counting the smallest. Hundreds of the largest size descend through the
+forests to the level of the sea, or near it, though as far as my own
+observations have reached, after a pretty thorough examination of the
+region, not more than twenty-five discharge icebergs into the sea. All
+the long high-walled fiords into which these great glaciers of the first
+class flow are of course crowded with icebergs of every conceivable
+form, which are detached with thundering noise at intervals of a few
+minutes from an imposing ice-wall that is thrust forward into deep
+water. But these Pacific Coast icebergs are small as compared with those
+of Greenland and the Antarctic region, and only a few of them escape
+from the intricate system of channels, with which this portion of the
+coast is fringed, into the open sea. Nearly all of them are swashed and
+drifted by wind and tide back and forth in the fiords until finally
+melted by the ocean water, the sunshine, the warm winds, and the copious
+rains of summer. Only one glacier on the coast, observed by Prof.
+Russell, discharges its bergs directly into the open sea, at Icy Cape,
+opposite Mount St. Elias. The southernmost of the glaciers that reach
+the sea occupies a narrow, picturesque fiord about twenty miles to the
+northwest of the mouth of the Stikeen River, in latitude 56 deg. 50'. The
+fiord is called by the natives "Hutli," or Thunder Bay, from the noise
+made by the discharge of the icebergs. About one degree farther north
+there are four of these complete glaciers, discharging at the heads of
+the long arms of Holkam Bay. At the head of the Tahkoo Inlet, still
+farther north, there is one; and at the head and around the sides of
+Glacier Bay, trending in a general northerly direction from Cross Sound
+in latitude 58 deg. to 59 deg., there are seven of these complete glaciers
+pouring bergs into the bay and its branches, and keeping up an eternal
+thundering. The largest of this group, the Muir, has upward of 200
+tributaries, and a width below the confluence of the main tributaries of
+about twenty-five miles. Between the west side of this icy bay and the
+ocean all the ground, high and low, excepting the peaks of the
+Fairweather Range, is covered with a mantle of ice from 1000 to probably
+3000 feet thick, which discharges by many distinct mouths.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT RAINIER FROM PARADISE VALLEY--NISQUALLY GLACIER.]
+
+This fragmentary ice-sheet, and the immense glaciers about Mount St.
+Elias, together with the multitude of separate river-like glaciers that
+load the slopes of the coast mountains, evidently once formed part of a
+continuous ice-sheet that flowed over all the region hereabouts, and
+only a comparatively short time ago extended as far southward as the
+mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, probably farther. All the islands
+of the Alexander Archipelago, as well as the headlands and promontories
+of the mainland, display telling traces of this great mantle that are
+still fresh and unmistakable. They all have the forms of the greatest
+strength with reference to the action of a vast rigid press of
+oversweeping ice from the north and northwest, and their surfaces have a
+smooth, rounded, overrubbed appearance, generally free from angles. The
+intricate labyrinth of canals, channels, straits, passages, sounds,
+narrows, etc. between the islands, and extending into the mainland, of
+course manifest in their forms and trends and general characteristics
+the same subordination to the grinding action of universal glaciation as
+to their origin, and differ from the islands and banks of the fiords
+only in being portions of the pre-glacial margin of the continent more
+deeply eroded, and therefore covered by the ocean waters which flowed
+into them as the ice was melted out of them. The formation and extension
+of fiords in this manner is still going on, and may be witnessed in many
+places in Glacier Bay, Yakutat Bay, and adjacent regions. That the
+domain of the sea is being extended over the land by the wearing away of
+its shores, is well known, but in these icy regions of Alaska, and even
+as far south as Vancouver Island, the coast rocks have been so short a
+time exposed to wave-action they are but little wasted as yet. In these
+regions the extension of the sea effected by its own action in
+post-glacial time is scarcely appreciable as compared with that effected
+by ice-action.
+
+Traces of the vanished glaciers made during the period of greater
+extension abound on the Sierra as far south as latitude 36 deg.. Even the
+polished rock surfaces, the most evanescent of glacial records, are
+still found in a wonderfully perfect state of preservation on the upper
+half of the middle portion of the range, and form the most striking of
+all the glacial phenomena. They occur in large irregular patches in the
+summit and middle regions, and though they have been subjected to the
+action of the weather with its corroding storms for thousands of years,
+their mechanical excellence is such that they still reflect the sunbeams
+like glass, and attract the attention of every observer. The attention
+of the mountaineer is seldom arrested by moraines, however regular and
+high they may be, or by canons, however deep, or by rocks, however noble
+in form and sculpture; but he stoops and rubs his hands admiringly on
+the shining surfaces and trios hard to account for their mysterious
+smoothness. He has seen the snow descending in avalanches, but concludes
+this cannot be the work of snow, for he finds it where no avalanches
+occur. Nor can water have done it, for he sees this smoothness glowing
+on the sides and tops of the highest domes. Only the winds of all the
+agents he knows seem capable of flowing in the directions indicated by
+the scoring. Indians, usually so little curious about geological
+phenomena, have come to me occasionally and asked me, "What makeum the
+ground so smooth at Lake Tenaya?" Even horses and dogs gaze wonderingly
+at the strange brightness of the ground, and smell the polished spaces
+and place their feet cautiously on them when they come to them for the
+first time, as if afraid of sinking. The most perfect of the polished
+pavements and walls lie at an elevation of from 7000 to 9000 feet above
+the sea, where the rock is compact silicious granite. Small dim patches
+may be found as low as 3000 feet on the driest and most enduring
+portions of sheer walls with a southern exposure, and on compact
+swelling bosses partially protected from rain by a covering of large
+boulders. On the north half of the range the striated and polished
+surfaces are less common, not only because this part of the chain is
+lower, but because the surface rocks are chiefly porous lavas subject to
+comparatively rapid waste. The ancient moraines also, though well
+preserved on most of the south half of the range, are nearly obliterated
+to the northward, but then material is found scattered and
+disintegrated.
+
+A similar blurred condition of the superficial records of glacial action
+obtains throughout most of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and
+Alaska, due in great part to the action of excessive moisture. Even in
+southeastern Alaska, where the most extensive glaciers on the continent
+are, the more evanescent of the traces of their former greater
+extension, though comparatively recent, are more obscure than those of
+the ancient California glaciers whore the climate is drier and the rocks
+more resisting.
+
+These general views of the glaciers of the Pacific Coast will enable my
+readers to see something of the changes that have taken place in
+California, and will throw light on the residual glaciers of the High
+Sierra.
+
+Prior to the autumn of 1871 the glaciers of the Sierra were unknown. In
+October of that year I discovered the Black Mountain Glacier in a
+shadowy amphitheater between Black and Rod Mountains, two of the peaks
+of the Merced group. This group is the highest portion of a spur that
+straggles out from the main axis of the range in the direction of
+Yosemite Valley. At the time of this interesting discovery I was
+exploring the _neve_ amphitheaters of the group, and tracing the
+courses of the ancient glaciers that once poured from its ample
+fountains through the Illilouette Basin and the Yosemite Valley, not
+expecting to find any active glaciers so far south in the land of
+sunshine.
+
+Beginning on the northwestern extremity of the group, I explored the
+chief tributary basins in succession, their moraines, roches moutonnees,
+and splendid glacier pavements, taking them in regular succession
+without any reference to the time consumed in their study. The monuments
+of the tributary that poured its ice from between Red and Black
+Mountains I found to be the most interesting of them all; and when I saw
+its magnificent moraines extending in majestic curves from the spacious
+amphitheater between the mountains, I was exhilarated with the work that
+lay before me. It was one of the golden days of the Sierra Indian
+summer, when the rich sunshine glorifies every landscape however rocky
+and cold, and suggests anything rather than glaciers. The path of the
+vanished glacier was warm now, and shone in many places as if washed
+with silver. The tall pines growing on the moraines stood transfigured
+in the glowing light, the poplar groves on the levels of the basin were
+masses of orange-yellow, and the late-blooming goldenrods added gold to
+gold. Pushing on over my rosy glacial highway, I passed lake after lake
+set in solid basins of granite, and many a thicket and meadow watered by
+a stream that issues from the amphitheater and links the lakes together;
+now wading through plushy bogs knee-deep in yellow and purple sphagnum;
+now passing over bare rock. The main lateral moraines that bounded the
+view on either hand are from 100 to nearly 200 feet high, and about as
+regular as artificial embankments, and covered with a superb growth of
+Silver Fir and Pine. But this garden and forest luxuriance was speedily
+left behind. The trees were dwarfed as I ascended; patches of the alpine
+bryanthus and cassiope began to appear, and arctic willows pressed into
+flat carpets by the winter snow. The lakelets, which a few miles down
+the valley were so richly embroidered with flowery meadows, had here, at
+an elevation of 10,000 feet, only small brown mats of carex, leaving
+bare rocks around more than half their shores. Yet amid this alpine
+suppression the Mountain Pine bravely tossed his storm-beaten branches
+on the ledges and buttresses of Red Mountain, some specimens being over
+100 feet high, and 24 feet in circumference, seemingly as fresh and
+vigorous as the giants of the lower zones.
+
+Evening came on just as I got fairly within the portal of the main
+amphitheater. It is about a mile wide, and a little less than two miles
+long. The crumbling spurs and battlements of Red Mountain bound it on
+the north, the somber, rudely sculptured precipices of Black Mountain on
+the south, and a hacked, splintery _col_, curving around from
+mountain to mountain, shuts it in on the east.
+
+I chose a camping-ground on the brink of one of the lakes where a
+thicket of Hemlock Spruce sheltered me from the night wind. Then, after
+making a tin-cupful of tea, I sat by my camp-fire reflecting on the
+grandeur and significance of the glacial records I had seen. As the
+night advanced the mighty rock walls of my mountain mansion seemed to
+come nearer, while the starry sky in glorious brightness stretched
+across like a ceiling from wall to wall, and fitted closely down into
+all the spiky irregularities of the summits. Then, after a long fireside
+rest and a glance at my note-book, I cut a few leafy branches for a bed,
+and fell into the clear, death-like sleep of the tired mountaineer.
+
+Early next morning I set out to trace the grand old glacier that had
+done so much for the beauty of the Yosemite region back to its farthest
+fountains, enjoying the charm that every explorer feels in Nature's
+untrodden wildernesses. The voices of the mountains were still asleep.
+The wind scarce stirred the pine-needles. The sun was up, but it was yet
+too cold for the birds and the few burrowing animals that dwell here.
+Only the stream, cascading from pool to pool, seemed to be wholly awake.
+Yet the spirit of the opening day called to action. The sunbeams came
+streaming gloriously through the jagged openings of the _col_,
+glancing on the burnished pavements and lighting the silvery lakes,
+while every sun-touched rock burned white on its edges like melting iron
+in a furnace. Passing round the north shore of my camp lake I followed
+the central stream past many cascades from lakelet to lakelet. The
+scenery became more rigidly arctic, the Dwarf Pines and Hemlocks
+disappeared, and the stream was bordered with icicles. As the sun rose
+higher rocks were loosened on shattered portions of the cliffs, and came
+down in rattling avalanches, echoing wildly from crag to crag.
+
+The main lateral moraines that extend from the jaws of the amphitheater
+into the Illilouette Basin are continued in straggling masses along the
+walls of the amphitheater, while separate boulders, hundreds of tons in
+weight, are left stranded here and there out in the middle of the
+channel. Here, also, I observed a series of small terminal moraines
+ranged along the south wall of the amphitheater, corresponding in size
+and form with the shadows cast by the highest portions. The meaning of
+this correspondence between moraines and shadows was afterward made
+plain. Tracing the stream back to the last of its chain of lakelets, I
+noticed a deposit of fine gray mud on the bottom except where the force
+of the entering current had prevented its settling. It looked like the
+mud worn from a grindstone, and I at once suspected its glacial origin,
+for the stream that was carrying it came gurgling out of the base of a
+raw moraine that seemed in process of formation. Not a plant or
+weather-stain was visible on its rough, unsettled surface. It is from 60
+to over 100 feet high, and plunges forward at an angle of 38 deg..
+Cautiously picking my way, I gained the top of the moraine and was
+delighted to see a small but well characterized glacier swooping down
+from the gloomy precipices of Black Mountain in a finely graduated curve
+to the moraine on which I stood. The compact ice appeared on all the
+lower portions of the glacier, though gray with dirt and stones embedded
+in it. Farther up the ice disappeared beneath coarse granulated snow.
+The surface of the glacier was further characterized by dirt bands and
+the outcropping edges of the blue veins, showing the laminated structure
+of the ice. The uppermost crevasse, or "bergschrund," where the
+_neve_ was attached to the mountain, was from 12 to 14 feet wide,
+and was bridged in a few places by the remains of snow avalanches.
+Creeping along the edge of the schrund, holding on with benumbed
+fingers, I discovered clear sections where the bedded structure was
+beautifully revealed. The surface snow, though sprinkled with stones
+shot down from the cliffs, was in some places almost pure, gradually
+becoming crystalline and changing to whitish porous ice of different
+shades of color, and this again changing at a depth of 20 or 30 feet to
+blue ice, some of the ribbon-like bands of which were nearly pure, and
+blended with the paler bands in the most gradual and delicate manner
+imaginable. A series of rugged zigzags enabled me to make my way down
+into the weird under-world of the crevasse. Its chambered hollows were
+hung with a multitude of clustered icicles, amid which pale, subdued
+light pulsed and shimmered with indescribable loveliness. Water dripped
+and tinkled overhead, and from far below came strange, solemn murmurings
+from currents that were feeling their way through veins and fissures in
+the dark. The chambers of a glacier are perfectly enchanting,
+notwithstanding one feels out of place in their frosty beauty. I was
+soon cold in my shirt-sleeves, and the leaning wall threatened to engulf
+me; yet it was hard to leave the delicious music of the water and the
+lovely light. Coming again to the surface, I noticed boulders of every
+size on their journeys to the terminal moraine--journeys of more than a
+hundred years, without a single stop, night or day, winter or summer.
+
+The sun gave birth to a network of sweet-voiced rills that ran
+gracefully down the glacier, curling and swirling in their shining
+channels, and cutting clear sections through the porous surface-ice into
+the solid blue, where the structure of the glacier was beautifully
+illustrated.
+
+The series of small terminal moraines which I had observed in the
+morning, along the south wall of the amphitheater, correspond in every
+way with the moraine of this glacier, and their distribution with
+reference to shadows was now understood. When the climatic changes came
+on that caused the melting and retreat of the main glacier that filled
+the amphitheater, a series of residual glaciers were left in the cliff
+shadows, under the protection of which they lingered, until they formed
+the moraines we are studying. Then, as the snow became still less
+abundant, all of them vanished in succession, except the one just
+described; and the cause of its longer life is sufficiently apparent in
+the greater area of snow-basin it drains, and its more perfect
+protection from wasting sunshine. How much longer this little glacier
+will last depends, of course, on the amount of snow it receives from
+year to year, as compared with melting waste.
+
+After this discovery, I made excursions over all the High Sierra,
+pushing my explorations summer after summer, and discovered that what at
+first sight in the distance looked like extensive snow-fields, wore in
+great part glaciers, busily at work completing the sculpture of the
+summit-peaks so grandly blocked out by their giant predecessors.
+
+On August 21, I set a series of stakes in the Maclure Glacier, near
+Mount Lyell, and found its rate of motion to be little more than an inch
+a day in the middle, showing a great contrast to the Muir Glacier in
+Alaska, which, near the front, flows at a rate of from five to ten feet
+in twenty-four hours. Mount Shasta has three glaciers, but Mount
+Whitney, although it is the highest mountain in the range, does not now
+cherish a single glacier. Small patches of lasting snow and ice occur on
+its northern slopes, but they are shallow, and present no well marked
+evidence of glacial motion. Its sides, however, are scored and polished
+in many places by the action of its ancient glaciers that flowed east
+and west as tributaries of the great glaciers that once filled the
+valleys of the Kern and Owen's rivers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+THE SNOW
+
+The first snow that whitens the Sierra, usually falls about the end of
+October or early in November, to a depth of a few inches, after months
+of the most charming Indian summer weather imaginable. But in a few
+days, this light covering mostly melts from the slopes exposed to the
+sun and causes but little apprehension on the part of mountaineers who
+may be lingering among the high peaks at this time. The first general
+winter storm that yields snow that is to form a lasting portion of the
+season's supply, seldom breaks on the mountains before the end of
+November. Then, warned by the sky, cautions mountaineers, together with
+the wild sheep, deer, and most of the birds and bears, make haste to the
+lowlands or foot-hills; and burrowing marmots, mountain beavers,
+wood-rats, and such people go into winter quarters, some of them not
+again to see the light of day until the general awakening and
+resurrection of the spring in June or July. The first heavy fall is
+usually from about two to four feet in depth. Then, with intervals of
+splendid sunshine, storm succeeds storm, heaping snow on snow, until
+thirty to fifty feet has fallen. But on account of its settling and
+compacting, and the almost constant waste from melting and evaporation,
+the average depth actually found at any time seldom exceeds ten feet in
+the forest region, or fifteen feet along the slopes of the summit peaks.
+
+Even during the coldest weather evaporation never wholly ceases, and the
+sunshine that abounds between the storms is sufficiently powerful to
+melt the surface more or less through all the winter months. Waste from
+melting also goes on to some extent on the bottom from heat stored up in
+the rocks, and given off slowly to the snow in contact with them, as is
+shown by the rising of the streams on all the higher regions after the
+first snowfall, and their steady sustained flow all winter.
+
+The greater portion of the snow deposited around the lofty summits of
+the range falls in small crisp flakes and broken crystals, or, when
+accompanied by strong winds and low temperature, the crystals, instead
+of being locked together in their fall to form tufted flakes, are beaten
+and broken into meal and fine dust. But down in the forest region the
+greater portion comes gently to the ground, light and feathery, some of
+the flakes in mild weather being nearly an inch in diameter, and it is
+evenly distributed and kept from drifting to any great extent by the
+shelter afforded by the large trees. Every tree during the progress of
+gentle storms is loaded with, fairy bloom at the coldest and darkest
+time of year, bending the branches, and hushing every singing needle.
+But as soon as the storm is over, and the sun shines, the snow at once
+begins to shift and settle and fall from the branches in miniature
+avalanches, and the white forest soon becomes green again. The snow on
+the ground also settles and thaws every bright day, and freezes at
+night, until it becomes coarsely granulated, and loses every trace of
+its rayed crystalline structure, and then a man may walk firmly over its
+frozen surface as if on ice. The forest region up to an elevation of
+7000 feet is usually in great part free from snow in June, but at this
+time the higher regions are still heavy-laden, and are not touched by
+spring weather to any considerable extent before the middle or end of
+July.
+
+One of the most striking effects of the snow on the mountains is the
+burial of the rivers and small lakes.
+
+    As the snow fa's in the river
+    A moment white, then lost forever,
+
+sang Burns, in illustrating the fleeting character of human pleasure.
+The first snowflakes that fall into the Sierra rivers vanish thus
+suddenly; but in great storms, when the temperature is low, the
+abundance of the snow at length chills the water nearly to the
+freezing-point, and then, of course, it ceases to melt and consume the
+snow so suddenly. The falling flakes and crystals form, cloud-like
+masses of blue sludge, which are swept forward with the current and
+carried down to warmer climates many miles distant, while some are
+lodged against logs and rocks and projecting points of the banks, and
+last for days, piled high above the level of the water, and show white
+again, instead of being at once "lost forever," while the rivers
+themselves are at length lost for months during the snowy period. The
+snow is first built out from the banks in bossy, over-curling drifts,
+compacting and cementing until the streams are spanned. They then flow
+in the dark beneath a continuous covering across the snowy zone, which
+is about thirty miles wide. All the Sierra rivers and their tributaries
+in these high regions are thus lost every winter, as if another glacial
+period had come on. Not a drop of running water is to be seen excepting
+at a few points where large falls occur, though the rush and rumble of
+the heavier currents may still be heard. Toward spring, when the weather
+is warm during the day and frosty at night, repeated thawing and
+freezing and new layers of snow render the bridging-masses dense and
+firm, so that one may safely walk across the streams, or even lead a
+horse across them without danger of falling through. In June the
+thinnest parts of the winter ceiling, and those most exposed to
+sunshine, begin to give way, forming dark, rugged-edged, pit-like sinks,
+at the bottom of which the rushing water may be seen. At the end of June
+only here and there may the mountaineer find a secure snow-bridge. The
+most lasting of the winter bridges, thawing from below as well as from
+above, because of warm currents of air passing through the tunnels, are
+strikingly arched and sculptured; and by the occasional freezing of the
+oozing, dripping water of the ceiling they become brightly and
+picturesquely icy. In some of the reaches, where there is a free margin,
+we may walk through them. Small skylights appearing here and there,
+these tunnels are not very dark. The roaring river fills all the arching
+way with impressively loud reverberating music, which is sweetened at
+times by the ouzel, a bird that is not afraid to go wherever a stream
+may go, and to sing wherever a stream sings.
+
+All the small alpine pools and lakelets are in like manner obliterated
+from the winter landscapes, either by being first frozen and then
+covered by snow, or by being filled in by avalanches. The first
+avalanche of the season shot into a lake basin may perhaps find the
+surface frozen. Then there is a grand crashing of breaking ice and
+dashing of waves mingled with the low, deep booming of the avalanche.
+Detached masses of the invading snow, mixed with fragments of ice, drift
+about in sludgy, island-like heaps, while the main body of it forms a
+talus with its base wholly or in part resting on the bottom of the
+basin, as controlled by its depth and the size of the avalanche. The
+next avalanche, of course, encroaches still farther, and so on with each
+in succession until the entire basin may be filled and its water sponged
+up or displaced. This huge mass of sludge, more or less mixed with sand,
+stones, and perhaps timber, is frozen to a considerable depth, and much
+sun-heat is required to thaw it. Some of these unfortunate lakelets are
+not clear of ice and snow until near the end of summer. Others are never
+quite free, opening only on the side opposite the entrance of the
+avalanches. Some show only a narrow crescent of water lying between the
+shore and sheer bluffs of icy compacted snow, masses of which breaking
+off float in front like icebergs in a miniature Arctic Ocean, while the
+avalanche heaps leaning back against the mountains look like small
+glaciers. The frontal cliffs are in some instances quite picturesque,
+and with the berg-dotted waters in front of them lighted with sunshine
+are exceedingly beautiful. It often happens that while one side of a
+lake basin is hopelessly snow-buried and frozen, the other, enjoying
+sunshine, is adorned with beautiful flower-gardens. Some of the smaller
+lakes are extinguished in an instant by a heavy avalanche either of
+rocks or snow. The rolling, sliding, ponderous mass entering on one side
+sweeps across the bottom and up the opposite side, displacing the water
+and even scraping the basin clean, and shoving the accumulated rocks and
+sediments up the farther bank and taking full possession. The dislodged
+water is in part absorbed, but most of it is sent around the front of
+the avalanche and down the channel of the outlet, roaring and hurrying
+as if frightened and glad to escape.
+
+
+SNOW-BANNERS
+
+The most magnificent storm phenomenon I ever saw, surpassing in showy
+grandeur the most imposing effects of clouds, floods, or avalanches, was
+the peaks of the High Sierra, back of Yosemite Valley, decorated with
+snow-banners. Many of the starry snow-flowers, out of which these
+banners are made, fall before they are ripe, while most of those that do
+attain perfect development as six-rayed crystals glint and chafe against
+one another in their fall through the frosty air, and are broken into
+fragments. This dry fragmentary snow is still further prepared for the
+formation of banners by the action of the wind. For, instead of finding
+rest at once, like the snow which falls into the tranquil depths of the
+forests, it is rolled over and over, beaten against rock-ridges, and
+swirled in pits and hollows, like boulders, pebbles, and sand in the
+pot-holes of a river, until finally the delicate angles of the crystals
+are worn off, and the whole mass is reduced to dust. And whenever
+storm-winds find this prepared snow-dust in a loose condition on exposed
+slopes, where there is a free upward sweep to leeward, it is tossed back
+into the sky, and borne onward from peak to peak in the form of banners
+or cloudy drifts, according to the velocity of the wind and the
+conformation of the slopes up or around which it is driven. While thus
+flying through the air, a small portion makes good its escape, and
+remains in the sky as vapor. But far the greater part, after being
+driven into the sky again and again, is at length locked fast in bossy
+drifts, or in the wombs of glaciers, some of it to remain silent and
+rigid for centuries before it is finally melted and sent singing down
+the mountainsides to the sea.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding the abundance of winter snow-dust in the mountains,
+and the frequency of high winds, and the length of time the dust remains
+loose and exposed to their action, the occurrence of well-formed banners
+is, for causes we shall hereafter note, comparatively rare. I have seen
+only one display of this kind that seemed in every way perfect. This was
+in the winter of 1873, when the snow-laden summits were swept by a wild
+"norther." I happened at the time to be wintering in Yosemite Valley,
+that sublime Sierra temple where every day one may see the grandest
+sights. Yet even here the wild gala-day of the north wind seemed
+surpassingly glorious. I was awakened in the morning by the rocking of
+my cabin and the beating of pine-burs on the roof. Detached torrents and
+avalanches from the main wind-flood overhead were rushing wildly down
+the narrow side canons, and over the precipitous walls, with loud
+resounding roar, rousing the pines to enthusiastic action, and making
+the whole valley vibrate as though it were an instrument being played.
+
+But afar on the lofty exposed peaks of the range standing so high in the
+sky, the storm was expressing itself in still grander characters, which
+I was soon to see in all their glory. I had long been anxious to study
+some points in the structure of the ice-cone that is formed every winter
+at the foot of the upper Yosemite fall, but the blinding spray by which
+it is invested had hitherto prevented me from making a sufficiently near
+approach. This morning the entire body of the fall was torn into gauzy
+shreds, and blown horizontally along the face of the cliff, leaving the
+cone dry; and while making my way to the top of an overlooking ledge to
+seize so favorable an opportunity to examine the interior of the cone,
+the peaks of the Merced group came in sight over the shoulder of the
+South Dome, each waving a resplendent banner against the blue sky, as
+regular in form, and as firm in texture, as if woven of fine silk. So
+rare and splendid a phenomenon, of course, overbore all other
+considerations, and I at once let the ice-cone go, and began to force my
+way out of the valley to some dome or ridge sufficiently lofty to
+command a general view of the main summits, feeling assured that I
+should find them bannered still more gloriously; nor was I in the least
+disappointed. Indian Canon, through which I climbed, was choked with
+snow that had been shot down in avalanches from the high cliffs on
+either side, rendering the ascent difficult; but inspired by the roaring
+storm, the tedious wallowing brought no fatigue, and in four hours I
+gained the top of a ridge above the valley, 8000 feet high. And there in
+bold relief, like a clear painting, appeared a most imposing scene.
+Innumerable peaks, black and sharp, rose grandly into the dark blue sky,
+their bases set in solid white, their sides streaked and splashed with
+snow, like ocean rocks with foam; and from every summit, all free and
+unconfused, was streaming a beautiful silky silvery banner, from half a
+mile to a mile in length, slender at the point of attachment, then
+widening gradually as it extended from the peak until it was about 1000
+or 1500 feet in breadth, as near as I could estimate. The cluster of
+peaks called the "Crown of the Sierra," at the head of the Merced and
+Tuolumne rivers,--Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Conness, Lyell, Maclure, Ritter,
+with their nameless compeers,--each had its own refulgent banner, waving
+with a clearly visible motion in the sunglow, and there was not a single
+cloud in the sky to mar their simple grandeur. Fancy yourself standing
+on this Yosemite ridge looking eastward. You notice a strange garish
+glitter in the air. The gale drives wildly overhead with a fierce,
+tempestuous roar, but its violence is not felt, for you are looking
+through a sheltered opening in the woods as through a window. There, in
+the immediate foreground of your picture, rises a majestic forest of
+Silver Fir blooming in eternal freshness, the foliage yellow-green, and
+the snow beneath the trees strewn with their beautiful plumes, plucked
+off by the wind. Beyond, and extending over all the middle ground, are
+somber swaths of pine, interrupted by huge swelling ridges and domes;
+and just beyond the dark forest you see the monarchs of the High Sierra
+waving their magnificent banners. They are twenty miles away, but you
+would not wish them nearer, for every feature is distinct, and the whole
+glorious show is seen in its right proportions. After this general view,
+mark how sharply the dark snowless ribs and buttresses and summits of
+the peaks are defined, excepting the portions veiled by the banners, and
+how delicately their sides are streaked with snow, where it has come to
+rest in narrow flutings and gorges. Mark, too, how grandly the banners
+wave as the wind is deflected against their sides, and how trimly each
+is attached to the very summit of its peak, like a streamer at a
+masthead; how smooth and silky they are in texture, and how finely their
+fading fringes are penciled on the azure sky. See how dense and opaque
+they are at the point of attachment, and how filmy and translucent
+toward the end, so that the peaks back of them are seen dimly, as though
+you were looking through ground glass. Yet again observe how some of the
+longest, belonging to the loftiest summits, stream perfectly free all
+the way across intervening notches and passes from peak to peak, while
+others overlap and partly hide each other. And consider how keenly every
+particle of this wondrous cloth of snow is flashing out jets of light.
+These are the main features of the beautiful and terrible picture as
+seen from the forest window; and it would still be surpassingly glorious
+were the fore- and middle-grounds obliterated altogether, leaving only
+the black peaks, the white banners, and the blue sky.
+
+Glancing now in a general way at the formation of snow-banners, we find
+that the main causes of the wondrous beauty and perfection of those we
+have been contemplating were the favorable direction and great force of
+the wind, the abundance of snow-dust, and the peculiar conformation of
+the slopes of the peaks. It is essential not only that the wind should
+move with great velocity and steadiness to supply a sufficiently copious
+and continuous stream of snow-dust, but that it should come from the
+north. No perfect banner is ever hung on the Sierra peaks by a south
+wind. Had the gale that day blown from the south, leaving other
+conditions unchanged, only a dull, confused, fog-like drift would have
+been produced; for the snow, instead of being spouted up over the tops
+of the peaks in concentrated currents to be drawn out as streamers,
+would have been shed off around the sides, and piled down into the
+glacier wombs. The cause of the concentrated action of the north wind is
+found in the peculiar form of the north sides of the peaks, where the
+amphitheaters of the residual glaciers are. In general the south sides
+are convex and irregular, while the north sides are concave both in
+their vertical and horizontal sections; the wind in ascending these
+curves converges toward the summits, carrying the snow in concentrating
+currents with it, shooting it almost straight up into the air above the
+peaks, from which it is then carried away in a horizontal direction.
+
+This difference in form between the north and south sides of the peaks
+was almost wholly produced by the difference in the kind and quantity of
+the glaciation to which they have been subjected, the north sides having
+been hollowed by residual shadow-glaciers of a form that never existed
+on the sun-beaten sides.
+
+It appears, therefore, that shadows in great part determine not only the
+forms of lofty icy mountains, but also those of the snow-banners that
+the wild winds hang on them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA
+
+Early one bright morning in the middle of Indian summer, while the
+glacier meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from the
+foot of Mount Lyell, on my way down to Yosemite Valley, to replenish my
+exhausted store of bread and tea. I had spent the past summer, as many
+preceding ones, exploring the glaciers that lie on the head waters of
+the San Joaquin, Tuolumne, Merced, and Owen's rivers; measuring and
+studying their movements, trends, crevasses, moraines, etc., and the
+part they had played during the period of their greater extension in the
+creation and development of the landscapes of this alpine wonderland.
+The time for this kind of work was nearly over for the year, and I began
+to look forward with delight to the approaching winter with its wondrous
+storms, when I would be warmly snow-bound in my Yosemite cabin with
+plenty of bread and books; but a tinge of regret came on when I
+considered that possibly I might not see this favorite region again
+until the next summer, excepting distant views from the heights about
+the Yosemite walls.
+
+To artists, few portions of the High Sierra are, strictly speaking,
+picturesque. The whole massive uplift of the range is one great picture,
+not clearly divisible into smaller ones; differing much in this respect
+from the older, and what may be called, riper mountains of the Coast
+Range. All the landscapes of the Sierra, as we have seen, were born
+again, remodeled from base to summit by the developing ice-floods of the
+last glacial winter. But all those new landscapes were not brought forth
+simultaneously; some of the highest, where the ice lingered longest, are
+tens of centuries younger than those of the warmer regions below them.
+In general, the younger the mountain-landscapes,--younger, I mean, with
+reference to the time of their emergence from the ice of the glacial
+period,--the less separable are they into artistic bits capable of being
+made into warm, sympathetic, lovable pictures with appreciable humanity
+in them.
+
+Here, however, on the head waters of the Tuolumne, is a group of wild
+peaks on which the geologist may say that the sun has but just begun to
+shine, which is yet in a high degree picturesque, and in its main
+features so regular and evenly balanced as almost to appear
+conventional--one somber cluster of snow-laden peaks with gray
+pine-fringed granite bosses braided around its base, the whole surging
+free into the sky from the head of a magnificent valley, whose lofty
+walls are beveled away on both sides so as to embrace it all without
+admitting anything not strictly belonging to it. The foreground was now
+aflame with autumn colors, brown and purple and gold, ripe in the mellow
+sunshine; contrasting brightly with the deep, cobalt blue of the sky,
+and the black and gray, and pure, spiritual white of the rocks and
+glaciers. Down through the midst, the young Tuolumne was seen pouring
+from its crystal fountains, now resting in glassy pools as if changing
+back again into ice, now leaping in white cascades as if turning to
+snow; gliding right and left between granite bosses, then sweeping on
+through the smooth, meadowy levels of the valley, swaying pensively from
+side to side with calm, stately gestures past dipping willows and
+sedges, and around groves of arrowy pine; and throughout its whole
+eventful course, whether flowing fast or slow, singing loud or low, ever
+filling the landscape with spiritual animation, and manifesting the
+grandeur of its sources in every movement and tone.
+
+Pursuing my lonely way down the valley, I turned again and again to gaze
+on the glorious picture, throwing up my arms to inclose it as in a
+frame. After long ages of growth in the darkness beneath the glaciers,
+through sunshine and storms, it seemed now to be ready and waiting for
+the elected artist, like yellow wheat for the reaper; and I could not
+help wishing that I might carry colors and brushes with me on my
+travels, and learn to paint. In the mean time I had to be content with
+photographs on my mind and sketches in my note-books. At length, after I
+had rounded a precipitous headland that puts out from the west wall of
+the valley, every peak vanished from sight, and I pushed rapidly along
+the frozen meadows, over the divide between the waters of the Merced and
+Tuolumne, and down through the forests that clothe the slopes of Cloud's
+Rest, arriving in Yosemite in due time--which, with me, is _any_
+time. And, strange to say, among the first people I met here were two
+artists who, with letters of introduction, were awaiting my return. They
+inquired whether in the course of my explorations in the adjacent
+mountains I had ever come upon a landscape suitable for a large
+painting; whereupon I began a description of the one that had so lately
+excited my admiration. Then, as I went on further and further into
+details, their faces began to glow, and I offered to guide them to it,
+while they declared that they would gladly follow, far or near,
+whithersoever I could spare the time to lead them.
+
+Since storms might come breaking down through the fine weather at any
+time, burying the colors in snow, and cutting off the artists' retreat,
+I advised getting ready at once.
+
+I led them out of the valley by the Vernal and Nevada Falls, thence over
+the main dividing ridge to the Big Tuolumne Meadows, by the old Mono
+trail, and thence along the upper Tuolumne River to its head. This was
+my companions' first excursion into the High Sierra, and as I was almost
+always alone in my mountaineering, the way that the fresh beauty was
+reflected in their faces made for me a novel and interesting study. They
+naturally were affected most of all by the colors--the intense azure of
+the sky, the purplish grays of the granite, the red and browns of dry
+meadows, and the translucent purple and crimson of huckleberry bogs; the
+flaming yellow of aspen groves, the silvery flashing of the streams, and
+the bright green and blue of the glacier lakes. But the general
+expression of the scenery--rocky and savage--seemed sadly disappointing;
+and as they threaded the forest from ridge to ridge, eagerly scanning
+the landscapes as they were unfolded, they said: "All this is huge and
+sublime, but we see nothing as yet at all available for effective
+pictures. Art is long, and art is limited, you know; and here are
+foregrounds, middle-grounds, backgrounds, all alike; bare rock-waves,
+woods, groves, diminutive flecks of meadow, and strips of glittering
+water." "Never mind," I replied, "only bide a wee, and I will show you
+something you will like."
+
+At length, toward the end of the second day, the Sierra Crown began to
+come into view, and when we had fairly rounded the projecting headland
+before mentioned, the whole picture stood revealed in the flush of the
+alpenglow. Their enthusiasm was excited beyond bounds, and the more
+impulsive of the two, a young Scotchman, dashed ahead, shouting and
+gesticulating and tossing his arms in the air like a madman. Here, at
+last, was a typical alpine landscape.
+
+After feasting awhile on the view, I proceeded to make camp in a
+sheltered grove a little way back from the meadow, where pine-boughs
+could be obtained for beds, and where there was plenty of dry wood for
+fires, while the artists ran here and there, along the river-bends and
+up the sides of the canon, choosing foregrounds for sketches. After
+dark, when our tea was made and a rousing fire had been built, we began
+to make our plans. They decided to remain several days, at the least,
+while I concluded to make an excursion in the mean time to the untouched
+summit of Ritter.
+
+It was now about the middle of October, the springtime of snow-flowers.
+The first winter-clouds had already bloomed, and the peaks were strewn
+with fresh crystals, without, however, affecting the climbing to any
+dangerous extent. And as the weather was still profoundly calm, and the
+distance to the foot of the mountain only a little more than a day, I
+felt that I was running no great risk of being storm-bound.
+
+Mount Ritter is king of the mountains of the middle portion of the High
+Sierra, as Shasta of the north and Whitney of the south sections.
+Moreover, as far as I know, it had never been climbed. I had explored
+the adjacent wilderness summer after summer, but my studies thus far had
+never drawn me to the top of it. Its height above sea-level is about
+13,300 feet, and it is fenced round by steeply inclined glaciers, and
+canons of tremendous depth and ruggedness, which render it almost
+inaccessible. But difficulties of this kind only exhilarate the
+mountaineer.
+
+Next morning, the artists went heartily to their work and I to mine.
+Former experiences had given good reason to know that passionate storms,
+invisible as yet, might be brooding in the calm sun-gold; therefore,
+before bidding farewell, I warned the artists not to be alarmed should I
+fail to appear before a week or ten days, and advised them, in case a
+snow-storm should set in, to keep up big fires and shelter themselves as
+best they could, and on no account to become frightened and attempt to
+seek their way back to Yosemite alone through the drifts.
+
+My general plan was simply this: to scale the canon, wall, cross over to
+the eastern flank of the range, and then make my way southward to the
+northern spurs of Mount Ritter in compliance with the intervening
+topography; for to push on directly southward from camp through the
+innumerable peaks and pinnacles that adorn this portion of the axis of
+the range, however interesting, would take too much time, besides being
+extremely difficult and dangerous at this time of year.
+
+All my first day was pure pleasure; simply mountaineering indulgence,
+crossing the dry pathways of the ancient glaciers, tracing happy
+streams, and learning the habits of the birds and marmots in the groves
+and rocks. Before I had gone a mile from camp, I came to the foot of a
+white cascade that beats its way down a rugged gorge in the canon wall,
+from a height of about nine hundred feet, and pours its throbbing waters
+into the Tuolumne. I was acquainted with its fountains, which,
+fortunately, lay in my course. What a fine traveling companion it proved
+to be, what songs it sang, and how passionately it told the mountain's
+own joy! Gladly I climbed along its dashing border, absorbing its divine
+music, and bathing from time to time in waftings of irised spray.
+Climbing higher, higher, now beauty came streaming on the sight: painted
+meadows, late-blooming gardens, peaks of rare architecture, lakes here
+and there, shining like silver, and glimpses of the forested middle
+region and the yellow lowlands far in the west. Beyond the range I saw
+the so-called Mono Desert, lying dreamily silent in thick purple
+light--a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished
+granite. Here the waters divide, shouting in glorious enthusiasm, and
+falling eastward to vanish in the volcanic sands and dry sky of the
+Great Basin, or westward to the Great Valley of California, and thence
+through the Bay of San Francisco and the Golden Gate to the sea.
+
+Passing a little way down over the summit until I had reached an
+elevation of about 10,000 feet, I pushed on southward toward a group of
+savage peaks that stand guard about Ritter on the north and west,
+groping my way, and dealing instinctively with every obstacle as it
+presented itself. Here a huge gorge would be found cutting across my
+path, along the dizzy edge of which I scrambled until some less
+precipitous point was discovered where I might safely venture to the
+bottom and then, selecting some feasible portion of the opposite wall,
+reascend with the same slow caution. Massive, flat-topped spurs
+alternate with the gorges, plunging abruptly from the shoulders of the
+snowy peaks, and planting their feet in the warm desert. These were
+everywhere marked and adorned with characteristic sculptures of the
+ancient glaciers that swept over this entire region like one vast
+ice-wind, and the polished surfaces produced by the ponderous flood are
+still so perfectly preserved that in many places the sunlight reflected
+from them is about as trying to the eyes as sheets of snow.
+
+God's glacial-mills grind slowly, but they have been kept in motion long
+enough in California to grind sufficient soil for a glorious abundance
+of life, though most of the grist has been carried to the lowlands,
+leaving these high regions comparatively lean and bare; while the
+post-glacial agents of erosion have not yet furnished sufficient
+available food over the general surface for more than a few tufts of the
+hardiest plants, chiefly carices and eriogonae. And it is interesting to
+learn in this connection that the sparseness and repressed character of
+the vegetation at this height is caused more by want of soil than by
+harshness of climate; for, here and there, in sheltered hollows
+(countersunk beneath the general surface) into which a few rods of
+well-ground moraine chips have been dumped, we find groves of spruce and
+pine thirty to forty feet high, trimmed around the edges with willow and
+huckleberry bushes, and oftentimes still further by an outer ring of
+tall grasses, bright with lupines, larkspurs, and showy columbines,
+suggesting a climate by no means repressingly severe. All the streams,
+too, and the pools at this elevation are furnished with little gardens
+wherever soil can be made to lie, which, though making scarce any show
+at a distance, constitute charming surprises to the appreciative
+observer. In these bits of leanness a few birds find grateful homes.
+Having no acquaintance with man, they fear no ill, and flock curiously
+about the stranger, almost allowing themselves to be taken in the hand.
+In so wild and so beautiful a region was spent my first day, every sight
+and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and
+building up his individuality.
+
+Now came the solemn, silent evening. Long, blue, spiky shadows crept out
+across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible,
+gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the
+glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me
+one of the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God.
+At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a
+rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed and waiting like devout
+worshipers. Just before the alpenglow began to fade, two crimson clouds
+came streaming across the summit like wings of flame, rendering the
+sublime scene yet more impressive; then came darkness and the stars.
+
+Icy Ritter was still miles away, but I could proceed no farther that
+night. I found a good campground on the rim of a glacier basin about
+11,000 feet above the sea. A small lake nestles in the bottom of it,
+from which I got water for my tea, and a storm-beaten thicket near by
+furnished abundance of resiny fire-wood. Somber peaks, hacked and
+shattered, circled half-way around the horizon, wearing a savage aspect
+in the gloaming, and a waterfall chanted solemnly across the lake on its
+way down from the foot of a glacier. The fall and the lake and the
+glacier were almost equally bare; while the scraggy pines anchored in
+the rock-fissures were so dwarfed and shorn by storm-winds that you
+might walk over their tops. In tone and aspect the scene was one of the
+most desolate I ever beheld. But the darkest scriptures of the mountains
+are illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to make
+themselves felt when one is alone.
+
+I made my bed in a nook of the pine-thicket, where the branches were
+pressed and crinkled overhead like a roof, and bent down around the
+sides. These are the best bedchambers the high mountains afford--snug as
+squirrel-nests, well ventilated, full of spicy odors, and with plenty of
+wind-played needles to sing one asleep. I little expected company, but,
+creeping in through a low side-door, I found five or six birds nestling
+among the tassels. The night-wind began to blow soon after dark; at
+first only a gentle breathing, but increasing toward midnight to a rough
+gale that fell upon my leafy roof in ragged surges like a cascade,
+bearing wild sounds from the crags overhead. The waterfall sang in
+chorus, filling the old ice-fountain with its solemn roar, and seeming
+to increase in power as the night advanced--fit voice for such a
+landscape. I had to creep out many times to the fire during the night,
+for it was biting cold and I had no blankets. Gladly I welcomed the
+morning star.
+
+The dawn in the dry, wavering air of the desert was glorious. Everything
+encouraged my undertaking and betokened success. There was no cloud in
+the sky, no storm-tone in the wind. Breakfast of bread and tea was soon
+made. I fastened a hard, durable crust to my belt by way of provision,
+in case I should be compelled to pass a night on the mountain-top; then,
+securing the remainder of my little stock against wolves and wood-rats,
+I set forth free and hopeful.
+
+How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this
+alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The
+highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the
+lower peaks and spires caught the glow, and long lances of light,
+streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen
+meadows. The majestic form of Ritter was full in sight, and I pushed
+rapidly on over rounded rock-bosses and pavements, my iron-shod shoes
+making a clanking sound, suddenly hushed now and then in rugs of
+bryanthus, and sedgy lake-margins soft as moss. Here, too, in this
+so-called "land of desolation," I met cassiope, growing in fringes among
+the battered rocks. Her blossoms had faded long ago, but they were still
+clinging with happy memories to the evergreen sprays, and still so
+beautiful as to thrill every fiber of one's being. Winter and summer,
+you may hear her voice, the low, sweet melody of her purple bells. No
+evangel among all the mountain plants speaks Nature's love more plainly
+than cassiope. Where she dwells, the redemption of the coldest solitude
+is complete. The very rocks and glaciers seem to feel her presence, and
+become imbued with her own fountain sweetness. All things were warming
+and awakening. Frozen rills began to flow, the marmots came out of their
+nests in boulder-piles and climbed sunny rocks to bask, and the
+dun-headed sparrows were flitting about seeking their breakfasts. The
+lakes seen from every ridge-top were brilliantly rippled and spangled,
+shimmering like the thickets of the low Dwarf Pines. The rocks, too,
+seemed responsive to the vital heat--rock-crystals and snow-crystals
+thrilling alike. I strode on exhilarated, as if never more to feel
+fatigue, limbs moving of themselves, every sense unfolding like the
+thawing flowers, to take part in the new day harmony.
+
+All along my course thus far, excepting when down in the canons, the
+landscapes were mostly open to me, and expansive, at least on one side.
+On the left were the purple plains of Mono, reposing dreamily and warm;
+on the right, the near peaks springing keenly into the thin sky with
+more and more impressive sublimity. But these larger views were at
+length lost. Rugged spurs, and moraines, and huge, projecting buttresses
+began to shut me in. Every feature became more rigidly alpine, without,
+however, producing any chilling effect; for going to the mountains is
+like going home. We always find that the strangest objects in these
+fountain wilds are in some degree familiar, and we look upon them with a
+vague sense of having seen them before.
+
+On the southern shore of a frozen lake, I encountered an extensive field
+of hard, granular snow, up which I scampered in fine tone, intending to
+follow it to its head, and cross the rocky spur against which it leans,
+hoping thus to come direct upon the base of the main Ritter peak. The
+surface was pitted with oval hollows, made by stones and drifted
+pine-needles that had melted themselves into the mass by the radiation
+of absorbed sun-heat. These afforded good footholds, but the surface
+curved more and more steeply at the head, and the pits became shallower
+and less abundant, until I found myself in danger of being shed off like
+avalanching snow. I persisted, however, creeping on all fours, and
+shuffling up the smoothest places on my back, as I had often done on
+burnished granite, until, after slipping several times, I was compelled
+to retrace my course to the bottom, and make my way around the west end
+of the lake, and thence up to the summit of the divide between the head
+waters of Rush Creek and the northernmost tributaries of the San
+Joaquin.
+
+Arriving on the summit of this dividing crest, one of the most exciting
+pieces of pure wilderness was disclosed that I ever discovered in all my
+mountaineering. There, immediately in front, loomed the majestic mass of
+Mount Ritter, with a glacier swooping down its face nearly to my feet,
+then curving westward and pouring its frozen flood into a dark blue
+lake, whose shores were bound with precipices of crystalline snow; while
+a deep chasm drawn between the divide and the glacier separated the
+massive picture from everything else. I could see only the one sublime
+mountain, the one glacier, the one lake; the whole veiled with one blue
+shadow--rock, ice, and water close together without a single leaf or
+sign of life. After gazing spellbound, I began instinctively to
+scrutinize every notch and gorge and weathered buttress of the mountain,
+with reference to making the ascent. The entire front above the glacier
+appeared as one tremendous precipice, slightly receding at the top, and
+bristling with spires and pinnacles set above one another in formidable
+array. Massive lichen-stained battlements stood forward here and there,
+hacked at the top with angular notches, and separated by frosty gullies
+and recesses that have been veiled in shadow ever since their creation;
+while to right and left, as far as I could see, were huge, crumbling
+buttresses, offering no hope to the climber. The head of the glacier
+sends up a few finger-like branches through narrow _couloirs_; but
+these seemed too steep and short to be available, especially as I had no
+ax with which to cut steps, and the numerous narrow-throated gullies
+down which stones and snow are avalanched seemed hopelessly steep,
+besides being interrupted by vertical cliffs; while the whole front was
+rendered still more terribly forbidding by the chill shadow and the
+gloomy blackness of the rocks.
+
+Descending the divide in a hesitating mood, I picked my way across the
+yawning chasm at the foot, and climbed out upon the glacier. There were
+no meadows now to cheer with their brave colors, nor could I hear the
+dun-headed sparrows, whose cheery notes so often relieve the silence of
+our highest mountains. The only sounds were the gurgling of small rills
+down in the veins and crevasses of the glacier, and now and then the
+rattling report of falling stones, with the echoes they shot out into
+the crisp air.
+
+I could not distinctly hope to reach the summit from this side, yet I
+moved on across the glacier as if driven by fate. Contending with
+myself, the season is too far spent, I said, and even should I be
+successful, I might be storm-bound on the mountain; and in the
+cloud-darkness, with the cliffs and crevasses covered with snow, how
+could I escape? No; I must wait till next summer. I would only approach
+the mountain now, and inspect it, creep about its flanks, learn what I
+could of its history, holding myself ready to flee on the approach of
+the first storm-cloud. But we little know until tried how much of the
+uncontrollable there is in us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and
+up dangerous heights, let the judgment forbid as it may.
+
+I succeeded in gaining the foot of the cliff on the eastern extremity of
+the glacier, and there discovered the mouth of a narrow avalanche gully,
+through which I began to climb, intending to follow it as far as
+possible, and at least obtain some fine wild views for my pains. Its
+general course is oblique to the plane of the mountain-face, and the
+metamorphic slates of which the mountain is built are cut by cleavage
+planes in such a way that they weather off in angular blocks, giving
+rise to irregular steps that greatly facilitate climbing on the sheer
+places. I thus made my way into a wilderness of crumbling spires and
+battlements, built together in bewildering combinations, and glazed in
+many places with a thin coating of ice, which I had to hammer off with
+stones. The situation was becoming gradually more perilous; but, having
+passed several dangerous spots, I dared not think of descending; for, so
+steep was the entire ascent, one would inevitably fall to the glacier in
+case a single misstep were made. Knowing, therefore, the tried danger
+beneath, I became all the more anxious concerning the developments to be
+made above, and began to be conscious of a vague foreboding of what
+actually befell; not that I was given to fear, but rather because my
+instincts, usually so positive and true, seemed vitiated in some way,
+and were leading me astray. At length, after attaining an elevation of
+about 12,800 feet, I found myself at the foot of a sheer drop in the bed
+of the avalanche channel I was tracing, which seemed absolutely to bar
+further progress. It was only about forty-five or fifty feet high, and
+somewhat roughened by fissures and projections; but these seemed so
+slight and insecure, as footholds, that I tried hard to avoid the
+precipice altogether, by scaling the wall of the channel on either side.
+But, though less steep, the walls were smoother than the obstructing
+rock, and repeated efforts only showed that I must either go right ahead
+or turn back. The tried dangers beneath seemed even greater than that of
+the cliff in front; therefore, after scanning its face again and again,
+I began to scale it, picking my holds with intense caution. After
+gaining a point about halfway to the top, I was suddenly brought to a
+dead stop, with arms outspread, clinging close to the face of the rock,
+unable to move hand or foot either up or down. My doom appeared fixed. I
+_must_ fall. There would be a moment of bewilderment, and then a
+lifeless rumble down the one general precipice to the glacier below.
+
+When this final danger flashed upon me, I became nerve-shaken for the
+first time since setting foot on the mountains, and my mind seemed to
+fill with a stifling smoke. But this terrible eclipse lasted only a
+moment, when life blazed forth again with preternatural clearness. I
+seemed suddenly to become possessed of a new sense. The other self,
+bygone experiences, Instinct, or Guardian Angel,--call it what you
+will,--came forward and assumed control. Then my trembling muscles
+became firm again, every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as through a
+microscope, and my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision with
+which I seemed to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft upon
+wings, my deliverance could not have been more complete.
+
+Above this memorable spot, the face of the mountain is still more
+savagely hacked and torn. It is a maze of yawning chasms and gullies, in
+the angles of which rise beetling crags and piles of detached boulders
+that seem to have been gotten ready to be launched below. But the
+strange influx of strength I had received seemed inexhaustible. I found
+a way without effort, and soon stood upon the topmost crag in the
+blessed light.
+
+How truly glorious the landscape circled around this noble
+summit!--giant mountains, valleys innumerable, glaciers and meadows,
+rivers and lakes, with the wide blue sky bent tenderly over them all.
+But in my first hour of freedom from that terrible shadow, the sunlight
+in which I was laving seemed all in all.
+
+Looking southward along the axis of the range, the eye is first caught
+by a row of exceedingly sharp and slender spires, which rise openly to a
+height of about a thousand feet, above a series of short, residual
+glaciers that lean back against their bases; their fantastic sculpture
+and the unrelieved sharpness with which they spring out of the ice
+rendering them peculiarly wild and striking. These are "The Minarets."
+Beyond them you behold a sublime wilderness of mountains, their snowy
+summits towering together in crowded abundance, peak beyond peak,
+swelling higher, higher as they sweep on southward, until the
+culminating point of the range is reached on Mount Whitney, near the
+head of the Kern River, at an elevation of nearly 14,700 feet above the
+level of the sea.
+
+Westward, the general flank of the range is seen flowing sublimely away
+from the sharp summits, in smooth undulations; a sea of huge gray
+granite waves dotted with lakes and meadows, and fluted with stupendous
+canons that grow steadily deeper as they recede in the distance. Below
+this gray region lies the dark forest zone, broken here and there by
+upswelling ridges and domes; and yet beyond lies a yellow, hazy belt,
+marking the broad plain of the San Joaquin, bounded on its farther side
+by the blue mountains of the coast.
+
+Turning now to the northward, there in the immediate foreground is the
+glorious Sierra Crown, with Cathedral Peak, a temple of marvelous
+architecture, a few degrees to the left of it; the gray, massive form of
+Mammoth Mountain to the right; while Mounts Ord, Gibbs, Dana, Conness,
+Tower Peak, Castle Peak, Silver Mountain, and a host of noble
+companions, as yet nameless, make a sublime show along the axis of the
+range.
+
+Eastward, the whole region seems a land of desolation covered with
+beautiful light. The torrid volcanic basin of Mono, with its one bare
+lake fourteen miles long; Owen's Valley and the broad lava table-land at
+its head, dotted with craters, and the massive Inyo Range, rivaling even
+the Sierra in height; these are spread, map-like, beneath you, with
+countless ranges beyond, passing and overlapping one another and fading
+on the glowing horizon.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY.]
+
+At a distance of less than 3000 feet below the summit of Mount Ritter
+you may find tributaries of the San Joaquin and Owen's rivers, bursting
+forth from the ice and snow of the glaciers that load its flanks; while
+a little to the north of here are found the highest affluents of the
+Tuolumne and Merced. Thus, the fountains of four of the principal rivers
+of California are within a radius of four or five miles.
+
+Lakes are seen gleaming in all sorts of places,--round, or oval, or
+square, like very mirrors; others narrow and sinuous, drawn close around
+the peaks like silver zones, the highest reflecting only rocks, snow,
+and the sky. But neither these nor the glaciers, nor the bits of brown
+meadow and moorland that occur here and there, are large enough to make
+any marked impression upon the mighty wilderness of mountains. The eye,
+rejoicing in its freedom, roves about the vast expanse, yet returns
+again and again to the fountain peaks. Perhaps some one of the multitude
+excites special attention, some gigantic castle with turret and
+battlement, or some Gothic cathedral more abundantly spired than
+Milan's. But, generally, when looking for the first time from an
+all-embracing standpoint like this, the inexperienced observer is
+oppressed by the incomprehensible grandeur, variety, and abundance of
+the mountains rising shoulder to shoulder beyond the reach of vision;
+and it is only after they have been studied one by one, long and
+lovingly, that their far-reaching harmonies become manifest. Then,
+penetrate the wilderness where you may, the main telling features, to
+which all the surrounding topography is subordinate, are quickly
+perceived, and the most complicated clusters of peaks stand revealed
+harmoniously correlated and fashioned like works of art--eloquent
+monuments of the ancient ice-rivers that brought them into relief from
+the general mass of the range. The canons, too, some of them a mile
+deep, mazing wildly through the mighty host of mountains, however
+lawless and ungovernable at first sight they appear, are at length
+recognized as the necessary effects of causes which followed each other
+in harmonious sequence--Nature's poems carved on tables of stone--the
+simplest and most emphatic of her glacial compositions.
+
+Could we have been here to observe during the glacial period, we should
+have overlooked a wrinkled ocean of ice as continuous as that now
+covering the landscapes of Greenland; filling every valley and canon
+with only the tops of the fountain peaks rising darkly above the
+rock-encumbered ice-waves like islets in a stormy sea--those islets the
+only hints of the glorious landscapes now smiling in the sun. Standing
+here in the deep, brooding silence all the wilderness seems motionless,
+as if the work of creation were done. But in the midst of this outer
+steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and change. Ever and
+anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These cliff-bound
+glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water and
+grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite
+shores and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young
+rivers is fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to the
+plains. Here are the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here more
+simply than elsewhere is the eternal flux of nature manifested. Ice
+changing to water, lakes to meadows, and mountains to plains. And while
+we thus contemplate Nature's methods of landscape creation, and, reading
+the records she has carved on the rocks, reconstruct, however
+imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also learn that as these we
+now behold have succeeded those of the pre-glacial age, so they in turn
+are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others yet unborn.
+
+But in the midst of these fine lessons and landscapes, I had to remember
+that the sun was wheeling far to the west, while a new way down the
+mountain had to be discovered to some point on the timber line where I
+could have a fire; for I had not even burdened myself with a coat. I
+first scanned the western spurs, hoping some way might appear through
+which I might reach the northern glacier, and cross its snout; or pass
+around the lake into which it flows, and thus strike my morning track.
+This route was soon sufficiently unfolded to show that, if practicable
+at all, it would require so much time that reaching camp that night
+would be out of the question. I therefore scrambled back eastward,
+descending the southern slopes obliquely at the same time. Here the
+crags seemed less formidable, and the head of a glacier that flows
+northeast came in sight, which I determined to follow as far as
+possible, hoping thus to make my way to the foot of the peak on the east
+side, and thence across the intervening canons and ridges to camp.
+
+The inclination of the glacier is quite moderate at the head, and, as
+the sun had softened the _neve_, I made safe and rapid progress,
+running and sliding, and keeping up a sharp outlook for crevasses. About
+half a mile from the head, there is an ice-cascade, where the glacier
+pours over a sharp declivity and is shattered into massive blocks
+separated by deep, blue fissures. To thread my way through the slippery
+mazes of this crevassed portion seemed impossible, and I endeavored to
+avoid it by climbing off to the shoulder of the mountain. But the slopes
+rapidly steepened and at length fell away in sheer precipices,
+compelling a return to the ice. Fortunately, the day had been warm
+enough to loosen the ice-crystals so as to admit of hollows being dug in
+the rotten portions of the blocks, thus enabling me to pick my way with
+far less difficulty than I had anticipated. Continuing down over the
+snout, and along the left lateral moraine, was only a confident saunter,
+showing that the ascent of the mountain by way of this glacier is easy,
+provided one is armed with an ax to cut steps here and there.
+
+The lower end of the glacier was beautifully waved and barred by the
+outcropping edges of the bedded ice-layers which represent the annual
+snowfalls, and to some extent the irregularities of structure caused by
+the weathering of the walls of crevasses, and by separate snowfalls
+which have been followed by rain, hail, thawing and freezing, etc. Small
+rills were gliding and swirling over the melting surface with a smooth,
+oily appearance, in channels of pure ice--their quick, compliant
+movements contrasting most impressively with the rigid, invisible flow
+of the glacier itself, on whose back they all were riding.
+
+Night drew near before I reached the eastern base of the mountain, and
+my camp lay many a rugged mile to the north; but ultimate success was
+assured. It was now only a matter of endurance and ordinary
+mountain-craft. The sunset was, if possible, yet more beautiful than
+that of the day before. The Mono landscape seemed to be fairly saturated
+with warm, purple light. The peaks marshaled along the summit were in
+shadow, but through every notch and pass streamed vivid sun-fire,
+soothing and irradiating their rough, black angles, while companies of
+small, luminous clouds hovered above them like very angels of light.
+
+Darkness came on, but I found my way by the trends of the canons and the
+peaks projected against the sky. All excitement died with the light, and
+then I was weary. But the joyful sound of the waterfall across the lake
+was heard at last, and soon the stars were seen reflected in the lake
+itself. Taking my bearings from these, I discovered the little pine
+thicket in which my nest was, and then I had a rest such as only a tired
+mountaineer may enjoy. After lying loose and lost for awhile, I made a
+sunrise fire, went down to the lake, dashed water on my head, and dipped
+a cupful for tea. The revival brought about by bread and tea was as
+complete as the exhaustion from excessive enjoyment and toil. Then I
+crept beneath the pine-tassels to bed. The wind was frosty and the fire
+burned low, but my sleep was none the less sound, and the evening
+constellations had swept far to the west before I awoke.
+
+After thawing and resting in the morning sunshine, I sauntered
+home,--that is, back to the Tuolumne camp,--bearing away toward a
+cluster of peaks that hold the fountain snows of one of the north
+tributaries of Rush Creek. Here I discovered a group of beautiful
+glacier lakes, nestled together in a grand amphitheater. Toward evening,
+I crossed the divide separating the Mono waters from those of the
+Tuolumne, and entered the glacier basin that now holds the fountain
+snows of the stream that forms the upper Tuolumne cascades. This stream
+I traced down through its many dells and gorges, meadows and bogs,
+reaching the brink of the main Tuolumne at dusk.
+
+A loud whoop for the artists was answered again and again. Their
+camp-fire came in sight, and half an hour afterward I was with them.
+They seemed unreasonably glad to see me. I had been absent only three
+days; nevertheless, though the weather was fine, they had already been
+weighing chances as to whether I would ever return, and trying to decide
+whether they should wait longer or begin to seek their way back to the
+lowlands. Now their curious troubles were over. They packed their
+precious sketches, and next morning we set out homeward bound, and in
+two days entered the Yosemite Valley from the north by way of Indian
+Canon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+THE PASSES
+
+The sustained grandeur of the High Sierra is strikingly illustrated by
+the great height of the passes. Between latitude 36 deg. 20' and 38 deg. the
+lowest pass, gap, gorge, or notch of any kind cutting across the axis of
+the range, as far as I have discovered, exceeds 9000 feet in height
+above the level of the sea; while the average height of all that are in
+use, either by Indians or whites, is perhaps not less than 11,000 feet,
+and not one of these is a carriage-pass.
+
+Farther north a carriage-road has been constructed through what is known
+as the Sonora Pass, on the head waters of the Stanislaus and Walker's
+rivers, the summit of which is about 10,000 feet above the sea.
+Substantial wagon-roads have also been built through the Carson and
+Johnson passes, near the head of Lake Tahoe, over which immense
+quantities of freight were hauled from California to the mining regions
+of Nevada, before the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad.
+
+Still farther north, a considerable number of comparatively low passes
+occur, some of which are accessible to wheeled vehicles, and through
+these rugged defiles during the exciting years of the gold period long
+emigrant-trains with foot-sore cattle wearily toiled. After the
+toil-worn adventurers had escaped a thousand dangers and had crawled
+thousands of miles across the plains the snowy Sierra at last loomed in
+sight, the eastern wall of the land of gold. And as with shaded eyes
+they gazed through the tremulous haze of the desert, with what joy must
+they have descried the pass through which they were to enter the better
+land of their hopes and dreams!
+
+Between the Sonora Pass and the southern extremity of the High Sierra, a
+distance of nearly 160 miles, there are only five passes through which
+trails conduct from one side of the range to the other. These are barely
+practicable for animals; a pass in these regions meaning simply any
+notch or canon through which one may, by the exercise of unlimited
+patience, make out to lead a mule, or a sure-footed mustang; animals
+that can slide or jump as well as walk. Only three of the five passes
+may be said to be in use, viz.: the Kearsarge, Mono, and Virginia Creek;
+the tracks leading through the others being only obscure Indian trails,
+not graded in the least, and scarcely traceable by white men; for much
+of the way is over solid rock and earthquake avalanche taluses, where
+the unshod ponies of the Indians leave no appreciable sign. Only skilled
+mountaineers are able to detect the marks that serve to guide the
+Indians, such as slight abrasions of the looser rocks, the displacement
+of stones here and there, and bent bushes and weeds. A general knowledge
+of the topography is, then, the main guide, enabling one to determine
+where the trail ought to go--_must_ go. One of these Indian trails
+crosses the range by a nameless pass between the head waters of the
+south and middle forks of the San Joaquin, the other between the north
+and middle forks of the same river, just to the south of "The Minarets";
+this last being about 9000 feet high, is the lowest of the five. The
+Kearsarge is the highest, crossing the summit near the head of the south
+fork of King's River, about eight miles to the north of Mount Tyndall,
+through the midst of the most stupendous rock-scenery. The summit of
+this pass is over 12,000 feet above sea-level; nevertheless, it is one
+of the safest of the five, and is used every summer, from July to
+October or November, by hunters, prospectors, and stock-owners, and to
+some extent by enterprising pleasure-seekers also. For, besides the
+surpassing grandeur of the scenery about the summit, the trail, in
+ascending the western flank of the range, conducts through a grove of
+the giant Sequoias, and through the magnificent Yosemite Valley of the
+south fork of King's River. This is, perhaps, the highest traveled pass
+on the North American continent.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION
+BOUNDARY.]
+
+The Mono Pass lies to the east of Yosemite Valley, at the head of one of
+the tributaries of the south fork of the Tuolumne. This is the best
+known and most extensively traveled of all that exist in the High
+Sierra. A trail was made through it about the time of the Mono gold
+excitement, in the year 1858, by adventurous miners and prospectors--men
+who would build a trail down the throat of darkest Erebus on the way to
+gold. Though more than a thousand feet lower than the Kearsarge, it is
+scarcely less sublime in rock-scenery, while in snowy, falling water it
+far surpasses it. Being so favorably situated for the stream of Yosemite
+travel, the more adventurous tourists cross over through this glorious
+gateway to the volcanic region around Mono Lake. It has therefore gained
+a name and fame above every other pass in the range. According to the
+few barometrical observations made upon it, its highest point is 10,765
+feet above the sea. The other pass of the five we have been considering
+is somewhat lower, and crosses the axis of the range a few miles to the
+north of the Mono Pass, at the head of the southernmost tributary of
+Walker's River. It is used chiefly by roaming bands of the Pah Ute
+Indians and "sheepmen."
+
+But, leaving wheels and animals out of the question, the free
+mountaineer with a sack of bread on his shoulders and an ax to cut steps
+in ice and frozen snow can make his way across the range almost
+everywhere, and at any time of year when the weather is calm. To him
+nearly every notch between the peaks is a pass, though much patient
+step-cutting is at times required up and down steeply inclined glaciers,
+with cautious climbing over precipices that at first sight would seem
+hopelessly inaccessible.
+
+In pursuing my studies, I have crossed from side to side of the range at
+intervals of a few miles all along the highest portion of the chain,
+with far less real danger than one would naturally count on. And what
+fine wildness was thus revealed--storms and avalanches, lakes and
+waterfalls, gardens and meadows, and interesting animals--only those
+will ever know who give the freest and most buoyant portion of their
+lives to climbing and seeing for themselves.
+
+To the timid traveler, fresh from the sedimentary levels of the
+lowlands, these highways, however picturesque and grand, seem terribly
+forbidding--cold, dead, gloomy gashes in the bones of the mountains, and
+of all Nature's ways the ones to be most cautiously avoided. Yet they
+are full of the finest and most telling examples of Nature's love; and
+though hard to travel, none are safer. For they lead through regions
+that lie far above the ordinary haunts of the devil, and of the
+pestilence that walks in darkness. True, there are innumerable places
+where the careless step will be the last step; and a rock falling from
+the cliffs may crush without warning like lightning from the sky; but
+what then! Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the
+lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even
+divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of
+civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home.
+Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care,
+save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty
+into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these
+so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill,
+they cure a thousand.
+
+All the passes make their steepest ascents on the eastern flank. On this
+side the average rise is not far from a thousand feet to the mile, while
+on the west it is about two hundred feet. Another marked difference
+between the eastern and western portions of the passes is that the
+former begin at the very foot of the range, while the latter can hardly
+be said to begin lower than an elevation of from seven to ten thousand
+feet. Approaching the range from the gray levels of Mono and Owen's
+Valley on the east, the traveler sees before him the steep, short passes
+in full view, fenced in by rugged spurs that come plunging down from the
+shoulders of the peaks on either side, the courses of the more direct
+being disclosed from top to bottom without interruption. But from the
+west one sees nothing of the way he may be seeking until near the
+summit, after days have been spent in threading the forests growing on
+the main dividing ridges between the river canons.
+
+It is interesting to observe how surely the alp-crossing animals of
+every kind fall into the same trails. The more rugged and inaccessible
+the general character of the topography of any particular region, the
+more surely will the trails of white men, Indians, bears, wild sheep,
+etc., be found converging into the best passes. The Indians of the
+western slope venture cautiously over the passes in settled weather to
+attend dances, and obtain loads of pine-nuts and the larvae of a small
+fly that breeds in Mono and Owen's lakes, which, when dried, forms an
+important article of food; while the Pah Utes cross over from the east
+to hunt the deer and obtain supplies of acorns; and it is truly
+astonishing to see what immense loads the haggard old squaws make out to
+carry bare-footed through these rough passes, oftentimes for a distance
+of sixty or seventy miles. They are always accompanied by the men, who
+stride on, unburdened and erect, a little in advance, kindly stooping at
+difficult places to pile stepping-stones for their patient, pack-animal
+wives, just as they would prepare the way for their ponies.
+
+Bears evince great sagacity as mountaineers, but although they are
+tireless and enterprising travelers they seldom cross the range. I have
+several times tracked them through the Mono Pass, but only in late
+years, after cattle and sheep had passed that way, when they doubtless
+were following to feed on the stragglers and on those that had been
+killed by falling over the rocks. Even the wild sheep, the best
+mountaineers of all, choose regular passes in making journeys across the
+summits. Deer seldom cross the range in either direction. I have never
+yet observed a single specimen of the mule-deer of the Great Basin west
+of the summit, and rarely one of the black-tailed species on the eastern
+slope, notwithstanding many of the latter ascend the range nearly to the
+summit every summer, to feed in the wild gardens and bring forth their
+young.
+
+The glaciers are the pass-makers, and it is by them that the courses of
+all mountaineers are predestined. Without exception every pass in the
+Sierra was created by them without the slightest aid or predetermining
+guidance from any of the cataclysmic agents. I have seen elaborate
+statements of the amount of drilling and blasting accomplished in the
+construction of the railroad across the Sierra, above Donner Lake; but
+for every pound of rock moved in this way, the glaciers which descended
+east and west through this same pass, crushed and carried away more than
+a hundred tons.
+
+The so-called practicable road-passes are simply those portions of the
+range more degraded by glacial action than the adjacent portions, and
+degraded in such a way as to leave the summits rounded, instead of
+sharp; while the peaks, from the superior strength and hardness of their
+rocks, or from more favorable position, having suffered less
+degradation, are left towering above the passes as if they had been
+heaved into the sky by some force acting from beneath.
+
+The scenery of all the passes, especially at the head, is of the wildest
+and grandest description,--lofty peaks massed together and laden around
+their bases with ice and snow; chains of glacier lakes; cascading
+streams in endless variety, with glorious views, westward over a sea of
+rocks and woods, and eastward over strange ashy plains, volcanoes, and
+the dry, dead-looking ranges of the Great Basin. Every pass, however,
+possesses treasures of beauty all its own.
+
+Having thus in a general way indicated the height, leading features, and
+distribution of the principal passes, I will now endeavor to describe
+the Mono Pass in particular, which may, I think, be regarded as a fair
+example of the higher alpine passes in general.
+
+The main portion of the Mono Pass is formed by Bloody Canon, which
+begins at the summit of the range, and runs in a general
+east-northeasterly direction to the edge of the Mono Plain.
+
+The first white men who forced a way through its somber depths were, as
+we have seen, eager gold-seekers. But the canon was known and traveled
+as a pass by the Indians and mountain animals long before its discovery
+by white men, as is shown by the numerous tributary trails which come
+into it from every direction. Its name accords well with the character
+of the "early times" in California, and may perhaps have been suggested
+by the predominant color of the metamorphic slates in which it is in
+great part eroded; or more probably by blood-stains made by the
+unfortunate animals which were compelled to slip and shuffle awkwardly
+over its rough, cutting rocks. I have never known an animal, either mule
+or horse, to make its way through the canon, either in going up or down,
+without losing more or less blood from wounds on the legs. Occasionally
+one is killed outright--falling headlong and rolling over precipices
+like a boulder. But such accidents are rarer than from the terrible
+appearance of the trail one would be led to expect; the more experienced
+when driven loose find their way over the dangerous places with a
+caution and sagacity that is truly wonderful. During the gold excitement
+it was at times a matter of considerable pecuniary importance to force a
+way through the canon with pack-trains early in the spring while it was
+yet heavily blocked with snow; and then the mules with their loads had
+sometimes to be let down over the steepest drifts and avalanche beds by
+means of ropes.
+
+A good bridle-path leads from Yosemite through many a grove and meadow
+up to the head of the canon, a distance of about thirty miles. Here the
+scenery undergoes a sudden and startling condensation. Mountains, red,
+gray, and black, rise close at hand on the right, whitened around their
+bases with banks of enduring snow; on the left swells the huge red mass
+of Mount Gibbs, while in front the eye wanders down the shadowy canon,
+and out on the warm plain of Mono, where the lake is seen gleaming like
+a burnished metallic disk, with clusters of lofty volcanic cones to the
+south of it.
+
+When at length we enter the mountain gateway, the somber rocks seem
+aware of our presence, and seem to come thronging closer about us.
+Happily the ouzel and the old familiar robin are here to sing us
+welcome, and azure daisies beam with trustfulness and sympathy, enabling
+us to feel something of Nature's love even here, beneath the gaze of her
+coldest rocks.
+
+The effect of this expressive outspokenness on the part of the
+canon-rocks is greatly enhanced by the quiet aspect of the alpine
+meadows through which we pass just before entering the narrow gateway.
+The forests in which they lie, and the mountain-tops rising beyond them,
+seem quiet and tranquil. We catch their restful spirit, yield to the
+soothing influences of the sunshine, and saunter dreamily on through
+flowers and bees, scarce touched by a definite thought; then suddenly we
+find ourselves in the shadowy canon, closeted with Nature in one of her
+wildest strongholds.
+
+After the first bewildering impression begins to wear off, we perceive
+that it is not altogether terrible; for besides the reassuring birds and
+flowers we discover a chain of shining lakelets hanging down from the
+very summit of the pass, and linked together by a silvery stream. The
+highest are set in bleak, rough bowls, scantily fringed with brown and
+yellow sedges. Winter storms blow snow through the canon in blinding
+drifts, and avalanches shoot from the heights. Then are these sparkling
+tarns filled and buried, leaving not a hint of their existence. In June
+and July they begin to blink and thaw out like sleepy eyes, the carices
+thrust up their short brown spikes, the daisies bloom in turn, and the
+most profoundly buried of them all is at length warmed and summered as
+if winter were only a dream.
+
+Red Lake is the lowest of the chain, and also the largest. It seems
+rather dull and forbidding at first sight, lying motionless in its deep,
+dark bed. The canon wall rises sheer from the water's edge on the south,
+but on the opposite side there is sufficient space and sunshine for a
+sedgy daisy garden, the center of which is brilliantly lighted with
+lilies, castilleias, larkspurs, and columbines, sheltered from the wind
+by leafy willows, and forming a most joyful outburst of plant-life
+keenly emphasized by the chill baldness of the onlooking cliffs.
+
+After indulging here in a dozing, shimmering lake-rest, the happy stream
+sets forth again, warbling and trilling like an ouzel, ever delightfully
+confiding, no matter how dark the way; leaping, gliding, hither,
+thither, clear or foaming: manifesting the beauty of its wildness in
+every sound and gesture.
+
+One of its most beautiful developments is the Diamond Cascade, situated
+a short distance below Red Lake. Here the tense, crystalline water is
+first dashed into coarse, granular spray mixed with dusty foam, and then
+divided into a diamond pattern by following the diagonal cleavage-joints
+that intersect the face of the precipice over which it pours. Viewed in
+front, it resembles a strip of embroidery of definite pattern, varying
+through the seasons with the temperature and the volume of water. Scarce
+a flower may be seen along its snowy border. A few bent pines look on
+from a distance, and small fringes of cassiope and rock-ferns are
+growing in fissures near the head, but these are so lowly and
+undemonstrative that only the attentive observer will be likely to
+notice them.
+
+On the north wall of the canon, a little below the Diamond Cascade, a
+glittering side stream makes its appearance, seeming to leap directly
+out of the sky. It first resembles a crinkled ribbon of silver hanging
+loosely down the wall, but grows wider as it descends, and dashes the
+dull rock with foam. A long rough talus curves up against this part of
+the cliff, overgrown with snow-pressed willows, in which the fall
+disappears with many an eager surge and swirl and plashing leap, finally
+beating its way down to its confluence with the main canon stream.
+
+Below this point the climate is no longer arctic. Butterflies become
+larger and more abundant, grasses with imposing spread of panicle wave
+above your shoulders, and the summery drone of the bumblebee thickens
+the air. The Dwarf Pine, the tree-mountaineer that climbs highest and
+braves the coldest blasts, is found scattered in storm-beaten clumps from
+the summit of the pass about half-way down the canon. Here it is
+succeeded by the hardy Two-leaved Pine, which is speedily joined by the
+taller Yellow and Mountain Pines. These, with the burly juniper, and
+shimmering aspen, rapidly grow larger as the sunshine becomes richer,
+forming groves that block the view; or they stand more apart here and
+there in picturesque groups, that make beautiful and obvious harmony
+with the rocks and with one another. Blooming underbrush becomes
+abundant,--azalea, spiraea, and the brier-rose weaving fringes for the
+streams, and shaggy rugs to relieve the stern, unflinching rock-bosses.
+
+Through this delightful wilderness, Canon Creek roves without any
+constraining channel, throbbing and wavering; now in sunshine, now in
+thoughtful shade; falling, swirling, flashing from side to side in
+weariless exuberance of energy. A glorious milky way of cascades is thus
+developed, of which Bower Cascade, though one of the smallest, is
+perhaps the most beautiful of them all. It is situated in the lower
+region of the pass, just where the sunshine begins to mellow between the
+cold and warm climates. Here the glad creek, grown strong with tribute
+gathered from many a snowy fountain on the heights, sings richer
+strains, and becomes more human and lovable at every step. Now you may
+by its side find the rose and homely yarrow, and small meadows full of
+bees and clover. At the head of a low-browed rock, luxuriant dogwood
+bushes and willows arch over from bank to bank, embowering the stream
+with their leafy branches; and drooping plumes, kept in motion by the
+current, fringe the brow of the cascade in front. From this leafy covert
+the stream leaps out into the light in a fluted curve thick sown with
+sparkling crystals, and falls into a pool filled with brown boulders,
+out of which it creeps gray with foam-bells and disappears in a tangle
+of verdure like that from which it came.
+
+Hence, to the foot of the canon, the metamorphic slates give place to
+granite, whose nobler sculpture calls forth expressions of corresponding
+beauty from the stream in passing over it,--bright trills of rapids,
+booming notes of falls, solemn hushes of smooth-gliding sheets, all
+chanting and blending in glorious harmony. When, at length, its
+impetuous alpine life is done, it slips through a meadow with scarce an
+audible whisper, and falls asleep in Moraine Lake.
+
+This water-bed is one of the finest I ever saw. Evergreens wave
+soothingly about it, and the breath of flowers floats over it like
+incense. Here our blessed stream rests from its rocky wanderings, all
+its mountaineering done,--no more foaming rock-leaping, no more wild,
+exulting song. It falls into a smooth, glassy sleep, stirred only by the
+night-wind, which, coming down the canon, makes it croon and mutter in
+ripples along its broidered shores.
+
+Leaving the lake, it glides quietly through the rushes, destined never
+more to touch the living rock. Henceforth its path lies through ancient
+moraines and reaches of ashy sage-plain, which nowhere afford rocks
+suitable for the development of cascades or sheer falls. Yet this beauty
+of maturity, though less striking, is of a still higher order, enticing
+us lovingly on through gentian meadows and groves of rustling aspen to
+Lake Mono, where, spirit-like, our happy stream vanishes in vapor, and
+floats free again in the sky.
+
+Bloody Canon, like every other in the Sierra, was recently occupied by a
+glacier, which derived its fountain snows from the adjacent summits, and
+descended into Mono Lake, at a time when its waters stood at a much
+higher level than now. The principal characters in which the history of
+the ancient glaciers is preserved are displayed here in marvelous
+freshness and simplicity, furnishing the student with extraordinary
+advantages for the acquisition of knowledge of this sort. The most
+striking passages are polished and striated surfaces, which in many
+places reflect the rays of the sun like smooth water. The dam of Red
+Lake is an elegantly modeled rib of metamorphic slate, brought into
+relief because of its superior strength, and because of the greater
+intensity of the glacial erosion of the rock immediately above it,
+caused by a steeply inclined tributary glacier, which entered the main
+trunk with a heavy down-thrust at the head of the lake.
+
+Moraine Lake furnishes an equally interesting example of a basin formed
+wholly, or in part, by a terminal moraine dam curved across the path of
+a stream between two lateral moraines.
+
+At Moraine Lake the canon proper terminates, although apparently
+continued by the two lateral moraines of the vanished glacier. These
+moraines are about 300 feet high, and extend unbrokenly from the sides
+of the canon into the plain, a distance of about five miles, curving and
+tapering in beautiful lines. Their sunward sides are gardens, their
+shady sides are groves; the former devoted chiefly to eriogonae,
+compositae, and graminae; a square rod containing five or six profusely
+flowered eriogonums of several species, about the same number of bahia
+and linosyris, and a few grass tufts; each species being planted trimly
+apart, with bare gravel between, as if cultivated artificially.
+
+My first visit to Bloody Canon was made in the summer of 1869, under
+circumstances well calculated to heighten the impressions that are the
+peculiar offspring of mountains. I came from the blooming tangles of
+Florida, and waded out into the plant-gold of the great valley of
+California, when its flora was as yet untrodden. Never before had I
+beheld congregations of social flowers half so extensive or half so
+glorious. Golden composite covered all the ground from the Coast Range
+to the Sierra like a stratum of curdled sunshine, in which I reveled for
+weeks, watching the rising and setting of their innumerable suns; then I
+gave myself up to be borne forward on the crest of the summer wave that
+sweeps annually up the Sierra and spends itself on the snowy summits.
+
+At the Big Tuolumne Meadows I remained more than a month, sketching,
+botanizing, and climbing among the surrounding mountains. The
+mountaineer with whom I then happened to be camping was one of those
+remarkable men one so frequently meets in California, the hard angles
+and bosses of whose characters have been brought into relief by the
+grinding excitements of the gold period, until they resemble glacial
+landscapes. But at this late day, my friend's activities had subsided,
+and his craving for rest caused him to become a gentle shepherd and
+literally to lie down with the lamb.
+
+Recognizing the unsatisfiable longings of my Scotch Highland instincts,
+he threw out some hints concerning Bloody Canon, and advised me to
+explore it. "I have never seen it myself," he said, "for I never was so
+unfortunate as to pass that way. But I have heard many a strange story
+about it, and I warrant you will at least find it wild enough."
+
+Then of course I made haste to see it. Early next morning I made up a
+bundle of bread, tied my note-book to my belt, and strode away in the
+bracing air, full of eager, indefinite hope. The plushy lawns that lay
+in my path served to soothe my morning haste. The sod in many places was
+starred with daisies and blue gentians, over which I lingered. I traced
+the paths of the ancient glaciers over many a shining pavement, and
+marked the gaps in the upper forests that told the power of the winter
+avalanches. Climbing higher, I saw for the first time the gradual
+dwarfing of the pines in compliance with climate, and on the summit
+discovered creeping mats of the arctic willow overgrown with silky
+catkins, and patches of the dwarf vaccinium with its round flowers
+sprinkled in the grass like purple hail; while in every direction the
+landscape stretched sublimely away in fresh wildness--a manuscript
+written by the hand of Nature alone.
+
+At length, as I entered the pass, the huge rocks began to close around
+in all their wild, mysterious impressiveness, when suddenly, as I was
+gazing eagerly about me, a drove of gray hairy beings came in sight,
+lumbering toward me with a kind of boneless, wallowing motion like
+bears.
+
+I never turn back, though often so inclined, and in this particular
+instance, amid such surroundings, everything seemed singularly
+unfavorable for the calm acceptance of so grim a company. Suppressing my
+fears, I soon discovered that although as hairy as bears and as crooked
+as summit pines, the strange creatures were sufficiently erect to belong
+to our own species. They proved to be nothing more formidable than Mono
+Indians dressed in the skins of sage-rabbits. Both the men and the women
+begged persistently for whisky and tobacco, and seemed so accustomed to
+denials that I found it impossible to convince them that I had none to
+give. Excepting the names of these two products of civilization, they
+seemed to understand not a word of English; but I afterward learned that
+they were on their way to Yosemite Valley to feast awhile on trout and
+procure a load of acorns to carry back through the pass to their huts on
+the shore of Mono Lake.
+
+Occasionally a good countenance may be seen among the Mono Indians, but
+these, the first specimens I had seen, were mostly ugly, and some of
+them altogether hideous. The dirt on their faces was fairly stratified,
+and seemed so ancient and so undisturbed it might almost possess a
+geological significance. The older faces were, moreover, strangely
+blurred and divided into sections by furrows that looked like the
+cleavage-joints of rocks, suggesting exposure on the mountains in a
+castaway condition for ages. Somehow they seemed to have no right place
+in the landscape, and I was glad to see them fading out of sight down
+the pass.
+
+Then came evening, and the somber cliffs were inspired with the
+ineffable beauty of the alpenglow. A solemn calm fell upon everything.
+All the lower portion of the canon was in gloaming shadow, and I crept
+into a hollow near one of the upper lakelets to smooth the ground in a
+sheltered nook for a bed. When the short twilight faded, I kindled a
+sunny fire, made a cup of tea, and lay down to rest and look at the
+stars. Soon the night-wind began to flow and pour in torrents among the
+jagged peaks, mingling strange tones with those of the waterfalls
+sounding far below; and as I drifted toward sleep I began to experience
+an uncomfortable feeling of nearness to the furred Monos. Then the full
+moon looked down over the edge of the canon wall, her countenance
+seemingly filled with intense concern, and apparently so near as to
+produce a startling effect as if she had entered my bedroom, forgetting
+all the world, to gaze on me alone.
+
+The night was full of strange sounds, and I gladly welcomed the morning.
+Breakfast was soon done, and I set forth in the exhilarating freshness
+of the new day, rejoicing in the abundance of pure wildness so close
+about me. The stupendous rocks, hacked and scarred with centuries of
+storms, stood sharply out in the thin early light, while down in the
+bottom of the canon grooved and polished bosses heaved and glistened
+like swelling sea-waves, telling a grand old story of the ancient
+glacier that poured its crushing floods above them.
+
+Here for the first time I met the arctic daisies in all their perfection
+of purity and spirituality,--gentle mountaineers face to face with the
+stormy sky, kept safe and warm by a thousand miracles. I leaped lightly
+from rock to rock, glorying in the eternal freshness and sufficiency of
+Nature, and in the ineffable tenderness with which she nurtures her
+mountain darlings in the very fountains of storms. Fresh beauty appeared
+at every step, delicate rock-ferns, and groups of the fairest flowers.
+Now another lake came to view, now a waterfall. Never fell light in
+brighter spangles, never fell water in whiter foam. I seemed to float
+through the canon enchanted, feeling nothing of its roughness, and was
+out in the Mono levels before I was aware.
+
+Looking back from the shore of Moraine Lake, my morning ramble seemed
+all a dream. There curved Bloody Canon, a mere glacial furrow 2000 feet
+deep, with smooth rocks projecting from the sides and braided together
+in the middle, like bulging, swelling muscles. Here the lilies were
+higher than my head, and the sunshine was warm enough for palms. Yet the
+snow around the arctic willows was plainly visible only four miles away,
+and between were narrow specimen zones of all the principal climates of
+the globe.
+
+On the bank of a small brook that comes gurgling down the side of the
+left lateral moraine, I found a camp-fire still burning, which no doubt
+belonged to the gray Indians I had met on the summit, and I listened
+instinctively and moved cautiously forward, half expecting to see some
+of their grim faces peering out of the bushes.
+
+Passing on toward the open plain, I noticed three well-defined terminal
+moraines curved gracefully across the canon stream, and joined by long
+splices to the two noble laterals. These mark the halting-places of the
+vanished glacier when it was retreating into its summit shadows on the
+breaking-up of the glacial winter.
+
+Five miles below the foot of Moraine Lake, just where the lateral
+moraines lose themselves in the plain, there was a field of wild rye,
+growing in magnificent waving bunches six to eight feet high, bearing
+heads from six to twelve inches long. Rubbing out some of the grains, I
+found them about five eighths of an inch long, dark-colored, and sweet.
+Indian women were gathering it in baskets, bending down large handfuls,
+beating it out, and fanning it in the wind. They were quite picturesque,
+coming through the rye, as one caught glimpses of them here and there,
+in winding lanes and openings, with splendid tufts arching above their
+heads, while their incessant chat and laughter showed their heedless
+joy.
+
+Like the rye-field, I found the so-called desert of Mono blooming in a
+high state of natural cultivation with the wild rose, cherry, aster, and
+the delicate abronia; also innumerable gilias, phloxes, poppies, and
+bush-compositae. I observed their gestures and the various expressions
+of their corollas, inquiring how they could be so fresh and beautiful
+out in this volcanic desert. They told as happy a life as any
+plant-company I ever met, and seemed to enjoy even the hot sand and the
+wind.
+
+But the vegetation of the pass has been in great part destroyed, and the
+same may be said of all the more accessible passes throughout the range.
+Immense numbers of starving sheep and cattle have been driven through
+them into Nevada, trampling the wild gardens and meadows almost out of
+existence. The lofty walls are untouched by any foot, and the falls sing
+on unchanged; but the sight of crushed flowers and stripped, bitten
+bushes goes far toward destroying the charm of wildness.
+
+The canon should be seen in winter. A good, strong traveler, who knows
+the way and the weather, might easily make a safe excursion through it
+from Yosemite Valley on snow-shoes during some tranquil time, when the
+storms are hushed. The lakes and falls would be buried then; but so,
+also, would be the traces of destructive feet, while the views of the
+mountains in their winter garb, and the ride at lightning speed down the
+pass between the snowy walls, would be truly glorious.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CANON.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+THE GLACIER LAKES
+
+Among the many unlooked-for treasures that are bound up and hidden away
+in the depths of Sierra solitudes, none more surely charm and surprise
+all kinds of travelers than the glacier lakes. The forests and the
+glaciers and the snowy fountains of the streams advertise their wealth
+in a more or less telling manner even in the distance, but nothing is
+seen of the lakes until we have climbed above them. All the upper
+branches of the rivers are fairly laden with lakes, like orchard trees
+with fruit. They lie embosomed in the deep woods, down in the grovy
+bottoms of canons, high on bald tablelands, and around the feet of the
+icy peaks, mirroring back their wild beauty over and over again. Some
+conception of their lavish abundance may be made from the fact that,
+from one standpoint on the summit of Red Mountain, a day's journey to
+the east of Yosemite Valley, no fewer than forty-two are displayed
+within a radius of ten miles. The whole number in the Sierra can hardly
+be less than fifteen hundred, not counting the smaller pools and tarns,
+which are innumerable. Perhaps two thirds or more lie on the western
+flank of the range, and all are restricted to the alpine and subalpine
+regions. At the close of the last glacial period, the middle and
+foot-hill regions also abounded in lakes, all of which have long since
+vanished as completely as the magnificent ancient glaciers that brought
+them into existence.
+
+Though the eastern flank of the range is excessively steep, we find
+lakes pretty regularly distributed throughout even the most precipitous
+portions. They are mostly found in the upper branches of the canons, and
+in the glacial amphitheaters around the peaks.
+
+Occasionally long, narrow specimens occur upon the steep sides of
+dividing ridges, their basins swung lengthwise like hammocks, and very
+rarely one is found lying so exactly on the summit of the range at the
+head of some pass that its waters are discharged down both flanks when
+the snow is melting fast. But, however situated, they soon cease to form
+surprises to the studious mountaineer; for, like all the love-work of
+Nature, they are harmoniously related to one another, and to all the
+other features of the mountains. It is easy, therefore, to find the
+bright lake-eyes in the roughest and most ungovernable-looking
+topography of any landscape countenance. Even in the lower regions,
+where they have been closed for many a century, their rocky orbits are
+still discernible, filled in with the detritus of flood and avalanche. A
+beautiful system of grouping in correspondence with the glacial
+fountains is soon perceived; also their extension in the direction of
+the trends of the ancient glaciers; and in general their dependence as
+to form, size, and position upon the character of the rocks in which
+their basins have been eroded, and the quantity and direction of
+application of the glacial force expended upon each basin.
+
+In the upper canons we usually find them in pretty regular succession,
+strung together like beads on the bright ribbons of their
+feeding-streams, which pour, white and gray with foam and spray, from
+one to the other, their perfect mirror stillness making impressive
+contrasts with the grand blare and glare of the connecting cataracts. In
+Lake Hollow, on the north side of the Hoffman spur, immediately above
+the great Tuolumne canon, there are ten lovely lakelets lying near
+together in one general hollow, like eggs in a nest. Seen from above, in
+a general view, feathered with Hemlock Spruce, and fringed with sedge,
+they seem to me the most singularly beautiful and interestingly located
+lake-cluster I have ever yet discovered.
+
+Lake Tahoe, 22 miles long by about 10 wide, and from 500 to over 1600
+feet in depth, is the largest of all the Sierra lakes. It lies just
+beyond the northern limit of the higher portion of the range between the
+main axis and a spur that puts out on the east side from near the head
+of the Carson River. Its forested shores go curving in and out around
+many an emerald bay and pine-crowned promontory, and its waters are
+everywhere as keenly pure as any to be found among the highest
+mountains.
+
+Donner Lake, rendered memorable by the terrible fate of the Donner
+party, is about three miles long, and lies about ten miles to the north
+of Tahoe, at the head of one of the tributaries of the Truckee. A few
+miles farther north lies Lake Independence, about the same size as
+Donner. But far the greater number of the lakes lie much higher and are
+quite small, few of them exceeding a mile in length, most of them less
+than half a mile.
+
+Along the lower edge of the lake-belt, the smallest have disappeared by
+the filling-in of their basins, leaving only those of considerable size.
+But all along the upper freshly glaciated margin of the lake-bearing
+zone, every hollow, however small, lying within reach of any portion of
+the close network of streams, contains a bright, brimming pool; so that
+the landscape viewed from the mountain-tops seems to be sown broadcast
+with them. Many of the larger lakes are encircled with smaller ones like
+central gems girdled with sparkling brilliants. In general, however,
+there is no marked dividing line as to size. In order, therefore, to
+prevent confusion, I would state here that in giving numbers, I include
+none less than 500 yards in circumference.
+
+In the basin of the Merced River, I counted 131, of which 111 are upon
+the tributaries that fall so grandly into Yosemite Valley. Pohono Creek,
+which forms the fall of that name, takes its rise in a beautiful lake,
+lying beneath the shadow of a lofty granite spur that puts out from
+Buena Vista peak. This is now the only lake left in the whole Pohono
+Basin. The Illilouette has sixteen, the Nevada no fewer than
+sixty-seven, the Tenaya eight, Hoffmann Creek five, and Yosemite Creek
+fourteen. There are but two other lake-bearing affluents of the Merced,
+viz., the South Fork with fifteen, and Cascade Creek with five, both of
+which unite with the main trunk below Yosemite.
+
+[Illustration: LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS.]
+
+The Merced River, as a whole, is remarkably like an elm-tree, and it
+requires but little effort on the part of the imagination to picture it
+standing upright, with all its lakes hanging upon its spreading
+branches, the topmost eighty miles in height. Now add all the other
+lake-bearing rivers of the Sierra, each in its place, and you will have
+a truly glorious spectacle,--an avenue the length and width of the
+range; the long, slender, gray shafts of the main trunks, the milky way
+of arching branches, and the silvery lakes, all clearly defined and
+shining on the sky. How excitedly such an addition to the scenery would
+be gazed at! Yet these lakeful rivers are still more excitingly
+beautiful and impressive in their natural positions to those who have
+the eyes to see them as they lie imbedded in their meadows and forests
+and glacier-sculptured rocks.
+
+When a mountain lake is born,--when, like a young eye, it first opens to
+the light,--it is an irregular, expressionless crescent, inclosed in
+banks of rock and ice,--bare, glaciated rock on the lower side, the
+rugged snout of a glacier on the upper. In this condition it remains for
+many a year, until at length, toward the end of some auspicious cluster
+of seasons, the glacier recedes beyond the upper margin of the basin,
+leaving it open from shore to shore for the first time, thousands of
+years after its conception beneath the glacier that excavated its basin.
+The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its pure depths; the winds
+ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun fills it with throbbing spangles,
+while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless
+shores,--sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at night its
+only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the
+glacier continues to recede, and numerous rills, still younger than the
+lake itself, bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, giving
+rise to margin-rings and plats of soil. To these fresh soil-beds come
+many a waiting plant. First, a hardy carex with arching leaves and a
+spike of brown flowers; then, as the seasons grow warmer, and the
+soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take their appointed places,
+and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies, dodecatheons, violets,
+honeyworts, and many a lowly moss. Shrubs also hasten in time to the new
+gardens,--kalmia with its glossy leaves and purple flowers, the arctic
+willow, making soft woven carpets, together with the heathy bryanthus
+and cassiope, the fairest and dearest of them all. Insects now enrich
+the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed by the
+ouzel, which is the first bird to visit a glacier lake, as the sedge is
+the first of plants.
+
+So the young lake grows in beauty, becoming more and more humanly
+lovable from century to century. Groves of aspen spring up, and hardy
+pines, and the Hemlock Spruce, until it is richly overshadowed and
+embowered. But while its shores are being enriched, the soil-beds creep
+out with incessant growth, contracting its area, while the lighter
+mud-particles deposited on the bottom cause it to grow constantly
+shallower, until at length the last remnant of the lake
+vanishes,--closed forever in ripe and natural old age. And now its
+feeding-stream goes winding on without halting through the new gardens
+and groves that have taken its place.
+
+The length of the life of any lake depends ordinarily upon the capacity
+of its basin, as compared with the carrying power of the streams that
+flow into it, the character of the rocks over which these streams flow,
+and the relative position of the lake toward other lakes. In a series
+whose basins lie in the same canon, and are fed by one and the same main
+stream, the uppermost will, of course, vanish first unless some other
+lake-filling agent comes in to modify the result; because at first it
+receives nearly all of the sediments that the stream brings down, only
+the finest of the mud-particles being carried through the highest of the
+series to the next below. Then the next higher, and the next would be
+successively filled, and the lowest would be the last to vanish. But
+this simplicity as to duration is broken in upon in various ways,
+chiefly through the action of side-streams that enter the lower lakes
+direct. For, notwithstanding many of these side tributaries are quite
+short, and, during late summer, feeble, they all become powerful
+torrents in springtime when the snow is melting, and carry not only sand
+and pine-needles, but large trunks and boulders tons in weight, sweeping
+them down their steeply inclined channels and into the lake basins with
+astounding energy. Many of these side affluents also have the advantage
+of access to the main lateral moraines of the vanished glacier that
+occupied the canon, and upon these they draw for lake-filling material,
+while the main trunk stream flows mostly over clean glacier pavements,
+where but little moraine matter is ever left for them to carry. Thus a
+small rapid stream with abundance of loose transportable material within
+its reach may fill up an extensive basin in a few centuries, while a
+large perennial trunk stream, flowing over clean, enduring pavements,
+though ordinarily a hundred times larger, may not fill a smaller basin
+in thousands of years.
+
+The comparative influence of great and small streams as lake-fillers is
+strikingly illustrated in Yosemite Valley, through which the Merced
+flows. The bottom of the valley is now composed of level meadow-lands
+and dry, sloping soil-beds planted with oak and pine, but it was once a
+lake stretching from wall to wall and nearly from one end of the valley
+to the other, forming one of the most beautiful cliff-bound sheets of
+water that ever existed in the Sierra. And though never perhaps seen by
+human eye, it was but yesterday, geologically speaking, since it
+disappeared, and the traces of its existence are still so fresh, it may
+easily be restored to the eye of imagination and viewed in all its
+grandeur, about as truly and vividly as if actually before us. Now we
+find that the detritus which fills this magnificent basin was not
+brought down from the distant mountains by the main streams that
+converge here to form the river, however powerful and available for the
+purpose at first sight they appear; but almost wholly by the small local
+tributaries, such as those of Indian Canon, the Sentinel, and the Three
+Brothers, and by a few small residual glaciers which lingered in the
+shadows of the walls long after the main trunk glacier had receded
+beyond the head of the valley.
+
+Had the glaciers that once covered the range been melted at once,
+leaving the entire surface bare from top to bottom simultaneously, then
+of course all the lakes would have come into existence at the same time,
+and the highest, other circumstances being equal, would, as we have
+seen, be the first to vanish. But because they melted gradually from the
+foot of the range upward, the lower lakes were the first to see the
+light and the first to be obliterated. Therefore, instead of finding the
+lakes of the present day at the foot of the range, we find them at the
+top. Most of the lower lakes vanished thousands of years before those
+now brightening the alpine landscapes were born. And in general, owing
+to the deliberation of the upward retreat of the glaciers, the lowest of
+the existing lakes are also the oldest, a gradual transition being
+apparent throughout the entire belt, from the older, forested,
+meadow-rimmed and contracted forms all the way up to those that are new
+born, lying bare and meadowless among the highest peaks.
+
+[Illustration: THE DEATH OF A LAKE.]
+
+A few small lakes unfortunately situated are extinguished suddenly by a
+single swoop of an avalanche, carrying down immense numbers of trees,
+together with the soil they were growing upon. Others are obliterated by
+land-slips, earthquake taluses, etc., but these lake-deaths compared
+with those resulting from the deliberate and incessant deposition of
+sediments, may be termed accidental. Their fate is like that of trees
+struck by lightning.
+
+The lake-line is of course still rising, its present elevation being
+about 8000 feet above sea-level; somewhat higher than this toward the
+southern extremity of the range, lower toward the northern, on account
+of the difference in time of the withdrawal of the glaciers, due to
+difference in climate. Specimens occur here and there considerably below
+this limit, in basins specially protected from inwashing detritus, or
+exceptional in size. These, however, are not sufficiently numerous to
+make any marked irregularity in the line. The highest I have yet found
+lies at an elevation of about 12,000 feet, in a glacier womb, at the
+foot of one of the highest of the summit peaks, a few miles to the north
+of Mount Hitter. The basins of perhaps twenty-five or thirty are still
+in process of formation beneath the few lingering glaciers, but by the
+time they are born, an equal or greater number will probably have died.
+Since the beginning of the close of the ice-period the whole number in
+the range has perhaps never been greater than at present.
+
+A rough approximation to the average duration of these mountain lakes
+may be made from data already suggested, but I cannot stop here to
+present the subject in detail. I must also forego, in the mean time, the
+pleasure of a full discussion of the interesting question of lake-basin
+formation, for which fine, clear, demonstrative material abounds in
+these mountains. In addition to what has been already given on the
+subject, I will only make this one statement. Every lake in the Sierra
+is a glacier lake. Their basins were not merely remodeled and scoured
+out by this mighty agent, but in the first place were eroded from the
+solid.
+
+I must now make haste to give some nearer views of representative
+specimens lying at different elevations on the main lake-belt, confining
+myself to descriptions of the features most characteristic of each.
+
+
+SHADOW LAKE
+
+This is a fine specimen of the oldest and lowest of the existing lakes.
+It lies about eight miles above Yosemite Valley, on the main branch of
+the Merced, at an elevation of about 7350 feet above the sea; and is
+everywhere so securely cliff-bound that without artificial trails only
+wild animals can get down to its rocky shores from any direction. Its
+original length was about a mile and a half; now it is only half a mile
+in length by about a fourth of a mile in width, and over the lowest
+portion of the basin ninety-eight feet deep. Its crystal waters are
+clasped around on the north and south by majestic granite walls
+sculptured in true Yosemitic style into domes, gables, and battlemented
+headlands, which on the south come plunging down sheer into deep water,
+from a height of from 1500 to 2000 feet. The South Lyell glacier eroded
+this magnificent basin out of solid porphyritic granite while forcing
+its way westward from the summit fountains toward Yosemite, and the
+exposed rocks around the shores, and the projecting bosses of the walls,
+ground and burnished beneath the vast ice-flood, still glow with silvery
+radiance, notwithstanding the innumerable corroding storms that have
+fallen upon them. The general conformation of the basin, as well as the
+moraines laid along the top of the walls, and the grooves and scratches
+on the bottom and sides, indicate in the most unmistakable manner the
+direction pursued by this mighty ice-river, its great depth, and the
+tremendous energy it exerted in thrusting itself into and out of the
+basin; bearing down with superior pressure upon this portion of its
+channel, because of the greater declivity, consequently eroding it
+deeper than the other portions about it, and producing the lake-bowl as
+the necessary result.
+
+With these magnificent ice-characters so vividly before us it is not
+easy to realize that the old glacier that made them vanished tens of
+centuries ago; for, excepting the vegetation that has sprung up, and the
+changes effected by an earthquake that hurled rock-avalanches from the
+weaker headlands, the basin as a whole presents the same appearance that
+it did when first brought to light. The lake itself, however, has
+undergone marked changes; one sees at a glance that it is growing old.
+More than two thirds of its original area is now dry land, covered with
+meadow-grasses and groves of pine and fir, and the level bed of alluvium
+stretching across from wall to wall at the head is evidently growing out
+all along its lakeward margin, and will at length close the lake
+forever.
+
+Every lover of fine wildness would delight to saunter on a summer day
+through the flowery groves now occupying the filled-up portion of the
+basin. The curving shore is clearly traced by a ribbon of white sand
+upon which the ripples play; then comes a belt of broad-leafed sedges,
+interrupted here and there by impenetrable tangles of willows; beyond
+this there are groves of trembling aspen; then a dark, shadowy belt of
+Two-leaved Pine, with here and there a round carex meadow ensconced
+nest-like in its midst; and lastly, a narrow outer margin of majestic
+Silver Fir 200 feet high. The ground beneath the trees is covered with a
+luxuriant crop of grasses, chiefly triticum, bromus, and calamagrostis,
+with purple spikes and panicles arching to one's shoulders; while the
+open meadow patches glow throughout the summer with showy
+flowers,--heleniums, goldenrods, erigerons, lupines, castilleias, and
+lilies, and form favorite hiding and feeding-grounds for bears and deer.
+
+The rugged south wall is feathered darkly along the top with an imposing
+array of spirey Silver Firs, while the rifted precipices all the way
+down to the water's edge are adorned with picturesque old junipers,
+their cinnamon-colored bark showing finely upon the neutral gray of the
+granite. These, with a few venturesome Dwarf Pines and Spruces, lean out
+over fissured ribs and tablets, or stand erect back in shadowy niches,
+in an indescribably wild and fearless manner. Moreover, the
+white-flowered Douglas spiraea and dwarf evergreen oak form graceful
+fringes along the narrower seams, wherever the slightest hold can be
+effected. Rock-ferns, too, are here, such as allosorus, pellaea, and
+cheilanthes, making handsome rosettes on the drier fissures; and the
+delicate maidenhair, cistoperis, and woodsia hide back in mossy
+grottoes, moistened by some trickling rill; and then the orange
+wall-flower holds up its showy panicles here and there in the sunshine,
+and bahia makes bosses of gold. But, notwithstanding all this plant
+beauty, the general impression in looking across the lake is of stern,
+unflinching rockiness; the ferns and flowers are scarcely seen, and not
+one fiftieth of the whole surface is screened with plant life.
+
+The sunnier north wall is more varied in sculpture, but the general tone
+is the same. A few headlands, flat-topped and soil-covered, support
+clumps of cedar and pine; and up-curving tangles of chinquapin and
+live-oak, growing on rough earthquake taluses, girdle their bases. Small
+streams come cascading down between them, their foaming margins
+brightened with gay primulas, gilias, and mimuluses. And close along the
+shore on this side there is a strip of rocky meadow enameled with
+buttercups, daisies, and white violets, and the purple-topped grasses
+out on its beveled border dip their leaves into the water.
+
+The lower edge of the basin is a dam-like swell of solid granite,
+heavily abraded by the old glacier, but scarce at all cut into as yet by
+the outflowing stream, though it has flowed on unceasingly since the
+lake came into existence.
+
+As soon as the stream is fairly over the lake-lip it breaks into
+cascades, never for a moment halting, and scarce abating one jot of its
+glad energy, until it reaches the next filled-up basin, a mile below.
+Then swirling and curving drowsily through meadow and grove, it breaks
+forth anew into gray rapids and falls, leaping and gliding in glorious
+exuberance of wild bound and dance down into another and yet another
+filled-up lake basin. Then, after a long rest in the levels of Little
+Yosemite, it makes its grandest display in the famous Nevada Fall. Out
+of the clouds of spray at the foot of the fall the battered, roaring
+river gropes its way, makes another mile of cascades and rapids, rests a
+moment in Emerald Pool, then plunges over the grand cliff of the Vernal
+Fall, and goes thundering and chafing down a boulder-choked gorge of
+tremendous depth and wildness into the tranquil reaches of the old
+Yosemite lake basin.
+
+The color-beauty about Shadow Lake during the Indian summer is much
+richer than one could hope to find in so young and so glacial a
+wilderness. Almost every leaf is tinted then, and the golden-rods are in
+bloom; but most of the color is given by the ripe grasses, willows, and
+aspens. At the foot of the lake you stand in a trembling aspen grove,
+every leaf painted like a butterfly, and away to right and left round
+the shores sweeps a curving ribbon of meadow, red and brown dotted with
+pale yellow, shading off here and there into hazy purple. The walls,
+too, are dashed with bits of bright color that gleam out on the neutral
+granite gray. But neither the walls, nor the margin meadow, nor yet the
+gay, fluttering grove in which you stand, nor the lake itself, flashing
+with spangles, can long hold your attention; for at the head of the lake
+there is a gorgeous mass of orange-yellow, belonging to the main aspen
+belt of the basin, which seems the very fountain whence all the color
+below it had flowed, and here your eye is filled and fixed. This
+glorious mass is about thirty feet high, and extends across the basin
+nearly from wall to wall. Rich bosses of willow flame in front of it,
+and from the base of these the brown meadow comes forward to the water's
+edge, the whole being relieved against the unyielding green of the
+coniferae, while thick sun-gold is poured over all.
+
+During these blessed color-days no cloud darkens the sky, the winds are
+gentle, and the landscape rests, hushed everywhere, and indescribably
+impressive. A few ducks are usually seen sailing on the lake, apparently
+more for pleasure than anything else, and the ouzels at the head of the
+rapids sing always; while robins, grosbeaks, and the Douglas squirrels
+are busy in the groves, making delightful company, and intensifying the
+feeling of grateful sequestration without ruffling the deep, hushed calm
+and peace.
+
+This autumnal mellowness usually lasts until the end of November. Then
+come days of quite another kind. The winter clouds grow, and bloom, and
+shed their starry crystals on every leaf and rock, and all the colors
+vanish like a sunset. The deer gather and hasten down their well-known
+trails, fearful of being snow-bound. Storm succeeds storm, heaping snow
+on the cliffs and meadows, and bending the slender pines to the ground
+in wide arches, one over the other, clustering and interlacing like
+lodged wheat. Avalanches rush and boom from the shelving heights, piling
+immense heaps upon the frozen lake, and all the summer glory is buried
+and lost. Yet in the midst of this hearty winter the sun shines warm at
+times, calling the Douglas squirrel to frisk in the snowy pines and seek
+out his hidden stores; and the weather is never so severe as to drive
+away the grouse and little nut-hatches and chickadees.
+
+Toward May, the lake begins to open. The hot sun sends down innumerable
+streams over the cliffs, streaking them round and round with foam. The
+snow slowly vanishes, and the meadows show tintings of green. Then
+spring comes on apace; flowers and flies enrich the air and the sod, and
+the deer come back to the upper groves like birds to an old nest.
+
+I first discovered this charming lake in the autumn of 1872, while on my
+way to the glaciers at the head of the river. It was rejoicing then in
+its gayest colors, untrodden, hidden in the glorious wildness like
+unmined gold. Year after year I walked its shores without discovering
+any other trace of humanity than the remains of an Indian camp-fire, and
+the thigh-bones of a deer that had been broken to get at the marrow. It
+lies out of the regular ways of Indians, who love to hunt in more
+accessible fields adjacent to trails. Their knowledge of deer-haunts had
+probably enticed them here some hunger-time when they wished to make
+sure of a feast; for hunting in this lake-hollow is like hunting in a
+fenced park. I had told the beauty of Shadow Lake only to a few friends,
+fearing it might come to be trampled and "improved" like Yosemite. On my
+last visit, as I was sauntering along the shore on the strip of sand
+between the water and sod, reading the tracks of the wild animals that
+live here, I was startled by a human track, which I at once saw belonged
+to some shepherd; for each step was turned out 35 deg. or 40 deg. from the
+general course pursued, and was also run over in an uncertain sprawling
+fashion at the heel, while a row of round dots on the right indicated
+the staff that shepherds carry. None but a shepherd could make such a
+track, and after tracing it a few minutes I began to fear that he might
+be seeking pasturage; for what else could he be seeking? Returning from
+the glaciers shortly afterward, nay worst fears were realized. A trail
+had been made down the mountain-side from the north, and all the gardens
+and meadows were destroyed by a horde of hoofed locusts, as if swept by
+a fire. The money-changers were in the temple.
+
+
+ORANGE LAKE
+
+Besides these larger canon lakes, fed by the main canon streams, there
+are many smaller ones lying aloft on the top of rock benches, entirely
+independent of the general drainage channels, and of course drawing
+their supplies from a very limited area. Notwithstanding they are mostly
+small and shallow, owing to their immunity from avalanche detritus and
+the inwashings of powerful streams, they often endure longer than others
+many times larger but less favorably situated. When very shallow they
+become dry toward the end of summer; but because their basins are ground
+out of seamless stone they suffer no loss save from evaporation alone;
+and the great depth of snow that falls, lasting into June, makes their
+dry season short in any case.
+
+Orange Lake is a fair illustration of this bench form. It lies in the
+middle of a beautiful glacial pavement near the lower margin of the
+lake-line, about a mile and a half to the northwest of Shadow Lake. It
+is only about 100 yards in circumference. Next the water there is a
+girdle of carices with wide overarching leaves, then in regular order a
+shaggy ruff of huckleberry bushes, a zone of willows with here and there
+a bush of the Mountain Ash, then a zone of aspens with a few pines
+around the outside. These zones are of course concentric, and together
+form a wall beyond which the naked ice-burnished granite stretches away
+in every direction, leaving it conspicuously relieved, like a bunch of
+palms in a desert.
+
+In autumn, when the colors are ripe, the whole circular grove, at a
+little distance, looks like a big handful of flowers set in a cup to be
+kept fresh--a tuft of goldenrods. Its feeding-streams are exceedingly
+beautiful, notwithstanding their inconstancy and extreme shallowness.
+They have no channel whatever, and consequently are left free to spread
+in thin sheets upon the shining granite and wander at will. In many
+places the current is less than a fourth of an inch deep, and flows with
+so little friction it is scarcely visible. Sometimes there is not a
+single foam-bell, or drifting pine-needle, or irregularity of any sort
+to manifest its motion. Yet when observed narrowly it is seen to form a
+web of gliding lacework exquisitely woven, giving beautiful reflections
+from its minute curving ripples and eddies, and differing from the
+water-laces of large cascades in being everywhere transparent. In
+spring, when the snow is melting, the lake-bowl is brimming full, and
+sends forth quite a large stream that slips glassily for 200 yards or
+so, until it comes to an almost vertical precipice 800 feet high, down
+which it plunges in a fine cataract; then it gathers its scattered
+waters and goes smoothly over folds of gently dipping granite to its
+confluence with the main canon stream. During the greater portion of the
+year, however, not a single water sound will you hear either at head or
+foot of the lake, not oven the whispered lappings of ripple-waves along
+the shore; for the winds are fenced out. But the deep mountain silence
+is sweetened now and then by birds that stop here to rest and drink on
+their way across the canon.
+
+
+LAKE STAKE KING
+
+A beautiful variety of the bench-top lakes occurs just where the great
+lateral moraines of the main glaciers have been shoved forward in
+outswelling concentric rings by small residual tributary glaciers.
+Instead of being encompassed by a narrow ring of trees like Orange Lake,
+these lie embosomed in dense moraine woods, so dense that in seeking
+them you may pass them by again and again, although you may know nearly
+where they lie concealed.
+
+[Illustration: LAKE STARR KING.]
+
+Lake Starr King, lying to the north of the cone of that name, above the
+Little Yosemite Valley, is a fine specimen of this variety. The ouzels
+pass it by, and so do the ducks; they could hardly get into it if they
+would, without plumping straight down inside the circling trees.
+
+Yet these isolated gems, lying like fallen fruit detached from the
+branches, are not altogether without inhabitants and joyous, animating
+visitors. Of course fishes cannot get into them, and this is generally
+true of nearly every glacier lake in the range, but they are all well
+stocked with happy frogs. How did the frogs get into them in the first
+place? Perhaps their sticky spawn was carried in on the feet of ducks or
+other birds, else their progenitors must have made some exciting
+excursions through the woods and up the sides of the canons. Down in the
+still, pure depths of these hidden lakelets you may also find the larvae
+of innumerable insects and a great variety of beetles, while the air
+above them is thick with humming wings, through the midst of which
+fly-catchers are constantly darting. And in autumn, when the
+huckleberries are ripe, bands of robins and grosbeaks come to feast,
+forming altogether delightful little byworlds for the naturalist.
+
+Pushing our way upward toward the axis of the range, we find lakes in
+greater and greater abundance, and more youthful in aspect. At an
+elevation of about 9000 feet above sea-level they seem to have arrived
+at middle age,--that is, their basins seem to be about half filled with
+alluvium. Broad sheets of meadow-land are seen extending into them,
+imperfect and boggy in many places and more nearly level than those of
+the older lakes below them, and the vegetation of their shores is of
+course more alpine. Kalmia, lodum, and cassiope fringe the meadow rocks,
+while the luxuriant, waving groves, so characteristic of the lower
+lakes, are represented only by clumps of the Dwarf Pine and Hemlock
+Spruce. These, however, are oftentimes very picturesquely grouped on
+rocky headlands around the outer rim of the meadows, or with still more
+striking effect crown some rocky islet.
+
+Moreover, from causes that we cannot stop here to explain, the cliffs
+about these middle-aged lakes are seldom of the massive Yosemite type,
+but are more broken, and less sheer, and they usually stand back,
+leaving the shores comparatively free; while the few precipitous rocks
+that do come forward and plunge directly into deep water are seldom more
+than three or four hundred feet high.
+
+I have never yet met ducks in any of the lakes of this kind, but the
+ouzel is never wanting where the feeding-streams are perennial. Wild
+sheep and deer may occasionally be seen on the meadows, and very rarely
+a bear. One might camp on the rugged shores of these bright fountains
+for weeks, without meeting any animal larger than the marmots that
+burrow beneath glacier boulders along the edges of the meadows.
+
+The highest and youngest of all the lakes lie nestled in glacier wombs.
+At first sight, they seem pictures of pure bloodless desolation,
+miniature arctic seas, bound in perpetual ice and snow, and overshadowed
+by harsh, gloomy, crumbling precipices. Their waters are keen
+ultramarine blue in the deepest parts, lively grass-green toward the
+shore shallows and around the edges of the small bergs usually floating
+about in them. A few hardy sedges, frost-pinched every night, are
+occasionally found making soft sods along the sun-touched portions of
+their shores, and when their northern banks slope openly to the south,
+and are soil-covered, no matter how coarsely, they are sure to be
+brightened with flowers. One lake in particular now comes to mind which
+illustrates the floweriness of the sun-touched banks of these icy gems.
+Close up under the shadow of the Sierra Matterhorn, on the eastern slope
+of the range, lies one of the iciest of these glacier lakes at an
+elevation of about 12,000 feet. A short, ragged-edged glacier crawls
+into it from the south, and on the opposite side it is embanked and
+dammed by a series of concentric terminal moraines, made by the glacier
+when it entirely filled the basin. Half a mile below lies a second lake,
+at a height of 11,500 feet, about as cold and as pure as a snow-crystal.
+The waters of the first come gurgling down into it over and through the
+moraine dam, while a second stream pours into it direct from a glacier
+that lies to the southeast. Sheer precipices of crystalline snow rise
+out of deep water on the south, keeping perpetual winter on that side,
+but there is a fine summery spot on the other, notwithstanding the lake
+is only about 300 yards wide. Here, on August 25, 1873, I found a
+charming company of flowers, not pinched, crouching dwarfs, scarce able
+to look up, but warm and juicy, standing erect in rich cheery color and
+bloom. On a narrow strip of shingle, close to the water's edge, there
+were a few tufts of carex gone to seed; and a little way back up the
+rocky bank at the foot of a crumbling wall so inclined as to absorb and
+radiate as well as reflect a considerable quantity of sun-heat, was the
+garden, containing a thrifty thicket of Cowania covered with large
+yellow flowers; several bushes of the alpine ribes with berries nearly
+ripe and wildly acid; a few handsome grasses belonging to two distinct
+species, and one goldenrod; a few hairy lupines and radiant spragueas,
+whose blue and rose-colored flowers were set off to fine advantage amid
+green carices; and along a narrow seam in the very warmest angle of the
+wall a perfectly gorgeous fringe of _Epilobium obcordatum_ with
+flowers an inch wide, crowded together in lavish profusion, and colored
+as royal a purple as ever was worn by any high-bred plant of the
+tropics; and best of all, and greatest of all, a noble thistle in full
+bloom, standing erect, head and shoulders above his companions, and
+thrusting out his lances in sturdy vigor as if growing on a Scottish
+brae. All this brave warm bloom among the raw stones, right in the face
+of the onlooking glaciers.
+
+As far as I have been able to find out, these upper lakes are
+snow-buried in winter to a depth of about thirty-five or forty feet, and
+those most exposed to avalanches, to a depth of even a hundred feet or
+more. These last are, of course, nearly lost to the landscape. Some
+remain buried for years, when the snowfall is exceptionally great, and
+many open only on one side late in the season. The snow of the closed
+side is composed of coarse granules compacted and frozen into a firm,
+faintly stratified mass, like the _neve_ of a glacier. The lapping
+waves of the open portion gradually undermine and cause it to break off
+in large masses like icebergs, which gives rise to a precipitous front
+like the discharging wall of a glacier entering the sea. The play of the
+lights among the crystal angles of these snow-cliffs, the pearly white
+of the outswelling bosses, the bergs drifting in front, aglow in the sun
+and edged with green water, and the deep blue disk of the lake itself
+extending to your feet,--this forms a picture that enriches all your
+afterlife, and is never forgotten. But however perfect the season and
+the day, the cold incompleteness of these young lakes is always keenly
+felt. We approach them with a kind of mean caution, and steal
+unconfidingly around their crystal shores, dashed and ill at ease, as if
+expecting to hear some forbidding voice. But the love-songs of the
+ouzels and the love-looks of the daisies gradually reassure us, and
+manifest the warm fountain humanity that pervades the coldest and most
+solitary of them all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+THE GLACIER MEADOWS
+
+After the lakes on the High Sierra come the glacier meadows. They are
+smooth, level, silky lawns, lying embedded in the upper forests, on the
+floors of the valleys, and along the broad backs of the main dividing
+ridges, at a height of about 8000 to 9500 feet above the sea.
+
+They are nearly as level as the lakes whose places they have taken, and
+present a dry, even surface free from rock-heaps, mossy bogginess, and
+the frowsy roughness of rank, coarse-leaved, weedy, and shrubby
+vegetation. The sod is close and fine, and so complete that you cannot
+see the ground; and at the same time so brightly enameled with flowers
+and butterflies that it may well be called a garden-meadow, or
+meadow-garden; for the plushy sod is in many places so crowded with
+gentians, daisies, ivesias, and various species of orthocarpus that the
+grass is scarcely noticeable, while in others the flowers are only
+pricked in here and there singly, or in small ornamental rosettes.
+
+The most influential of the grasses composing the sod is a delicate
+calamagrostis with fine filiform leaves, and loose, airy panicles that
+seem to float above the flowery lawn like a purple mist. But, write as I
+may, I cannot give anything like an adequate idea of the exquisite
+beauty of these mountain carpets as they lie smoothly outspread in the
+savage wilderness. What words are fine enough to picture them I to what
+shall we liken them? The flowery levels of the prairies of the old West,
+the luxuriant savannahs of the South, and the finest of cultivated
+meadows are coarse in comparison. One may at first sight compare them
+with the carefully tended lawns of pleasure-grounds; for they are as
+free from weeds as they, and as smooth, but here the likeness ends; for
+these wild lawns, with all their exquisite fineness, have no trace of
+that painful, licked, snipped, repressed appearance that pleasure-ground
+lawns are apt to have even when viewed at a distance. And, not to
+mention the flowers with which they are brightened, their grasses are
+very much finer both in color and texture, and instead of lying flat and
+motionless, matted together like a dead green cloth, they respond to the
+touches of every breeze, rejoicing in pure wildness, blooming and
+fruiting in the vital light.
+
+Glacier meadows abound throughout all the alpine and subalpine regions
+of the Sierra in still greater numbers than the lakes. Probably from
+2500 to 3000 exist between latitude 36 deg. 30' and 39 deg., distributed, of
+course, like the lakes, in concordance with all the other glacial
+features of the landscape.
+
+On the head waters of the rivers there are what are called "Big
+Meadows," usually about from five to ten miles long. These occupy the
+basins of the ancient ice-seas, where many tributary glaciers came
+together to form the grand trunks. Most, however, are quite small,
+averaging perhaps but little more than three fourths of a mile in
+length.
+
+One of the very finest of the thousands I have enjoyed lies hidden in an
+extensive forest of the Two-leaved Pine, on the edge of the basin of the
+ancient Tuolumne Mer de Glace, about eight miles to the west of Mount
+Dana.
+
+Imagine yourself at the Tuolumne Soda Springs on the bank of the river,
+a day's journey above Yosemite Valley. You set off northward through a
+forest that stretches away indefinitely before you, seemingly unbroken
+by openings of any kind. As soon as you are fairly into the woods, the
+gray mountain-peaks, with their snowy gorges and hollows, are lost to
+view. The ground is littered with fallen trunks that lie crossed and
+recrossed like storm-lodged wheat; and besides this close forest of
+pines, the rich moraine soil supports a luxuriant growth of
+ribbon-leaved grasses--bromus, triticum, calamagrostis, agrostis, etc.,
+which rear their handsome spikes and panicles above your waist. Making
+your way through the fertile wilderness,--finding lively bits of
+interest now and then in the squirrels and Clark crows, and perchance in
+a deer or bear,--after the lapse of an hour or two vertical bars of
+sunshine are seen ahead between the brown shafts of the pines, showing
+that you are approaching an open space, and then you suddenly emerge
+from the forest shadows upon a delightful purple lawn lying smooth and
+free in the light like a lake. This is a glacier meadow. It is about a
+mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile wide. The trees come
+pressing forward all around in close serried ranks, planting their feet
+exactly on its margin, and holding themselves erect, strict and orderly
+like soldiers on parade; thus bounding the meadow with exquisite
+precision, yet with free curving lines such as Nature alone can draw.
+With inexpressible delight you wade out into the grassy sun-lake,
+feeling yourself contained in one of Nature's most sacred chambers,
+withdrawn from the sterner influences of the mountains, secure from all
+intrusion, secure from yourself, free in the universal beauty. And
+notwithstanding the scene is so impressively spiritual, and you seem
+dissolved in it, yet everything about you is beating with warm,
+terrestrial, human love and life delightfully substantial and familiar.
+The resiny pines are types of health and steadfastness; the robins
+feeding on the sod belong to the same species you have known since
+childhood; and surely these daisies, larkspurs, and goldenrods are the
+very friend-flowers of the old home garden. Bees hum as in a harvest
+noon, butterflies waver above the flowers, and like them you lave in the
+vital sunshine, too richly and homogeneously joy-filled to be capable of
+partial thought. You are all eye, sifted through and through with light
+and beauty. Sauntering along the brook that meanders silently through
+the meadow from the east, special flowers call you back to
+discriminating consciousness. The sod comes curving down to the water's
+edge, forming bossy outswelling banks, and in some places overlapping
+countersunk boulders and forming bridges. Here you find mats of the
+curious dwarf willow scarce an inch high, yet sending up a multitude of
+gray silky catkins, illumined here and there with, the purple cups and
+bells of bryanthus and vaccinium.
+
+Go where you may, you everywhere find the lawn divinely beautiful, as if
+Nature had fingered and adjusted every plant this very day. The floating
+grass panicles are scarcely felt in brushing through their midst, so
+flue are they, and none of the flowers have tall or rigid stalks. In the
+brightest places you find three species of gentians with different
+shades of blue, daisies pure as the sky, silky leaved ivesias with warm
+yellow flowers, several species of orthocarpus with blunt, bossy spikes,
+red and purple and yellow; the alpine goldenrod, pentstemon, and clover,
+fragrant and honeyful, with their colors massed and blended. Parting the
+grasses and looking more closely you may trace the branching of their
+shining stems, and note the marvelous beauty of their mist of flowers,
+the glumes and pales exquisitely penciled, the yellow dangling stamens,
+and feathery pistils. Beneath the lowest leaves you discover a fairy
+realm of mosses,--hypnum, dicranum, polytriclium, and many
+others,--their precious spore-cups poised daintily on polished shafts,
+curiously hooded, or open, showing the richly ornate peristomas worn
+like royal crowns. Creeping liverworts are here also in abundance, and
+several rare species of fungi, exceedingly small, and frail, and
+delicate, as if made only for beauty. Caterpillars, black beetles, and
+ants roam the wilds of this lower world, making their way through
+miniature groves and thickets like bears in a thick wood.
+
+And how rich, too, is the life of the sunny air! Every leaf and flower
+seems to have its winged representative overhead. Dragon-flies shoot in
+vigorous zigzags through the dancing swarms, and a rich profusion of
+butterflies--the leguminosae of insects--make a fine addition to the
+general show. Many of these last are comparatively small at this
+elevation, and as yet almost unknown to science; but every now and then
+a familiar vanessa or papilio comes sailing past. Humming-birds, too,
+are quite common here, and the robin is always found along the margin of
+the stream, or out in the shallowest portions of the sod, and sometimes
+the grouse and mountain quail, with their broods of precious fluffy
+chickens. Swallows skim the grassy lake from end to end, fly-catchers
+come and go in fitful flights from the tops of dead spars, while
+woodpeckers swing across from side to side in graceful festoon
+curves,--birds, insects, and flowers all in their own way telling a deep
+summer joy.
+
+The influences of pure nature seem to be so little known as yet, that it
+is generally supposed that complete pleasure of this kind, permeating
+one's very flesh and bones, unfits the student for scientific pursuits
+in which cool judgment and observation are required. But the effect is
+just the opposite. Instead of producing a dissipated condition, the mind
+is fertilized and stimulated and developed like sun-fed plants. All that
+we have seen here enables us to see with surer vision the fountains
+among the summit-peaks to the east whence flowed the glaciers that
+ground soil for the surrounding forest; and down at the foot of the
+meadow the moraine which formed the dam which gave rise to the lake that
+occupied this basin before the meadow was made; and around the margin
+the stones that were shoved back and piled up into a rude wall by the
+expansion of the lake ice during long bygone winters; and along the
+sides of the streams the slight hollows of the meadow which mark those
+portions of the old lake that were the last to vanish.
+
+I would fain ask my readers to linger awhile in this fertile wilderness,
+to trace its history from its earliest glacial beginnings, and learn
+what we may of its wild inhabitants and visitors. How happy the birds
+are all summer and some of them all winter; how the pouched marmots
+drive tunnels under the snow, and how fine and brave a life the
+slandered coyote lives here, and the deer and bears! But, knowing well
+the difference between reading and seeing, I will only ask attention to
+some brief sketches of its varying aspects as they are presented
+throughout the more marked seasons of the year.
+
+The summer life we have been depicting lasts with but little abatement
+until October, when the night frosts begin to sting, bronzing the
+grasses, and ripening the leaves of the creeping heathworts along the
+banks of the stream to reddish purple and crimson; while the flowers
+disappear, all save the goldenrods and a few daisies, that continue to
+bloom on unscathed until the beginning of snowy winter. In still nights
+the grass panicles and every leaf and stalk are laden with frost
+crystals, through which the morning sunbeams sift in ravishing splendor,
+transforming each to a precious diamond radiating the colors of the
+rainbow. The brook shallows are plaited across and across with slender
+lances of ice, but both these and the grass crystals are melted before
+midday, and, notwithstanding the great elevation of the meadow, the
+afternoons are still warm enough to revive the chilled butterflies and
+call them out to enjoy the late-flowering goldenrods. The divine
+alpenglow flushes the surrounding forest every evening, followed by a
+crystal night with hosts of lily stars, whose size and brilliancy cannot
+be conceived by those who have never risen above the lowlands.
+
+Thus come and go the bright sun-days of autumn, not a cloud in the sky,
+week after week until near December. Then comes a sudden change. Clouds
+of a peculiar aspect with a slow, crawling gait gather and grow in the
+azure, throwing out satiny fringes, and becoming gradually darker until
+every lake-like rift and opening is closed and the whole bent firmament
+is obscured in equal structureless gloom. Then comes the snow, for the
+clouds are ripe, the meadows of the sky are in bloom, and shed their
+radiant blossoms like an orchard in the spring. Lightly, lightly they
+lodge in the brown grasses and in the tasseled needles of the pines,
+falling hour after hour, day after day, silently, lovingly,--all the
+winds hushed,--glancing and circling hither, thither, glinting against
+one another, rays interlocking in flakes as large as daisies; and then
+the dry grasses, and the trees, and the stones are all equally abloom
+again. Thunder-showers occur here during the summer months, and
+impressive it is to watch the coming of the big transparent drops, each
+a small world in itself,--one unbroken ocean without islands hurling
+free through the air like planets through space. But still more
+impressive to me is the coming of the snow-flowers,--falling stars,
+winter daisies,--giving bloom to all the ground alike. Raindrops blossom
+brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow
+comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.
+
+The later snow-storms are oftentimes accompanied by winds that break up
+the crystals, when the temperature is low, into single petals and
+irregular dusty fragments; but there is comparatively little drifting on
+the meadow, so securely is it embosomed in the woods. From December to
+May, storm succeeds storm, until the snow is about fifteen or twenty
+feet deep, but the surface is always as smooth as the breast of a bird.
+
+Hushed now is the life that so late was beating warmly. Most of the
+birds have gone down below the snow-line, the plants sleep, and all the
+fly-wings are folded. Yet the sun beams gloriously many a cloudless day
+in midwinter, casting long lance shadows athwart the dazzling expanse.
+In June small flecks of the dead, decaying sod begin to appear,
+gradually widening and uniting with one another, covered with creeping
+rags of water during the day, and ice by night, looking as hopeless and
+unvital as crushed rocks just emerging from the darkness of the glacial
+period. Walk the meadow now! Scarce the memory of a flower will you
+find. The ground seems twice dead. Nevertheless, the annual resurrection
+is drawing near. The life-giving sun pours his floods, the last
+snow-wreath melts, myriads of growing points push eagerly through the
+steaming mold, the birds come back, new wings fill the air, and fervid
+summer life comes surging on, seemingly yet more glorious than before.
+
+This is a perfect meadow, and under favorable circumstances exists
+without manifesting any marked changes for centuries. Nevertheless, soon
+or late it must inevitably grow old and vanish. During the calm Indian
+summer, scarce a sand-grain moves around its banks, but in flood-times
+and storm-times, soil is washed forward upon it and laid in successive
+sheets around its gently sloping rim, and is gradually extended to the
+center, making it dryer. Through a considerable period the meadow
+vegetation is not greatly affected thereby, for it gradually rises with
+the rising ground, keeping on the surface like water-plants rising on
+the swell of waves. But at length the elevation of the meadow-land goes
+on so far as to produce too dry a soil for the specific meadow-plants,
+when, of course, they have to give up their places to others fitted for
+the new conditions. The most characteristic of the newcomers at this
+elevation above the sea are principally sun-loving gilias, eriogonae,
+and compositae, and finally forest-trees. Henceforward the obscuring
+changes are so manifold that the original lake-meadow can be unveiled
+and seen only by the geologist.
+
+Generally speaking, glacier lakes vanish more slowly than the meadows
+that succeed them, because, unless very shallow, a greater quantity of
+material is required to fill up their basins and obliterate them than is
+required to render the surface of the meadow too high and dry for meadow
+vegetation. Furthermore, owing to the weathering to which the adjacent
+rocks are subjected, material of the finer sort, susceptible of
+transportation by rains and ordinary floods, is more abundant during the
+meadow period than during the lake period. Yet doubtless many a fine
+meadow favorably situated exists in almost prime beauty for thousands of
+years, the process of extinction being exceedingly slow, as we reckon
+time. This is especially the case with meadows circumstanced like the
+one we have described--embosomed in deep woods, with the ground rising
+gently away from it all around, the network of tree-roots in which all
+the ground is clasped preventing any rapid torrential washing. But, in
+exceptional cases, beautiful lawns formed with great deliberation are
+overwhelmed and obliterated at once by the action of land-slips,
+earthquake avalanches, or extraordinary floods, just as lakes are.
+
+In those glacier meadows that take the places of shallow lakes which
+have been fed by feeble streams, glacier mud and fine vegetable humus
+enter largely into the composition of the soil; and on account of the
+shallowness of this soil, and the seamless, water-tight, undrained
+condition of the rock-basins, they are usually wet, and therefore
+occupied by tall grasses and sedges, whose coarse appearance offers a
+striking contrast to that of the delicate lawn-making kind described
+above. These shallow-soiled meadows are oftentimes still further
+roughened and diversified by partially buried moraines and swelling
+bosses of the bed-rock, which, with the trees and shrubs growing upon
+them, produce a striking effect as they stand in relief like islands in
+the grassy level, or sweep across in rugged curves from one forest wall
+to the other.
+
+Throughout the upper meadow region, wherever water is sufficiently
+abundant and low in temperature, in basins secure from flood-washing,
+handsome bogs are formed with a deep growth of brown and yellow sphagnum
+picturesquely ruined with patches of kalmia and ledum which ripen masses
+of beautiful color in the autumn. Between these cool, spongy bogs and
+the dry, flowery meadows there are many interesting varieties which are
+graduated into one another by the varied conditions already alluded to,
+forming a series of delightful studies.
+
+
+HANGING MEADOWS
+
+Another, very well-marked and interesting kind of meadow, differing
+greatly both in origin and appearance from the lake-meadows, is found
+lying aslant upon moraine-covered hillsides trending in the direction of
+greatest declivity, waving up and down over rock heaps and ledges, like
+rich green ribbons brilliantly illumined with tall flowers. They occur
+both in the alpine and subalpine regions in considerable numbers, and
+never fail to make telling features in the landscape. They are often a
+mile or more in length, but never very wide--usually from thirty to
+fifty yards. When the mountain or canon side on which, they lie dips at
+the required angle, and other conditions are at the same time favorable,
+they extend from above the timber line to the bottom of a canon or lake
+basin, descending in fine, fluent lines like cascades, breaking here and
+there into a kind of spray on large boulders, or dividing and flowing
+around on either side of some projecting islet. Sometimes a noisy stream
+goes brawling down through them, and again, scarcely a drop of water is
+in sight. They owe their existence, however, to streams, whether visible
+or invisible, the wildest specimens being found where some perennial
+fountain, as a glacier or snowbank or moraine spring sends down its
+waters across a rough sheet of soil in a dissipated web of feeble,
+oozing rivulets. These conditions give rise to a meadowy vegetation,
+whose extending roots still more obstruct the free flow of the waters,
+and tend to dissipate them out over a yet wider area. Thus the moraine
+soil and the necessary moisture requisite for the better class of meadow
+plants are at times combined about as perfectly as if smoothly outspread
+on a level surface. Where the soil happens to be composed of the finer
+qualities of glacial detritus and the water is not in excess, the
+nearest approach is made by the vegetation to that of the lake-meadow.
+But where, as is more commonly the case, the soil is coarse and
+bouldery, the vegetation is correspondingly rank. Tall, wide-leaved
+grasses take their places along the sides, and rushes and nodding
+carices in the wetter portions, mingled with the most beautiful and
+imposing flowers,--orange lilies and larkspurs seven or eight feet high,
+lupines, senecios, aliums, painted-cups, many species of mimulus and
+pentstemon, the ample boat-leaved _veratrum alba_, and the
+magnificent alpine columbine, with spurs an inch and a half long. At an
+elevation of from seven to nine thousand feet showy flowers frequently
+form the bulk of the vegetation; then the hanging meadows become hanging
+gardens.
+
+In rare instances we find an alpine basin the bottom of which is a
+perfect meadow, and the sides nearly all the way round, rising in gentle
+curves, are covered with moraine soil, which, being saturated with
+melting snow from encircling fountains, gives rise to an almost
+continuous girdle of down-curving meadow vegetation that blends
+gracefully into the level meadow at the bottom, thus forming a grand,
+smooth, soft, meadow-lined mountain nest. It is in meadows of this sort
+that the mountain beaver (_Haplodon_) loves to make his home,
+excavating snug chambers beneath the sod, digging canals, turning the
+underground waters from channel to channel to suit his convenience, and
+feeding the vegetation.
+
+Another kind of meadow or bog occurs on densely timbered hillsides where
+small perennial streams have been dammed at short intervals by fallen
+trees. Still another kind is found hanging down smooth, flat precipices,
+while corresponding leaning meadows rise to meet them.
+
+There are also three kinds of small pot-hole meadows one of which is
+found along the banks of the main streams, another on the summits of
+rocky ridges, and the third on glacier pavements, all of them
+interesting in origin and brimful of plant beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+THE FORESTS
+
+The coniferous forests of the Sierra are the grandest and most beautiful
+in the world, and grow in a delightful climate on the most interesting
+and accessible of mountain-ranges, yet strange to say they are not well
+known. More than sixty years ago David Douglas, an enthusiastic botanist
+and tree lover, wandered alone through fine sections of the Sugar Pine
+and Silver Fir woods wild with delight. A few years later, other
+botanists made short journeys from the coast into the lower woods. Then
+came the wonderful multitude of miners into the foot-hill zone, mostly
+blind with gold-dust, soon followed by "sheepmen," who, with wool over
+their eyes, chased their flocks through all the forest belts from one
+end of the range to the other. Then the Yosemite Valley was discovered,
+and thousands of admiring tourists passed through sections of the lower
+and middle zones on their way to that wonderful park, and gained fine
+glimpses of the Sugar Pines and Silver Firs along the edges of dusty
+trails and roads. But few indeed, strong and free with eyes undimmed
+with care, have gone far enough and lived long enough with the trees to
+gain anything like a loving conception of their grandeur and
+significance as manifested in the harmonies of their distribution and
+varying aspects throughout the seasons, as they stand arrayed in their
+winter garb rejoicing in storms, putting forth their fresh leaves in the
+spring while steaming with resiny fragrance, receiving the
+thunder-showers of summer, or reposing heavy-laden with ripe cones in
+the rich sungold of autumn. For knowledge of this kind one must dwell
+with the trees and grow with them, without any reference to time in the
+almanac sense.
+
+The distribution of the general forest in belts is readily perceived.
+These, as we have seen, extend in regular order from one extremity of
+the range to the other; and however dense and somber they may appear in
+general views, neither on the rocky heights nor down in the leafiest
+hollows will you find anything to remind you of the dank, malarial
+selvas of the Amazon and Orinoco, with, their "boundless contiguity of
+shade," the monotonous uniformity of the Deodar forests of the Himalaya,
+the Black Forest of Europe, or the dense dark woods of Douglas Spruce
+where rolls the Oregon. The giant pines, and firs, and Sequoias hold
+their arms open to the sunlight, rising above one another on the
+mountain benches, marshaled in glorious array, giving forth the utmost
+expression of grandeur and beauty with inexhaustible variety and
+harmony.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST.]
+
+The inviting openness of the Sierra woods is one of their most
+distinguishing characteristics. The trees of all the species stand more
+or less apart in groves, or in small, irregular groups, enabling one to
+find a way nearly everywhere, along sunny colonnades and through
+openings that have a smooth, park-like surface, strewn with brown
+needles and burs. Now you cross a wild garden, now a meadow, now a
+ferny, willowy stream; and ever and anon you emerge from all the groves
+and flowers upon some granite pavement or high, bare ridge commanding
+superb views above the waving sea of evergreens far and near.
+
+One would experience but little difficulty in riding on horseback
+through the successive belts all the way up to the storm-beaten fringes
+of the icy peaks. The deep canons, however, that extend from the axis of
+the range, cut the belts more or less completely into sections, and
+prevent the mounted traveler from tracing them lengthwise.
+
+This simple arrangement in zones and sections brings the forest, as a
+whole, within the comprehension of every observer. The different species
+are ever found occupying the same relative positions to one another, as
+controlled by soil, climate, and the comparative vigor of each species
+in taking and holding the ground; and so appreciable are these
+relations, one need never be at a loss in determining, within a few
+hundred feet, the elevation above sea-level by the trees alone; for,
+notwithstanding some of the species range upward for several thousand
+feet, and all pass one another more or less, yet even those possessing
+the greatest vertical range are available in this connection, in as much
+as they take on new forms corresponding with the variations in altitude.
+
+Crossing the treeless plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin from the
+west and reaching the Sierra foot-hills, you enter the lower fringe of
+the forest, composed of small oaks and pines, growing so far apart that
+not one twentieth of the surface of the ground is in shade at clear
+noonday. After advancing fifteen or twenty miles, and making an ascent
+of from two to three thousand feet, you reach the lower margin of the
+main pine belt, composed of the gigantic Sugar Pine, Yellow Pine,
+Incense Cedar, and Sequoia. Next you come to the magnificent Silver Fir
+belt, and lastly to the upper pine belt, which sweeps up the rocky
+acclivities of the summit peaks in a dwarfed, wavering fringe to a
+height of from ten to twelve thousand feet.
+
+[Illustration: EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA.]
+
+This general order of distribution, with reference to climate dependent
+on elevation, is perceived at once, but there are other harmonies, as
+far-reaching in this connection, that become manifest only after patient
+observation and study. Perhaps the most interesting of these is the
+arrangement of the forests in long, curving bands, braided together into
+lace-like patterns, and outspread in charming variety. The key to this
+beautiful harmony is the ancient glaciers; where they flowed the trees
+followed, tracing their wavering courses along canons, over ridges, and
+over high, rolling plateaus. The Cedars of Lebanon, says Hooker, are
+growing upon one of the moraines of an ancient glacier. All the forests
+of the Sierra are growing upon moraines. But moraines vanish like the
+glaciers that make them. Every storm that falls upon them wastes them,
+cutting gaps, disintegrating boulders, and carrying away their decaying
+material into new formations, until at length they are no longer
+recognizable by any save students, who trace their transitional forms
+down from the fresh moraines still in process of formation, through
+those that are more and more ancient, and more and more obscured by
+vegetation and all kinds of post-glacial weathering.
+
+Had the ice-sheet that once covered all the range been melted
+simultaneously from the foot-hills to the summits, the flanks would, of
+course, have been left almost bare of soil, and these noble forests
+would be wanting. Many groves and thickets would undoubtedly have grown
+up on lake and avalanche beds, and many a fair flower and shrub would
+have found food and a dwelling-place in weathered nooks and crevices,
+but the Sierra as a whole would have been a bare, rocky desert.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST.]
+
+It appears, therefore, that the Sierra forests in general indicate the
+extent and positions of the ancient moraines as well as they do lines of
+climate. For forests, properly speaking, cannot exist without soil; and,
+since the moraines have been deposited upon the solid rock, and only
+upon elected places, leaving a considerable portion of the old glacial
+surface bare, we find luxuriant forests of pine and fir abruptly
+terminated by scored and polished pavements on which not even a moss is
+growing, though soil alone is required to fit them for the growth of
+trees 200 feet in height.
+
+
+THE NUT PINE
+(_Pinus Sabiniana_)
+
+The Nut Pine, the first conifer met in ascending the range from the
+west, grows only on the torrid foothills, seeming to delight in the most
+ardent sun-heat, like a palm; springing up here and there singly, or in
+scattered groups of five or six, among scrubby White Oaks and thickets
+of ceanothus and manzanita; its extreme upper limit being about 4000
+feet above the sea, its lower about from 500 to 800 feet.
+
+This tree is remarkable for its airy, widespread, tropical appearance,
+which suggests a region of palms, rather than cool, resiny pine woods.
+No one would take it at first sight to be a conifer of any kind, it is
+so loose in habit and so widely branched, and its foliage is so thin and
+gray. Full-grown specimens are from forty to fifty feet in height, and
+from two to three feet in diameter. The trunk usually divides into three
+or four main branches, about fifteen and twenty feet from the ground,
+which, after bearing away from one another, shoot straight up and form
+separate summits; while the crooked subordinate branches aspire, and
+radiate, and droop in ornamental sprays. The slender, grayish-green
+needles are from eight to twelve inches long, loosely tasseled, and
+inclined to droop in handsome curves, contrasting with the stiff,
+dark-colored trunk and branches in a very striking manner. No other tree
+of my acquaintance, so substantial in body, is in its foliage so thin
+and so pervious to the light. The sunbeams sift through even the
+leafiest trees with scarcely any interruption, and the weary, heated
+traveler finds but little protection in their shade.
+
+[Illustration: NUT PINE (PINUS SABINIANA).]
+
+The generous crop of nutritious nuts which the Nut Pine yields makes it
+a favorite with Indians, bears, and squirrels. The cones are most
+beautiful, measuring from five to eight inches in length, and not much
+less in thickness, rich chocolate-brown in color, and protected by
+strong, down-curving hooks Which terminate the scales. Nevertheless, the
+little Douglas squirrel can open them. Indians gathering the ripe nuts
+make a striking picture. The men climb the trees like bears and beat off
+the cones with sticks, or recklessly cut off the more fruitful branches
+with hatchets, while the squaws gather the big, generous cones, and
+roast them until the scales open sufficiently to allow the hard-shelled
+seeds to be beaten out. Then, in the cool evenings, men, women, and
+children, with their capacity for dirt greatly increased by the soft
+resin with which they are all bedraggled, form circles around
+camp-fires, on the bank of the nearest stream, and lie in easy
+independence cracking nuts and laughing and chattering, as heedless of
+the future as the squirrels.
+
+
+_Pinus tuberculata_
+
+This curious little pine is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000
+feet, growing in close, willowy groves. It is exceedingly slender and
+graceful in habit, although trees that chance to stand alone outside the
+groves sweep forth long, curved branches, producing a striking contrast
+to the ordinary grove form. The foliage is of the same peculiar
+gray-green color as that of the Nut Pine, and is worn about as loosely,
+so that the body of the tree is scarcely obscured by it.
+
+[Illustration: THE GROVE FORM. THE ISOLATED FORM (PINUS TUBERCULATA).]
+
+At the age of seven or eight years it begins to bear cones, not on
+branches, but on the main axis, and, as they never fall off, the trunk
+is soon picturesquely dotted with them. The branches also become
+fruitful after they attain sufficient size. The average size of the
+older trees is about thirty or forty feet in height, and twelve to
+fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are about four inches long,
+exceedingly hard, and covered with a sort of silicious varnish and gum,
+rendering them impervious to moisture, evidently with a view to the
+careful preservation of the seeds.
+
+No other conifer in the range is so closely restricted to special
+localities. It is usually found apart, standing deep in chaparral on
+sunny hill-and canon-sides where there is but little depth of soil, and,
+where found at all, it is quite plentiful; but the ordinary traveler,
+following carriage-roads and trails, may ascend the range many times
+without meeting it.
+
+While exploring the lower portion of the Merced Canon I found a lonely
+miner seeking his fortune in a quartz vein on a wild mountain-side
+planted with this singular tree. He told me that he called it the
+Hickory Pine, because of the whiteness and toughness of the wood. It is
+so little known, however, that it can hardly be said to have a common
+name. Most mountaineers refer to it as "that queer little pine-tree
+covered all over with burs." In my studies of this species I found a
+very interesting and significant group of facts, whose relations will be
+seen almost as soon as stated:
+
+1st. All the trees in the groves I examined, however unequal in size,
+are of the same age.
+
+2d. Those groves are all planted on dry hillsides covered with
+chaparral, and therefore are liable to be swept by fire.
+
+3d. There are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves,
+but there is always a fine, hopeful crop springing up on the ground once
+occupied by any grove that has been destroyed by the burning of the
+chaparral.
+
+4th. The cones never fall off and never discharge their seeds until the
+tree or branch to which they belong dies.
+
+[Illustration: LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN
+CHARACTER OF WOODS.]
+
+A full discussion of the bearing of these facts upon one another would
+perhaps be out of place here, but I may at least call attention to the
+admirable adaptation of the tree to the fire-swept regions where alone
+it is found. After a grove has been destroyed, the ground is at once
+sown lavishly with all the seeds ripened during its whole life, which
+seem to have been carefully held in store with reference to such a
+calamity. Then a young grove immediately springs up, giving beauty for
+ashes.
+
+
+SUGAR PINE
+(_Pinus Lambertiana_)
+
+This is the noblest pine yet discovered, surpassing all others not
+merely in size but also in kingly beauty and majesty.
+
+It towers sublimely from every ridge and canon of the range, at an
+elevation of from three to seven thousand feet above the sea, attaining
+most perfect development at a height of about 5000 feet.
+
+Full-grown specimens are commonly about 220 feet high, and from six to
+eight feet in diameter near the ground, though some grand old patriarch
+is occasionally met that has enjoyed five or six centuries of storms,
+and attained a thickness of ten or even twelve feet, living on
+undecayed, sweet and fresh in every fiber.
+
+In southern Oregon, where it was first discovered by David Douglas, on
+the head waters of the Umpqua, it attains still grander dimensions, one
+specimen having been measured that was 245 feet high, and over eighteen
+feet in diameter three feet from the ground. The discoverer was the
+Douglas for whom the noble Douglas Spruce is named, and many other
+plants which will keep his memory sweet and fresh as long as trees and
+flowers are loved. His first visit to the Pacific Coast was made in the
+year 1825. The Oregon Indians watched him with curiosity as he wandered
+in the woods collecting specimens, and, unlike the fur-gathering
+strangers they had hitherto known, caring nothing about trade. And when
+at length they came to know him better, and saw that from year to year
+the growing things of the woods and prairies were his only objects of
+pursuit, they called him "The Man of Grass," a title of which he was
+proud. During his first summer on the waters of the Columbia he made
+Fort Vancouver his headquarters, making excursions from this Hudson Bay
+post in every direction. On one of his long trips he saw in an Indian's
+pouch some of the seeds of a new species of pine which he learned were
+obtained from a very large tree far to the southward of the Columbia. At
+the end of the next summer, returning to Fort Vancouver after the
+setting in of the winter rains, bearing in mind the big pine he had
+heard of, he set out on an excursion up the Willamette Valley in search
+of it; and how he fared, and what dangers and hardships he endured, are
+best told in his own journal, from which I quote as follows:
+
+    _October_ 26, 1826. Weather dull. Cold and cloudy. When my
+    friends in England are made acquainted with my travels I fear they
+    will think I have told them nothing but my miseries.... I quitted
+    my camp early in the morning to survey the neighboring country,
+    leaving my guide to take charge of the horses until my return in
+    the evening. About an hour's walk from the camp I met an Indian,
+    who on perceiving me instantly strung his bow, placed on his left
+    arm a sleeve of raccoon skin and stood on the defensive. Being
+    quite sure that conduct was prompted by fear and not by hostile
+    intentions, the poor fellow having probably never seen such a being
+    as myself before, I laid my gun at my feet on the ground and waved
+    my hand for him to come to me, which he did slowly and with great
+    caution. I then made him place his bow and quiver of arrows beside
+    my gun, and striking a light gave him a smoke out of my own pipe
+    and a present of a few beads. With my pencil I made a rough sketch
+    of the cone and pine tree which I wanted to obtain, and drew his
+    attention to it, when he instantly pointed with his hand to the
+    hills fifteen or twenty miles distant towards the south; and when I
+    expressed my intention of going thither, cheerfully set out to
+    accompany me. At midday I reached my long-wished-for pines, and
+    lost no time in examining them and endeavoring to collect specimens
+    and seeds. New and strange things seldom fail to make strong
+    impressions, and are therefore frequently over-rated; so that, lest
+    I should never see my friends in England to inform them verbally of
+    this most beautiful and immensely grand tree, I shall here state
+    the dimensions of the largest I could find among several that had
+    been blown down by the wind. At 3 feet from the ground its
+    circumference is 57 feet 9 inches; at 134 feet, 17 feet 5 inches;
+    the extreme length 245 feet.... As it was impossible either to
+    climb the tree or hew it down, I endeavored to knock off the cones
+    by firing at them with ball, when the report of my gun brought
+    eight Indians, all of them painted with red earth, armed with bows,
+    arrows, bone-tipped spears, and flint-knives. They appeared
+    anything but friendly. I explained to them what I wanted, and they
+    seemed satisfied and sat down to smoke; but presently I saw one of
+    them string his bow, and another sharpen his flint knife with a
+    pair of wooden pincers and suspend it off the wrist of his right
+    hand. Further testimony of their intentions was unnecessary. To
+    save myself by flight was impossible, so without hesitation I
+    stepped back about five paces, cocked my gun, drew one of the
+    pistols out of my belt, and holding it in my left hand and the gun
+    in my right, showed myself determined to fight for my life. As much
+    as possible I endeavored to preserve my coolness, and thus we stood
+    looking at one another without making any movement or uttering a
+    word for perhaps ten minutes, when one at last, who seemed to be
+    the leader, gave a sign that they wished for some tobacco; this I
+    signified that they should have if they fetched a quantity of
+    cones. They went off immediately in search of them, and no sooner
+    were they all out of sight than I picked up my three cones and some
+    twigs of the trees and made the quickest possible retreat, hurrying
+    back to the camp, which I reached before dusk.... I now write lying
+    on the grass with my gun cocked beside me, and penning these lines
+    by the light of my Columbian candle, namely, an ignited piece of
+    rosin-wood.
+
+This grand pine discovered under such, exciting circumstances Douglas
+named in honor of his friend Dr. Lambert of London.
+
+The trunk is a smooth, round, delicately tapered shaft, mostly without
+limbs, and colored rich purplish-brown, usually enlivened with tufts of
+yellow lichen. At the top of this magnificent bole, long, curving
+branches sweep gracefully outward and downward, sometimes forming a
+palm-like crown, but far more nobly impressive than any palm crown I
+ever beheld. The needles are about three inches long, finely tempered
+and arranged in rather close tassels at the ends of slender branchlets
+that clothe the long, outsweeping limbs. How well they sing in the wind,
+and how strikingly harmonious an effect is made by the immense
+cylindrical cones that depend loosely from the ends of the main
+branches! No one knows what Nature can do in the way of pine-burs until
+he has seen those of the Sugar Pine. They are commonly from fifteen to
+eighteen inches long, and three in diameter; green, shaded with dark
+purple on their sunward sides. They are ripe in September and October.
+Then the flat scales open and the seeds take wing, but the empty cones
+become still more beautiful and effective, for their diameter is nearly
+doubled by the spreading of the scales, and their color changes to a
+warm yellowish-brown; while they remain swinging on the tree all the
+following winter and summer, and continue effectively beautiful even on
+the ground many years after they fall. The wood is deliciously fragrant,
+and fine in grain and texture; it is of a rich cream-yellow, as if
+formed of condensed sunbeams. _Retinospora obtusa, Siebold_, the
+glory of Eastern forests, is called "Fu-si-no-ki" (tree of the sun) by
+the Japanese; the Sugar Pine is the sun-tree of the Sierra.
+Unfortunately it is greatly prized by the lumbermen, and in accessible
+places is always the first tree in the woods to feel their steel. But
+the regular lumbermen, with their saw-mills, have been, less generally
+destructive thus far than the shingle-makers. The wood splits freely,
+and there is a constant demand for the shingles. And because an ax, and
+saw, and frow are all the capital required for the business, many of
+that drifting, unsteady class of men so large in California engage in it
+for a few months in the year. When prospectors, hunters, ranch hands,
+etc., touch their "bottom dollar" and find themselves out of employment,
+they say, "Well, I can at least go to the Sugar Pines and make
+shingles." A few posts are set in the ground, and a single length cut
+from the first tree felled produces boards enough for the walls and roof
+of a cabin; all the rest the lumberman makes is for sale, and he is
+speedily independent. No gardener or haymaker is more sweetly perfumed
+than these rough mountaineers while engaged in this business, but the
+havoc they make is most deplorable.
+
+[Illustration: SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE.]
+
+The sugar, from which the common name is derived, is to my taste the
+best of sweets--better than maple sugar. It exudes from the heart-wood,
+where wounds have been made, either by forest fires, or the ax, in the
+shape of irregular, crisp, candy-like kernels, which are crowded
+together in masses of considerable size, like clusters of resin-beads.
+When fresh, it is perfectly white and delicious, but, because most of
+the wounds on which it is found have been made by fire, the exuding sap
+is stained on the charred surface, and the hardened sugar becomes brown.
+Indians are fond of it, but on account of its laxative properties only
+small quantities may be eaten. Bears, so fond of sweet things in
+general, seem never to taste it; at least I have failed to find any
+trace of their teeth in this connection.
+
+No lover of trees will ever forget his first meeting with the Sugar
+Pine, nor will he afterward need a poet to call him to "listen what the
+pine-tree saith." In most pine-trees there is a sameness of expression,
+which, to most people, is apt to become monotonous; for the typical
+spiry form, however beautiful, affords but little scope for appreciable
+individual character. The Sugar Pine is as free from conventionalities
+of form and motion as any oak. No two are alike, even to the most
+inattentive observer; and, notwithstanding they are ever tossing out
+their immense arms in what might seem most extravagant gestures, there
+is a majesty and repose about them that precludes all possibility of the
+grotesque, or even picturesque, in their general expression. They are
+the priests of pines, and seem ever to be addressing the surrounding
+forest. The Yellow Pine is found growing with them on warm hillsides,
+and the White Silver Fir on cool northern slopes; but, noble as these
+are, the Sugar Pine is easily king, and spreads his arms above them in
+blessing while they rock and wave in sign of recognition. The main
+branches are sometimes found to be forty feet in length, yet
+persistently simple, seldom dividing at all, excepting near the end; but
+anything like a bare cable appearance is prevented by the small,
+tasseled branchlets that extend all around them; and when these superb
+limbs sweep out symmetrically on all sides, a crown sixty or seventy
+feet wide is formed, which, gracefully poised on the summit of the noble
+shaft, and filled with sunshine, is one of the most glorious forest
+objects conceivable. Commonly, however, there is a great preponderance
+of limbs toward the east, away from the direction of the prevailing
+winds.
+
+No other pine seems to me so unfamiliar and self-contained. In
+approaching it, we feel as if in the presence of a superior being, and
+begin to walk with a light step, holding our breath. Then, perchance,
+while we gaze awe-stricken, along comes a merry squirrel, chattering and
+laughing, to break the spell, running up the trunk with no ceremony, and
+gnawing off the cones as if they were made only for him; while the
+carpenter-woodpecker hammers away at the bark, drilling holes in which
+to store his winter supply of acorns.
+
+[Illustration: YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES.]
+
+Although so wild and unconventional when full-grown, the Sugar Pine is a
+remarkably proper tree in youth. The old is the most original and
+independent in appearance of all the Sierra evergreens; the young is the
+most regular,--a strict follower of coniferous fashions,--slim, erect,
+with leafy, supple branches kept exactly in place, each tapering in
+outline and terminating in a spiry point. The successive transitional
+forms presented between the cautious neatness of youth and bold freedom
+of maturity offer a delightful study. At the age of fifty or sixty
+years, the shy, fashionable form begins to be broken up. Specialized
+branches push out in the most unthought-of places, and bend with the
+great cones, at once marking individual character, and this being
+constantly augmented from year to year by the varying action of the
+sunlight, winds, snow-storms, etc., the individuality of the tree is
+never again lost in the general forest.
+
+The most constant companion of this species is the Yellow Pine, and a
+worthy companion it is.
+
+[Illustration: FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE.]
+
+The Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, Sequoia, and the White Silver Fir are
+also more or less associated with it; but on many deep-soiled
+mountain-sides, at an elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, it
+forms the bulk of the forest, filling every swell and hollow and
+down-plunging ravine. The majestic crowns, approaching each other in
+bold curves, make a glorious canopy through which the tempered sunbeams
+pour, silvering the needles, and gilding the massive boles, and flowery,
+park-like ground, into a scene of enchantment.
+
+On the most sunny slopes the white-flowered fragrant chamoebatia is
+spread like a carpet, brightened during early summer with the crimson
+Sarcodes, the wild rose, and innumerable violets and gilias. Not even in
+the shadiest nooks will you find any rank, untidy weeds or unwholesome
+darkness. On the north sides of ridges the boles are more slender, and
+the ground is mostly occupied by an underbrush of hazel, ceanothus, and
+flowering dogwood, but never so densely as to prevent the traveler from
+sauntering where he will; while the crowning branches are never
+impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and never so interblended as to
+lose their individuality.
+
+View the forest from beneath or from some commanding ridge-top; each
+tree presents a study in itself, and proclaims the surpassing grandeur
+of the species.
+
+
+YELLOW, OR SILVER PINE
+(_Pinus ponderosa_)
+
+The Silver, or Yellow, Pine, as it is commonly called, ranks second
+among the pines of the Sierra as a lumber tree, and almost rivals the
+Sugar Pine in stature and nobleness of port. Because of its superior
+powers of enduring variations of climate and soil, it has a more
+extensive range than any other conifer growing on the Sierra. On the
+western slope it is first met at an elevation of about 2000 feet, and
+extends nearly to the upper limit of the timber line. Thence, crossing
+the range by the lowest passes, it descends to the eastern base, and
+pushes out for a considerable distance into the hot volcanic plains,
+growing bravely upon well-watered moraines, gravelly lake basins, arctic
+ridges, and torrid lava-beds; planting itself upon the lips of craters,
+flourishing vigorously even there, and tossing ripe cones among the
+ashes and cinders of Nature's hearths.
+
+The average size of full-grown trees on the western slope, where it is
+associated with the Sugar Pine, is a little less than 200 feet in height
+and from five to six feet in diameter, though specimens may easily be
+found that are considerably larger. I measured one, growing at an
+elevation of 4000 feet in the valley of the Merced, that is a few inches
+over eight feet in diameter, and 220 feet high.
+
+Where there is plenty of free sunshine and other conditions are
+favorable, it presents a striking contrast in form to the Sugar Pine,
+being a symmetrical spire, formed of a straight round trunk, clad with
+innumerable branches that are divided over and over again. About one
+half of the trunk is commonly branchless, but where it grows at all
+close, three fourths or more become naked; the tree presenting then a
+more slender and elegant shaft than any other tree in the woods. The
+bark is mostly arranged in massive plates, some of them measuring four
+or five feet in length by eighteen inches in width, with a thickness of
+three or four inches, forming a quite marked and distinguishing feature.
+The needles are of a fine, warm, yellow-green color, six to eight inches
+long, firm and elastic, and crowded in handsome, radiant tassels on the
+upturning ends of the branches. The cones are about three or four inches
+long, and two and a half wide, growing in close, sessile clusters among
+the leaves.
+
+[Illustration: PINUS PONDEROSA.]
+
+The species attains its noblest form in filled-up lake basins,
+especially in those of the older yosemites, and so prominent a part does
+it form of their groves that it may well be called the Yosemite Pine.
+Ripe specimens favorably situated are almost always 200 feet or more in
+height, and the branches clothe the trunk nearly to the ground, as seen
+in the illustration.
+
+The Jeffrey variety attains its finest development in the northern
+portion of the range, in the wide basins of the McCloud and Pitt rivers,
+where it forms magnificent forests scarcely invaded by any other tree.
+It differs from the ordinary form in size, being only about half as
+tall, and in its redder and more closely furrowed bark, grayish-green
+foliage, less divided branches, and larger cones; but intermediate forms
+come in which make a clear separation impossible, although some
+botanists regard it as a distinct species. It is this variety that
+climbs storm-swept ridges, and wanders out among the volcanoes of the
+Great Basin. Whether exposed to extremes of heat or cold, it is dwarfed
+like every other tree, and becomes all knots and angles, wholly unlike
+the majestic forms we have been sketching. Old specimens, bearing cones
+about as big as pineapples, may sometimes be found clinging to rifted
+rocks at an elevation of seven or eight thousand feet, whose highest
+branches scarce reach above one's shoulders.
+
+[Illustration: SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH. (THE FORM GROWING IN YOSEMITE
+VALLEY.)]
+
+I have oftentimes feasted on the beauty of these noble trees when they
+were towering in all their winter grandeur, laden with snow--one mass of
+bloom; in summer, too, when the brown, staminate clusters hang thick
+among the shimmering needles, and the big purple burs are ripening in
+the mellow light; but it is during cloudless wind-storms that these
+colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like
+willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when
+the sun shines upon them at the required angle, entire groves glow as if
+every leaf were burnished silver. The fall of tropic light on the royal
+crown of a palm is a truly glorious spectacle, the fervid sun-flood
+breaking upon the glossy leaves in long lance-rays, like mountain water
+among boulders. But to me there is something more impressive in the fall
+of light upon these Silver Pines. It seems beaten to the finest dust,
+and is shed off in myriads of minute sparkles that seem to come from the
+very heart of the trees, as if, like rain falling upon fertile soil, it
+had been absorbed, to reappear in flowers of light.
+
+This species also gives forth the finest music to the wind. After
+listening to it in all kinds of winds, night and day, season after
+season, I think I could approximate to my position on the mountains by
+this pine-music alone. If you would catch the tones of separate needles,
+climb a tree. They are well tempered, and give forth no uncertain sound,
+each standing out, with no interference excepting during heavy gales;
+then you may detect the click of one needle upon another, readily
+distinguishable from their free, wing-like hum. Some idea of their
+temper may be drawn from the fact that, notwithstanding they are so
+long, the vibrations that give rise to the peculiar shimmering of the
+light are made at the rate of about two hundred and fifty per minute.
+
+When a Sugar Pine and one of this species equal in size are observed
+together, the latter is seen to be far more simple in manners, more
+lithely graceful, and its beauty is of a kind more easily appreciated;
+but then, it is, on the other hand, much less dignified and original in
+demeanor. The Silver Pine seems eager to shoot aloft. Even while it is
+drowsing in autumn sun-gold, you may still detect a skyward aspiration.
+But the Sugar Pine seems too unconsciously noble, and too complete in
+every way, to leave room for even a heavenward care.
+
+
+DOUGLAS SPRUCE
+(_Pseudotsuga Douglasii_)
+
+This tree is the king of the spruces, as the Sugar Pine is king of
+pines. It is by far the most majestic spruce I ever beheld in any
+forest, and one of the largest and longest lived of the giants that
+flourish throughout the main pine belt, often attaining a height of
+nearly 200 feet, and a diameter of six or seven. Where the growth is not
+too close, the strong, spreading branches come more than halfway down
+the trunk, and these are hung with innumerable slender, swaying sprays,
+that are handsomely feathered with the short leaves which radiate at
+right angles all around them. This vigorous spruce is ever beautiful,
+welcoming the mountain winds and the snow as well as the mellow summer
+light, and maintaining its youthful freshness undiminished from century
+to century through a thousand storms.
+
+It makes its finest appearance in the months of June and July. The rich
+brown buds with which its sprays are tipped swell and break about this
+time, revealing the young leaves, which at first are bright yellow,
+making the tree appear as if covered with gay blossoms; while the
+pendulous bracted cones with their shell-like scales are a constant
+adornment.
+
+The young trees are mostly gathered into beautiful family groups, each
+sapling exquisitely symmetrical. The primary branches are whorled
+regularly around the axis, generally in fives, while each is draped with
+long, feathery sprays, that descend in curves as free and as finely
+drawn as those of falling water.
+
+In Oregon and Washington it grows in dense forests, growing tall and
+mast-like to a height of 300 feet, and is greatly prized as a lumber
+tree. But in the Sierra it is scattered among other trees, or forms
+small groves, seldom ascending higher than 5500 feet, and never making
+what would be called a forest. It is not particular in its choice of
+soil--wet or dry, smooth or rocky, it makes out to live well on them
+all. Two of the largest specimens I have measured are in Yosemite
+Valley, one of which is more than eight feet in diameter, and is growing
+upon the terminal moraine of the residual glacier that occupied the
+South Fork Canon; the other is nearly as large, growing upon angular
+blocks of granite that have been shaken from the precipitous front of
+the Liberty Cap near the Nevada Fall. No other tree seems so capable of
+adapting itself to earthquake taluses, and many of these rough
+boulder-slopes are occupied by it almost exclusively, especially in
+yosemite gorges moistened by the spray of waterfalls.
+
+
+INCENSE CEDAR
+(_Libocedrus decurrens_)
+
+The Incense Cedar is another of the giants quite generally distributed
+throughout this portion of the forest, without exclusively occupying any
+considerable area, or even making extensive groves. It ascends to about
+5000 feet on the warmer hillsides, and reaches the climate most
+congenial to it at about from 3000 to 4000 feet, growing vigorously at
+this elevation on all kinds of soil, and in particular it is capable of
+enduring more moisture about its roots than any of its companions,
+excepting only the Sequoia.
+
+The largest specimens are about 150 feet high, and seven feet in
+diameter. The bark is brown, of a singularly rich tone very attractive
+to artists, and the foliage is tinted with a warmer yellow than that of
+any other evergreen in the woods. Casting your eye over the general
+forest from some ridge-top, the color alone of its spiry summits is
+sufficient to identify it in any company.
+
+In youth, say up to the age of seventy or eighty years, no other tree
+forms so strictly tapered a cone from top to bottom. The branches swoop
+outward and downward in bold curves, excepting the younger ones near the
+top, which aspire, while the lowest droop to the ground, and all spread
+out in flat, ferny plumes, beautifully fronded, and imbricated upon one
+another. As it becomes older, it grows strikingly irregular and
+picturesque. Large special branches put out at right angles from the
+trunk, form big, stubborn elbows, and then shoot up parallel with the
+axis. Very old trees are usually dead at the top, the main axis
+protruding above ample masses of green plumes, gray and lichen-covered,
+and drilled full of acorn holes by the woodpeckers. The plumes are
+exceedingly beautiful; no waving fern-frond in shady dell is more
+unreservedly beautiful in form and texture, or half so inspiring in
+color and spicy fragrance. In its prime, the whole tree is thatched with
+them, so that they shed off rain and snow like a roof, making fine
+mansions for storm-bound birds and mountaineers. But if you would see
+the _Libocedrus_ in all its glory, you must go to the woods in
+winter. Then it is laden with myriads of four-sided staminate cones
+about the size of wheat grains,--winter wheat,--producing a golden
+tinge, and forming a noble illustration of Nature's immortal vigor and
+virility. The fertile cones are about three fourths of an inch long,
+borne on the outside of the plumy branchlets, where they serve to enrich
+still more the surpassing beauty of this grand winter-blooming
+goldenrod.
+
+[Illustration: INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME.]
+
+
+WHITE SILVER FIR
+(_Abies concolor_)
+
+[Illustration: FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS. TWO SEQUOIAS IN THE
+FOREGROUND ON THE LEFT.]
+
+We come now to the most regularly planted of all the main forest belts,
+composed almost exclusively of two noble firs--_A. concolor_ and
+_A. magnifica_. It extends with no marked interruption for 450
+miles, at an elevation of from 5000 to nearly 9000 feet above the sea.
+In its youth _A. concolor_ is a charmingly symmetrical tree with
+branches regularly whorled in level collars around its whitish-gray
+axis, which terminates in a strong, hopeful shoot. The leaves are in two
+horizontal rows, along branchlets that commonly are less than eight
+years old, forming handsome plumes, pinnated like the fronds of ferns.
+The cones are grayish-green when ripe, cylindrical, about from three to
+four inches long by one and a half to two inches wide, and stand upright
+on the upper branches.
+
+Full-grown trees, favorably situated as to soil and exposure, are about
+200 feet high, and five or six feet in diameter near the ground, though
+larger specimens are by no means rare.
+
+As old age creeps on, the bark becomes rougher and grayer, the branches
+lose their exact regularity, many are snow-bent or broken off, and the
+main axis often becomes double or otherwise irregular from accidents to
+the terminal bud or shoot; but throughout all the vicissitudes of its
+life on the mountains, come what may, the noble grandeur of the species
+is patent to every eye.
+
+
+MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR, OR RED FIR
+(_Abies magnifica_)
+
+This is the most charmingly symmetrical of all the giants of the Sierra
+woods, far surpassing its companion species in this respect, and easily
+distinguished from it by the purplish-red bark, which is also more
+closely furrowed than that of the white, and by its larger cones, more
+regularly whorled and fronded branches, and by its leaves, which are
+shorter, and grow all around the branchlets and point upward.
+
+In size, these two Silver Firs are about equal, the _magnifica_
+perhaps a little the taller. Specimens from 200 to 250 feet high are not
+rare on well-ground moraine soil, at an elevation of from 7500 to 8500
+feet above sea-level. The largest that I measured stands back three
+miles from the brink of the north wall of Yosemite Valley. Fifteen years
+ago it was 240 feet high, with a diameter of a little more than five
+feet.
+
+Happy the man with the freedom and the love to climb one of these superb
+trees in full flower and fruit. How admirable the forest-work of Nature
+is then seen to be, as one makes his way up through the midst of the
+broad, fronded branches, all arranged in exquisite order around the
+trunk, like the whorled leaves of lilies, and each branch and branchlet
+about as strictly pinnate as the most symmetrical fern-frond. The
+staminate cones are seen growing straight downward from the under side
+of the young branches in lavish profusion, making fine purple clusters
+amid the grayish-green foliage. On the topmost branches the fertile
+cones are set firmly on end like small casks. They are about six inches
+long, three wide, covered with a fine gray down, and streaked with
+crystal balsam that seems to have been poured upon each cone from above.
+
+Both the Silver Firs live 250 years or more when the conditions about
+them are at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may often be seen,
+heavily storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising
+generation, with a protecting grove of saplings pressing close around
+his feet, each dressed with such loving care that not a leaf seems
+wanting. Other companies are made up of trees near the prime of life,
+exquisitely harmonized to one another in form and gesture, as if Nature
+had culled them one by one with nice discrimination from all the rest of
+the woods.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR.]
+
+It is from this tree, called Red Fir by the lumberman, that mountaineers
+always cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate as to be within
+its limits. Two rows of the plushy branches overlapping along the
+middle, and a crescent of smaller plumes mixed with ferns and flowers
+for a pillow, form the very best bed imaginable. The essences of the
+pressed leaves seem to fill every pore of one's body, the sounds of
+falling water make a soothing hush, while the spaces between the grand
+spires afford noble openings through which to gaze dreamily into the
+starry sky. Even in the matter of sensuous ease, any combination of
+cloth, steel springs, and feathers seems vulgar in comparison.
+
+The fir woods are delightful sauntering-grounds at any time of year, but
+most so in autumn. Then the noble trees are hushed in the hazy light,
+and drip with balsam; the cones are ripe, and the seeds, with their
+ample purple wings, mottle the air like flocks of butterflies; while
+deer feeding in the flowery openings between the groves, and birds and
+squirrels in the branches, make a pleasant stir which enriches the deep,
+brooding calm of the wilderness, and gives a peculiar impressiveness to
+every tree. No wonder the enthusiastic Douglas went wild with joy when
+he first discovered this species. Even in the Sierra, where so many
+noble evergreens challenge admiration, we linger among these colossal
+firs with fresh love, and extol their beauty again and again, as if no
+other in the world could henceforth claim our regard.
+
+[Illustration: SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND
+TENAYA GLACIERS.]
+
+It is in these woods the great granite domes rise that are so striking
+and characteristic a feature of the Sierra. And here too we find the
+best of the garden meadows. They lie level on the tops of the dividing
+ridges, or sloping on the sides of them, embedded in the magnificent
+forest. Some of these meadows are in great part occupied by
+_Veratrumalba_, which here grows rank and tall, with boat-shaped
+leaves thirteen inches long and twelve inches wide, ribbed like those of
+cypripedium. Columbine grows on the drier margins with tall larkspurs
+and lupines waist-deep in grasses and sedges; several species of
+castilleia also make a bright show in beds of blue and white violets and
+daisies. But the glory of these forest meadows is a lily--_L. parvum_.
+The flowers are orange-colored and quite small, the smallest I ever saw
+of the true lilies; but it is showy nevertheless, for it is seven to
+eight feet high and waves magnificent racemes of ten to twenty flowers
+or more over one's head, while it stands out in the open ground with
+just enough of grass and other plants about it to make a fringe for
+its feet and show it off to best advantage.
+
+A dry spot a little way back from the margin of a Silver Fir lily garden
+makes a glorious campground, especially where the slope is toward the
+east and opens a view of the distant peaks along the summit of the
+range. The tall lilies are brought forward in all their glory by the
+light of your blazing camp-fire, relieved against the outer darkness,
+and the nearest of the trees with their whorled branches tower above you
+like larger lilies, and the sky seen through the garden opening seems
+one vast meadow of white lily stars.
+
+In the morning everything is joyous and bright, the delicious purple of
+the dawn changes softly to daffodil yellow and white; while the sunbeams
+pouring through the passes between the peaks give a margin of gold to
+each of them. Then the spires of the firs in the hollows of the middle
+region catch the glow, and your camp grove is filled with light. The
+birds begin to stir, seeking sunny branches on the edge of the meadow
+for sun-baths after the cold night, and looking for their breakfasts,
+every one of them as fresh as a lily and as charmingly arrayed.
+Innumerable insects begin to dance, the deer withdraw from the open
+glades and ridge-tops to their leafy hiding-places in the chaparral, the
+flowers open and straighten their petals as the dew vanishes, every
+pulse beats high, every life-cell rejoices, the very rocks seem to
+tingle with life, and God is felt brooding over everything great and
+small.
+
+
+BIG TREE
+(_Sequoia gigantea_)
+
+Between the heavy pine and Silver Fir belts we find the Big Tree, the
+king of all the conifers in the world, "the noblest of a noble race." It
+extends in a widely interrupted belt from a small grove on the middle
+fork of the American River to the head of Deer Creek, a distance of
+about 260 miles, the northern limit being near the thirty-ninth
+parallel, the southern a little below the thirty-sixth, and the
+elevation of the belt above the sea varies from about 5000 to 8000 feet.
+From the American River grove to the forest on King's River the species
+occurs only in small isolated groups so sparsely distributed along the
+belt that three of the gaps in it are from forty to sixty miles wide.
+But from King's River southward the Sequoia is not restricted to mere
+groves, but extends across the broad rugged basins of the Kaweah and
+Tule rivers in noble forests, a distance of nearly seventy miles, the
+continuity of this part of the belt being broken only by deep canons.
+The Fresno, the largest of the northern groves, occupies an area of
+three or four square miles, a short distance to the southward of the
+famous Mariposa Grove. Along the beveled rim of the canon of the south
+fork of King's River there is a majestic forest of Sequoia about six
+miles long by two wide. This is the northernmost assemblage of Big Trees
+that may fairly be called a forest. Descending the precipitous divide
+between the King's River and Kaweah you enter the grand forests that
+form the main continuous portion of the belt. Advancing southward the
+giants become more and more irrepressibly exuberant, heaving their
+massive crowns into the sky from every ridge and slope, and waving
+onward in graceful compliance with the complicated topography of the
+region. The finest of the Kaweah section of the belt is on the broad
+ridge between Marble Creek and the middle fork, and extends from the
+granite headlands overlooking the hot plains to within a few miles of
+the cool glacial fountains of the summit peaks. The extreme upper limit
+of the belt is reached between the middle and south forks of the Kaweah
+at an elevation of 8400 feet. But the finest block of Big Tree forest in
+the entire belt is on the north fork of Tule River. In the northern
+groves there are comparatively few young trees or saplings. But here for
+every old, storm-stricken giant there are many in all the glory of prime
+vigor, and for each of these a crowd of eager, hopeful young trees and
+saplings growing heartily on moraines, rocky ledges, along watercourses,
+and in the moist alluvium of meadows, seemingly in hot pursuit of
+eternal life.
+
+But though the area occupied by the species increases so much from north
+to south there is no marked increase in the size of the trees. A height
+of 275 feet and a diameter near the ground of about 20 feet is perhaps
+about the average size of full-grown trees favorably situated; specimens
+25 feet in diameter are not very rare, and a few are nearly 300 feet
+high. In the Calaveras Grove there are four trees over 300 feet in
+height, the tallest of which by careful measurement is 325 feet. The
+largest I have yet met in the course of my explorations is a majestic
+old scarred monument in the King's River forest. It is 35 feet 8 inches
+in diameter inside the bark four feet from the ground. Under the most
+favorable conditions these giants probably live 5000 years or more,
+though few of even the larger trees are more than half as old. I never
+saw a Big Tree that had died a natural death; barring accidents they
+seem to be immortal, being exempt from all the diseases that afflict and
+kill other trees. Unless destroyed by man, they live on indefinitely
+until burned, smashed by lightning, or cast down by storms, or by the
+giving way of the ground on which they stand. The age of one that was
+felled in the Calaveras Grove, for the sake of having its stump for a
+dancing-floor, was about 1300 years, and its diameter, measured across
+the stump, 24 feet inside the bark. Another that was cut down in the
+King's River forest was about the same size, but nearly a thousand years
+older (2200 years), though not a very old-looking tree. It was felled to
+procure a section for exhibition, and thus an opportunity was given to
+count its annual rings of growth. The colossal scarred monument in the
+King's River forest mentioned above is burned half through, and I spent
+a day in making an estimate of its age, clearing away the charred
+surface with an ax and carefully counting the annual rings with the aid
+of a pocket-lens. The wood-rings in the section I laid bare were so
+involved and contorted in some places that I was not able to determine
+its age exactly, but I counted over 4000 rings, which showed that this
+tree was in its prime, swaying in the Sierra winds, when Christ walked
+the earth. No other tree in the world, as far as I know, has looked down
+on so many centuries as the Sequoia, or opens such impressive and
+suggestive views into history.
+
+So exquisitely harmonious and finely balanced are even the very
+mightiest of these monarchs of the woods in all their proportions and
+circumstances there never is anything overgrown or monstrous-looking
+about them. On coming in sight of them for the first time, you are
+likely to say, "Oh, see what beautiful, noble-looking trees are towering
+there among the firs and pines!"--their grandeur being in the mean time
+in great part invisible, but to the living eye it will be manifested
+sooner or later, stealing slowly on the senses, like the grandeur of
+Niagara, or the lofty Yosemite domes. Their great size is hidden from
+the inexperienced observer as long as they are seen at a distance in one
+harmonious view. When, however, you approach them and walk round them,
+you begin to wonder at their colossal size and seek a measuring-rod.
+These giants bulge considerably at the base, but not more than is
+required for beauty and safety; and the only reason that this bulging
+seems in some cases excessive is that only a comparatively small section
+of the shaft is seen at once in near views. One that I measured in the
+King's River forest was 25 feet in diameter at the ground, and 10 feet
+in diameter 200 feet above the ground, showing that the taper of the
+trunk as a whole is charmingly fine. And when you stand back far enough
+to see the massive columns from the swelling instep to the lofty summit
+dissolving in a dome of verdure, you rejoice in the unrivaled display of
+combined grandeur and beauty. About a hundred feet or more of the trunk
+is usually branchless, but its massive simplicity is relieved by the
+bark furrows, which instead of making an irregular network run evenly
+parallel, like the fluting of an architectural column, and to some
+extent by tufts of slender sprays that wave lightly in the winds and
+cast flecks of shade, seeming to have been pinned on here and there for
+the sake of beauty only. The young trees have slender simple branches
+down to the ground, put on with strict regularity, sharply aspiring at
+the top, horizontal about half-way down, and drooping in handsome curves
+at the base. By the time the sapling is five or six hundred years old
+this spiry, feathery, juvenile habit merges into the firm, rounded dome
+form of middle age, which in turn takes on the eccentric picturesqueness
+of old age. No other tree in the Sierra forest has foliage so densely
+massed or presents outlines so firmly drawn and so steadily subordinate
+to a special type. A knotty ungovernable-looking branch five to eight
+feet thick may be seen pushing out abruptly from the smooth trunk, as if
+sure to throw the regular curve into confusion, but as soon as the
+general outline is reached it stops short and dissolves in spreading
+bosses of law-abiding sprays, just as if every tree were growing beneath
+some huge, invisible bell-glass, against whose sides every branch was
+being pressed and molded, yet somehow indulging in so many small
+departures from the regular form that there is still an appearance of
+freedom.
+
+The foliage of the saplings is dark bluish-green in color, while the
+older trees ripen to a warm brownish-yellow tint like Libocedrus. The
+bark is rich cinnamon-brown, purplish in young trees and in shady
+portions of the old, while the ground is covered with brown leaves and
+burs forming color-masses of extraordinary richness, not to mention the
+flowers and underbrush that rejoice about them in their seasons. Walk
+the Sequoia woods at any time of year and you will say they are the most
+beautiful and majestic on earth. Beautiful and impressive contrasts meet
+you everywhere: the colors of tree and flower, rock and sky, light and
+shade, strength and frailty, endurance and evanescence, tangles of
+supple hazel-bushes, tree-pillars about as rigid as granite domes, roses
+and violets, the smallest of their kind, blooming around the feet of the
+giants, and rugs of the lowly chamaebatia where the sunbeams fall. Then
+in winter the trees themselves break forth in bloom, myriads of small
+four-sided staminate cones crowd the ends of the slender sprays,
+coloring the whole tree, and when ripe dusting the air and the ground
+with golden pollen. The fertile cones are bright grass-green, measuring
+about two inches in length by one and a half in thickness, and are made
+up of about forty firm rhomboidal scales densely packed, with from five
+to eight seeds at the base of each. A single cone, therefore, contains
+from two to three hundred seeds, which are about a fourth of an inch
+long by three sixteenths wide, including a thin, flat margin that makes
+them go glancing and wavering in their fall like a boy's kite. The
+fruitfulness of Sequoia may be illustrated by two specimen branches one
+and a half and two inches in diameter on which I counted 480 cones. No
+other Sierra conifer produces nearly so many seeds. Millions are ripened
+annually by a single tree, and in a fruitful year the product of one of
+the northern groves would be enough to plant all the mountain-ranges of
+the world. Nature takes care, however, that not one seed in a million
+shall germinate at all, and of those that do perhaps not one in ten
+thousand is suffered to live through the many vicissitudes of storm,
+drought, fire, and snow-crushing that beset their youth.
+
+The Douglas squirrel is the happy harvester of most of the Sequoia
+cones. Out of every hundred perhaps ninety fall to his share, and unless
+cut off by his ivory sickle they shake out their seeds and remain on the
+tree for many years. Watching the squirrels at their harvest work in the
+Indian summer is one of the most delightful diversions imaginable. The
+woods are calm and the ripe colors are blazing in all their glory; the
+cone-laden trees stand motionless in the warm, hazy air, and you may see
+the crimson-crested woodcock, the prince of Sierra woodpeckers, drilling
+some dead limb or fallen trunk with his bill, and ever and anon filling
+the glens with his happy cackle. The humming-bird, too, dwells in these
+noble woods, and may oftentimes be seen glancing among the flowers or
+resting wing-weary on some leafless twig; here also are the familiar
+robin of the orchards, and the brown and grizzly bears so obviously
+fitted for these majestic solitudes; and the Douglas squirrel, making
+more hilarious, exuberant, vital stir than all the bears, birds, and
+humming wings together.
+
+As soon as any accident happens to the crown of these Sequoias, such as
+being stricken off by lightning or broken by storms, then the branches
+beneath the wound, no matter how situated, seem to be excited like a
+colony of bees that have lost their queen, and become anxious to repair
+the damage. Limbs that have grown outward for centuries at right angles
+to the trunk begin to turn upward to assist in making a new crown, each
+speedily assuming the special form of true summits. Even in the case of
+mere stumps, burned half through, some mere ornamental tuft will try to
+go aloft and do its best as a leader in forming a new head.
+
+Groups of two or three of these grand trees are often found standing
+close together, the seeds from which they sprang having probably grown
+on ground cleared for their reception by the fall of a large tree of a
+former generation. These patches of fresh, mellow soil beside the
+upturned roots of the fallen giant may be from forty to sixty feet wide,
+and they are speedily occupied by seedlings. Out of these
+seedling-thickets perhaps two or three may become trees, forming those
+close groups called "three graces," "loving couples," etc. For even
+supposing that the trees should stand twenty or thirty feet apart while
+young, by the time they are full-grown their trunks will touch and crowd
+against each other and even appear as one in some cases.
+
+It is generally believed that this grand Sequoia was once far more
+widely distributed over the Sierra; but after long and careful study I
+have come to the conclusion that it never was, at least since the close
+of the glacial period, because a diligent search along the margins of
+the groves, and in the gaps between, fails to reveal a single trace of
+its previous existence beyond its present bounds. Notwithstanding, I
+feel confident that if every Sequoia in the range were to die to-day,
+numerous monuments of their existence would remain, of so imperishable a
+nature as to be available for the student more than ten thousand years
+hence.
+
+In the first place we might notice that no species of coniferous tree in
+the range keeps its individuals so well together as Sequoia; a mile is
+perhaps the greatest distance of any straggler from the main body, and
+all of those stragglers that have come under my observation are young,
+instead of old monumental trees, relics of a more extended growth.
+
+Again, Sequoia trunks frequently endure for centuries after they fall. I
+have a specimen block, cut from a fallen trunk, which is hardly
+distinguishable from specimens cut from living trees, although the old
+trunk-fragment from which it was derived has lain in the damp forest
+more than 380 years, probably thrice as long. The time measure in the
+case is simply this: when the ponderous trunk to which the old vestige
+belonged fell, it sunk itself into the ground, thus making a long,
+straight ditch, and in the middle of this ditch a Silver Fir is growing
+that is now four feet in diameter and 380 years old, as determined by
+cutting it half through and counting the rings, thus demonstrating that
+the remnant of the trunk that made the ditch has lain on the ground
+_more_ than 380 years. For it is evident that to find the whole
+time, we must add to the 380 years the time that the vanished portion of
+the trunk lay in the ditch before being burned out of the way, plus the
+time that passed before the seed from which the monumental fir sprang
+fell into the prepared soil and took root. Now, because Sequoia trunks
+are never wholly consumed in one forest fire, and those fires recur only
+at considerable intervals, and because Sequoia ditches after being
+cleared are often left unplanted for centuries, it becomes evident that
+the trunk remnant in question may probably have lain a thousand years or
+more. And this instance is by no means a rare one.
+
+But admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been once covered
+with Sequoia every tree may have fallen, and every trunk may have been
+burned or buried, leaving not a remnant, many of the ditches made by the
+fall of the ponderous trunks, and the bowls made by their upturning
+roots, would remain patent for thousands of years after the last vestige
+of the trunks that made them had vanished. Much of this ditch-writing
+would no doubt be quickly effaced by the flood-action of overflowing
+streams and rain-washing; but no inconsiderable portion would remain
+enduringly engraved on ridge-tops beyond such destructive action; for,
+where all the conditions are favorable, it is almost imperishable.
+_Now these historic ditches and root bowls occur in all the present
+Sequoia groves and forests, but as far as I have observed, not the
+faintest vestige of one presents itself outside of them_.
+
+We therefore conclude that the area covered by Sequoia has not been
+diminished during the last eight or ten thousand years, and probably not
+at all in post-glacial times.
+
+_Is the species verging to extinction? What are its relations to
+climate, soil, and associated trees?_
+
+All the phenomena bearing on these questions also throw light, as we
+shall endeavor to show, upon the peculiar distribution of the species,
+and sustain the conclusion already arrived at on the question of
+extension.
+
+In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are few young trees or
+saplings growing up around the failing old ones to perpetuate the race,
+and in as much as those aged Sequoias, so nearly childless, are the only
+ones commonly known, the species, to most observers, seems doomed to
+speedy extinction, as being nothing more than an expiring remnant,
+vanquished in the so-called struggle for life by pines and firs that
+have driven it into its last strongholds in moist glens where climate is
+exceptionally favorable. But the language of the majestic continuous
+forests of the south creates a very different impression. No tree of all
+the forest is more enduringly established in concordance with climate
+and soil. It grows heartily everywhere--on moraines, rocky ledges, along
+watercourses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows, with a
+multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the aged,
+seemingly abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. For
+every old storm-stricken tree, there is one or more in all the glory of
+prime; and for each of these many young trees and crowds of exuberant
+saplings. So that if all the trees of any section of the main Sequoia
+forest were ranged together according to age, a very promising curve
+would be presented, all the way up from last year's seedlings to giants,
+and with the young and middle-aged portion of the curve many times
+longer than the old portion. Even as far north as the Fresno, I counted
+536 saplings and seedlings growing promisingly upon a piece of rough
+avalanche soil not exceeding two acres in area. This soil bed is about
+seven years old, and has been seeded almost simultaneously by pines,
+firs, Libocedrus, and Sequoia, presenting a simple and instructive
+illustration of the struggle for life among the rival species; and it
+was interesting to note that the conditions thus far affecting them have
+enabled the young Sequoias to gain a marked advantage.
+
+In every instance like the above I have observed that the seedling
+Sequoia is capable of growing on both drier and wetter soil than its
+rivals, but requires more sunshine than they; the latter fact being
+clearly shown wherever a Sugar Pine or fir is growing in close contact
+with a Sequoia of about equal age and size, and equally exposed to the
+sun; the branches of the latter in such cases are always less leafy.
+Toward the south, however, where the Sequoia becomes _more_
+exuberant and numerous, the rival trees become _less_ so; and where
+they mix with Sequoias, they mostly grow up beneath them, like slender
+grasses among stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of sandy flood-soil I
+counted ninety-four Sequoias, from one to twelve feet high, on a patch,
+of ground once occupied by four large Sugar Pines which lay crumbling
+beneath them,--an instance of conditions which have enabled Sequoias to
+crowd out the pines.
+
+I also noted eighty-six vigorous saplings upon a piece of fresh ground
+prepared for their reception by fire. Thus fire, the great destroyer of
+Sequoia, also furnishes bare virgin ground, one of the conditions
+essential for its growth from the seed. Fresh ground is, however,
+furnished in sufficient quantities for the constant renewal of the
+forests without fire, viz., by the fall of old trees. The soil is thus
+upturned and mellowed, and many trees are planted for every one that
+falls. Land-slips and floods also give rise to bare virgin ground; and a
+tree now and then owes its existence to a burrowing wolf or squirrel,
+but the most regular supply of fresh soil is furnished by the fall of
+aged trees.
+
+The climatic changes in progress in the Sierra, bearing on the tenure of
+tree life, are entirely misapprehended, especially as to the time and
+the means employed by Nature in effecting them. It is constantly
+asserted in a vague way that the Sierra was vastly wetter than now, and
+that the increasing drought will of itself extinguish Sequoia, leaving
+its ground to other trees supposed capable of nourishing in a drier
+climate. But that Sequoia can and does grow on as dry ground as any of
+its present rivals, is manifest in a thousand places. "Why, then," it
+will be asked, "are Sequoias always found in greatest abundance in
+well-watered places where streams are exceptionally abundant?" Simply
+because a growth of Sequoias creates those streams. The thirsty
+mountaineer knows well that in every Sequoia grove he will find running
+water, but it is a mistake to suppose that the water is the cause of the
+grove being there; on the contrary, the grove is the cause of the water
+being there. Drain off the water and the trees will remain, but cut off
+the trees, and the streams will vanish. Never was cause more completely
+mistaken for effect than in the case of these related phenomena of
+Sequoia woods and perennial streams, and I confess that at first I
+shared in the blunder.
+
+When attention is called to the method of Sequoia stream-making, it will
+be apprehended at once. The roots of this immense tree fill the ground,
+forming a thick sponge that absorbs and holds back the rains and melting
+snows, only allowing them to ooze and flow gently. Indeed, every fallen
+leaf and rootlet, as well as long clasping root, and prostrate trunk,
+may be regarded as a dam hoarding the bounty of storm-clouds, and
+dispensing it as blessings all through the summer, instead of allowing
+it to go headlong in short-lived floods. Evaporation is also checked by
+the dense foliage to a greater extent than by any other Sierra tree, and
+the air is entangled in masses and broad sheets that are quickly
+saturated; while thirsty winds are not allowed to go sponging and
+licking along the ground.
+
+So great is the retention of water in many places in the main belt, that
+bogs and meadows are created by the killing of the trees. A single trunk
+falling across a stream in the woods forms a dam 200 feet long, and from
+ten to thirty feet high, giving rise to a pond which kills the trees
+within its reach. These dead trees fall in turn, thus making a clearing,
+while sediments gradually accumulate changing the pond into a bog, or
+meadow, for a growth of carices and sphagnum. In some instances a series
+of small bogs or meadows rise above one another on a hillside, which are
+gradually merged into one another, forming sloping bogs, or meadows,
+which make striking features of Sequoia woods, and since all the trees
+that have fallen into them have been preserved, they contain records of
+the generations that have passed since they began to form.
+
+Since, then, it is a fact that thousands of Sequoias are growing
+thriftily on what is termed dry ground, and even clinging like mountain
+pines to rifts in granite precipices; and since it has also been shown
+that the extra moisture found in connection with the denser growths is
+an effect of their presence, instead of a cause of their presence, then
+the notions as to the former extension of the species and its near
+approach to extinction, based upon its supposed dependence on greater
+moisture, are seen to be erroneous.
+
+The decrease in the rain- and snow-fall since the close of the glacial
+period in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed. The highest
+post-glacial watermarks are well preserved in all the upper river
+channels, and they are not greatly higher than the spring floodmarks of
+the present; showing conclusively that no extraordinary decrease has
+taken place in the volume of the upper tributaries of post-glacial
+Sierra streams since they came into existence. But in the mean time,
+eliminating all this complicated question of climatic change, the plain
+fact remains that _the present rain- and snow-fall is abundantly
+sufficient for the luxuriant growth of Sequoia forests_. Indeed, all
+my observations tend to show that in a prolonged drought the Sugar Pines
+and firs would perish before the Sequoia, not alone because of the
+greater longevity of individual trees, but because the species can
+endure more drought, and make the most of whatever moisture falls.
+
+Again, if the restriction and irregular distribution of the species be
+interpreted as a result of the desiccation of the range, then instead of
+increasing as it does in individuals toward the south where the rainfall
+is less, it should diminish.
+
+If, then, the peculiar distribution of Sequoia has not been governed by
+superior conditions of soil as to fertility or moisture, by what has it
+been governed?
+
+In the course of my studies I observed that the northern groves, the
+only ones I was at first acquainted with, were located on just those
+portions of the general forest soil-belt that were first laid bare
+toward the close of the glacial period when the ice-sheet began to break
+up into individual glaciers. And while searching the wide basin of the
+San Joaquin, and trying to account for the absence of Sequoia where
+every condition seemed favorable for its growth, it occured to me that
+this remarkable gap in the Sequoia belt is located exactly in the basin
+of the vast ancient _mer de glace_ of the San Joaquin and King's
+River basins, which poured its frozen floods to the plain, fed by the
+snows that fell on more than fifty miles of the summit. I then perceived
+that the next great gap in the belt to the northward, forty miles wide,
+extending between the Calaveras and Tuolumne groves, occurs in the basin
+of the great ancient _mer de glace_ of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus
+basins, and that the smaller gap between the Merced and Mariposa groves
+occurs in the basin of the smaller glacier of the Merced. _The wider
+the ancient glacier, the wider the corresponding gap in the Sequoia
+belt_.
+
+Finally, pursuing my investigations across the basins of the Kaweah and
+Tule, I discovered that the Sequoia belt attained its greatest
+development just where, owing to the topographical peculiarities of the
+region, the ground had been most perfectly protected from the main
+ice-rivers that continued to pour past from the summit fountains long
+after the smaller local glaciers had been melted.
+
+Taking now a general view of the belt, beginning at the south, we see
+that the majestic ancient glaciers were shed off right and left down the
+valleys of Kern and King's rivers by the lofty protective spurs
+outspread embracingly above the warm Sequoia-filled basins of the Kaweah
+and Tule. Then, next northward, occurs the wide Sequoia-less channel, or
+basin, of the ancient San Joaquin and King's River _mer de glace_;
+then the warm, protected spots of Fresno and Mariposa groves; then the
+Sequoia-less channel of the ancient Merced glacier; next the warm,
+sheltered ground of the Merced and Tuolumne groves; then the
+Sequoia-less channel of the grand ancient _mer de glace_ of the
+Tuolumne and Stanislaus; then the warm old ground of the Calaveras and
+Stanislaus groves. It appears, therefore, that just where, at a certain
+period in the history of the Sierra, the glaciers were not, there the
+Sequoia is, and just where the glaciers were, there the Sequoia is not.
+
+What the other conditions may have been that enabled Sequoia to
+establish itself upon these oldest and warmest portions of the main
+glacial soil-belt, I cannot say. I might venture to state, however, in
+this connection, that since the Sequoia forests present a more and more
+ancient aspect as they extend southward, I am inclined to think that the
+species was distributed from the south, while the Sugar Pine, its great
+rival in the northern groves, seems to have come around the head of the
+Sacramento valley and down the Sierra from the north; consequently, when
+the Sierra soil-beds were first thrown open to preemption on the melting
+of the ice-sheet, the Sequoia may have established itself along the
+available portions of the south half of the range prior to the arrival
+of the Sugar Pine, while the Sugar Pine took possession of the north
+half prior to the arrival of Sequoia.
+
+But however much uncertainty may attach to this branch of the question,
+there are no obscuring shadows upon the grand general relationship we
+have pointed out between the present distribution of Sequoia and the
+ancient glaciers of the Sierra. And when we bear in mind that all the
+present forests of the Sierra are young, growing on moraine soil
+recently deposited, and that the flank of the range itself, with all its
+landscapes, is new-born, recently sculptured, and brought to the light
+of day from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial winter, then a
+thousand lawless mysteries disappear, and broad harmonies take their
+places.
+
+But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial
+history of this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was
+more widely distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial
+epoch; that its present forests are scarcely past prime, if, indeed,
+they have reached prime; that the post-glacial day of the species is
+probably not half done; yet, when from a wider outlook the vast
+antiquity of the genus is considered, and its ancient richness in
+species and individuals; comparing our Sierra Giant and _Sequoia
+sempervirens_ of the Coast Range, the only other living species of
+Sequoia, with the twelve fossil species already discovered and described
+by Heer and Lesquereux, some of which seem to have flourished over vast
+areas in the Arctic regions and in Europe and our own territories,
+during tertiary and cretaceous times,--then indeed it becomes plain that
+our two surviving species, restricted to narrow belts within the limits
+of California, are mere remnants of the genus, both as to species and
+individuals, and that they probably are verging to extinction. But the
+verge of a period beginning in cretaceous times may have a breadth of
+tens of thousands of years, not to mention the possible existence of
+conditions calculated to multiply and reextend both species and
+individuals. This, however, is a branch of the question into which I do
+not now purpose to enter.
+
+In studying the fate of our forest king, we have thus far considered the
+action of purely natural causes only; but, unfortunately, _man_ is
+in the woods, and waste and pure destruction are making rapid headway.
+If the importance of forests were at all understood, even from an
+economic standpoint, their preservation would call forth the most
+watchful attention of government. Only of late years by means of forest
+reservations has the simplest groundwork for available legislation been
+laid, while in many of the finest groves every species of destruction is
+still moving on with accelerated speed.
+
+In the course of my explorations I found no fewer than five mills
+located on or near the lower edge of the Sequoia belt, all of which were
+cutting considerable quantities of Big Tree lumber. Most of the Fresno
+group are doomed to feed the mills recently erected near them, and a
+company of lumbermen are now cutting the magnificent forest on King's
+River. In these milling operations waste far exceeds use, for after the
+choice young manageable trees on any given spot have been felled, the
+woods are fired to clear the ground of limbs and refuse with reference
+to further operations, and, of course, most of the seedlings and
+saplings are destroyed.
+
+These mill ravages, however, are small as compared with the
+comprehensive destruction caused by "sheepmen." Incredible numbers of
+sheep are driven to the mountain pastures every summer, and their course
+is ever marked by desolation. Every wild garden is trodden down, the
+shrubs are stripped of leaves as if devoured by locusts, and the woods
+are burned. Running fires are set everywhere, with a view to clearing
+the ground of prostrate trunks, to facilitate the movements of the
+flocks and improve the pastures. The entire forest belt is thus swept
+and devastated from one extremity of the range to the other, and, with
+the exception of the resinous _Pinus contorta_, Sequoia suffers
+most of all. Indians burn off the underbrush in certain localities to
+facilitate deer-hunting, mountaineers and lumbermen carelessly allow
+their camp-fires to run; but the fires of the sheepmen, or
+_muttoneers_, form more than ninety per cent. of all destructive
+fires that range the Sierra forests.
+
+It appears, therefore, that notwithstanding our forest king might live
+on gloriously in Nature's keeping, it is rapidly vanishing before the
+fire and steel of man; and unless protective measures be speedily
+invented and applied, in a few decades, at the farthest, all that will be
+left of _Sequoia gigantea_ will be a few hacked and scarred
+monuments.
+
+
+TWO-LEAVED, OR TAMARACK, PINE
+(_Pinus contorta_, var._Marrayana_)
+
+This species forms the bulk of the alpine forests, extending along the
+range, above the fir zone, up to a height of from 8000 to 9500 feet
+above the sea, growing in beautiful order upon moraines that are
+scarcely changed as yet by post-glacial weathering. Compared with the
+giants of the lower zones, this is a small tree, seldom attaining a
+height of a hundred feet. The largest specimen I ever measured was
+ninety feet in height, and a little over six in diameter four feet from
+the ground. The average height of mature trees throughout the entire
+belt is probably not far from fifty or sixty feet, with a diameter of
+two feet. It is a well-proportioned, rather handsome little pine, with
+grayish-brown bark, and crooked, much-divided branches, which cover the
+greater portion of the trunk, not so densely, however, as to prevent its
+being seen. The lower limbs curve downward, gradually take a horizontal
+position about half-way up the trunk, then aspire more and more toward
+the summit, thus forming a sharp, conical top. The foliage is short and
+rigid, two leaves in a fascicle, arranged in comparatively long,
+cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough, up-curving branchlets. The
+cones are about two inches long, growing in stiff clusters among the
+needles, without making any striking effect, except while very young,
+when they are of a vivid crimson color, and the whole tree appears to be
+dotted with brilliant flowers. The sterile cones are still more showy,
+on account of their great abundance, often giving a reddish-yellow tinge
+to the whole mass of the foliage, and filling the air with pollen.
+
+No other pine on the range is so regularly planted as this one. Moraine
+forests sweep along the sides of the high, rocky valleys for miles
+without interruption; still, strictly speaking, they are not dense, for
+flecks of sunshine and flowers find their way into the darkest places,
+where the trees grow tallest and thickest. Tall, nutritious grasses are
+specially abundant beneath them, growing over all the ground, in
+sunshine and shade, over extensive areas like a farmer's crop, and
+serving as pasture for the multitude of sheep that are driven from the
+arid plains every summer as soon as the snow is melted.
+
+The Two-leaved Pine, more than any other, is subject to destruction by
+fire. The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled with resin, as though it
+had been showered down upon it like rain, so that even the green trees
+catch fire readily, and during strong winds whole forests are destroyed,
+the flames leaping from tree to tree, forming one continuous belt of
+roaring fire that goes surging and racing onward above the bending
+woods, like the grass-fires of a prairie. During the calm, dry season of
+Indian summer, the fire creeps quietly along the ground, feeding on the
+dry needles and burs; then, arriving at the foot of a tree, the resiny
+bark is ignited, and the heated air ascends in a powerful current,
+increasing in velocity, and dragging the flames swiftly upward; then the
+leaves catch fire, and an immense column of flame, beautifully spired on
+the edges, and tinted a rose-purple hue, rushes aloft thirty or forty
+feet above the top of the tree, forming a grand spectacle, especially on
+a dark night. It lasts, however, only a few seconds, vanishing with
+magical rapidity, to be succeeded by others along the fire-line at
+irregular intervals for weeks at a time--tree after tree flashing and
+darkening, leaving the trunks and branches hardly scarred. The heat,
+however, is sufficient to kill the trees, and in a few years the bark
+shrivels and falls off. Belts miles in extent are thus killed and left
+standing with the branches on, peeled and rigid, appearing gray in the
+distance, like misty clouds. Later the branches drop off, leaving a
+forest of bleached spars. At length the roots decay, and the forlorn
+trunks are blown down during some storm, and piled one upon another
+encumbering the ground until they are consumed by the next fire, and
+leave it ready for a fresh crop.
+
+The endurance of the species is shown by its wandering occasionally out
+over the lava plains with the Yellow Pine, and climbing moraineless
+mountain-sides with the Dwarf Pine, clinging to any chance support in
+rifts and crevices of storm-beaten rocks--always, however, showing the
+effects of such hardships in every feature.
+
+Down in sheltered lake hollows, on beds of rich alluvium, it varies so
+far from the common form as frequently to be taken for a distinct
+species. Here it grows in dense sods, like grasses, from forty to eighty
+feet high, bending all together to the breeze and whirling in eddying
+gusts more lithely than any other tree in the woods. I have frequently
+found specimens fifty feet high less than five inches in diameter. Being
+thus slender, and at the same time well clad with leafy boughs, it is
+oftentimes bent to the ground when laden with soft snow, forming
+beautiful arches in endless variety, some of which last until the
+melting of the snow in spring.
+
+
+MOUNTAIN PINE
+(_Pinus monticola_)
+
+The Mountain Pine is king of the alpine woods, brave, hardy, and
+long-lived, towering grandly above its companions, and becoming stronger
+and more imposing just where other species begin to crouch and
+disappear. At its best it is usually about ninety feet high and five or
+six in diameter, though a specimen is often met considerably larger than
+this. The trunk is as massive and as suggestive of enduring strength as
+that of an oak. About two thirds of the trunk is commonly free of limbs,
+but close, fringy tufts of sprays occur all the way down, like those
+which adorn the colossal shafts of Sequoia. The bark is deep
+reddish-brown upon trees that occupy exposed situations near its upper
+limit, and furrowed rather deeply, the main furrows running nearly
+parallel with each other, and connected by conspicuous cross furrows,
+which, with one exception, are, as far as I have noticed, peculiar to
+this species.
+
+The cones are from four to eight inches long, slender, cylindrical, and
+somewhat curved, resembling those of the common White Pine of the
+Atlantic coast. They grow in clusters of about from three to six or
+seven, becoming pendulous as they increase in weight, chiefly by the
+bending of the branches.
+
+This species is nearly related to the Sugar Pine, and, though not half
+so tall, it constantly suggests its noble relative in the way that it
+extends its long arms and in general habit. The Mountain Pine is first
+met on the upper margin of the fir zone, growing singly in a subdued,
+inconspicuous form, in what appear as chance situations, without making
+much impression on the general forest. Continuing up through the
+Two-leaved Pines in the same scattered growth, it begins to show its
+character, and at an elevation of about 10,000 feet attains its noblest
+development near the middle of the range, tossing its tough arms in the
+frosty air, welcoming storms and feeding on them, and reaching the grand
+old age of 1000 years.
+
+
+JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR
+(_Juniperus occidentalis_)
+
+The Juniper is preeminently a rock tree, occupying the baldest domes and
+pavements, where there is scarcely a handful of soil, at a height of
+from 7000 to 9500 feet. In such situations the trunk is frequently over
+eight feet in diameter, and not much more in height. The top is almost
+always dead in old trees, and great stubborn limbs push out horizontally
+that are mostly broken and bare at the ends, but densely covered and
+embedded here and there with bossy mounds of gray foliage. Some are mere
+weathered stumps, as broad as long, decorated with a few leafy sprays,
+reminding one of the crumbling towers of some ancient castle
+scantily draped with ivy. Only upon the head waters of the Carson have I
+found this species established on good moraine soil. Here it flourishes
+with the Silver and Two-leaved Pines, in great beauty and luxuriance,
+attaining a height of from forty to sixty feet, and manifesting but
+little of that rocky angularity so characteristic a feature throughout
+the greater portion, of its range. Two of the largest, growing at the
+head of Hope Valley, measured twenty-nine feet three inches and
+twenty-five feet six inches in circumference, respectively, four feet
+from the ground. The bark is of a bright cinnamon color, and, in thrifty
+trees, beautifully braided and reticulated, flaking off in thin,
+lustrous ribbons that are sometimes used by Indians for tent-matting.
+Its fine color and odd picturesqueness always catch an artist's eye, but
+to me the Juniper seems a singularly dull and taciturn tree, never
+speaking to one's heart. I have spent many a day and night in its
+company, in all kinds of weather, and have ever found it silent, cold,
+and rigid, like a column of ice. Its broad stumpiness, of course,
+precludes all possibility of waving, or even shaking; but it is not this
+rocky steadfastness that constitutes its silence. In calm, sun-days the
+Sugar Pine preaches the grandeur of the mountains like an apostle
+without moving a leaf.
+
+[Illustration: JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR.]
+
+On level rocks it dies standing, and wastes insensibly out of existence
+like granite, the wind exerting about as little control over it alive or
+dead as it does over a glacier boulder. Some are undoubtedly over 2000
+years old. All the trees of the alpine woods suffer, more or less, from
+avalanches, the Two-leaved Pine most of all. Gaps two or three hundred
+yards wide, extending from the upper limit of the tree-line to the
+bottoms of valleys and lake basins, are of common occurrence in all the
+upper forests, resembling the clearings of settlers in the old
+backwoods. Scarcely a tree is spared, even the soil is scraped away,
+while the thousands of uprooted pines and spruces are piled upon one
+another heads downward, and tucked snugly in along the sides of the
+clearing in two windrows, like lateral moraines. The pines lie with
+branches wilted and drooping like weeds. Not so the burly junipers.
+After braving in silence the storms of perhaps a dozen or twenty
+centuries, they seem in this, their last calamity, to become somewhat
+communicative, making sign of a very unwilling acceptance of their fate,
+holding themselves well up from the ground on knees and elbows,
+seemingly ill at ease, and anxious, like stubborn wrestlers, to rise
+again.
+
+
+HEMLOCK SPRUCE
+(_Tsuga Pattoniana_)
+
+The Hemlock Spruce is the most singularly beautiful of all the
+California coniferae. So slender is its axis at the top, that it bends
+over and droops like the stalk of a nodding lily. The branches droop
+also, and divide into innumerable slender, waving sprays, which are
+arranged in a varied, eloquent harmony that is wholly indescribable. Its
+cones are purple, and hang free, in the form of little tassels two
+inches long from all the sprays from top to bottom. Though exquisitely
+delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best where the snow lies
+deepest, far up in the region of storms, at an elevation of from 9000 to
+9500 feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it is capable of growing
+considerably higher, say 10,500 feet. The tallest specimens, growing in
+sheltered hollows somewhat beneath the heaviest wind-currents, are from
+eighty to a hundred feet high, and from two to four feet in diameter.
+The very largest specimen I ever found was nineteen feet seven inches in
+circumference four feet from the ground, growing on the edge of Lake
+Hollow, at an elevation of 9250 feet above the level of the sea. At the
+age of twenty or thirty years it becomes fruitful, and hangs out its
+beautiful purple cones at the ends of the slender sprays, where they
+swing free in the breeze, and contrast delightfully with the cool green
+foliage. They are translucent when young, and their beauty is delicious.
+After they are fully ripe, they spread their shell-like scales and allow
+the brown-winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while the empty cones
+remain to beautify the tree until the coming of a fresh crop.
+
+[Illustration: STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH.]
+
+The staminate cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in
+bright clusters, yellow, and rose, and crimson. Those of the Hemlock
+Spruce are the most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue
+flowers, each on a slender stem.
+
+Under all conditions, sheltered or storm-beaten, well-fed or ill-fed,
+this tree is singularly graceful in habit. Even at its highest limit
+upon exposed ridge-tops, though compelled to crouch in dense thickets,
+huddled close together, as if for mutual protection, it still manages to
+throw out its sprays in irrepressible loveliness; while on well-ground
+moraine soil it develops a perfectly tropical luxuriance of foliage and
+fruit, and is the very loveliest tree in the forest; poised in thin
+white sunshine, clad with branches from head to foot, yet not in the
+faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in unassuming majesty,
+drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its race,
+loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven and joyously
+receptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like sensitive
+tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it. No other of our alpine
+conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches yield to
+the mountains' gentlest breath; yet is it strong to meet the wildest
+onsets of the gale,--strong not in resistance, but compliance, bowing,
+snow-laden, to the ground, gracefully accepting burial month after month
+in the darkness beneath the heavy mantle of winter.
+
+When the first soft snow begins to fall, the flakes lodge in the leaves,
+weighing down the branches against the trunk. Then the axis bends yet
+lower and lower, until the slender top touches the ground, thus forming
+a fine ornamental arch. The snow still falls lavishly, and the whole
+tree is at length buried, to sleep and rest in its beautiful grave as
+though dead. Entire groves of young trees, from ten to forty feet high,
+are thus buried every winter like slender grasses. But, like the violets
+and daisies which the heaviest snows crush not, they are safe. It is as
+though this were only Nature's method of putting her darlings to sleep
+instead of leaving them exposed to the biting storms of winter.
+
+Thus warmly wrapped they await the summer resurrection. The snow becomes
+soft in the sunshine, and freezes at night, making the mass hard and
+compact, like ice, so that during the months of April and May you can
+ride a horse over the prostrate groves without catching sight of a
+single leaf. At length the down-pouring sunshine sets them free. First
+the elastic tops of the arches begin to appear, then one branch after
+another, each springing loose with a gentle rustling sound, and at
+length the whole tree, with the assistance of the winds, gradually
+unbends and rises and settles back into its place in the warm air, as
+dry and feathery and fresh as young ferns just out of the coil.
+
+Some of the finest groves I have yet found are on the southern slopes of
+Lassen's Butte. There are also many charming companies on the head
+waters of the Tuolumne, Merced, and San Joaquin, and, in general, the
+species is so far from being rare that you can scarcely fail to find
+groves of considerable extent in crossing the range, choose what pass
+you may. The Mountain Pine grows beside it, and more frequently the
+two-leaved species; but there are many beautiful groups, numbering 1000
+individuals, or more, without a single intruder.
+
+I wish I had space to write more of the surpassing beauty of this
+favorite spruce. Every tree-lover is sure to regard it with special
+admiration; apathetic mountaineers, even, seeking only game or gold,
+stop to gaze on first meeting it, and mutter to themselves: "That's a
+mighty pretty tree," some of them adding, "d----d pretty!" In autumn,
+when its cones are ripe, the little striped tamias, and the Douglas
+squirrel, and the Clark crow make a happy stir in its groves. The deer
+love to lie down beneath its spreading branches; bright streams from the
+snow that is always near ripple through its groves, and bryanthus
+spreads precious carpets in its shade. But the best words only hint its
+charms. Come to the mountains and see.
+
+
+DWARF PINE
+(_Pinus albicaulis_)
+
+This species forms the extreme edge of the timber line throughout nearly
+the whole extent of the range on both flanks. It is first met growing in
+company with _Pinus contorta_, var. _Murrayana_, on the upper margin of
+the belt, as an erect tree from fifteen to thirty feet high and from one
+to two feet in thickness; thence it goes straggling up the flanks of the
+summit peaks, upon moraines or crumbling ledges, wherever it can obtain
+a foothold, to an elevation of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, where it
+dwarfs to a mass of crumpled, prostrate branches, covered with slender,
+upright shoots, each tipped with a short, close-packed tassel of leaves.
+The bark is smooth and purplish, in some places almost white. The
+fertile cones grow in rigid clusters upon the upper branches, dark
+chocolate in color while young, and bear beautiful pearly seeds about
+the size of peas, most of which are eaten by two species of tamias and
+the notable Clark crow. The staminate cones occur in clusters, about an
+inch wide, down among the leaves, and, as they are colored bright
+rose-purple, they give rise to a lively, flowery appearance little
+looked for in such a tree.
+
+[Illustration: GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES.]
+
+Pines are commonly regarded as sky-loving trees that must necessarily
+aspire or die. This species forms a marked exception, creeping lowly, in
+compliance with the most rigorous demands of climate, yet enduring
+bravely to a more advanced age than many of its lofty relatives in the
+sun-lands below. Seen from a distance, it would never be taken for a
+tree of any kind. Yonder, for example, is Cathedral Peak, some three
+miles away, with a scattered growth of this pine creeping like mosses
+over the roof and around the beveled edges of the north gable, nowhere
+giving any hint of an ascending axis. When approached quite near it
+still appears matted and heathy, and is so low that one experiences no
+great difficulty in walking over the top of it. Yet it is seldom
+absolutely prostrate, at its lowest usually attaining a height of three
+or four feet, with a main trunk, and branches outspread and intertangled
+above it, as if in ascending they had been checked by a ceiling, against
+which they had grown and been compelled to spread horizontally. The
+winter snow is indeed such a ceiling, lasting half the year; while the
+pressed, shorn surface is made yet smoother by violent winds, armed with
+cutting sand-grains, that beat down any shoot that offers to rise much
+above the general level, and carve the dead trunks and branches in
+beautiful patterns.
+
+During stormy nights I have often camped snugly beneath the interlacing
+arches of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for
+centuries, make fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers, such
+as deer and wild sheep, who paw out oval hollows and lie beneath the
+larger trees in safe and comfortable concealment.
+
+[Illustration: A DWARF PINE.]
+
+The longevity of this lowly dwarf is far greater than would be guessed.
+Here, for example, is a specimen, growing at an elevation of 10,700
+feet, which seems as though it might be plucked up by the roots, for it
+is only three and a half inches in diameter, and its topmost tassel is
+hardly three feet above the ground. Cutting it half through and counting
+the annual rings with the aid of a lens, we find its age to be no less
+than 255 years. Here is another telling specimen about the same height,
+426 years old, whose trunk is only six inches in diameter; and one of
+its supple branchlets, hardly an eighth of an inch in diameter inside
+the bark, is seventy-five years old, and so filled with oily balsam, and
+so well seasoned by storms, that we may tie it in knots like a
+whip-cord.
+
+
+WHITE PINE
+(_Pinus flexilis_)
+
+This species is widely distributed throughout the Rocky Mountains, and
+over all the higher of the many ranges of the Great Basin, between the
+Wahsatch Mountains and the Sierra, where it is known as White Pine. In
+the Sierra it is sparsely scattered along the eastern flank, from Bloody
+Canon southward nearly to the extremity of the range, opposite the
+village of Lone Pine, nowhere forming any appreciable portion of the
+general forest. From its peculiar position, in loose, straggling
+parties, it seems to have been derived from the Basin ranges to the
+eastward, where it is abundant.
+
+It is a larger tree than the Dwarf Pine. At an elevation of about 9000
+feet above the sea, it often attains a height of forty or fifty feet,
+and a diameter of from three to five feet. The cones open freely when
+ripe, and are twice as large as those of the _albicaulis_, and the
+foliage and branches are more open, having a tendency to sweep out in
+free, wild curves, like those of the Mountain Pine, to which it is
+closely allied. It is seldom found lower than 9000 feet above sea-level,
+but from this elevation it pushes upward over the roughest ledges to the
+extreme limit of tree-growth, where, in its dwarfed, storm-crushed
+condition, it is more like the white-barked species.
+
+Throughout Utah and Nevada it is one of the principal timber-trees,
+great quantities being cut every year for the mines. The famous White
+Pine Mining District, White Pine City, and the White Pine Mountains have
+derived their names from it.
+
+
+NEEDLE PINE
+(_Pinus aristata_)
+
+This species is restricted in the Sierra to the southern portion of the
+range, about the head waters of Kings and Kern rivers, where it forms
+extensive forests, and in some places accompanies the Dwarf Pine to the
+extreme limit of tree-growth.
+
+It is first met at an elevation of between 9000 and 10,000 feet, and
+runs up to 11,000 without seeming to suffer greatly from the climate or
+the leanness of the soil. It is a much finer tree than the Dwarf Pine.
+Instead of growing in clumps and low, heathy mats, it manages in some
+way to maintain an erect position, and usually stands single. Wherever
+the young trees are at all sheltered, they grow up straight and arrowy,
+with delicately tapered bole, and ascending branches terminated with
+glossy, bottle-brush tassels. At middle age, certain limbs are
+specialized and pushed far out for the bearing of cones, after the
+manner of the Sugar Pine; and in old age these branches droop and cast
+about in every direction, giving rise to very picturesque effects. The
+trunk becomes deep brown and rough, like that of the Mountain Pine,
+while the young cones are of a strange, dull, blackish-blue color,
+clustered on the upper branches. When ripe they are from three to four
+inches long, yellowish brown, resembling in every way those of the
+Mountain Pine. Excepting the Sugar Pine, no tree on the mountains is so
+capable of individual expression, while in grace of form and movement it
+constantly reminds one of the Hemlock Spruce.
+
+[Illustration: OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES.]
+
+The largest specimen I measured was a little over five feet in diameter
+and ninety feet in height, but this is more than twice the ordinary
+size.
+
+This species is common throughout the Rocky Mountains and most of the
+short ranges of the Great Basin, where it is called the Fox-tail Pine,
+from its long dense leaf-tassels. On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and
+Golden Gate ranges it is quite abundant. About a foot or eighteen inches
+of the ends of the branches is densely packed with stiff outstanding
+needles which radiate like an electric fox or squirrel's tail. The
+needles have a glossy polish, and the sunshine sifting through them
+makes them burn with silvery luster, while their number and elastic
+temper tell delightfully in the winds. This tree is here still more
+original and picturesque than in the Sierra, far surpassing not only its
+companion conifers in this respect, but also the most noted of the
+lowland oaks. Some stand firmly erect, feathered with radiant tassels
+down to the ground, forming slender tapering towers of shining verdure;
+others, with two or three specialized branches pushed out at right
+angles to the trunk and densely clad with tasseled sprays, take the form
+of beautiful ornamental crosses. Again in the same woods you find trees
+that are made up of several boles united near the ground, spreading at
+the sides in a plane parallel to the axis of the mountain, with the
+elegant tassels hung in charming order between them, making a harp held
+against the main wind lines where they are most effective in playing the
+grand storm harmonies. And besides these there are many variable arching
+forms, alone or in groups, with innumerable tassels drooping beneath the
+arches or radiant above them, and many lowly giants of no particular
+form that have braved the storms of a thousand years. But whether old or
+young, sheltered or exposed to the wildest gales, this tree is ever
+found irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque, and offers a richer
+and more varied series of forms to the artist than any other conifer I
+know of.
+
+
+NUT PINE
+(_Pinus monophylla_)
+
+The Nut Pine covers or rather dots the eastern flank of the Sierra, to
+which it is mostly restricted, in grayish, bush-like patches, from the
+margin of the sage-plains to an elevation of from 7000 to 8000 feet.
+
+A more contentedly fruitful and unaspiring conifer could not be
+conceived. All the species we have been sketching make departures more
+or less distant from the typical spire form, but none goes so far as
+this. Without any apparent exigency of climate or soil, it remains near
+the ground, throwing out crooked, divergent branches like an orchard
+apple-tree, and seldom pushes a single shoot higher than fifteen or
+twenty feet above the ground.
+
+The average thickness of the trunk is, perhaps, about ten or twelve
+inches. The leaves are mostly undivided, like round awls, instead of
+being separated, like those of other pines, into twos and threes and
+fives. The cones are green while growing, and are usually found over all
+the tree, forming quite a marked feature as seen against the bluish-gray
+foliage. They are quite small, only about two inches in length, and give
+no promise of edible nuts; but when we come to open them, we find that
+about half the entire bulk of the cone is made up of sweet, nutritious
+seeds, the kernels of which are nearly as large as those of hazel-nuts.
+
+This is undoubtedly the most important food-tree on the Sierra, and
+furnishes the Mono, Carson, and Walker River Indians with more and
+better nuts than all the other species taken together. It is the
+Indians' own tree, and many a white man have they killed for cutting it
+down.
+
+In its development Nature seems to have aimed at the formation of as
+great a fruit-bearing surface as possible. Being so low and accessible,
+the cones are readily beaten off with poles, and the nuts procured by
+roasting them until the scales open. In bountiful seasons a single
+Indian will gather thirty or forty bushels of them--a fine squirrelish
+employment.
+
+Of all the conifers along the eastern base of the Sierra, and on all the
+many mountain groups and short ranges of the Great Basin, this foodful
+little pine is the commonest tree, and the most important. Nearly every
+mountain is planted with it to a height of from 8000 to 9000 feet above
+the sea. Some are covered from base to summit by this one species, with
+only a sparse growth of juniper on the lower slopes to break the
+continuity of its curious woods, which, though dark-looking at a
+distance, are almost shadeless, and have none of the damp, leafy glens
+and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods. Tens of thousands of
+acres occur in continuous belts. Indeed, viewed comprehensively the
+entire Basin seems to be pretty evenly divided into level plains dotted
+with sage-bushes and mountain-chains covered with Nut Pines. No slope is
+too rough, none too dry, for these bountiful orchards of the red man.
+
+The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It
+furnishes charcoal and timber for the mines, and, with the juniper,
+supplies the ranches with fuel and rough fencing. In fruitful seasons
+the nut crop is perhaps greater than the California wheat crop, which
+exerts so much influence throughout the food markets of the world. When,
+the crop is ripe, the Indians make ready the long beating-poles; bags,
+baskets, mats, and sacks are collected; the women out at service among
+the settlers, washing or drudging, assemble at the family huts; the men
+leave their ranch work; old and young, all are mounted on ponies and
+start in great glee to the nut-lands, forming curiously picturesque
+cavalcades; flaming scarfs and calico skirts stream loosely over the
+knotty ponies, two squaws usually astride of each, with baby midgets
+bandaged in baskets slung on their backs or balanced on the saddle-bow;
+while nut-baskets and water-jars project from each side, and the long
+beating-poles make angles in every direction. Arriving at some
+well-known central point where grass and water are found, the squaws
+with baskets, the men with poles ascend the ridges to the laden trees,
+followed by the children. Then the beating begins right merrily, the
+burs fly in every direction, rolling down the slopes, lodging here and
+there against rocks and sage-bushes, chased and gathered by the women
+and children with fine natural gladness. Smoke-columns speedily mark the
+joyful scene of their labors as the roasting-fires are kindled, and, at
+night, assembled in gay circles garrulous as jays, they begin the first
+nut feast of the season.
+
+The nuts are about half an inch long and a quarter of an inch in
+diameter, pointed at the top, round at the base, light brown in general
+color, and, like many other pine seeds, handsomely dotted with purple,
+like birds' eggs. The shells are thin and may be crushed between the
+thumb and finger. The kernels are white, becoming brown by roasting, and
+are sweet to every palate, being eaten by birds, squirrels, dogs,
+horses, and men. Perhaps less than one bushel in a thousand of the whole
+crop is ever gathered. Still, besides supplying their own wants, in
+times of plenty the Indians bring large quantities to market; then they
+are eaten around nearly every fireside in the State, and are even fed to
+horses occasionally instead of barley.
+
+Of other trees growing on the Sierra, but forming a very small part of
+the general forest, we may briefly notice the following:
+
+_Chamoecyparis Lawsoniana_ is a magnificent tree in the coast
+ranges, but small in the Sierra. It is found only well to the northward
+along the banks of cool streams on the upper Sacramento toward Mount
+Shasta. Only a few trees of this species, as far as I have seen, have as
+yet gained a place in the Sierra woods. It has evidently been derived
+from the coast range by way of the tangle of connecting mountains at the
+head of the Sacramento Valley.
+
+In shady dells and on cool stream banks of the northern Sierra we also
+find the Yew (_Taxus brevifolia_).
+
+The interesting Nutmeg Tree (_Torreya Californica_) is sparsely
+distributed along the western flank of the range at an elevation of
+about 4000 feet, mostly in gulches and canons. It is a small, prickly
+leaved, glossy evergreen, like a conifer, from twenty to fifty feet
+high, and one to two feet in diameter. The fruit resembles a green-gage
+plum, and contains one seed, about the size of an acorn, and like a
+nutmeg, hence the common name. The wood is fine-grained and of a
+beautiful, creamy yellow color like box, sweet-scented when dry, though
+the green leaves emit a disagreeable odor.
+
+_Betula occidentalis_, the only birch, is a small, slender tree
+restricted to the eastern flank of the range along stream-sides below
+the pine-belt, especially in Owen's Valley.
+
+Alder, Maple, and Nuttall's Flowering Dogwood make beautiful bowers over
+swift, cool streams at an elevation of from 3000 to 5000 feet, mixed
+more or less with willows and cottonwood; and above these in lake basins
+the aspen forms fine ornamental groves, and lets its light shine
+gloriously in the autumn months.
+
+The Chestnut Oak (_Quercus densiflora_) seems to have come from the
+coast range around the head of the Sacramento Valley, like the
+_Chamaecyparis_, but as it extends southward along the lower edge
+of the main pine-belt it grows smaller until it finally dwarfs to a mere
+chaparral bush. In the coast mountains it is a fine, tall, rather
+slender tree, about from sixty to seventy-five feet high, growing with
+the grand _Sequoia sempervirens_, or Redwood. But unfortunately it
+is too good to live, and is now being rapidly destroyed for tan-bark.
+
+Besides the common Douglas Oak and the grand _Quercus Wislizeni_ of
+the foot-hills, and several small ones that make dense growths of
+chaparral, there are two mountain-oaks that grow with the pines up to an
+elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, and greatly enhance the
+beauty of the yosemite parks. These are the Mountain Live Oak and the
+Kellogg Oak, named in honor of the admirable botanical pioneer of
+California. Kellogg's Oak (_Quercus Kelloggii_) is a firm, bright,
+beautiful tree, reaching a height of sixty feet, four to seven feet in
+diameter, with wide-spreading branches, and growing at an elevation of
+from 3000 to 5000 feet in sunny valleys and flats among the evergreens,
+and higher in a dwarfed state. In the cliff-bound parks about 4000 feet
+above the sea it is so abundant and effective it might fairly be called
+the Yosemite Oak. The leaves make beautiful masses of purple in the
+spring, and yellow in ripe autumn; while its acorns are eagerly gathered
+by Indians, squirrels, and woodpeckers. The Mountain Live Oak (_Q.
+Chrysolepis_) is a tough, rugged mountaineer of a tree, growing
+bravely and attaining noble dimensions on the roughest earthquake
+taluses in deep canons and yosemite valleys. The trunk is usually short,
+dividing near the ground into great, wide-spreading limbs, and these
+again into a multitude of slender sprays, many of them cord-like and
+drooping to the ground, like those of the Great White Oak of the
+lowlands (_Q. lobata_). The top of the tree where there is plenty
+of space is broad and bossy, with a dense covering of shining leaves,
+making delightful canopies, the complicated system of gray, interlacing,
+arching branches as seen from beneath being exceedingly rich and
+picturesque. No other tree that I know dwarfs so regularly and
+completely as this under changes of climate due to changes in elevation.
+At the foot of a canon 4000 feet above the sea you may find magnificent
+specimens of this oak fifty feet high, with craggy, bulging trunks, five
+to seven feet in diameter, and at the head of the canon, 2500 feet
+higher, a dense, soft, low, shrubby growth of the same species, while
+all the way up the canon between these extremes of size and habit a
+perfect gradation may be traced. The largest I have seen was fifty feet
+high, eight feet in diameter, and about seventy-five feet in spread. The
+trunk was all knots and buttresses, gray like granite, and about as
+angular and irregular as the boulders on which it was growing--a type of
+steadfast, unwedgeable strength.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
+(_Sciurus Douglasii_)
+
+The Douglas Squirrel is by far the most interesting and influential of
+the California sciuridae, surpassing every other species in force of
+character, numbers, and extent of range, and in the amount of influence
+he brings to bear upon the health and distribution of the vast forests
+he inhabits.
+
+Go where you will throughout the noble woods of the Sierra Nevada, among
+the giant pines and spruces of the lower zones, up through the towering
+Silver Firs to the storm-bent thickets of the summit peaks, you
+everywhere find this little squirrel the master-existence. Though only a
+few inches long, so intense is his fiery vigor and restlessness, he
+stirs every grove with wild life, and makes himself more important than
+even the huge bears that shuffle through the tangled underbrush beneath
+him. Every wind is fretted by his voice, almost every bole and branch
+feels the sting of his sharp feet. How much the growth of the trees is
+stimulated by this means it is not easy to learn, but his action in
+manipulating their seeds is more appreciable. Nature has made him master
+forester and committed most of her coniferous crops to his paws.
+Probably over fifty per cent. of all the cones ripened on the Sierra are
+cut off and handled by the Douglas alone, and of those of the Big Trees
+perhaps ninety per cent. pass through his hands: the greater portion is
+of course stored away for food to last during the winter and spring, but
+some of them are tucked separately into loosely covered holes, where
+some of the seeds germinate and become trees. But the Sierra is only one
+of the many provinces over which he holds sway, for his dominion extends
+over all the Redwood Belt of the Coast Mountains, and far northward
+throughout the majestic forests of Oregon, Washington, and British
+Columbia. I make haste to mention these facts, to show upon how
+substantial a foundation the importance I ascribe to him rests.
+
+The Douglas is closely allied to the Red Squirrel or Chickaree of the
+eastern woods. Ours may be a lineal descendant of this species,
+distributed westward to the Pacific by way of the Great Lakes and the
+Rocky Mountains, and thence southward along our forested ranges. This
+view is suggested by the fact that our species becomes redder and more
+Chickaree-like in general, the farther it is traced back along the
+course indicated above. But whatever their relationship, and the
+evolutionary forces that have acted upon them, the Douglas is now the
+larger and more beautiful animal.
+
+From the nose to the root of the tail he measures about eight inches;
+and his tail, which he so effectively uses in interpreting his feelings,
+is about six inches in length. He wears dark bluish-gray over the back
+and half-way down the sides, bright buff on the belly, with a stripe of
+dark gray, nearly black, separating the upper and under colors; this
+dividing stripe, however, is not very sharply defined. He has long black
+whiskers, which gives him a rather fierce look when observed closely,
+strong claws, sharp as fish-hooks, and the brightest of bright eyes,
+full of telling speculation.
+
+A King's River Indian told me that they call him "Pillillooeet," which,
+rapidly pronounced with the first syllable heavily accented, is not
+unlike the lusty exclamation he utters on his way up a tree when
+excited. Most mountaineers in California call him the Pine Squirrel; and
+when I asked an old trapper whether he knew our little forester, he
+replied with brightening countenance: "Oh, yes, of course I know him;
+everybody knows him. When I'm huntin' in the woods, I often find out
+where the deer are by his barkin' at 'em. I call 'em Lightnin'
+Squirrels, because they're so mighty quick and peert."
+
+All the true squirrels are more or less birdlike in speech and
+movements; but the Douglas is preeminently so, possessing, as he does,
+every attribute peculiarly squirrelish enthusiastically concentrated. He
+is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his
+favorite evergreens crisp and glossy and undiseased as a sunbeam. Give
+him wings and he would outfly any bird in the woods. His big gray cousin
+is a looser animal, seemingly light enough to float on the wind; yet
+when leaping from limb to limb, or out of one tree-top to another, he
+sometimes halts to gather strength, as if making efforts concerning the
+upshot of which he does not always feel exactly confident. But the
+Douglas, with his denser body, leaps and glides in hidden strength,
+seemingly as independent of common muscles as a mountain stream. He
+threads the tasseled branches of the pines, stirring their needles like
+a rustling breeze; now shooting across openings in arrowy lines; now
+launching in curves, glinting deftly from side to side in sudden
+zigzags, and swirling in giddy loops and spirals around the knotty
+trunks; getting into what seem to be the most impossible situations
+without sense of danger; now on his haunches, now on his head; yet ever
+graceful, and punctuating his most irrepressible outbursts of energy
+with little dots and dashes of perfect repose. He is, without exception,
+the wildest animal I ever saw,--a fiery, sputtering little bolt of life,
+luxuriating in quick oxygen and the woods' best juices. One can hardly
+think of such a creature being dependent, like the rest of us, on
+climate and food. But, after all, it requires no long acquaintance to
+learn he is human, for he works for a living. His busiest time is in the
+Indian summer. Then he gathers burs and hazel-nuts like a plodding
+farmer, working continuously every day for hours; saying not a word;
+cutting off the ripe cones at the top of his speed, as if employed by
+the job, and examining every branch in regular order, as if careful that
+not one should escape him; then, descending, he stores them away beneath
+logs and stumps, in anticipation of the pinching hunger days of winter.
+He seems himself a kind of coniferous fruit,--both fruit and flower. The
+resiny essences of the pines pervade every pore of his body, and eating
+his flesh is like chewing gum.
+
+One never tires of this bright chip of nature,--this brave little voice
+crying in the wilderness,--of observing his many works and ways, and
+listening to his curious language. His musical, piny gossip is as savory
+to the ear as balsam to the palate; and, though he has not exactly the
+gift of song, some of his notes are as sweet as those of a
+linnet--almost flute-like in softness, while others prick and tingle
+like thistles. He is the mocking-bird of squirrels, pouring forth mixed
+chatter and song like a perennial fountain; barking like a dog,
+screaming like a hawk, chirping like a blackbird or a sparrow; while in
+bluff, audacious noisiness he is a very jay.
+
+[Illustration: TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE
+WHEN SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR.]
+
+In descending the trunk of a tree with the intention of alighting on the
+ground, he preserves a cautious silence, mindful, perhaps, of foxes and
+wildcats; but while rocking safely at home in the pine-tops there is no
+end to his capers and noise; and woe to the gray squirrel or chipmunk
+that ventures to set foot on his favorite tree! No matter how slyly they
+trace the furrows of the bark, they are speedily discovered, and kicked
+down-stairs with comic vehemence, while a torrent of angry notes comes
+rushing from his whiskered lips that sounds remarkably like swearing. He
+will even attempt at times to drive away dogs and men, especially if he
+has had no previous knowledge of them. Seeing a man for the first time,
+he approaches nearer and nearer, until within a few feet; then, with an
+angry outburst, he makes a sudden rush, all teeth and eyes, as if about
+to eat you up. But, finding that the big, forked animal doesn't scare,
+he prudently beats a retreat, and sets himself up to reconnoiter on some
+overhanging branch, scrutinizing every movement you make with ludicrous
+solemnity. Gathering courage, he ventures down the trunk again, churring
+and chirping, and jerking nervously up and down in curious loops, eyeing
+you all the time, as if snowing off and demanding your admiration.
+Finally, growing calmer, he settles down in a comfortable posture on
+some horizontal branch commanding a good view, and beats time with his
+tail to a steady "Chee-up! chee-up!" or, when somewhat less excited,
+"Pee-ah!" with the first syllable keenly accented, and the second drawn
+out like the scream of a hawk,--repeating this slowly and more
+emphatically at first, then gradually faster, until a rate of about 150
+words a minute is reached; usually sitting all the time on his haunches,
+with paws resting on his breast, which pulses visibly with each word. It
+is remarkable, too, that, though articulating distinctly, he keeps his
+mouth shut most of the time, and speaks through his nose. I have
+occasionally observed him even eating Sequoia seeds and nibbling a
+troublesome flea, without ceasing or in any way confusing his "Pee-ah!
+pee-ah!" for a single moment.
+
+While ascending trees all his claws come into play, but in descending
+the weight of his body is sustained chiefly by those of the hind feet;
+still in neither case do his movements suggest effort, though if you are
+near enough you may see the bulging strength of his short, bear-like
+arms, and note his sinewy fists clinched in the bark.
+
+Whether going up or down, he carries his tail extended at full length in
+line with his body, unless it be required for gestures. But while
+running along horizontal limbs or fallen trunks, it is frequently folded
+forward over the back, with the airy tip daintily upcurled. In cool
+weather it keeps him warm. Then, after he has finished his meal, you may
+see him crouched close on some level limb with his tail-robe neatly
+spread and reaching forward to his ears, the electric, outstanding hairs
+quivering in the breeze like pine-needles. But in wet or very cold
+weather he stays in his nest, and while curled up there his comforter is
+long enough to come forward around his nose. It is seldom so cold,
+however, as to prevent his going out to his stores when hungry.
+
+Once as I lay storm-bound on the upper edge of the timber line on Mount
+Shasta, the thermometer nearly at zero and the sky thick with driving
+snow, a Douglas came bravely out several times from one of the lower
+hollows of a Dwarf Pine near my camp, faced the wind without seeming to
+feel it much, frisked lightly about over the mealy snow, and dug his way
+down to some hidden seeds with wonderful precision, as if to his eyes
+the thick snow-covering were glass.
+
+No other of the Sierra animals of my acquaintance is better fed, not
+even the deer, amid abundance of sweet herbs and shrubs, or the mountain
+sheep, or omnivorous bears. His food consists of grass-seeds, berries,
+hazel-nuts, chinquapins, and the nuts and seeds of all the coniferous
+trees without exception,--Pine, Fir, Spruce, Libocedrus, Juniper, and
+Sequoia,--he is fond of them all, and they all agree with him, green or
+ripe. No cone is too large for him to manage, none so small as to be
+beneath his notice. The smaller ones, such as those of the Hemlock, and
+the Douglas Spruce, and the Two-leaved Pine, he cuts off and eats on a
+branch of the tree, without allowing them to fall; beginning at the
+bottom of the cone and cutting away the scales to expose the seeds; not
+gnawing by guess, like a bear, but turning them round and round in
+regular order, in compliance with their spiral arrangement.
+
+When thus employed, his location in the tree is betrayed by a dribble of
+scales, shells, and seed-wings, and, every few minutes, by the fall of
+the stripped axis of the cone. Then of course he is ready for another,
+and if you are watching you may catch a glimpse of him as he glides
+silently out to the end of a branch and see him examining the
+cone-clusters until he finds one to his mind; then, leaning over, pull
+back the springy needles out of his way, grasp the cone with his paws to
+prevent its falling, snip it off in an incredibly short time, seize it
+with jaws grotesquely stretched, and return to his chosen seat near the
+trunk. But the immense size of the cones of the Sugar Pine--from fifteen
+to twenty inches in length--and those of the Jeffrey variety of the
+Yellow Pine compel him to adopt a quite different method. He cuts them
+off without attempting to hold them, then goes down and drags them from
+where they have chanced to fall up to the bare, swelling ground around
+the instep of the tree, where he demolishes them in the same methodical
+way, beginning at the bottom and following the scale-spirals to the top.
+
+[Illustration: SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE. (NAT. SIZE.)]
+
+From a single Sugar Pine cone he gets from two to four hundred seeds
+about half the size of a hazel-nut, so that in a few minutes he can
+procure enough to last a week. He seems, however, to prefer those of the
+two Silver First above all others; perhaps because they are most easily
+obtained, as the scales drop off when ripe without needing to be cut.
+Both species are filled with an exceedingly pungent, aromatic oil, which
+spices all his flesh, and is of itself sufficient to account for his
+lightning energy.
+
+You may easily know this little workman by his chips. On sunny hillsides
+around the principal trees they lie in big piles,--bushels and
+basketfuls of them, all fresh and clean, making the most beautiful
+kitchen-middens imaginable. The brown and yellow scales and nut-shells
+are as abundant and as delicately penciled and tinted as the shells
+along the sea-shore; while the beautiful red and purple seed-wings
+mingled with them would lead one to fancy that innumerable butterflies
+had there met their fate.
+
+He feasts on all the species long before they are ripe, but is wise
+enough to wait until they are matured before he gathers them into his
+barns. This is in October and November, which with him are the two
+busiest months of the year. All kinds of burs, big and little, are now
+cut off and showered down alike, and the ground is speedily covered with
+them. A constant thudding and bumping is kept up; some of the larger
+cones chancing to fall on old logs make the forest reecho with the
+sound. Other nut-eaters less industrious know well what is going on, and
+hasten to carry away the cones as they fall. But however busy the
+harvester may be, he is not slow to descry the pilferers below, and
+instantly leaves his work to drive them away. The little striped tamias
+is a thorn in his flesh, stealing persistently, punish him as he may.
+The large Gray Squirrel gives trouble also, although the Douglas has
+been accused of stealing from him. Generally, however, just the opposite
+is the case.
+
+The excellence of the Sierra evergreens is well known to nurserymen
+throughout the world, consequently there is considerable demand for the
+seeds. The greater portion of the supply has hitherto been procured by
+chopping down the trees in the more accessible sections of the forest
+alongside of bridle-paths that cross the range. Sequoia seeds at first
+brought from twenty to thirty dollars per pound, and therefore were
+eagerly sought after. Some of the smaller fruitful trees were cut down
+in the groves not protected by government, especially those of Fresno
+and King's River. Most of the Sequoias, however, are of so gigantic a
+size that the seedsmen have to look for the greater portion of their
+supplies to the Douglas, who soon learns he is no match for these
+freebooters. He is wise enough, however, to cease working the instant he
+perceives them, and never fails to embrace every opportunity to recover
+his burs whenever they happen to be stored in any place accessible to
+him, and the busy seedsman often finds on returning to camp that the
+little Douglas has exhaustively spoiled the spoiler. I know one
+seed-gatherer who, whenever he robs the squirrels, scatters wheat or
+barley beneath the trees as conscience-money.
+
+The want of appreciable life remarked by so many travelers in the Sierra
+forests is never felt at this time of year. Banish all the humming
+insects and the birds and quadrupeds, leaving only Sir Douglas, and the
+most solitary of our so-called solitudes would still throb with ardent
+life. But if you should go impatiently even into the most populous of
+the groves on purpose to meet him, and walk about looking up among the
+branches, you would see very little of him. But lie down at the foot of
+one of the trees and straightway he will come. For, in the midst of the
+ordinary forest sounds, the falling of burs, piping of quails, the
+screaming of the Clark Crow, and the rustling of deer and bears among
+the chaparral, he is quick to detect your strange footsteps, and will
+hasten to make a good, close inspection of you as soon as you are still.
+First, you may hear him sounding a few notes of curious inquiry, but
+more likely the first intimation of his approach will be the prickly
+sounds of his feet as he descends the tree overhead, just before he
+makes his savage onrush to frighten you and proclaim your presence to
+every squirrel and bird in the neighborhood. If you remain perfectly
+motionless, he will come nearer and nearer, and probably set your flesh
+a-tingle by frisking across your body. Once, while I was seated at the
+foot of a Hemlock Spruce in one of the most inaccessible of the San
+Joaquin yosemites engaged in sketching, a reckless fellow came up behind
+me, passed under my bended arm, and jumped on my paper. And one warm
+afternoon, while an old friend of mine was reading out in the shade of
+his cabin, one of his Douglas neighbors jumped from the gable upon his
+head, and then with admirable assurance ran down over his shoulder and
+on to the book he held in his hand.
+
+Our Douglas enjoys a large social circle; for, besides his numerous
+relatives, _Sciurus fossor, Tamias quadrivitatus, T. Townsendii,
+Spermophilus Beccheyi, S. Douglasii_, he maintains intimate relations
+with the nut-eating birds, particularly the Clark Crow (_Picicorvus
+columbianus_) and the numerous woodpeckers and jays. The two
+spermophiles are astonishingly abundant in the lowlands and lower
+foot-hills, but more and more sparingly distributed up through the
+Douglas domains,--seldom venturing higher than six or seven thousand
+feet above the level of the sea. The gray sciurus ranges but little
+higher than this. The little striped tamias alone is associated with him
+everywhere. In the lower and middle zones, where they all meet, they are
+tolerably harmonious--a happy family, though very amusing skirmishes may
+occasionally be witnessed. Wherever the ancient glaciers have spread
+forest soil there you find our wee hero, most abundant where depth of
+soil and genial climate have given rise to a corresponding luxuriance in
+the trees, but following every kind of growth up the curving moraines to
+the highest glacial fountains.
+
+Though I cannot of course expect all my readers to sympathize fully in
+my admiration of this little animal, few, I hope, will think this sketch
+of his life too long. I cannot begin to tell here how much he has
+cheered my lonely wanderings during all the years I have been pursuing
+my studies in these glorious wilds; or how much unmistakable humanity I
+have found in him. Take this for example: One calm, creamy Indian summer
+morning, when the nuts were ripe, I was camped in the upper pine-woods
+of the south fork of the San Joaquin, where the squirrels seemed to be
+about as plentiful as the ripe burs. They were taking an early breakfast
+before going to their regular harvest-work. While I was busy with my own
+breakfast I heard the thudding fall of two or three heavy cones from a
+Yellow Pine near me. I stole noiselessly forward within about twenty
+feet of the base of it to observe. In a few moments down came the
+Douglas. The breakfast-burs he had cut off had rolled on the gently
+sloping ground into a clump of ceanothus bushes, but he seemed to know
+exactly where they were, for he found them at once, apparently without
+searching for them. They were more than twice as heavy as himself, but
+after turning them into the right position for getting a good hold with
+his long sickle-teeth he managed to drag them up to the foot of the tree
+from which he had cut them, moving backward. Then seating himself
+comfortably, he held them on end, bottom up, and demolished them at his
+ease. A good deal of nibbling had to be done before he got anything to
+eat, because the lower scales are barren, but when he had patiently
+worked his way up to the fertile ones he found two sweet nuts at the
+base of each, shaped like trimmed hams, and spotted purple like birds'
+eggs. And notwithstanding these cones were dripping with soft balsam,
+and covered with prickles, and so strongly put together that a boy would
+be puzzled to cut them open with a jack-knife, he accomplished his meal
+with easy dignity and cleanliness, making less effort apparently than a
+man would in eating soft cookery from a plate.
+
+Breakfast done, I whistled a tune for him before he went to work,
+curious to see how he would be affected by it. He had not seen me all
+this while; but the instant I began to whistle he darted up the tree
+nearest to him, and came out on a small dead limb opposite me, and
+composed himself to listen. I sang and whistled more than a dozen airs,
+and as the music changed his eyes sparkled, and he turned his head
+quickly from side to side, but made no other response. Other squirrels,
+hearing the strange sounds, came around on all sides, also chipmunks and
+birds. One of the birds, a handsome, speckle-breasted thrush, seemed
+even more interested than the squirrels. After listening for awhile on
+one of the lower dead sprays of a pine, he came swooping forward within
+a few feet of my face, and remained fluttering in the air for half a
+minute or so, sustaining himself with whirring wing-beats, like a
+humming-bird in front of a flower, while I could look into his eyes and
+see his innocent wonder.
+
+By this time my performance must have lasted nearly half an hour. I sang
+or whistled "Bonnie Boon," "Lass o' Gowrie," "O'er the Water to
+Charlie," "Bonnie Woods o' Cragie Lee," etc., all of which seemed to be
+listened to with bright interest, my first Douglas sitting patiently
+through it all, with his telling eyes fixed upon me until I ventured to
+give the "Old Hundredth," when he screamed his Indian name,
+Pillillooeet, turned tail, and darted with ludicrous haste up the tree
+out of sight, his voice and actions in the case leaving a somewhat
+profane impression, as if he had said, "I'll be hanged if you get me to
+hear anything so solemn and unpiny." This acted as a signal for the
+general dispersal of the whole hairy tribe, though the birds seemed
+willing to wait further developments, music being naturally more in
+their line.
+
+What there can be in that grand old church-tune that is so offensive to
+birds and squirrels I can't imagine. A year or two after this High
+Sierra concert, I was sitting one fine day on a hill in the Coast Range
+where the common Ground Squirrels were abundant. They were very shy on
+account of being hunted so much; but after I had been silent and
+motionless for half an hour or so they began to venture out of their
+holes and to feed on the seeds of the grasses and thistles around me as
+if I were no more to be feared than a tree-stump. Then it occurred to me
+that this was a good opportunity to find out whether they also disliked
+"Old Hundredth." Therefore I began to whistle as nearly as I could
+remember the same familiar airs that had pleased the mountaineers of the
+Sierra. They at once stopped eating, stood erect, and listened patiently
+until I came to "Old Hundredth," when with ludicrous haste every one of
+them rushed to their holes and bolted in, their feet twinkling in the
+air for a moment as they vanished.
+
+No one who makes the acquaintance of our forester will fail to admire
+him; but he is far too self-reliant and warlike ever to be taken for a
+darling.
+
+How long the life of a Douglas Squirrel may be, I don't know. The young
+seem to sprout from knot-holes, perfect from the first, and as enduring
+as their own trees. It is difficult, indeed, to realize that so
+condensed a piece of sun-fire should ever become dim or die at all. He
+is seldom killed by hunters, for he is too small to encourage much of
+their attention, and when pursued in settled regions becomes excessively
+shy, and keeps close in the furrows of the highest trunks, many of which
+are of the same color as himself. Indian boys, however, lie in wait with
+unbounded patience to shoot them with arrows. In the lower and middle
+zones a few fall a prey to rattlesnakes. Occasionally he is pursued by
+hawks and wildcats, etc. But, upon the whole, he dwells safely in the
+deep bosom of the woods, the most highly favored of all his happy tribe.
+May his tribe increase!
+
+[Illustration: TRYING THE BOW.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS
+
+The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are
+measured and bestowed with love on the forests to develop their strength
+and beauty. However restricted the scope of other forest influences,
+that of the winds is universal. The snow bends and trims the upper
+forests every winter, the lightning strikes a single tree here and
+there, while avalanches mow down thousands at a swoop as a gardener
+trims out a bed of flowers. But the winds go to every tree, fingering
+every leaf and branch and furrowed bole; not one is forgotten; the
+Mountain Pine towering with outstretched arms on the rugged buttresses
+of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring tenant of the dells;
+they seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in
+lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as
+required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing
+through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean;
+the winds blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable
+beauty and harmony as the sure result.
+
+[Illustration: A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS. (AFTER A SKETCH
+BY THE AUTHOR.)]
+
+After one has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses
+before a mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a
+crash that shakes the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the
+lowest thickset trees, could ever have found a period sufficiently
+stormless to establish themselves; or, once established, that they
+should not, sooner or later, have been blown down. But when the storm is
+over, and we behold the same forests tranquil again, towering fresh and
+unscathed in erect majesty, and consider what centuries of storms have
+fallen upon them since they were first planted,--hail, to break the
+tender seedlings; lightning, to scorch and shatter; snow, winds, and
+avalanches, to crush and overwhelm,--while the manifest result of all
+this wild storm-culture is the glorious perfection we behold; then faith
+in Nature's forestry is established, and we cease to deplore the
+violence of her most destructive gales, or of any other storm-implement
+whatsoever.
+
+There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never blown down, so
+long as they continue in sound health. These are the Juniper and the
+Dwarf Pine of the summit peaks. Their stiff, crooked roots grip the
+storm-beaten ledges like eagles' claws, while their lithe, cord-like
+branches bend round compliantly, offering but slight holds for winds,
+however violent. The other alpine conifers--the Needle Pine, Mountain
+Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruce--are never thinned out by this
+agent to any destructive extent, on account of their admirable toughness
+and the closeness of their growth. In general the same is true of the
+giants of the lower zones. The kingly Sugar Pine, towering aloft to a
+height of more than 200 feet, offers a fine mark to storm-winds; but it
+is not densely foliaged, and its long, horizontal arms swing round
+compliantly in the blast, like tresses of green, fluent algae in a
+brook; while the Silver Firs in most places keep their ranks well
+together in united strength. The Yellow or Silver Pine is more
+frequently overturned than any other tree on the Sierra, because its
+leaves and branches form a larger mass in proportion to its height,
+while in many places it is planted sparsely, leaving open lanes through
+which storms may enter with full force. Furthermore, because it is
+distributed along the lower portion of the range, which was the first to
+be left bare on the breaking up of the ice-sheet at the close of the
+glacial winter, the soil it is growing upon has been longer exposed to
+post-glacial weathering, and consequently is in a more crumbling,
+decayed condition than the fresher soils farther up the range, and
+therefore offers a less secure anchorage for the roots.
+
+While exploring the forest zones of Mount Shasta, I discovered the path
+of a hurricane strewn with thousands of pines of this species. Great and
+small had been uprooted or wrenched off by sheer force, making a clean
+gap, like that made by a snow avalanche. But hurricanes capable of doing
+this class of work are rare in the Sierra, and when we have explored the
+forests from one extremity of the range to the other, we are compelled
+to believe that they are the most beautiful on the face of the earth,
+however we may regard the agents that have made them so.
+
+There is always something deeply exciting, not only in the sounds of
+winds in the woods, which exert more or less influence over every mind,
+but in their varied waterlike flow as manifested by the movements of the
+trees, especially those of the conifers. By no other trees are they
+rendered so extensively and impressively visible, not even by the lordly
+tropic palms or tree-ferns responsive to the gentlest breeze. The waving
+of a forest of the giant Sequoias is indescribably impressive and
+sublime, but the pines seem to me the best interpreters of winds. They
+are mighty waving goldenrods, ever in tune, singing and writing
+wind-music all their long century lives. Little, however, of this noble
+tree-waving and tree-music will you see or hear in the strictly alpine
+portion of the forests. The burly Juniper, whose girth sometimes more
+than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it
+grows. The slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine stream out in
+wavering ripples, but the tallest and slenderest are far too unyielding
+to wave even in the heaviest gales. They only shake in quick, short
+vibrations. The Hemlock Spruce, however, and the Mountain Pine, and some
+of the tallest thickets of the Two-leaved species bow in storms with
+considerable scope and gracefulness. But it is only in the lower and
+middle zones that the meeting of winds and woods is to be seen in all
+its grandeur.
+
+One of the most beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever enjoyed in the
+Sierra occurred in December, 1874, when I happened to be exploring one
+of the tributary valleys of the Yuba River. The sky and the ground and
+the trees had been thoroughly rain-washed and were dry again. The day
+was intensely pure, one of those incomparable bits of California winter,
+warm and balmy and full of white sparkling sunshine, redolent of all the
+purest influences of the spring, and at the same time enlivened with one
+of the most bracing wind-storms conceivable. Instead of camping out, as
+I usually do, I then chanced to be stopping at the house of a friend.
+But when the storm began to sound, I lost no time in pushing out into
+the woods to enjoy it. For on such occasions Nature has always something
+rare to show us, and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than
+one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof.
+
+It was still early morning when I found myself fairly adrift. Delicious
+sunshine came pouring over the hills, lighting the tops of the pines,
+and setting free a steam of summery fragrance that contrasted strangely
+with the wild tones of the storm. The air was mottled with pine-tassels
+and bright green plumes, that went flashing past in the sunlight like
+birds pursued. But there was not the slightest dustiness, nothing less
+pure than leaves, and ripe pollen, and flecks of withered bracken and
+moss. I heard trees falling for hours at the rate of one every two or
+three minutes; some uprooted, partly on account of the loose,
+water-soaked condition of the ground; others broken straight across,
+where some weakness caused by fire had determined the spot. The gestures
+of the various trees made a delightful study. Young Sugar Pines, light
+and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the ground; while
+the grand old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been tried in a
+hundred storms, waved solemnly above them, their long, arching branches
+streaming fluently on the gale, and every needle thrilling and ringing
+and shedding off keen lances of light like a diamond. The Douglas
+Spruces, with long sprays drawn out in level tresses, and needles massed
+in a gray, shimmering glow, presented a most striking appearance as they
+stood in bold relief along the hilltops. The madronos in the dells, with
+their red bark and large glossy leaves tilted every way, reflected the
+sunshine in throbbing spangles like those one so often sees on the
+rippled surface of a glacier lake. But the Silver Pines were now the
+most impressively beautiful of all. Colossal spires 200 feet in height
+waved like supple golden-rods chanting and bowing low as if in worship,
+while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into
+one continuous blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such
+that the most steadfast monarch of them all rocked down to its roots
+with a motion plainly perceptible when one leaned against it. Nature was
+holding high festival, and every fiber of the most rigid giants thrilled
+with glad excitement.
+
+I drifted on through the midst of this passionate music and motion,
+across many a glen, from ridge to ridge; often halting in the lee of a
+rock for shelter, or to gaze and listen. Even when the grand anthem had
+swelled to its highest pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones
+of individual trees,--Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak,--and
+even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet.
+Each was expressing itself in its own way,--singing its own song, and
+making its own peculiar gestures,--manifesting a richness of variety to
+be found in no other forest I have yet seen. The coniferous woods of
+Canada, and the Carolinas, and Florida, are made up of trees that
+resemble one another about as nearly as blades of grass, and grow close
+together in much the same way. Coniferous trees, in general, seldom
+possess individual character, such as is manifest among Oaks and Elms.
+But the California forests are made up of a greater number of distinct
+species than any other in the world. And in them we find, not only a
+marked differentiation into special groups, but also a marked
+individuality in almost every tree, giving rise to storm effects
+indescribably glorious.
+
+Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through copses of hazel
+and ceanothus, I gained the summit of the highest ridge in the
+neighborhood; and then it occurred to me that it would be a fine thing
+to climb one of the trees to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear close
+to the Aeolian music of its topmost needles. But under the circumstances
+the choice of a tree was a serious matter. One whose instep was not very
+strong seemed in danger of being blown down, or of being struck by
+others in case they should fall; another was branchless to a
+considerable height above the ground, and at the same time too large to
+be grasped with arms and legs in climbing; while others were not
+favorably situated for clear views. After cautiously casting about, I
+made choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that were
+growing close together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed
+likely to fall unless all the rest fell with it. Though comparatively
+young, they were about 100 feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were
+rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy. Being accustomed to climb trees in
+making botanical studies, I experienced no difficulty in reaching the
+top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so noble an exhilaration
+of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in the passionate
+torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and round,
+tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves,
+while I clung with muscles firm braced, like a bobolink on a reed.
+
+In its widest sweeps my tree-top described an arc of from twenty to
+thirty degrees, but I felt sure of its elastic temper, having seen
+others of the same species still more severely tried--bent almost to the
+ground indeed, in heavy snows--without breaking a fiber. I was therefore
+safe, and free to take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the excited
+forest from my superb outlook. The view from here must be extremely
+beautiful in any weather. Now my eye roved over the piny hills and dales
+as over fields of waving grain, and felt the light running in ripples
+and broad swelling undulations across the valleys from ridge to ridge,
+as the shining foliage was stirred by corresponding waves of air.
+Oftentimes these waves of reflected light would break up suddenly into a
+kind of beaten foam, and again, after chasing one another in regular
+order, they would seem to bend forward in concentric curves, and
+disappear on some hillside, like sea-waves on a shelving shore. The
+quantity of light reflected from the bent needles was so great as to
+make whole groves appear as if covered with snow, while the black
+shadows beneath the trees greatly enhanced the effect of the silvery
+splendor.
+
+Excepting only the shadows there was nothing somber in all this wild sea
+of pines. On the contrary, notwithstanding this was the winter season,
+the colors were remarkably beautiful. The shafts of the pine and
+libocedrus were brown and purple, and most of the foliage was well
+tinged with yellow; the laurel groves, with the pale undersides of their
+leaves turned upward, made masses of gray; and then there was many a
+dash of chocolate color from clumps of manzanita, and jet of vivid
+crimson from the bark of the madronos, while the ground on the
+hillsides, appearing here and there through openings between the groves,
+displayed masses of pale purple and brown.
+
+The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with this wild
+exuberance of light and motion. The profound bass of the naked branches
+and boles booming like waterfalls; the quick, tense vibrations of the
+pine-needles, now rising to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a
+silky murmur; the rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen
+metallic click of leaf on leaf--all this was heard in easy analysis when
+the attention was calmly bent.
+
+The varied gestures of the multitude were seen to fine advantage, so
+that one could recognize the different species at a distance of several
+miles by this means alone, as well as by their forms and colors, and the
+way they reflected the light. All seemed strong and comfortable, as if
+really enjoying the storm, while responding to its most enthusiastic
+greetings. We hear much nowadays concerning the universal struggle for
+existence, but no struggle in the common meaning of the word was
+manifest here; no recognition of danger by any tree; no deprecation; but
+rather an invincible gladness as remote from exultation as from fear.
+
+I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the
+music by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was
+streaming past. The fragrance of the woods was less marked than that
+produced during warm rain, when so many balsamic buds and leaves are
+steeped like tea; but, from the chafing of resiny branches against each
+other, and the incessant attrition of myriads of needles, the gale was
+spiced to a very tonic degree. And besides the fragrance from these
+local sources there were traces of scents brought from afar. For this
+wind came first from the sea, rubbing against its fresh, briny waves,
+then distilled through the redwoods, threading rich ferny gulches, and
+spreading itself in broad undulating currents over many a
+flower-enameled ridge of the coast mountains, then across the golden
+plains, up the purple foot-hills, and into these piny woods with the
+varied incense gathered by the way.
+
+Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we
+may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents
+alone. Mariners detect the flowery perfume of land-winds far at sea, and
+sea-winds carry the fragrance of dulse and tangle far inland, where it
+is quickly recognized, though mingled with the scents of a thousand
+land-flowers. As an illustration of this, I may tell here that I
+breathed sea-air on the Firth of Forth, in Scotland, while a boy; then
+was taken to Wisconsin, where I remained nineteen years; then, without
+in all this time having breathed one breath of the sea, I walked
+quietly, alone, from the middle of the Mississippi Valley to the Gulf of
+Mexico, on a botanical excursion, and while in Florida, far from the
+coast, my attention wholly bent on the splendid tropical vegetation
+about me, I suddenly recognized a sea-breeze, as it came sifting through
+the palmettos and blooming vine-tangles, which at once awakened and set
+free a thousand dormant associations, and made me a boy again in
+Scotland, as if all the intervening years had been annihilated.
+
+Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear them in mind; but
+few care to look at the winds, though far more beautiful and sublime,
+and though they become at times about as visible as flowing water. When
+the north winds in winter are making upward sweeps over the curving
+summits of the High Sierra, the fact is sometimes published with flying
+snow-banners a mile long. Those portions of the winds thus embodied can
+scarce be wholly invisible, even to the darkest imagination. And when
+we look around over an agitated forest, we may see something of the wind
+that stirs it, by its effects upon the trees. Yonder it descends in a
+rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the bending pines from hill
+to hill. Nearer, we see detached plumes and leaves, now speeding by on
+level currents, now whirling in eddies, or, escaping over the edges of
+the whirls, soaring aloft on grand, upswelling domes of air, or tossing
+on flame-like crests. Smooth, deep currents, cascades, falls, and
+swirling eddies, sing around every tree and leaf, and over all the
+varied topography of the region with telling changes of form, like
+mountain rivers conforming to the features of their channels.
+
+After tracing the Sierra streams from their fountains to the plains,
+marking where they bloom white in falls, glide in crystal plumes, surge
+gray and foam-filled in boulder-choked gorges, and slip through the
+woods in long, tranquil reaches--after thus learning their language and
+forms in detail, we may at length hear them chanting all together in one
+grand anthem, and comprehend them all in clear inner vision, covering
+the range like lace. But even this spectacle is far less sublime and not
+a whit more substantial than what we may behold of these storm-streams
+of air in the mountain woods.
+
+We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never
+occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that
+trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not
+extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back
+again, are only little more than tree-wavings--many of them not so much.
+
+When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through
+the calming woods. The storm-tones died away, and, turning toward the
+east, I beheld the countless hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil,
+towering above one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout
+audience. The setting sun filled them with amber light, and seemed to
+say, while they listened, "My peace I give unto you."
+
+As I gazed on the impressive scene, all the so-called ruin of the storm
+was forgotten, and never before did these noble woods appear so fresh,
+so joyous, so immortal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+THE RIVER FLOODS
+
+The Sierra rivers are flooded every spring by the melting of the snow as
+regularly as the famous old Nile. They begin to rise in May, and in June
+high-water mark is reached. But because the melting does not go on
+rapidly over all the fountains, high and low, simultaneously, and the
+melted snow is not reinforced at this time of year by rain, the spring
+floods are seldom very violent or destructive. The thousand falls,
+however, and the cascades in the canons are then in full bloom, and sing
+songs from one end of the range to the other. Of course the snow on the
+lower tributaries of the rivers is first melted, then that on the higher
+fountains most exposed to sunshine, and about a month later the cooler,
+shadowy fountains send down their treasures, thus allowing the main
+trunk streams nearly six weeks to get their waters hurried through the
+foot-hills and across the lowlands to the sea. Therefore very violent
+spring floods are avoided, and will be as long as the shading,
+restraining forests last. The rivers of the north half of the range are
+still less subject to sudden floods, because their upper fountains in
+great part lie protected from the changes of the weather beneath thick
+folds of lava, just as many of the rivers of Alaska lie beneath folds of
+ice, coming to the light farther down the range in large springs, while
+those of the high Sierra lie on the surface of solid granite, exposed to
+every change of temperature. More than ninety per cent. of the water
+derived from the snow and ice of Mount Shasta is at once absorbed and
+drained away beneath the porous lava folds of the mountain, where
+mumbling and groping in the dark they at length find larger fissures and
+tunnel-like caves from which they emerge, filtered and cool, in the form
+of large springs, some of them so large they give birth to rivers that
+set out on their journeys beneath the sun without any visible
+intermediate period of childhood. Thus the Shasta River issues from a
+large lake-like spring in Shasta Valley, and about two thirds of the
+volume of the McCloud River gushes forth suddenly from the face of a
+lava bluff in a roaring spring seventy-five yards wide.
+
+These spring rivers of the north are of course shorter than those of the
+south whose tributaries extend up to the tops of the mountains. Fall
+River, an important tributary of the Pitt or Upper Sacramento, is only
+about ten miles long, and is all falls, cascades, and springs from its
+head to its confluence with the Pitt. Bountiful springs, charmingly
+embowered, issue from the rocks at one end of it, a snowy fall a hundred
+and eighty feet high thunders at the other, and a rush of crystal rapids
+sing and dance between. Of course such streams are but little affected
+by the weather. Sheltered from evaporation their flow is nearly as full
+in the autumn as in the time of general spring floods. While those of
+the high Sierra diminish to less than the hundredth part of their
+springtime prime, shallowing in autumn to a series of silent pools among
+the rocks and hollows of their channels, connected by feeble, creeping
+threads of water, like the sluggish sentences of a tired writer,
+connected by a drizzle of "ands" and "buts." Strange to say, the
+greatest floods occur in winter, when one would suppose all the wild
+waters would be muffled and chained in frost and snow. The same long,
+all-day storms of the so-called Rainy Season in California, that give
+rain to the lowlands, give dry frosty snow to the mountains. But at rare
+intervals warm rains and warm winds invade the mountains and push back
+the snow line from 2000 feet to 8000, or even higher, and then come the
+big floods.
+
+I was usually driven down out of the High Sierra about the end of
+November, but the winter of 1874 and 1875 was so warm and calm that I
+was tempted to seek general views of the geology and topography of the
+basin of Feather River in January. And I had just completed a hasty
+survey of the region, and made my way down to winter quarters, when one
+of the grandest flood-storms that I ever saw broke on the mountains. I
+was then in the edge of the main forest belt at a small foot-hill town
+called Knoxville, on the divide between the waters of the Feather and
+Yuba rivers. The cause of this notable flood was simply a sudden and
+copious fall of warm wind and rain on the basins of these rivers at a
+time when they contained a considerable quantity of snow. The rain was
+so heavy and long-sustained that it was, of itself, sufficient to make a
+good wild flood, while the snow which the warm wind and rain melted on
+the upper and middle regions of the basins was sufficient to make
+another flood equal to that of the rain. Now these two distinct harvests
+of flood waters were gathered simultaneously and poured out on the plain
+in one magnificent avalanche. The basins of the Yuba and Feather, like
+many others of the Sierra, are admirably adapted to the growth of floods
+of this kind. Their many tributaries radiate far and wide, comprehending
+extensive areas, and the tributaries are steeply inclined, while the
+trunks are comparatively level. While the flood-storm was in progress
+the thermometer at Knoxville ranged between 44 deg. and 50 deg.; and when warm
+wind and warm rain fall simultaneously on snow contained in basins like
+these, both the rain and that portion of the snow which the rain and
+wind melt are at first sponged up and held back until the combined mass
+becomes sludge, which at length, suddenly dissolving, slips and descends
+all together to the trunk channel; and since the deeper the stream the
+faster it flows, the flooded portion of the current above overtakes the
+slower foot-hill portion below it, and all sweeping forward together
+with a high, overcurling front, debouches on the open plain with a
+violence and suddenness that at first seem wholly unaccountable. The
+destructiveness of the lower portion of this particular flood was
+somewhat augmented by mining gravel in the river channels, and by levees
+which gave way after having at first restrained and held back the
+accumulating waters. These exaggerating conditions did not, however,
+greatly influence the general result, the main effect having been caused
+by the rare combination of flood factors indicated above. It is a pity
+that but few people meet and enjoy storms so noble as this in their
+homes in the mountains, for, spending themselves in the open levels of
+the plains, they are likely to be remembered more by the bridges and
+houses they carry away than by their beauty or the thousand blessings
+they bring to the fields and gardens of Nature.
+
+On the morning of the flood, January 19th, all the Feather and Yuba
+landscapes were covered with running water, muddy torrents filled every
+gulch and ravine, and the sky was thick with rain. The pines had long
+been sleeping in sunshine; they were now awake, roaring and waving with
+the beating storm, and the winds sweeping along the curves of hill and
+dale, streaming through the woods, surging and gurgling on the tops of
+rocky ridges, made the wildest of wild storm melody.
+
+It was easy to see that only a small part of the rain reached the ground
+in the form of drops. Most of it was thrashed into dusty spray like that
+into which small waterfalls are divided when they dash on shelving
+rocks. Never have I seen water coming from the sky in denser or more
+passionate streams. The wind chased the spray forward in choking drifts,
+and compelled me again and again to seek shelter in the dell copses and
+back of large trees to rest and catch my breath. Wherever I went, on
+ridges or in hollows, enthusiastic water still flashed and gurgled about
+my ankles, recalling a wild winter flood in Yosemite when a hundred
+waterfalls came booming and chanting together and filled the grand
+valley with a sea-like roar.
+
+After drifting an hour or two in the lower woods, I set out for the
+summit of a hill 900 feet high, with a view to getting as near the heart
+of the storm as possible. In order to reach it I had to cross Dry Creek,
+a tributary of the Yuba that goes crawling along the base of the hill on
+the northwest. It was now a booming river as large as the Tuolumne at
+ordinary stages, its current brown with mining-mud washed down from many
+a "claim," and mottled with sluice-boxes, fence-rails, and logs that had
+long lain above its reach. A slim foot-bridge stretched across it, now
+scarcely above the swollen current. Here I was glad to linger, gazing
+and listening, while the storm was in its richest mood--the gray
+rain-flood above, the brown river-flood beneath. The language of the
+river was scarcely less enchanting than that of the wind and rain; the
+sublime overboom of the main bouncing, exulting current, the swash and
+gurgle of the eddies, the keen dash and clash of heavy waves breaking
+against rocks, and the smooth, downy hush of shallow currents feeling
+their way through the willow thickets of the margin. And amid all this
+varied throng of sounds I heard the smothered bumping and rumbling of
+boulders on the bottom as they were shoving and rolling forward against
+one another in a wild rush, after having lain still for probably 100
+years or more.
+
+The glad creek rose high above its banks and wandered from its channel
+out over many a briery sand-flat and meadow. Alders and willows
+waist-deep were bearing up against the current with nervous trembling
+gestures, as if afraid of being carried away, while supple branches
+bending confidingly, dipped lightly and rose again, as if stroking the
+wild waters in play. Leaving the bridge and passing on through the
+storm-thrashed woods, all the ground seemed to be moving. Pine-tassels,
+flakes of bark, soil, leaves, and broken branches were being swept
+forward, and many a rock-fragment, weathered from exposed ledges, was
+now receiving its first rounding and polishing in the wild streams of
+the storm. On they rushed through every gulch and hollow, leaping,
+gliding, working with a will, and rejoicing like living creatures.
+
+Nor was the flood confined to the ground. Every tree had a water system
+of its own spreading far and wide like miniature Amazons and
+Mississippis.
+
+Toward midday, cloud, wind, and rain reached their highest development.
+The storm was in full bloom, and formed, from my commanding outlook on
+the hilltop, one of the most glorious views I ever beheld. As far as the
+eye could reach, above, beneath, around, wind-driven rain filled the air
+like one vast waterfall. Detached clouds swept imposingly up the valley,
+as if they were endowed with independent motion and had special work to
+do in replenishing the mountain wells, now rising above the pine-tops,
+now descending into their midst, fondling their arrowy spires and
+soothing every branch and leaf with gentleness in the midst of all the
+savage sound and motion. Others keeping near the ground glided behind
+separate groves, and brought them forward into relief with admirable
+distinctness; or, passing in front, eclipsed whole groves in succession,
+pine after pine melting in their gray fringes and bursting forth again
+seemingly clearer than before.
+
+The forms of storms are in great part measured, and controlled by the
+topography of the regions where they rise and over which they pass.
+When, therefore, we attempt to study them from the valleys, or from gaps
+and openings of the forest, we are confounded by a multitude of separate
+and apparently antagonistic impressions. The bottom of the storm is
+broken up into innumerable waves and currents that surge against the
+hillsides like sea-waves against a shore, and these, reacting on the
+nether surface of the storm, erode immense cavernous hollows and canons,
+and sweep forward the resulting detritus in long trains, like the
+moraines of glaciers. But, as we ascend, these partial, confusing
+effects disappear and the phenomena are beheld united and harmonious.
+
+The longer I gazed into the storm, the more plainly visible it became.
+The drifting cloud detritus gave it a kind of visible body, which
+explained many perplexing phenomena, and published its movements in
+plain terms, while the texture of the falling mass of rain rounded it
+out and rendered it more complete. Because raindrops differ in size they
+fall at different velocities and overtake and clash against one another,
+producing mist and spray. They also, of course, yield unequal compliance
+to the force of the wind, which gives rise to a still greater degree of
+interference, and passionate gusts sweep off clouds of spray from the
+groves like that torn from wave-tops in a gale. All these factors of
+irregularity in density, color, and texture of the general rain mass
+tend to make it the more appreciable and telling. It is then seen as one
+grand flood rushing over bank and brae, bending the pines like weeds,
+curving this way and that, whirling in huge eddies in hollows and dells,
+while the main current pours grandly over all, like ocean currents over
+the landscapes that lie hidden at the bottom of the sea.
+
+I watched the gestures of the pines while the storm was at its height,
+and it was easy to see that they were not distressed. Several large
+Sugar Pines stood near the thicket in which I was sheltered, bowing
+solemnly and tossing their long arms as if interpreting the very words
+of the storm while accepting its wildest onsets with passionate
+exhilaration. The lions were feeding. Those who have observed sunflowers
+feasting on sunshine during the golden days of Indian summer know that
+none of their gestures express thankfulness. Their celestial food is too
+heartily given, too heartily taken to leave room for thanks. The pines
+were evidently accepting the benefactions of the storm in the same
+whole-souled manner; and when I looked down among the budding hazels,
+and still lower to the young violets and fern-tufts on the rocks, I
+noticed the same divine methods of giving and taking, and the same
+exquisite adaptations of what seems an outbreak of violent and
+uncontrollable force to the purposes of beautiful and delicate life.
+Calms like sleep come upon landscapes, just as they do on people and
+trees, and storms awaken them in the same way. In the dry midsummer of
+the lower portion of the range the withered hills and valleys seem to
+lie as empty and expressionless as dead shells on a shore. Even the
+highest mountains may be found occasionally dull and uncommunicative as
+if in some way they had lost countenance and shrunk to less than half
+their real stature. But when the lightnings crash and echo in the
+canons, and the clouds come down wreathing and crowning their bald snowy
+heads, every feature beams with expression and they rise again in all
+their imposing majesty.
+
+Storms are fine speakers, and tell all they know, but their voices of
+lightning, torrent, and rushing wind are much less numerous than the
+nameless still, small voices too low for human ears; and because we are
+poor listeners we fail to catch much that is fairly within reach. Our
+best rains are heard mostly on roofs, and winds in chimneys; and when by
+choice or compulsion we are pushed into the heart of a storm, the
+confusion made by cumbersome equipments and nervous haste and mean fear,
+prevent our hearing any other than the loudest expressions. Yet we may
+draw enjoyment from storm sounds that are beyond hearing, and storm
+movements we cannot see. The sublime whirl of planets around their suns
+is as silent as raindrops oozing in the dark among the roots of plants.
+In this great storm, as in every other, there were tones and gestures
+inexpressibly gentle manifested in the midst of what is called violence
+and fury, but easily recognized by all who look and listen for them. The
+rain brought out the colors of the woods with delightful freshness, the
+rich brown of the bark of the trees and the fallen burs and leaves and
+dead ferns; the grays of rocks and lichens; the light purple of swelling
+buds, and the warm yellow greens of the libocedrus and mosses. The air
+was steaming with delightful fragrance, not rising and wafting past in
+separate masses, but diffused through all the atmosphere. Pine woods are
+always fragrant, but most so in spring when the young tassels are
+opening and in warm weather when the various gums and balsams are
+softened by the sun. The wind was now chafing their innumerable needles
+and the warm rain was steeping them. Monardella grows here in large beds
+in the openings, and there is plenty of laurel in dells and manzanita on
+the hillsides, and the rosy, fragrant chamoebatia carpets the ground
+almost everywhere. These, with the gums and balsams of the woods, form
+the main local fragrance-fountains of the storm. The ascending clouds of
+aroma wind-rolled and rain-washed became pure like light and traveled
+with the wind as part of it. Toward the middle of the afternoon the main
+flood cloud lifted along its western border revealing a beautiful
+section of the Sacramento Valley some twenty or thirty miles away,
+brilliantly sun-lighted and glistering with rain-sheets as if paved with
+silver. Soon afterward a jagged bluff-like cloud with a sheer face
+appeared over the valley of the Yuba, dark-colored and roughened with
+numerous furrows like some huge lava-table. The blue Coast Range was
+seen stretching along the sky like a beveled wall, and the somber,
+craggy Marysville Buttes rose impressively out of the flooded plain like
+islands out of the sea. Then the rain began to abate and I sauntered
+down through the dripping bushes reveling in the universal vigor and
+freshness that inspired all the life about me. How clean and unworn and
+immortal the woods seemed to be!--the lofty cedars in full bloom laden
+with golden pollen and their washed plumes shining; the pines rocking
+gently and settling back into rest, and the evening sunbeams spangling
+on the broad leaves of the madronos, their tracery of yellow boughs
+relieved against dusky thickets of Chestnut Oak; liverworts,
+lycopodiums, ferns were exulting in glorious revival, and every moss
+that had ever lived seemed to be coming crowding back from the dead to
+clothe each trunk and stone in living green. The steaming ground seemed
+fairly to throb and tingle with life; smilax, fritillaria, saxifrage,
+and young violets were pushing up as if already conscious of the summer
+glory, and innumerable green and yellow buds were peeping and smiling
+everywhere.
+
+As for the birds and squirrels, not a wing or tail of them was to be
+seen while the storm was blowing. Squirrels dislike wet weather more
+than cats do; therefore they were at home rocking in their dry nests.
+The birds were hiding in the dells out of the wind, some of the
+strongest of them pecking at acorns and manzanita berries, but most were
+perched on low twigs, their breast feathers puffed out and keeping one
+another company through the hard time as best they could.
+
+When I arrived at the village about sundown, the good people bestirred
+themselves, pitying my bedraggled condition as if I were some benumbed
+castaway snatched from the sea, while I, in turn, warm with excitement
+and reeking like the ground, pitied them for being dry and defrauded of
+all the glory that Nature had spread round about them that day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS
+
+The weather of spring and summer in the middle region of the Sierra is
+usually well flecked with rains and light dustings of snow, most of
+which are far too obviously joyful and life-giving to be regarded as
+storms; and in the picturesque beauty and clearness of outlines of their
+clouds they offer striking contrasts to those boundless, all-embracing
+cloud-mantles of the storms of winter. The smallest and most perfectly
+individualized specimens present a richly modeled cumulous cloud rising
+above the dark woods, about 11 A.M., swelling with a visible motion
+straight up into the calm, sunny sky to a height of 12,000 to 14,000
+feet above the sea, its white, pearly bosses relieved by gray and pale
+purple shadows in the hollows, and showing outlines as keenly defined as
+those of the glacier-polished domes. In less than an hour it attains
+full development and stands poised in the blazing sunshine like some
+colossal mountain, as beautiful in form and finish as if it were to
+become a permanent addition to the landscape. Presently a thunderbolt
+crashes through the crisp air, ringing like steel on steel, sharp and
+clear, its startling detonation breaking into a spray of echoes against
+the cliffs and canon walls. Then down comes a cataract of rain. The big
+drops sift through the pine-needles, plash and patter on the granite
+pavements, and pour down the sides of ridges and domes in a network of
+gray, bubbling rills. In a few minutes the cloud withers to a mesh of
+dim filaments and disappears, leaving the sky perfectly clear and
+bright, every dust-particle wiped and washed out of it. Everything is
+refreshed and invigorated, a steam of fragrance rises, and the storm is
+finished--one cloud, one lightning-stroke, and one dash of rain. This is
+the Sierra mid-summer thunder-storm reduced to its lowest terms. But
+some of them attain much larger proportions, and assume a grandeur and
+energy of expression hardly surpassed by those bred in the depths of
+winter, producing those sudden floods called "cloud-bursts," which are
+local, and to a considerable extent periodical, for they appear nearly
+every day about the same time for weeks, usually about eleven o'clock,
+and lasting from five minutes to an hour or two. One soon becomes so
+accustomed to see them that the noon sky seems empty and abandoned
+without them, as if Nature were forgetting something. When the glorious
+pearl and alabaster clouds of these noonday storms are being built I
+never give attention to anything else. No mountain or mountain-range,
+however divinely clothed with light, has a more enduring charm than
+those fleeting mountains of the sky--floating fountains bearing water
+for every well, the angels of the streams and lakes; brooding in the
+deep azure, or sweeping softly along the ground over ridge and dome,
+over meadow, over forest, over garden and grove; lingering with cooling
+shadows, refreshing every flower, and soothing rugged rock-brows with a
+gentleness of touch and gesture wholly divine.
+
+The most beautiful and imposing of the summer storms rise just above the
+upper edge of the Silver Fir zone, and all are so beautiful that it is
+not easy to choose any one for particular description. The one that I
+remember best fell on the mountains near Yosemite Valley, July 19, 1869,
+while I was encamped in the Silver Fir woods. A range of bossy cumuli
+took possession of the sky, huge domes and peaks rising one beyond
+another with deep canons between them, bending this way and that in long
+curves and reaches, interrupted here and there with white upboiling
+masses that looked like the spray of waterfalls. Zigzag lances of
+lightning followed each other in quick succession, and the thunder was
+so gloriously loud and massive it seemed as if surely an entire mountain
+was being shattered at every stroke. Only the trees were touched,
+however, so far as I could see,--a few firs 200 feet high, perhaps, and
+five to six feet in diameter, were split into long rails and slivers
+from top to bottom and scattered to all points of the compass. Then came
+the rain in a hearty flood, covering the ground and making it shine with
+a continuous sheet of water that, like a transparent film or skin,
+fitted closely down over all the rugged anatomy of the landscape.
+
+It is not long, geologically speaking, since the first raindrop fell on
+the present landscapes of the Sierra; and in the few tens of thousands
+of years of stormy cultivation they have been blest with, how beautiful
+they have become! The first rains fell on raw, crumbling moraines and
+rocks without a plant. Now scarcely a drop can fail to find a beautiful
+mark: on the tops of the peaks, on the smooth glacier pavements, on the
+curves of the domes, on moraines full of crystals, on the thousand forms
+of yosemitic sculpture with their tender beauty of balmy, flowery
+vegetation, laving, plashing, glinting, pattering; some falling softly
+on meadows, creeping out of sight, seeking and finding every thirsty
+rootlet, some through the spires of the woods, sifting in dust through
+the needles, and whispering good cheer to each of them; some falling
+with blunt tapping sounds, drumming on the broad leaves of veratrum,
+cypripedium, saxifrage; some falling straight into fragrant corollas,
+kissing the lips of lilies, glinting on the sides of crystals, on
+shining grains of gold; some falling into the fountains of snow to swell
+their well-saved stores; some into the lakes and rivers, patting the
+smooth glassy levels, making dimples and bells and spray, washing the
+mountain windows, washing the wandering winds; some plashing into the
+heart of snowy falls and cascades as if eager to join in the dance and
+the song and beat the foam yet finer. Good work and happy work for the
+merry mountain raindrops, each one of them a brave fall in itself,
+rushing from the cliffs and hollows of the clouds into the cliffs and
+hollows of the mountains; away from the thunder of the sky into the
+thunder of the roaring rivers. And how far they have to go, and how many
+cups to fill--cassiope-cups, holding half a drop, and lake basins
+between the hills, each replenished with equal care--every drop God's
+messenger sent on its way with glorious pomp and display of
+power--silvery new-born stars with lake and river, mountain and
+valley--all that the landscape holds--reflected in their crystal depths.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+THE WATER-OUZEL
+
+The waterfalls of the Sierra are frequented by only one bird,--the Ouzel
+or Water Thrush (_Cinclus Mexicanus_, SW.). He is a singularly
+joyous and lovable little fellow, about the size of a robin, clad in a
+plain waterproof suit of bluish gray, with a tinge of chocolate on the
+head and shoulders. In form he is about as smoothly plump and compact as
+a pebble that has been whirled in a pot-hole, the flowing contour of his
+body being interrupted only by his strong feet and bill, the crisp
+wing-tips, and the up-slanted wren-like tail. Among all the countless
+waterfalls I have met in the course of ten years' exploration in the
+Sierra, whether among the icy peaks, or warm foot-hills, or in the
+profound yosemitic canons of the middle region, not one was found
+without its Ouzel. No canon is too cold for this little bird, none too
+lonely, provided it be rich in falling water. Find a fall, or cascade,
+or rushing rapid, anywhere upon a clear stream, and there you will
+surely find its complementary Ouzel, flitting about in the spray, diving
+in foaming eddies, whirling like a leaf among beaten foam-bells; ever
+vigorous and enthusiastic, yet self-contained, and neither seeking nor
+shunning your company.
+
+[Illustration: WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING.]
+
+If disturbed while dipping about in the margin shallows, he either sets
+off with a rapid whir to some other feeding-ground up or down the
+stream, or alights on some half-submerged rock or snag out in the
+current, and immediately begins to nod and courtesy like a wren, turning
+his head from side to side with many other odd dainty movements that
+never fail to fix the attention of the observer.
+
+He is the mountain streams' own darling, the humming-bird of blooming
+waters, loving rocky ripple-slopes and sheets of foam as a bee loves
+flowers, as a lark loves sunshine and meadows. Among all the mountain
+birds, none has cheered me so much in my lonely wanderings,--none so
+unfailingly. For both in winter and summer he sings, sweetly, cheerily,
+independent alike of sunshine and of love, requiring no other
+inspiration than the stream on which he dwells. While water sings, so
+must he, in heat or cold, calm or storm, ever attuning his voice in sure
+accord; low in the drought of summer and the drought of winter, but
+never silent.
+
+During the golden days of Indian summer, after most of the snow has been
+melted, and the mountain streams have become feeble,--a succession of
+silent pools, linked together by shallow, transparent currents and
+strips of silvery lacework,--then the song of the Ouzel is at its lowest
+ebb. But as soon as the winter clouds have bloomed, and the mountain
+treasuries are once more replenished with snow, the voices of the
+streams and ouzels increase in strength and richness until the flood
+season of early summer. Then the torrents chant their noblest anthems,
+and then is the flood-time of our songster's melody. As for weather,
+dark days and sun days are the same to him. The voices of most
+song-birds, however joyous, suffer a long winter eclipse; but the Ouzel
+sings on through all the seasons and every kind of storm. Indeed no
+storm can be more violent than those of the waterfalls in the midst of
+which he delights to dwell. However dark and boisterous the weather,
+snowing, blowing, or cloudy, all the same he sings, and with never a
+note of sadness. No need of spring sunshine to thaw _his_ song, for
+it never freezes. Never shall you hear anything wintry from _his_
+warm breast; no pinched cheeping, no wavering notes between sorrow and
+joy; his mellow, fluty voice is ever tuned to downright gladness, as
+free from dejection as cock-crowing.
+
+It is pitiful to see wee frost-pinched sparrows on cold mornings in the
+mountain groves shaking the snow from their feathers, and hopping about
+as if anxious to be cheery, then hastening back to their hidings out of
+the wind, puffing out their breast-feathers over their toes, and
+subsiding among the leaves, cold and breakfastless, while the snow
+continues to fall, and there is no sign of clearing. But the Ouzel never
+calls forth a single touch of pity; not because he is strong to endure,
+but rather because he seems to live a charmed life beyond the reach of
+every influence that makes endurance necessary.
+
+One wild winter morning, when Yosemite Valley was swept its length from
+west to east by a cordial snow-storm, I sallied forth to see what I
+might learn and enjoy. A sort of gray, gloaming-like darkness filled the
+valley, the huge walls were out of sight, all ordinary sounds were
+smothered, and even the loudest booming of the falls was at times buried
+beneath the roar of the heavy-laden blast. The loose snow was already
+over five feet deep on the meadows, making extended walks impossible
+without the aid of snow-shoes. I found no great difficulty, however, in
+making my way to a certain ripple on the river where one of my ouzels
+lived. He was at home, busily gleaning his breakfast among the pebbles
+of a shallow portion of the margin, apparently unaware of anything
+extraordinary in the weather. Presently he flew out to a stone against
+which the icy current was beating, and turning his back to the wind,
+sang as delightfully as a lark in springtime.
+
+After spending an hour or two with my favorite, I made my way across the
+valley, boring and wallowing through the drifts, to learn as definitely
+as possible how the other birds were spending their time. The Yosemite
+birds are easily found during the winter because all of them excepting
+the Ouzel are restricted to the sunny north side of the valley, the
+south side being constantly eclipsed by the great frosty shadow of the
+wall. And because the Indian Canon groves, from their peculiar exposure,
+are the warmest, the birds congregate there, more especially in severe
+weather.
+
+I found most of the robins cowering on the lee side of the larger
+branches where the snow could not fall upon them, while two or three of
+the more enterprising were making desperate efforts to reach the
+mistletoe berries by clinging nervously to the under side of the
+snow-crowned masses, back downward, like woodpeckers. Every now and then
+they would dislodge some of the loose fringes of the snow-crown, which
+would come sifting down on them and send them screaming back to camp,
+where they would subside among their companions with a shiver, muttering
+in low, querulous chatter like hungry children.
+
+Some of the sparrows were busy at the feet of the larger trees gleaning
+seeds and benumbed insects, joined now and then by a robin weary of his
+unsuccessful attempts upon the snow-covered berries. The brave
+woodpeckers were clinging to the snowless sides of the larger boles and
+overarching branches of the camp trees, making short nights from side to
+side of the grove, pecking now and then at the acorns they had stored in
+the bark, and chattering aimlessly as if unable to keep still, yet
+evidently putting in the time in a very dull way, like storm-bound
+travelers at a country tavern. The hardy nut-hatches were threading the
+open furrows of the trunks in their usual industrious manner, and
+uttering their quaint notes, evidently less distressed than their
+neighbors. The Steller jays were of course making more noisy stir than
+all the other birds combined; ever coming and going with loud bluster,
+screaming as if each had a lump of melting sludge in his throat, and
+taking good care to improve the favorable opportunity afforded by the
+storm to steal from the acorn stores of the woodpeckers. I also noticed
+one solitary gray eagle braving the storm on the top of a tall
+pine-stump just outside the main grove. He was standing bolt upright
+with his back to the wind, a tuft of snow piled on his square shoulders,
+a monument of passive endurance. Thus every snow-bound bird seemed more
+or less uncomfortable if not in positive distress.
+
+The storm was reflected in every gesture, and not one cheerful note, not
+to say song, came from a single bill; their cowering, joyless endurance
+offering a striking contrast to the spontaneous, irrepressible gladness
+of the Ouzel, who could no more help exhaling sweet song than a rose
+sweet fragrance. He _must_ sing though the heavens fall. I remember
+noticing the distress of a pair of robins during the violent earthquake
+of the year 1872, when the pines of the Valley, with strange movements,
+flapped and waved their branches, and beetling rock-brows came
+thundering down to the meadows in tremendous avalanches. It did not
+occur to me in the midst of the excitement of other observations to look
+for the ouzels, but I doubt not they were singing straight on through it
+all, regarding the terrible rock-thunder as fearlessly as they do the
+booming of the waterfalls.
+
+What may be regarded as the separate songs of the Ouzel are exceedingly
+difficult of description, because they are so variable and at the same
+time so confluent. Though I have been acquainted with my favorite ten
+years, and during most of this time have heard him sing nearly every
+day, I still detect notes and strains that seem new to me. Nearly all of
+his music is sweet and tender, lapsing from his round breast like water
+over the smooth lip of a pool, then breaking farther on into a sparkling
+foam of melodious notes, which, glow with subdued enthusiasm, yet
+without expressing much of the strong, gushing ecstasy of the bobolink
+or skylark.
+
+The more striking strains are perfect arabesques of melody, composed of
+a few full, round, mellow notes, embroidered with delicate trills which
+fade and melt in long slender cadences. In a general way his music is
+that of the streams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of
+the falls are in it, the trills of rapids, the gurgling of margin
+eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of
+separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses and falling into tranquil
+pools.
+
+The Ouzel never sings in chorus with other birds, nor with his kind, but
+only with the streams. And like flowers that bloom beneath the surface
+of the ground, some of our favorite's best song-blossoms never rise
+above the surface of the heavier music of the water. I have often
+observed him singing in the midst of beaten spray, his music completely
+buried beneath the water's roar; yet I knew he was surely singing by his
+gestures and the movements of his bill.
+
+His food, as far as I have noticed, consists of all kinds of water
+insects, which in summer are chiefly procured along shallow margins.
+Here he wades about ducking his head under water and deftly turning over
+pebbles and fallen leaves with his bill, seldom choosing to go into deep
+water where he has to use his wings in diving.
+
+He seems to be especially fond of the larvae; of mosquitos, found in
+abundance attached to the bottom of smooth rock channels where the
+current is shallow. When feeding in such places he wades up-stream, and
+often while his head is under water the swift current is deflected
+upward along the glossy curves of his neck and shoulders, in the form of
+a clear, crystalline shell, which fairly incloses him like a bell-glass,
+the shell being broken and re-formed as he lifts and dips his head;
+while ever and anon he sidles out to where the too powerful current
+carries him off his feet; then he dexterously rises on the wing and goes
+gleaning again in shallower places.
+
+But during the winter, when the stream-banks are embossed in snow, and
+the streams themselves are chilled nearly to the freezing-point, so that
+the snow falling into them in stormy weather is not wholly dissolved,
+but forms a thin, blue sludge, thus rendering the current opaque--then
+he seeks the deeper portions of the main rivers, where he may dive to
+clear water beneath the sludge. Or he repairs to some open lake or
+mill-pond, at the bottom of which he feeds in safety.
+
+When thus compelled to betake himself to a lake, he does not plunge into
+it at once like a duck, but always alights in the first place upon some
+rock or fallen pine along the shore. Then flying out thirty or forty
+yards, more or less, according to the character of the bottom, he
+alights with a dainty glint on the surface, swims about, looks down,
+finally makes up his mind, and disappears with a sharp stroke of his
+wings. After feeding for two or three minutes he suddenly reappears,
+showers the water from his wings with one vigorous shake, and rises
+abruptly into the air as if pushed up from beneath, comes back to his
+perch, sings a few minutes, and goes out to dive again; thus coming and
+going, singing and diving at the same place for hours.
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL.]
+
+The Ouzel is usually found singly; rarely in pairs, excepting during the
+breeding season, and _very_ rarely in threes or fours. I once
+observed three thus spending a winter morning in company, upon a small
+glacier lake, on the Upper Merced, about 7500 feet above the level of
+the sea. A storm had occurred during the night, but the morning sun
+shone unclouded, and the shadowy lake, gleaming darkly in its setting of
+fresh snow, lay smooth and motionless as a mirror. My camp chanced to be
+within a few feet of the water's edge, opposite a fallen pine, some of
+the branches of which leaned out over the lake. Here my three dearly
+welcome visitors took up their station, and at once began to embroider
+the frosty air with their delicious melody, doubly delightful to me that
+particular morning, as I had been somewhat apprehensive of danger in
+breaking my way down through the snow-choked canons to the lowlands.
+
+The portion of the lake bottom selected for a feeding-ground lies at a
+depth of fifteen or twenty feet below the surface, and is covered with a
+short growth of algae and other aquatic plants,--facts I had previously
+determined while sailing over it on a raft. After alighting on the
+glassy surface, they occasionally indulged in a little play, chasing one
+another round about in small circles; then all three would suddenly dive
+together, and then come ashore and sing.
+
+The Ouzel seldom swims more than a few yards on the surface, for, not
+being web-footed, he makes rather slow progress, but by means of his
+strong, crisp wings he swims, or rather flies, with celerity under the
+surface, often to considerable distances. But it is in withstanding the
+force of heavy rapids that his strength of wing in this respect is most
+strikingly manifested. The following may be regarded as a fair
+illustration of his power of sub-aquatic flight. One stormy morning in
+winter when the Merced River was blue and green with unmelted snow, I
+observed one of my ouzels perched on a snag out in the midst of a
+swift-rushing rapid, singing cheerily, as if everything was just to his
+mind; and while I stood on the bank admiring him, he suddenly plunged
+into the sludgy current, leaving his song abruptly broken off. After
+feeding a minute or two at the bottom, and when one would suppose that
+he must inevitably be swept far down-stream, he emerged just where he
+went down, alighted on the same snag, showered the water-beads from his
+feathers, and continued his unfinished song, seemingly in tranquil ease
+as if it had suffered no interruption.
+
+[Illustration: OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT.]
+
+The Ouzel alone of all birds dares to enter a white torrent. And though
+strictly terrestrial in structure, no other is so inseparably related
+to water, not even the duck, or the bold ocean albatross, or the
+stormy-petrel. For ducks go ashore as soon as they finish feeding in
+undisturbed places, and very often make long flights over land from lake
+to lake or field to field. The same is true of most other aquatic birds.
+But the Ouzel, born on the brink of a stream, or on a snag or boulder
+in the midst of it, seldom leaves it for a single moment. For,
+notwithstanding he is often on the wing, he never flies overland, but
+whirs with, rapid, quail-like beat above the stream, tracing all its
+windings. Even when the stream is quite small, say from five to ten feet
+wide, he seldom shortens his flight by crossing a bend, however abrupt
+it may be; and even when disturbed by meeting some one on the bank, he
+prefers to fly over one's head, to dodging out over the ground. When,
+therefore, his flight along a crooked stream is viewed endwise, it
+appears most strikingly wavered--a description on the air of every curve
+with lightning-like rapidity.
+
+The vertical curves and angles of the most precipitous torrents he
+traces with the same rigid fidelity, swooping down the inclines of
+cascades, dropping sheer over dizzy falls amid the spray, and ascending
+with the same fearlessness and ease, seldom seeking to lessen the
+steepness of the acclivity by beginning to ascend before reaching the
+base of the fall. No matter though it may be several hundred feet in
+height he holds straight on, as if about to dash headlong into the
+throng of booming rockets, then darts abruptly upward, and, after
+alighting at the top of the precipice to rest a moment, proceeds to feed
+and sing. His flight is solid and impetuous, without any intermission of
+wing-beats,--one homogeneous buzz like that of a laden bee on its way
+home. And while thus buzzing freely from fall to fall, he is frequently
+heard giving utterance to a long outdrawn train of unmodulated notes, in
+no way connected with his song, but corresponding closely with his
+flight in sustained vigor.
+
+Were the flights of all the ouzels in the Sierra traced on a chart, they
+would indicate the direction of the flow of the entire system of ancient
+glaciers, from about the period of the breaking up of the ice-sheet
+until near the close of the glacial winter; because the streams which
+the ouzels so rigidly follow are, with the unimportant exceptions of a
+few side tributaries, all flowing in channels eroded for them out of the
+solid flank of the range by the vanished glaciers,--the streams tracing
+the ancient glaciers, the ouzels tracing the streams. Nor do we find so
+complete compliance to glacial conditions in the life of any other
+mountain bird, or animal of any kind. Bears frequently accept the
+pathways laid down by glaciers as the easiest to travel; but they often
+leave them and cross over from canon to canon. So also, most of the
+birds trace the moraines to some extent, because the forests are growing
+on them. But they wander far, crossing the canons from grove to grove,
+and draw exceedingly angular and complicated courses.
+
+The Ouzel's nest is one of the most extraordinary pieces of bird
+architecture I ever saw, odd and novel in design, perfectly fresh and
+beautiful, and in every way worthy of the genius of the little builder.
+It is about a foot in diameter, round and bossy in outline, with a
+neatly arched opening near the bottom, somewhat like an old-fashioned
+brick oven, or Hottentot's hut. It is built almost exclusively of green
+and yellow mosses, chiefly the beautiful fronded hypnum that covers the
+rocks and old drift-logs in the vicinity of waterfalls. These are deftly
+interwoven, and felted together into a charming little hut; and so
+situated that many of the outer mosses continue to flourish as if they
+had not been plucked. A few fine, silky-stemmed grasses are occasionally
+found interwoven with the mosses, but, with the exception of a thin
+layer lining the floor, their presence seems accidental, as they are of
+a species found growing with the mosses and are probably plucked with
+them. The site chosen for this curious mansion is usually some little
+rock-shelf within reach of the lighter particles of the spray of a
+waterfall, so that its walls are kept green and growing, at least during
+the time of high water.
+
+No harsh lines are presented by any portion of the nest as seen in
+place, but when removed from its shelf, the back and bottom, and
+sometimes a portion of the top, is found quite sharply angular, because
+it is made to conform to the surface of the rock upon which and against
+which it is built, the little architect always taking advantage of
+slight crevices and protuberances that may chance to offer, to render
+his structure stable by means of a kind of gripping and dovetailing.
+
+In choosing a building-spot, concealment does not seem to be taken into
+consideration; yet notwithstanding the nest is large and guilelessly
+exposed to view, it is far from being easily detected, chiefly because
+it swells forward like any other bulging moss-cushion growing naturally
+in such situations. This is more especially the case where the nest is
+kept fresh by being well sprinkled. Sometimes these romantic little huts
+have their beauty enhanced by rock-ferns and grasses that spring up
+around the mossy walls, or in front of the door-sill, dripping with
+crystal beads.
+
+Furthermore, at certain hours of the day, when the sunshine is poured
+down at the required angle, the whole mass of the spray enveloping the
+fairy establishment is brilliantly irised; and it is through so glorious
+a rainbow atmosphere as this that some of our blessed ouzels obtain
+their first peep at the world.
+
+Ouzels seem so completely part and parcel of the streams they inhabit,
+they scarce suggest any other origin than the streams themselves; and
+one might almost be pardoned in fancying they come direct from the
+living waters, like flowers from the ground. At least, from whatever
+cause, it never occurred to me to look for their nests until more than a
+year after I had made the acquaintance of the birds themselves, although
+I found one the very day on which I began the search. In making my way
+from Yosemite to the glaciers at the heads of the Merced and Tuolumne
+rivers, I camped in a particularly wild and romantic portion of the
+Nevada canon where in previous excursions I had never failed to enjoy
+the company of my favorites, who were attracted here, no doubt, by the
+safe nesting-places in the shelving rocks, and by the abundance of food
+and falling water. The river, for miles above and below, consists of a
+succession of small falls from ten to sixty feet in height, connected by
+flat, plume-like cascades that go flashing from fall to fall, free and
+almost channelless, over waving folds of glacier-polished granite.
+
+On the south side of one of the falls, that portion of the precipice
+which is bathed by the spray presents a series of little shelves and
+tablets caused by the development of planes of cleavage in the granite,
+and by the consequent fall of masses through the action of the water.
+"Now here," said I, "of all places, is the most charming spot for an
+Ouzel's nest." Then carefully scanning the fretted face of the precipice
+through the spray, I at length noticed a yellowish moss-cushion, growing
+on the edge of a level tablet within five or six feet of the outer folds
+of the fall. But apart from the fact of its being situated where one
+acquainted with the lives of ouzels would fancy an Ouzel's nest ought to
+be, there was nothing in its appearance visible at first sight, to
+distinguish it from other bosses of rock-moss similarly situated with
+reference to perennial spray; and it was not until I had scrutinized it
+again and again, and had removed my shoes and stockings and crept along
+the face of the rock within eight or ten feet of it, that I could decide
+certainly whether it was a nest or a natural growth.
+
+In these moss huts three or four eggs are laid, white like foam-bubbles;
+and well may the little birds hatched from them sing water songs, for
+they hear them all their lives, and even before they are born.
+
+I have often observed the young just out of the nest making their odd
+gestures, and seeming in every way as much at home as their experienced
+parents, like young bees on their first excursions to the flower fields.
+No amount of familiarity with people and their ways seems to change them
+in the least. To all appearance their behavior is just the same on
+seeing a man for the first time, as when they have seen him frequently.
+
+[Illustration: THE OUZEL AT HOME.]
+
+On the lower reaches of the rivers where mills are built, they sing on
+through the din of the machinery, and all the noisy confusion of dogs,
+cattle, and workmen. On one occasion, while a wood-chopper was at work
+on the river-bank, I observed one cheerily singing within reach of the
+flying chips. Nor does any kind of unwonted disturbance put him in bad
+humor, or frighten him out of calm self-possession. In passing through a
+narrow gorge, I once drove one ahead of me from rapid to rapid,
+disturbing him four times in quick succession where he could not very
+well fly past me on account of the narrowness of the channel. Most birds
+under similar circumstances fancy themselves pursued, and become
+suspiciously uneasy; but, instead of growing nervous about it, he made
+his usual dippings, and sang one of his most tranquil strains. When
+observed within a few yards their eyes are seen to express remarkable
+gentleness and intelligence; but they seldom allow so near a view unless
+one wears clothing of about the same color as the rocks and trees, and
+knows how to sit still. On one occasion, while rambling along the shore
+of a mountain lake, where the birds, at least those born that season,
+had never seen a man, I sat down to rest on a large stone close to the
+water's edge, upon which it seemed the ouzels and sandpipers were in the
+habit of alighting when they came to feed on that part of the shore, and
+some of the other birds also, when they came down to wash or drink. In a
+few minutes, along came a whirring Ouzel and alighted on the stone
+beside me, within reach of my hand. Then suddenly observing me, he
+stooped nervously as if about to fly on the instant, but as I remained
+as motionless as the stone, he gained confidence, and looked me steadily
+in the face for about a minute, then flew quietly to the outlet and
+began to sing. Next came a sandpiper and gazed at me with much the same
+guileless expression of eye as the Ouzel. Lastly, down with a swoop came
+a Steller's jay out of a fir-tree, probably with the intention of
+moistening his noisy throat. But instead of sitting confidingly as my
+other visitors had done, he rushed off at once, nearly tumbling heels
+over head into the lake in his suspicious confusion, and with loud
+screams roused the neighborhood.
+
+Love for song-birds, with their sweet human voices, appears to be more
+common and unfailing than love for flowers. Every one loves flowers to
+some extent, at least in life's fresh morning, attracted by them as
+instinctively as humming-birds and bees. Even the young Digger Indians
+have sufficient love for the brightest of those found growing on the
+mountains to gather them and braid them, as decorations for the hair.
+And I was glad to discover, through the few Indians that could be
+induced to talk on the subject, that they have names for the wild rose
+and the lily, and other conspicuous flowers, whether available as food
+or otherwise. Most men, however, whether savage or civilized, become
+apathetic toward all plants that have no other apparent use than the use
+of beauty. But fortunately one's first instinctive love of song-birds is
+never wholly obliterated, no matter what the influences upon our lives
+may be. I have often been delighted to see a pure, spiritual glow come
+into the countenances of hard business-men and old miners, when a
+song-bird chanced to alight near them. Nevertheless, the little mouthful
+of meat that swells out the breasts of some song-birds is too often the
+cause of their death. Larks and robins in particular are brought to
+market in hundreds. But fortunately the Ouzel has no enemy so eager to
+eat his little body as to follow him into the mountain solitudes. I
+never knew him to be chased even by hawks.
+
+An acquaintance of mine, a sort of foot-hill mountaineer, had a pet cat,
+a great, dozy, overgrown creature, about as broad-shouldered as a lynx.
+During the winter, while the snow lay deep, the mountaineer sat in his
+lonely cabin among the pines smoking his pipe and wearing the dull time
+away. Tom was his sole companion, sharing his bed, and sitting beside
+him on a stool with much the same drowsy expression of eye as his
+master. The good-natured bachelor was content with his hard fare of
+soda-bread and bacon, but Tom, the only creature in the world
+acknowledging dependence on him, must needs be provided with fresh meat.
+Accordingly he bestirred himself to contrive squirrel-traps, and waded
+the snowy woods with his gun, making sad havoc among the few winter
+birds, sparing neither robin, sparrow, nor tiny nuthatch, and the
+pleasure of seeing Tom eat and grow fat was his great reward.
+
+One cold afternoon, while hunting along the river-bank, he noticed a
+plain-feathered little bird skipping about in the shallows, and
+immediately raised his gun. But just then the confiding songster began
+to sing, and after listening to his summery melody the charmed hunter
+turned away, saying, "Bless your little heart, I can't shoot you, not
+even for Tom."
+
+[Illustration: YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CANON.]
+
+Even so far north as icy Alaska, I have found my glad singer. When I was
+exploring the glaciers between Mount Fairweather and the Stikeen River,
+one cold day in November, after trying in vain to force a way through
+the innumerable icebergs of Sum Dum Bay to the great glaciers at the
+head of it, I was weary and baffled and sat resting in my canoe
+convinced at last that I would have to leave this part of my work for
+another year. Then I began to plan my escape to open water before the
+young ice which was beginning to form should shut me in. While I thus
+lingered drifting with the bergs, in the midst of these gloomy
+forebodings and all the terrible glacial desolation and grandeur, I
+suddenly heard the well-known whir of an Ouzel's wings, and, looking up,
+saw my little comforter coming straight across the ice from the shore.
+In a second or two he was with me, flying three times round my head with
+a happy salute, as if saying, "Cheer up, old friend; you see I'm here,
+and all's well." Then he flew back to the shore, alighted on the topmost
+jag of a stranded iceberg, and began to nod and bow as though he were on
+one of his favorite boulders in the midst of a sunny Sierra cascade.
+
+The species is distributed all along the mountain-ranges of the Pacific
+Coast from Alaska to Mexico, and east to the Rocky Mountains.
+Nevertheless, it is as yet comparatively little known. Audubon and
+Wilson did not meet it. Swainson was, I believe, the first naturalist to
+describe a specimen from Mexico. Specimens were shortly afterward
+procured by Drummond near the sources of the Athabasca River, between
+the fifty-fourth and fifty-sixth parallels; and it has been collected by
+nearly all of the numerous exploring expeditions undertaken of late
+through our Western States and Territories; for it never fails to engage
+the attention of naturalists in a very particular manner.
+
+Such, then, is our little cinclus, beloved of every one who is so
+fortunate as to know him. Tracing on strong wing every curve of the most
+precipitous torrents from one extremity of the Sierra to the other; not
+fearing to follow them through their darkest gorges and coldest
+snow-tunnels; acquainted with every waterfall, echoing their divine
+music; and throughout the whole of their beautiful lives interpreting
+all that we in our unbelief call terrible in the utterances of torrents
+and storms, as only varied expressions of God's eternal love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+THE WILD SHEEP
+(_Ovis montana_)
+
+The wild sheep ranks highest among the animal mountaineers of the
+Sierra. Possessed of keen sight and scent, and strong limbs, he dwells
+secure amid the loftiest summits, leaping unscathed from crag to crag,
+up and down the fronts of giddy precipices, crossing foaming torrents
+and slopes of frozen snow, exposed to the wildest storms, yet
+maintaining a brave, warm life, and developing from generation to
+generation in perfect strength and beauty.
+
+Nearly all the lofty mountain-chains of the globe are inhabited by wild
+sheep, most of which, on account of the remote and all but inaccessible
+regions where they dwell, are imperfectly known as yet. They are
+classified by different naturalists under from five to ten distinct
+species or varieties, the best known being the burrhel of the Himalaya
+(_Ovis burrhel_, Blyth); the argali, the large wild sheep of
+central and northeastern Asia (_O. ammon_, Linn., or _Caprovis
+argali_); the Corsican mouflon (_O. musimon_, Pal.); the aoudad
+of the mountains of northern Africa (_Ammotragus tragelaphus_); and
+the Rocky Mountain bighorn (_O. montana_, Cuv.). To this last-named
+species belongs the wild sheep of the Sierra. Its range, according to
+the late Professor Baird of the Smithsonian Institution, extends "from
+the region of the upper Missouri and Yellowstone to the Rocky Mountains
+and the high grounds adjacent to them on the eastern slope, and as far
+south as the Rio Grande. Westward it extends to the coast ranges of
+Washington, Oregon, and California, and follows the highlands some
+distance into Mexico."[1] Throughout the vast region bounded on the east
+by the Wahsatch Mountains and on the west by the Sierra there are more
+than a hundred subordinate ranges and mountain groups, trending north
+and south, range beyond range, with summits rising from eight to twelve
+thousand feet above the level of the sea, probably all of which,
+according to my own observations, is, or has been, inhabited by this
+species.
+
+Compared with the argali, which, considering its size and the vast
+extent of its range, is probably the most important of all the wild
+sheep, our species is about the same size, but the horns are less
+twisted and less divergent. The more important characteristics are,
+however, essentially the same, some of the best naturalists maintaining
+that the two are only varied forms of one species. In accordance with
+this view, Cuvier conjectures that since central Asia seems to be the
+region where the sheep first appeared, and from which it has been
+distributed, the argali may have been distributed over this continent
+from Asia by crossing Bering Strait on ice. This conjecture is not so
+ill founded as at first sight would appear; for the Strait is only about
+fifty miles wide, is interrupted by three islands, and is jammed with
+ice nearly every winter. Furthermore the argali is abundant on the
+mountains adjacent to the Strait at East Cape, where it is well known to
+the Tschuckchi hunters and where I have seen many of their horns.
+
+On account of the extreme variability of the sheep under culture, it is
+generally supposed that the innumerable domestic breeds have all been
+derived from the few wild species; but the whole question is involved in
+obscurity. According to Darwin, sheep have been domesticated from a very
+ancient period, the remains of a small breed, differing from any now
+known, having been found in the famous Swiss lake-dwellings.
+
+Compared with the best-known domestic breeds, we find that our wild
+species is much larger, and, instead of an all-wool garment, wears a
+thick over-coat of hair like that of the deer, and an under-covering of
+fine wool. The hair, though rather coarse, is comfortably soft and
+spongy, and lies smooth, as if carefully tended with comb and brush. The
+predominant color during most of the year is brownish-gray, varying to
+bluish-gray in the autumn; the belly and a large, conspicuous patch on
+the buttocks are white; and the tail, which is very short, like that of
+a deer, is black, with a yellowish border. The wool is white, and grows
+in beautiful spirals down out of sight among the shining hair, like
+delicate climbing vines among stalks of corn.
+
+The horns of the male are of immense size, measuring in their greater
+diameter from five to six and a half inches, and from two and a half to
+three feet in length around the curve. They are yellowish-white in
+color, and ridged transversely, like those of the domestic ram. Their
+cross-section near the base is somewhat triangular in outline, and
+flattened toward the tip. Rising boldly from the top of the head, they
+curve gently backward and outward, then forward and outward, until about
+three fourths of a circle is described, and until the flattened, blunt
+tips are about two feet or two and a half feet apart. Those of the
+female are flattened throughout their entire length, are less curved
+than those of the male, and much smaller, measuring less than a foot
+along the curve.
+
+A ram and ewe that I obtained near the Modoc lava-beds, to the northeast
+of Mount Shasta, measured as follows:
+
+                                             _Ram.       Ewe._
+                                          _ft. in.     ft. in._
+  Height at shoulders                       3   6       3   0
+  Girth around shoulders                    3  11       3   3-3/4
+  Length from nose to root of tail          5  10-1/4   4   3-1/2
+  Length of ears                            0   4-3/4   0   5
+  Length of tail                            0   4-1/2   0   4-1/2
+  Length of horns around curve              2   9       0  11-1/2
+  Distance across from tip to tip of horns  2   5-1/2
+  Circumference of horns at base            1   4       0   6
+
+The measurements of a male obtained in the Rocky Mountains by Audubon
+vary but little as compared with the above. The weight of his specimen
+was 344 pounds,[2] which is, perhaps, about an average for full-grown
+males. The females are about a third lighter.
+
+Besides these differences in size, color, hair, etc., as noted above, we
+may observe that the domestic sheep, in a general way, is expressionless,
+like a dull bundle of something only half alive, while the wild is as
+elegant and graceful as a deer, every movement manifesting admirable
+strength and character. The tame is timid; the wild is bold. The tame
+is always more or less ruffled and dirty; while the wild is as smooth
+and clean as the flowers of his mountain pastures.
+
+The earliest mention that I have been able to find of the wild sheep in
+America is by Father Picolo, a Catholic missionary at Monterey, in the
+year 1797, who, after describing it, oddly enough, as "a kind of deer
+with a sheep-like head, and about as large as a calf one or two years
+old," naturally hurries on to remark: "I have eaten of these beasts;
+their flesh is very tender and delicious." Mackenzie, in his northern
+travels, heard the species spoken of by the Indians as "white buffaloes."
+And Lewis and Clark tell us that, in a time of great scarcity on the
+head waters of the Missouri, they saw plenty of wild sheep, but they
+were "too shy to be shot."
+
+A few of the more energetic of the Pah Ute Indians hunt the wild sheep
+every season among the more accessible sections of the High Sierra, in
+the neighborhood of passes, where, from having been pursued, they have
+become extremely wary; but in the rugged wilderness of peaks and canons,
+where the foaming tributaries of the San Joaquin and King's rivers take
+their rise, they fear no hunter save the wolf, and are more guileless
+and approachable than their tame kindred.
+
+While engaged in the work of exploring high regions where they delight
+to roam I have been greatly interested in studying their habits. In the
+months of November and December, and probably during a considerable
+portion of midwinter, they all flock together, male and female, old and
+young. I once found a complete band of this kind numbering upward of
+fifty, which, on being alarmed, went bounding away across a jagged
+lava-bed at admirable speed, led by a majestic old ram, with the lambs
+safe in the middle of the flock.
+
+In spring and summer, the full-grown rams form separate bands of from
+three to twenty, and are usually found feeding along the edges of
+glacier meadows, or resting among the castle-like crags of the high
+summits; and whether quietly feeding, or scaling the wild cliffs, their
+noble forms and the power and beauty of their movements never fail to
+strike the beholder with lively admiration.
+
+Their resting-places seem to be chosen with reference to sunshine and a
+wide outlook, and most of all to safety. Their feeding-grounds are among
+the most beautiful of the wild gardens, bright with daisies and gentians
+and mats of purple bryanthus, lying hidden away on rocky headlands and
+canon sides, where sunshine is abundant, or down in the shady glacier
+valleys, along the banks of the streams and lakes, where the plushy sod
+is greenest. Here they feast all summer, the happy wanderers, perhaps
+relishing the beauty as well as the taste of the lovely flora on which
+they feed.
+
+[Illustration: SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA.]
+
+When the winter storms set in, loading their highland pastures with
+snow, then, like the birds, they gather and go to lower climates,
+usually descending the eastern flank of the range to the rough, volcanic
+table-lands and treeless ranges of the Great Basin adjacent to the
+Sierra. They never make haste, however, and seem to have no dread of
+storms, many of the strongest only going down leisurely to bare,
+wind-swept ridges, to feed on bushes and dry bunch-grass, and then
+returning up into the snow. Once I was snow-bound on Mount Shasta for
+three days, a little below the timber line. It was a dark and stormy
+time, well calculated to test the skill and endurance of mountaineers.
+The snow-laden gale drove on night and day in hissing, blinding floods,
+and when at length it began to abate, I found that a small band of wild
+sheep had weathered the storm in the lee of a clump of Dwarf Pines a few
+yards above my storm-nest, where the snow was eight or ten feet deep. I
+was warm back of a rock, with blankets, bread, and fire. My brave
+companions lay in the snow, without food, and with only the partial
+shelter of the short trees, yet they made no sign of suffering or
+faint-heartedness.
+
+In the months of May and June, the wild sheep bring forth their young in
+solitary and almost inaccessible crags, far above the nesting-rocks of
+the eagle. I have frequently come upon the beds of the ewes and lambs at
+an elevation of from 12,000 to 13,000 feet above sea-level. These beds
+are simply oval-shaped hollows, pawed out among loose, disintegrating
+rock-chips and sand, upon some sunny spot commanding a good outlook, and
+partially sheltered from the winds that sweep those lofty peaks almost
+without intermission. Such is the cradle of the little mountaineer,
+aloft in the very sky; rocked in storms, curtained in clouds, sleeping
+in thin, icy air; but, wrapped in his hairy coat, and nourished by a
+strong, warm mother, defended from the talons of the eagle and the teeth
+of the sly coyote, the bonny lamb grows apace. He soon learns to nibble
+the tufted rock-grasses and leaves of the white spirsea; his horns begin
+to shoot, and before summer is done he is strong and agile, and goes
+forth with the flock, watched by the same divine love that tends the
+more helpless human lamb in its cradle by the fireside.
+
+Nothing is more commonly remarked by noisy, dusty trail-travelers in
+the Sierra than the want of animal life--no song-birds, no deer, no
+squirrels, no game of any kind, they say. But if such could only go away
+quietly into the wilderness, sauntering afoot and alone with natural
+deliberation, they would soon learn that these mountain mansions are not
+without inhabitants, many of whom, confiding and gentle, would not try
+to shun their acquaintance.
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM (DOMESTIC).]
+
+In the fall of 1873 I was tracing the South Fork of the San Joaquin up
+its wild canon to its farthest glacier fountains. It was the season of
+alpine Indian summer. The sun beamed lovingly; the squirrels were
+nutting in the pine-trees, butterflies hovered about the last of the
+goldenrods, the willow and maple thickets were yellow, the meadows
+brown, and the whole sunny, mellow landscape glowed like a countenance
+in the deepest and sweetest repose. On my way over the glacier-polished
+rocks along the river, I came to an expanded portion of the canon, about
+two miles long and half a mile wide, which formed a level park inclosed
+with picturesque granite walls like those of Yosemite Valley. Down
+through the middle of it poured the beautiful river shining and
+spangling in the golden light, yellow groves on its banks, and strips of
+brown meadow; while the whole park was astir with wild life, some of
+which even the noisiest and least observing of travelers must have seen
+had they been with me. Deer, with their supple, well-grown fawns,
+bounded from thicket to thicket as I advanced; grouse kept rising from
+the brown grass with a great whirring of wings, and, alighting on the
+lower branches of the pines and poplars, allowed a near approach, as if
+curious to see me. Farther on, a broad-shouldered wildcat showed
+himself, coming out of a grove, and crossing the river on a flood-jamb
+of logs, halting for a moment to look back. The bird-like tamias frisked
+about my feet everywhere among the pine-needles and seedy grass-tufts;
+cranes waded the shallows of the river-bends, the kingfisher rattled
+from perch to perch, and the blessed ouzel sang amid the spray of every
+cascade. Where may lonely wanderer find a more interesting family of
+mountain-dwellers, earth-born companions and fellow-mortals? It was
+afternoon when I joined them, and the glorious landscape began to fade
+in the gloaming before I awoke from their enchantment. Then I sought a
+camp-ground on the river-bank, made a cupful of tea, and lay down to
+sleep on a smooth place among the yellow leaves of an aspen grove. Next
+day I discovered yet grander landscapes and grander life. Following the
+river over huge, swelling rock-bosses through a majestic canon, and past
+innumerable cascades, the scenery in general became gradually wilder and
+more alpine. The Sugar Pine and Silver Firs gave place to the hardier
+Cedar and Hemlock Spruce. The canon walls became more rugged and bare,
+and gentians and arctic daisies became more abundant in the gardens and
+strips of meadow along the streams. Toward the middle of the afternoon I
+came to another valley, strikingly wild and original in all its
+features, and perhaps never before touched by human foot. As regards
+area of level bottom-land, it is one of the very smallest of the
+Yosemite type, but its walls are sublime, rising to a height of from
+2000 to 4000 feet above the river. At the head of the valley the main
+canon forks, as is found to be the case in all yosemites. The formation
+of this one is due chiefly to the action of two great glaciers, whose
+fountains lay to the eastward, on the flanks of Mounts Humphrey and
+Emerson and a cluster of nameless peaks farther south.
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP.]
+
+The gray, boulder-chafed river was singing loudly through the valley,
+but above its massy roar I heard the booming of a waterfall, which drew
+me eagerly on; and just as I emerged from the tangled groves and
+brier-thickets at the head of the valley, the main fork of the river
+came in sight, falling fresh from its glacier fountains in a snowy
+cascade, between granite walls 2000 feet high. The steep incline down
+which the glad waters thundered seemed to bar all farther progress. It
+was not long, however, before I discovered a crooked seam in the rock,
+by which I was enabled to climb to the edge of a terrace that crosses
+the canon, and divides the cataract nearly in the middle. Here I sat
+down to take breath and make some entries in my note-book, taking
+advantage, at the same time, of my elevated position above the trees to
+gaze back over the valley into the heart of the noble landscape, little
+knowing the while what neighbors were near.
+
+After spending a few minutes in this way, I chanced to look across the
+fall, and there stood three sheep quietly observing me. Never did the
+sudden appearance of a mountain, or fall, or human friend more forcibly
+seize and rivet my attention. Anxiety to observe accurately held me
+perfectly still. Eagerly I marked the flowing undulations of their firm,
+braided muscles, their strong legs, ears, eyes, heads, their graceful
+rounded necks, the color of their hair, and the bold, upsweeping curves
+of their noble horns. When they moved I watched every gesture, while
+they, in no wise disconcerted either by my attention or by the
+tumultuous roar of the water, advanced deliberately alongside the
+rapids, between the two divisions of the cataract, turning now and then
+to look at me. Presently they came to a steep, ice-burnished acclivity,
+which they ascended by a succession of quick, short, stiff-legged leaps,
+reaching the top without a struggle. This was the most startling feat of
+mountaineering I had ever witnessed, and, considering only the mechanics
+of the thing, my astonishment could hardly have been greater had they
+displayed wings and taken to flight. "Surefooted" mules on such ground
+would have fallen and rolled like loosened boulders. Many a time, where
+the slopes are far lower, I have been compelled to take off my shoes and
+stockings, tie them to my belt, and creep barefooted, with the utmost
+caution. No wonder then, that I watched the progress of these animal
+mountaineers with keen sympathy, and exulted in the boundless
+sufficiency of wild nature displayed in their invention, construction,
+and keeping. A few minutes later I caught sight of a dozen more in one
+band, near the foot of the upper fall. They were standing on the same
+side of the river with me, only twenty-five or thirty yards away,
+looking as unworn and perfect as if created on the spot. It appeared by
+their tracks, which I had seen in the Little Yosemite, and by their
+present position, that when I came up the canon they were all feeding
+together down in the valley, and in their haste to reach high
+ground, where they could look about them to ascertain the nature of the
+strange disturbance, they were divided, three ascending on one side the
+river, the rest on the other.
+
+The main band, headed by an experienced chief, now began to cross the
+wild rapids between the two divisions of the cascade. This was another
+exciting feat; for, among all the varied experiences of mountaineers,
+the crossing of boisterous, rock-dashed torrents is found to be one of
+the most trying to the nerves. Yet these fine fellows walked fearlessly
+to the brink, and jumped from boulder to boulder, holding themselves in
+easy poise above the whirling, confusing current, as if they were doing
+nothing extraordinary.
+
+[Illustration: CROSSING A CANON STREAM.]
+
+In the immediate foreground of this rare picture there was a fold of
+ice-burnished granite, traversed by a few bold lines in which rock-ferns
+and tufts of bryanthus were growing, the gray canon walls on the sides,
+nobly sculptured and adorned with brown cedars and pines; lofty peaks in
+the distance, and in the middle ground the snowy fall, the voice and
+soul of the landscape; fringing bushes beating time to its
+thunder-tones, the brave sheep in front of it, their gray forms slightly
+obscured in the spray, yet standing out in good, heavy relief against
+the close white water, with their huge horns rising like the upturned
+roots of dead pine-trees, while the evening sunbeams streaming up the
+canon colored all the picture a rosy purple and made it glorious. After
+crossing the river, the dauntless climbers, led by their chief, at once
+began to scale the canon wall, turning now right, now left, in long,
+single file, keeping well apart out of one another's way, and leaping in
+regular succession from crag to crag, now ascending slippery
+dome-curves, now walking leisurely along the edges of precipices,
+stopping at times to gaze down at me from some flat-topped rock, with
+heads held aslant, as if curious to learn what I thought about it, or
+whether I was likely to follow them. After reaching the top of the wall,
+which, at this place, is somewhere between 1500 and 2000 feet high, they
+were still visible against the sky as they lingered, looking down in
+groups of twos or threes.
+
+Throughout the entire ascent they did not make a single awkward step, or
+an unsuccessful effort of any kind. I have frequently seen tame sheep in
+mountains jump upon a sloping rock-surface, hold on tremulously a few
+seconds, and fall back baffled and irresolute. But in the most trying
+situations, where the slightest want or inaccuracy would have been
+fatal, these always seemed to move in comfortable reliance on their
+strength and skill, the limits of which they never appeared to know.
+Moreover, each one of the flock, while following the guidance of the
+most experienced, yet climbed with intelligent independence as a perfect
+individual, capable of separate existence whenever it should wish or be
+compelled to withdraw from the little clan. The domestic sheep, on the
+contrary, is only a fraction of an animal, a whole flock being required
+to form an individual, just as numerous flowerets are required to make
+one complete sunflower.
+
+Those shepherds who, in summer, drive their flocks to the mountain
+pastures, and, while watching them night and day, have seen them
+frightened by bears and storms, and scattered like wind-driven chaff,
+will, in some measure, be able to appreciate the self-reliance and
+strength and noble individuality of Nature's sheep.
+
+Like the Alp-climbing ibex of Europe, our mountaineer is said to plunge
+headlong down the faces of sheer precipices, and alight on his big
+horns. I know only two hunters who claim to have actually witnessed this
+feat; I never was so fortunate. They describe the act as a diving
+head-foremost. The horns are so large at the base that they cover the
+upper portion of the head down nearly to a level with the eyes, and the
+skull is exceedingly strong. I struck an old, bleached specimen on Mount
+Ritter a dozen blows with my ice-ax without breaking it. Such skulls
+would not fracture very readily by the wildest rock-diving, but other
+bones could hardly be expected to hold together in such a performance;
+and the mechanical difficulties in the way of controlling their
+movements, after striking upon an irregular surface, are, in themselves,
+sufficient to show this boulder-like method of progression to be
+impossible, even in the absence of all other evidence on the subject;
+moreover, the ewes follow wherever the rams may lead, although their
+horns are mere spikes. I have found many pairs of the horns of the old
+rams considerably battered, doubtless a result of fighting. I was
+particularly interested in the question, after witnessing the
+performances of this San Joaquin band upon the glaciated rocks at the
+foot of the falls; and as soon as I procured specimens and examined
+their feet, all the mystery disappeared. The secret, considered in
+connection with exceptionally strong muscles, is simply this: the wide
+posterior portion of the bottom of the foot, instead of wearing down and
+becoming flat and hard, like the feet of tame sheep and horses, bulges
+out in a soft, rubber-like pad or cushion, which not only grips and
+holds well on smooth rocks, but fits into small cavities, and down upon
+or against slight protuberances. Even the hardest portions of the edge
+of the hoof are comparatively soft and elastic; furthermore, the toes
+admit of an extraordinary amount of both lateral and vertical movement,
+allowing the foot to accommodate itself still more perfectly to the
+irregularities of rock surfaces, while at the same time increasing the
+gripping power.
+
+At the base of Sheep Rock, one of the winter strongholds of the Shasta
+flocks, there lives a stock-raiser who has had the advantage of
+observing the movements of wild sheep every winter; and, in the course
+of a conversation with him on the subject of their diving habits, he
+pointed to the front of a lava headland about 150 feet high, which is
+only eight or ten degrees out of the perpendicular. "There," said he, "I
+followed a band of them fellows to the back of that rock yonder, and
+expected to capture them all, for I thought I had a dead thing on them.
+I got behind them on a narrow bench that runs along the face of the wall
+near the top and comes to an end where they couldn't get away without
+falling and being killed; but they jumped off, and landed all right, as
+if that were the regular thing with them."
+
+"What!" said I, "jumped 150 feet perpendicular! Did you see them do it?"
+
+"No," he replied, "I didn't see them going down, for I was behind them;
+but I saw them go off over the brink, and then I went below and found
+their tracks where they struck on the loose rubbish at the bottom. They
+just _sailed right off_, and landed on their feet right side up.
+That is the kind of animal _they_ is--beats anything else that goes
+on four legs."
+
+[Illustration: WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE.]
+
+On another occasion, a flock that was pursued by hunters retreated to
+another portion of this same cliff where it is still higher, and, on
+being followed, they were seen jumping down in perfect order, one behind
+another, by two men who happened to be chopping where they had a fair
+view of them and could watch their progress from top to bottom of the
+precipice. Both ewes and rams made the frightful descent without
+evincing any extraordinary concern, hugging the rock closely, and
+controlling the velocity of their half falling, half leaping movements
+by striking at short intervals and holding back with their cushioned,
+rubber feet upon small ledges and roughened inclines until near the
+bottom, when they "sailed off" into the free air and alighted on their
+feet, but with their bodies so nearly in a vertical position that they
+appeared to be diving.
+
+It appears, therefore, that the methods of this wild mountaineering
+become clearly comprehensible as soon as we make ourselves acquainted
+with the rocks, and the kind of feet and muscles brought to bear upon
+them.
+
+The Modoc and Pah Ute Indians are, or rather have been, the most
+successful hunters of the wild sheep in the regions that have come under
+my own observation. I have seen large numbers of heads and horns in the
+caves of Mount Shasta and the Modoc lava-beds, where the Indians had
+been feasting in stormy weather; also in the canons of the Sierra
+opposite Owen's Valley; while the heavy obsidian arrow-heads found on
+some of the highest peaks show that this warfare has long been going on.
+
+In the more accessible ranges that stretch across the desert regions of
+western Utah and Nevada, considerable numbers of Indians used to hunt in
+company like packs of wolves, and being perfectly acquainted with the
+topography of their hunting-grounds, and with the habits and instincts
+of the game, they were pretty successful. On the tops of nearly every
+one of the Nevada mountains that I have visited, I found small,
+nest-like inclosures built of stones, in which, as I afterward learned,
+one or more Indians would lie in wait while their companions scoured the
+ridges below, knowing that the alarmed sheep would surely run to the
+summit, and when they could be made to approach with the wind they were
+shot at short range.
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP.]
+
+Still larger bands of Indians used to make extensive hunts upon some
+dominant mountain much frequented by the sheep, such as Mount Grant on
+the Wassuck Range to the west of Walker Lake. On some particular spot,
+favorably situated with reference to the well-known trails of the sheep,
+they built a high-walled corral, with long guiding wings diverging from
+the gateway; and into this inclosure they sometimes succeeded in driving
+the noble game. Great numbers of Indians were of course required, more,
+indeed, than they could usually muster, counting in squaws, children,
+and all; they were compelled, therefore, to build rows of dummy hunters
+out of stones, along the ridge-tops which they wished to prevent the
+sheep from crossing. And, without discrediting the sagacity of the game,
+these dummies were found effective; for, with a few live Indians moving
+about excitedly among them, they could hardly be distinguished at a
+little distance from men, by any one not in the secret. The whole
+ridge-top then seemed to be alive with hunters.
+
+The only animal that may fairly be regarded as a companion or rival of
+the sheep is the so-called Rocky Mountain goat (_Aplocerus montana_,
+Rich.), which, as its name indicates, is more antelope than goat. He,
+too, is a brave and hardy climber, fearlessly crossing the wildest
+summits, and braving the severest storms, but he is shaggy, short-legged,
+and much less dignified in demeanor than the sheep. His jet-black horns
+are only about five or six inches in length, and the long, white hair
+with which he is covered obscures the expression of his limbs. I have
+never yet seen a single specimen in the Sierra, though possibly a few
+flocks may have lived on Mount Shasta a comparatively short time ago.
+
+The ranges of these two mountaineers are pretty distinct, and they see
+but little of each other; the sheep being restricted mostly to the dry,
+inland mountains; the goat or chamois to the wet, snowy glacier-laden
+mountains of the northwest coast of the continent in Oregon, Washington,
+British Columbia, and Alaska. Probably more than 200 dwell on the icy,
+volcanic cone of Mount Rainier; and while I was exploring the glaciers
+of Alaska I saw flocks of these admirable mountaineers nearly every day,
+and often followed their trails through the mazes of bewildering
+crevasses, in which they are excellent guides.
+
+Three species of deer are found in California,--the black-tailed,
+white-tailed, and mule deer. The first mentioned (_Cervus Columbianus_)
+is by far the most abundant, and occasionally meets the sheep during
+the summer on high glacier meadows, and along the edge of the timber
+line; but being a forest animal, seeking shelter and rearing its young
+in dense thickets, it seldom visits the wild sheep in its higher homes.
+The antelope, though not a mountaineer, is occasionally met in winter
+by the sheep while feeding along the edges of the sage-plains and bare
+volcanic hills to the east of the Sierra. So also is the mule deer,
+which is almost restricted in its range to this eastern region. The
+white-tailed species belongs to the coast ranges.
+
+Perhaps no wild animal in the world is without enemies, but highlanders,
+as a class, have fewer than lowlanders. The wily panther, slipping and
+crouching among long grass and bushes, pounces upon the antelope and
+deer, but seldom crosses the bald, craggy thresholds of the sheep.
+Neither can the bears be regarded as enemies; for, though they seek to
+vary their every-day diet of nuts and berries by an occasional meal of
+mutton, they prefer to hunt tame and helpless flocks. Eagles and
+coyotes, no doubt, capture an unprotected lamb at times, or some
+unfortunate beset in deep, soft snow, but these cases are little more
+than accidents. So, also, a few perish in long-continued snow-storms,
+though, in all my mountaineering, I have not found more than five or six
+that seemed to have met their fate in this way. A little band of three
+were discovered snow-bound in Bloody Canon a few years ago, and were
+killed with an ax by mountaineers, who chanced to be crossing the range
+in winter.
+
+Man is the most dangerous enemy of all, but even from him our brave
+mountain-dweller has little to fear in the remote solitudes of the High
+Sierra. The golden plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin were lately
+thronged with bands of elk and antelope, but, being fertile and
+accessible, they were required for human pastures. So, also, are many of
+the feeding-grounds of the deer--hill, valley, forest, and meadow--but
+it will be long before man will care to take the highland castles of the
+sheep. And when we consider here how rapidly entire species of noble
+animals, such as the elk, moose, and buffalo, are being pushed to the
+very verge of extinction, all lovers of wildness will rejoice with me in
+the rocky security of _Ovis montana_, the bravest of all the Sierra
+mountaineers.
+
+
+[1] Pacific Railroad Survey, Vol. VIII, page 678.
+
+[2] Audubon and Bachman's "Quadrupeds of North America."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS
+
+Murphy's camp is a curious old mining-town in Calaveras County, at an
+elevation of 2400 feet above the sea, situated like a nest in the center
+of a rough, gravelly region, rich in gold. Granites, slates, lavas,
+limestone, iron ores, quartz veins, auriferous gravels, remnants of dead
+fire-rivers and dead water-rivers are developed here side by side within
+a radius of a few miles, and placed invitingly open before the student
+like a book, while the people and the region beyond the camp furnish
+mines of study of never-failing interest and variety.
+
+When I discovered this curious place, I was tracing the channels of the
+ancient pre-glacial rivers, instructive sections of which have been laid
+bare here and in the adjacent regions by the miners. Rivers, according
+to the poets, "go on forever"; but those of the Sierra are young as yet
+and have scarcely learned the way down to the sea; while at least one
+generation of them have died and vanished together with most of the
+basins they drained. All that remains of them to tell their history is a
+series of interrupted fragments of channels, mostly choked with gravel,
+and buried beneath broad, thick sheets of lava. These are known as the
+"Dead Rivers of California," and the gravel deposited in them is
+comprehensively called the "Blue Lead." In some places the channels of
+the present rivers trend in the same direction, or nearly so, as those
+of the ancient rivers; but, in general, there is little correspondence
+between them, the entire drainage having been changed, or, rather, made
+new. Many of the hills of the ancient landscapes have become hollows,
+and the old hollows have become hills. Therefore the fragmentary
+channels, with their loads of auriferous gravel, occur in all kinds of
+unthought-of places, trending obliquely, or even at right angles to the
+present drainage, across the tops of lofty ridges or far beneath them,
+presenting impressive illustrations of the magnitude of the changes
+accomplished since those ancient streams were annihilated. The last
+volcanic period preceding the regeneration of the Sierra landscapes
+seems to have come on over all the range almost simultaneously, like the
+glacial period, notwithstanding lavas of different age occur together in
+many places, indicating numerous periods of activity in the Sierra
+fire-fountains. The most important of the ancient river-channels in this
+region is a section that extends from the south side of the town beneath
+Coyote Creek and the ridge beyond it to the Canon of the Stanislaus; but
+on account of its depth below the general surface of the present valleys
+the rich gold gravels it is known to contain cannot be easily worked on
+a large scale. Their extraordinary richness may be inferred from the
+fact that many claims were profitably worked in them by sinking shafts
+to a depth of 200 feet or more, and hoisting the dirt by a windlass.
+Should the dip of this ancient channel be such as to make the Stanislaus
+Canon available as a dump, then the grand deposit might be worked by the
+hydraulic method, and although a long, expensive tunnel would be
+required, the scheme might still prove profitable, for there is
+"millions in it."
+
+The importance of these ancient gravels as gold fountains is well known
+to miners. Even the superficial placers of the present streams have
+derived much of their gold from them. According to all accounts, the
+Murphy placers have been very rich--"terrific rich," as they say here.
+The hills have been cut and scalped, and every gorge and gulch and
+valley torn to pieces and disemboweled, expressing a fierce and
+desperate energy hard to understand. Still, any kind of effort-making is
+better than inaction, and there is something sublime in seeing men
+working in dead earnest at anything, pursuing an object with
+glacier-like energy and persistence. Many a brave fellow has recorded a
+most eventful chapter of life on these Calaveras rocks. But most of the
+pioneer miners are sleeping now, their wild day done, while the few
+survivors linger languidly in the washed-out gulches or sleepy village
+like harried bees around the ruins of their hive. "We have no industry
+left _now_," they told me, "and no men; everybody and everything
+hereabouts has gone to decay. We are only bummers--out of the game, a
+thin scatterin' of poor, dilapidated cusses, compared with what we used
+to be in the grand old gold-days. We were giants then, and you can look
+around here and see our tracks." But although these lingering pioneers
+are perhaps more exhausted than the mines, and about as dead as the dead
+rivers, they are yet a rare and interesting set of men, with much gold
+mixed with the rough, rocky gravel of their characters; and they
+manifest a breeding and intelligence little looked for in such
+surroundings as theirs. As the heavy, long-continued grinding of the
+glaciers brought out the features of the Sierra, so the intense
+experiences of the gold period have brought out the features of these
+old miners, forming a richness and variety of character little known as
+yet. The sketches of Bret Harte, Hayes, and Miller have not exhausted
+this field by any means. It is interesting to note the extremes possible
+in one and the same character: harshness and gentleness, manliness and
+childishness, apathy and fierce endeavor. Men who, twenty years ago,
+would not cease their shoveling to save their lives, now play in the
+streets with children. Their long, Micawber-like waiting after the
+exhaustion of the placers has brought on an exaggerated form of dotage.
+I heard a group of brawny pioneers in the street eagerly discussing the
+quantity of tail required for a boy's kite; and one graybeard undertook
+the sport of flying it, volunteering the information that he was a boy,
+"always was a boy, and d--n a man who was not a boy inside, however
+ancient outside!" Mines, morals, politics, the immortality of the soul,
+etc., were discussed beneath shade-trees and in saloons, the time for
+each being governed apparently by the temperature. Contact with Nature,
+and the habits of observation acquired in gold-seeking, had made them
+all, to some extent, collectors, and, like wood-rats, they had gathered
+all kinds of odd specimens into their cabins, and now required me to
+examine them. They were themselves the oddest and most interesting
+specimens. One of them offered to show me around the old diggings,
+giving me fair warning before setting out that I might not like him,
+"because," said he, "people say I'm eccentric. I notice everything, and
+gather beetles and snakes and anything that's queer; and so some don't
+like me, and call me eccentric. I'm always trying to find out things.
+Now, there's a weed; the Indians eat it for greens. What do you call
+those long-bodied flies with big heads?" "Dragon-flies," I suggested.
+"Well, their jaws work sidewise, instead of up and down, and
+grasshoppers' jaws work the same way, and therefore I think they are the
+same species. I always notice everything like that, and just because I
+do, they say I'm eccentric," etc.
+
+Anxious that I should miss none of the wonders of their old gold-field,
+the good people had much to say about the marvelous beauty of Cave City
+Cave, and advised me to explore it. This I was very glad to do, and
+finding a guide who knew the way to the mouth of it, I set out from
+Murphy the next morning.
+
+The most beautiful and extensive of the mountain caves of California
+occur in a belt of metamorphic limestone that is pretty generally
+developed along the western flank of the Sierra from the McCloud River
+on the north to the Kaweah on the south, a distance of over 400 miles,
+at an elevation of from 2000 to 7000 feet above the sea. Besides this
+regular belt of caves, the California landscapes are diversified by long
+imposing ranks of sea-caves, rugged and variable in architecture, carved
+in the coast headlands and precipices by centuries of wave-dashing; and
+innumerable lava-caves, great and small, originating in the unequal
+flowing and hardening of the lava sheets in which they occur, fine
+illustrations of which are presented in the famous Modoc Lava Beds, and
+around the base of icy Shasta. In this comprehensive glance we may also
+notice the shallow wind-worn caves in stratified sandstones along the
+margins of the plains; and the cave-like recesses in the Sierra slates
+and granites, where bears and other mountaineers find shelter during the
+fall of sudden storms. In general, however, the grand massive uplift of
+the Sierra, as far as it has been laid-bare to observation, is about as
+solid and caveless as a boulder.
+
+Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very
+abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps
+prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing,
+therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the
+sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or
+in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns
+underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those
+out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return
+to common every-day beauty.
+
+Our way from Murphy's to the cave lay across a series of picturesque,
+moory ridges in the chaparral region between the brown foot-hills and
+the forests, a flowery stretch of rolling hill-waves breaking here and
+there into a kind of rocky foam on the higher summits, and sinking into
+delightful bosky hollows embowered with vines. The day was a fine
+specimen of California summer, pure sunshine, unshaded most of the time
+by a single cloud. As the sun rose higher, the heated air began to flow
+in tremulous waves from every southern slope. The sea-breeze that
+usually comes up the foot-hills at this season, with cooling on its
+wings, was scarcely perceptible. The birds were assembled beneath leafy
+shade, or made short, languid flights in search of food, all save the
+majestic buzzard; with broad wings outspread he sailed the warm air
+unwearily from ridge to ridge, seeming to enjoy the fervid sunshine like
+a butterfly. Squirrels, too, whose spicy ardor no heat or cold may
+abate, were nutting among the pines, and the innumerable hosts of the
+insect kingdom were throbbing and wavering unwearied as sunbeams.
+
+This brushy, berry-bearing region used to be a deer and bear pasture,
+but since the disturbances of the gold period these fine animals have
+almost wholly disappeared. Here, also, once roamed the mastodon and
+elephant, whose bones are found entombed in the river gravels and
+beneath thick folds of lava. Toward noon, as we were riding slowly over
+bank and brae, basking in the unfeverish sun-heat, we witnessed the
+upheaval of a new mountain-range, a Sierra of clouds abounding in
+landscapes as truly sublime and beautiful--if only we have a mind to
+think so and eyes to see--as the more ancient rocky Sierra beneath it,
+with its forests and waterfalls; reminding us that, as there is a lower
+world of caves, so, also, there is an upper world of clouds. Huge, bossy
+cumuli developed with astonishing rapidity from mere buds, swelling with
+visible motion into colossal mountains, and piling higher, higher, in
+long massive ranges, peak beyond peak, dome over dome, with many a
+picturesque valley and shadowy cave between; while the dark firs and
+pines of the upper benches of the Sierra were projected against their
+pearl bosses with exquisite clearness of outline. These cloud mountains
+vanished in the azure as quickly as they were developed, leaving no
+detritus; but they were not a whit less real or interesting on this
+account. The more enduring hills over which we rode were vanishing as
+surely as they, only not so fast, a difference which is great or small
+according to the standpoint from which it is contemplated.
+
+At the bottom of every dell we found little homesteads embosomed in wild
+brush and vines wherever the recession of the hills left patches of
+arable ground. These secluded flats are settled mostly by Italians and
+Germans, who plant a few vegetables and grape-vines at odd times, while
+their main business is mining and prospecting. In spite of all the
+natural beauty of these dell cabins, they can hardly be called homes.
+They are only a better kind of camp, gladly abandoned whenever the
+hoped-for gold harvest has been gathered. There is an air of profound
+unrest and melancholy about the best of them. Their beauty is thrust
+upon them by exuberant Nature, apart from which they are only a few logs
+and boards rudely jointed and without either ceiling or floor, a rough
+fireplace with corresponding cooking utensils, a shelf-bed, and stool.
+The ground about them is strewn with battered prospecting-pans, picks,
+sluice-boxes, and quartz specimens from many a ledge, indicating the
+trend of their owners' hard lives.
+
+The ride from Murphy's to the cave is scarcely two hours long, but we
+lingered among quartz-ledges and banks of dead river gravel until long
+after noon. At length emerging from a narrow-throated gorge, a small
+house came in sight set in a thicket of fig-trees at the base of a
+limestone hill. "That," said my guide, pointing to the house, "is Cave
+City, and the cave is in that gray hill." Arriving at the one house of
+this one-house city, we were boisterously welcomed by three drunken men
+who had come to town to hold a spree. The mistress of the house tried to
+keep order, and in reply to our inquiries told us that the cave guide
+was then in the cave with a party of ladies. "And must we wait until he
+returns?" we asked. No, that was unnecessary; we might take candles and
+go into the cave alone, provided we shouted from time to time so as to
+be found by the guide, and were careful not to fall over the rocks or
+into the dark pools. Accordingly taking a trail from the house, we were
+led around the base of the hill to the mouth of the cave, a small
+inconspicuous archway, mossy around the edges and shaped like the door
+of a water-ouzel's nest, with no appreciable hint or advertisement of
+the grandeur of the many crystal chambers within. Lighting our candles,
+which seemed to have no illuminating power in the thick darkness, we
+groped our way onward as best we could along narrow lanes and alleys,
+from chamber to chamber, around rustic columns and heaps of fallen
+rocks, stopping to rest now and then in particularly beautiful
+places--fairy alcoves furnished with admirable variety of shelves and
+tables, and round bossy stools covered with sparkling crystals. Some of
+the corridors were muddy, and in plodding along these we seemed to be in
+the streets of some prairie village in spring-time. Then we would come
+to handsome marble stairways conducting right and left into upper
+chambers ranged above one another three or four stories high, floors,
+ceilings, and walls lavishly decorated with innumerable crystalline
+forms. After thus wandering exploringly, and alone for a mile or so,
+fairly enchanted, a murmur of voices and a gleam of light betrayed the
+approach of the guide and his party, from whom, when they came up, we
+received a most hearty and natural stare, as we stood half concealed in
+a side recess among stalagmites. I ventured to ask the dripping,
+crouching company how they had enjoyed their saunter, anxious to learn
+how the strange sunless scenery of the underworld had impressed them.
+"Ah, it's nice! It's splendid!" they all replied and echoed. "The Bridal
+Chamber back here is just glorious! This morning we came down from the
+Calaveras Big Tree Grove, and the trees are nothing to it." After making
+this curious comparison they hastened sunward, the guide promising to
+join us shortly on the bank of a deep pool, where we were to wait for
+him. This is a charming little lakelet of unknown depth, never yet
+stirred by a breeze, and its eternal calm excites the imagination even
+more profoundly than the silvery lakes of the glaciers rimmed with
+meadows and snow and reflecting sublime mountains.
+
+Our guide, a jolly, rollicking Italian, led us into the heart of the
+hill, up and down, right and left, from chamber to chamber more and more
+magnificent, all a-glitter like a glacier cave with icicle-like
+stalactites and stalagmites combined in forms of indescribable beauty.
+We were shown one large room that was occasionally used as a
+dancing-hall; another that was used as a chapel, with natural pulpit and
+crosses and pews, sermons in every stone, where a priest had said mass.
+Mass-saying is not so generally developed in connection with natural
+wonders as dancing. One of the first conceits excited by the giant
+Sequoias was to cut one of them down and dance on its stump. We have
+also seen dancing in the spray of Niagara; dancing in the famous Bower
+Cave above Coulterville; and nowhere have I seen so much dancing as in
+Yosemite. A dance on the inaccessible South Dome would likely follow the
+making of an easy way to the top of it.
+
+It was delightful to witness here the infinite deliberation of Nature,
+and the simplicity of her methods in the production of such mighty
+results, such perfect repose combined with restless enthusiastic energy.
+Though cold and bloodless as a landscape of polar ice, building was
+going on in the dark with incessant activity. The archways and ceilings
+were everywhere hung with down-growing crystals, like inverted groves of
+leafless saplings, some of them large, others delicately attenuated,
+each tipped with a single drop of water, like the terminal bud of a
+pine-tree. The only appreciable sounds were the dripping and tinkling of
+water failing into pools or faintly plashing on the crystal floors.
+
+In some places the crystal decorations are arranged in graceful flowing
+folds deeply plicated like stiff silken drapery. In others straight
+lines of the ordinary stalactite forms are combined with reference to
+size and tone in a regularly graduated system like the strings of a harp
+with musical tones corresponding thereto; and on these stone harps we
+played by striking the crystal strings with a stick. The delicious
+liquid tones they gave forth seemed perfectly divine as they sweetly
+whispered and wavered through the majestic halls and died away in
+faintest cadence,--the music of fairy-land. Here we lingered and
+reveled, rejoicing to find so much music in stony silence, so much
+splendor in darkness, so many mansions in the depths of the mountains,
+buildings ever in process of construction, yet ever finished, developing
+from perfection to perfection, profusion without overabundance; every
+particle visible or invisible in glorious motion, marching to the music
+of the spheres in a region regarded as the abode of eternal stillness
+and death.
+
+The outer chambers of mountain caves are frequently selected as homes by
+wild beasts. In the Sierra, however, they seem to prefer homes and
+hiding-places in chaparral and beneath shelving precipices, as I have
+never seen their tracks in any of the caves. This is the more remarkable
+because notwithstanding the darkness and oozing water there is nothing
+uncomfortably cellar-like or sepulchral about them.
+
+When we emerged into the bright landscapes of the sun everything looked
+brighter, and we felt our faith in Nature's beauty strengthened, and saw
+more clearly that beauty is universal and immortal, above, beneath, on
+land and sea, mountain and plain, in heat and cold, light and darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+THE BEE-PASTURES
+
+When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its
+entire length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy
+Sierra to the ocean.
+
+Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin
+wilderness--through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers,
+along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain,
+park and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the
+mountains--throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber
+line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish, abundance. Here they grew more or
+less apart in special sheets and patches of no great size, there in
+broad, flowing folds hundreds of miles in length--zones of polleny
+forests, zones of flowery chaparral, stream-tangles of rubus and wild
+rose, sheets of golden composite, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of
+bryanthus and clover, and so on, certain species blooming somewhere all
+the year round.
+
+But of late years plows and sheep have made sad havoc in these glorious
+pastures, destroying tens of thousands of the flowery acres like a fire,
+and banishing many species of the best honey-plants to rocky cliffs and
+fence-corners, while, on the other hand, cultivation thus far has given
+no adequate compensation, at least in kind; only acres of alfalfa for
+miles of the richest wild pasture, ornamental roses and honeysuckles
+around cottage doors for cascades of wild roses in the dells, and small,
+square orchards and orange-groves for broad mountain-belts of chaparral.
+
+The Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March,
+April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so
+marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a
+distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred
+flowers at every step. Mints, gilias, nemophilas, castilleias, and
+innumerable compositae were so crowded together that, had ninety-nine
+per cent. of them been taken away, the plain would still have seemed to
+any but Californians extravagantly flowery. The radiant, honeyful
+corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another, glowed
+in the living light like a sunset sky--one sheet of purple and gold,
+with the bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it from the
+north, the San Joaquin from the south, and their many tributaries
+sweeping in at right angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into
+sections fringed with trees.
+
+Along the rivers there is a strip of bottom-land, countersunk beneath
+the general level, and wider toward the foot-hills, where magnificent
+oaks, from three to eight feet in diameter, cast grateful masses of
+shade over the open, prairie-like levels. And close along the water's
+edge there was a fine jungle of tropical luxuriance, composed of
+wild-rose and bramble bushes and a great variety of climbing vines,
+wreathing and interlacing the branches and trunks of willows and alders,
+and swinging across from summit to summit in heavy festoons. Here the
+wild bees reveled in fresh bloom long after the flowers of the drier
+plain had withered and gone to seed. And in midsummer, when the
+"blackberries" were ripe, the Indians came from the mountains to
+feast--men, women, and babies in long, noisy trains, often joined by the
+farmers of the neighborhood, who gathered this wild fruit with
+commendable appreciation of its superior flavor, while their home
+orchards were full of ripe peaches, apricots, nectarines, and figs, and
+their vineyards were laden with grapes. But, though these luxuriant,
+shaggy river-beds were thus distinct from the smooth, treeless plain,
+they made no heavy dividing lines in general views. The whole appeared
+as one continuous sheet of bloom bounded only by the mountains.
+
+When I first saw this central garden, the most extensive and regular of
+all the bee-pastures of the State, it seemed all one sheet of plant
+gold, hazy and vanishing in the distance, distinct as a new map along
+the foot-hills at my feet.
+
+Descending the eastern slopes of the Coast Range through beds of gilias
+and lupines, and around many a breezy hillock and bush-crowned headland,
+I at length waded out into the midst of it. All the ground was covered,
+not with grass and green leaves, but with radiant corollas, about
+ankle-deep next the foot-hills, knee-deep or more five or six miles out.
+Here were bahia, madia, madaria, burrielia, chrysopsis, corethrogyne,
+grindelia, etc., growing in close social congregations of various shades
+of yellow, blending finely with the purples of clarkia, orthocarpus, and
+oenothera, whose delicate petals were drinking the vital sunbeams
+without giving back any sparkling glow.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA.]
+
+Because so long a period of extreme drought succeeds the rainy season,
+most of the vegetation is composed of annuals, which spring up
+simultaneously, and bloom together at about the same height above the
+ground, the general surface being but slightly ruffled by the taller
+phacelias, pentstemons, and groups of _Salvia carduacea_, the king of
+the mints.
+
+Sauntering in any direction, hundreds of these happy sun-plants brushed
+against my feet at every step, and closed over them as if I were wading
+in liquid gold. The air was sweet with fragrance, the larks sang their
+blessed songs, rising on the wing as I advanced, then sinking out of
+sight in the polleny sod, while myriads of wild bees stirred the lower
+air with their monotonous hum--monotonous, yet forever fresh and sweet
+as every-day sunshine. Hares and spermophiles showed themselves in
+considerable numbers in shallow places, and small bands of antelopes
+were almost constantly in sight, gazing curiously from some slight
+elevation, and then bounding swiftly away with unrivaled grace of
+motion. Yet I could discover no crushed flowers to mark their track,
+nor, indeed, any destructive action of any wild foot or tooth whatever.
+
+The great yellow days circled by uncounted, while I drifted toward the
+north, observing the countless forms of life thronging about me, lying
+down almost anywhere on the approach of night. And what glorious
+botanical beds I had! Oftentimes on awaking I would find several new
+species leaning over me and looking me full in the face, so that my
+studies would begin before rising.
+
+About the first of May I turned eastward, crossing the San Joaquin River
+between the mouths of the Tuolumne and Merced, and by the time I had
+reached the Sierra foot-hills most of the vegetation had gone to seed
+and become as dry as hay.
+
+All the seasons of the great plain are warm or temperate, and
+bee-flowers are never wholly wanting; but the grand springtime--the
+annual resurrection--is governed by the rains, which usually set in
+about the middle of November or the beginning of December. Then the
+seeds, that for six months have lain on the ground dry and fresh as if
+they had been gathered into barns, at once unfold their treasured life.
+The general brown and purple of the ground, and the dead vegetation of
+the preceding year, give place to the green of mosses and liverworts and
+myriads of young leaves. Then one species after another comes into
+flower, gradually overspreading the green with yellow and purple, which
+lasts until May.
+
+The "rainy season" is by no means a gloomy, soggy period of constant
+cloudiness and rain. Perhaps nowhere else in North America, perhaps in
+the world, are the months of December, January, February, and March so
+full of bland, plant-building sunshine. Referring to my notes of the
+winter and spring of 1868-69, every day of which I spent out of doors,
+on that section of the plain lying between the Tuolumne and Merced
+rivers, I find that the first rain of the season fell on December 18th.
+January had only six rainy days--that is, days on which rain fell;
+February three, March five, April three, and May three, completing the
+so-called rainy season, which was about an average one. The ordinary
+rain-storm of this region is seldom very cold or violent. The winds,
+which in settled weather come from the northwest, veer round into the
+opposite direction, the sky fills gradually and evenly with one general
+cloud, from which, the rain falls steadily, often for days in
+succession, at a temperature of about 45 deg. or 50 deg..
+
+More than seventy-five per cent. of all the rain of this season came
+from the northwest, down the coast over southeastern Alaska, British
+Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, though the local winds of these
+circular storms blow from the southeast. One magnificent local storm
+from the northwest fell on March 21. A massive, round-browed cloud came
+swelling and thundering over the flowery plain in most imposing majesty,
+its bossy front burning white and purple in the full blaze of the sun,
+while warm rain poured from its ample fountains like a cataract, beating
+down flowers and bees, and flooding the dry watercourses as suddenly as
+those of Nevada are flooded by the so-called "cloudbursts." But in less
+than half an hour not a trace of the heavy, mountain-like cloud-structure
+was left in the sky, and the bees were on the wing, as if nothing more
+gratefully refreshing could have been sent them.
+
+By the end of January four species of plants were in flower, and five or
+six mosses had already adjusted their hoods and were in the prime of
+life; but the flowers were not sufficiently numerous as yet to affect
+greatly the general green of the young leaves. Violets made their
+appearance in the first week of February, and toward the end of this
+month the warmer portions of the plain were already golden with myriads
+of the flowers of rayed composite.
+
+This was the full springtime. The sunshine grew warmer and richer, new
+plants bloomed every day; the air became more tuneful with humming
+wings, and sweeter with the fragrance of the opening flowers. Ants and
+ground squirrels were getting ready for their summer work, rubbing their
+benumbed limbs, and sunning themselves on the husk-piles before their
+doors, and spiders were busy mending their old webs, or weaving new
+ones.
+
+In March, the vegetation was more than doubled in depth and color;
+claytonia, calandrinia, a large white gilia, and two nemophilas were in
+bloom, together with a host of yellow composite, tall enough now to bend
+in the wind and show wavering ripples of shade.
+
+In April, plant-life, as a whole, reached its greatest height, and the
+plain, over all its varied surface, was mantled with a close, furred
+plush of purple and golden corollas. By the end of this month, most of
+the species had ripened their seeds, but undecayed, still seemed to be
+in bloom from the numerous corolla-like involucres and whorls of chaffy
+scales of the composite. In May, the bees found in flower only a few
+deep-set liliaceous plants and eriogonums.
+
+June, July, August, and September is the season of rest and sleep,--a
+winter of dry heat,--followed in October by a second outburst of bloom
+at the very driest time of the year. Then, after the shrunken mass of
+leaves and stalks of the dead vegetation crinkle and turn to dust
+beneath the foot, as if it had been baked in an oven, _Hemizonia
+virgata_, a slender, unobtrusive little plant, from six inches to three
+feet high, suddenly makes its appearance in patches miles in extent,
+like a resurrection of the bloom of April. I have counted upward of 3000
+flowers, five eighths of an inch in diameter, on a single plant. Both
+its leaves and stems are so slender as to be nearly invisible, at a
+distance of a few yards, amid so showy a multitude of flowers. The ray
+and disk flowers are both yellow, the stamens purple, and the texture of
+the rays is rich and velvety, like the petals of garden pansies. The
+prevailing wind turns all the heads round to the southeast, so that in
+facing northwestward we have the flowers looking us in the face. In my
+estimation, this little plant, the last born of the brilliant host of
+compositae that glorify the plain, is the most interesting of all. It
+remains in flower until November, uniting with two or three species of
+wiry eriogonums, which continue the floral chain around December to the
+spring flowers of January. Thus, although the main bloom and honey
+season is only about three months long, the floral circle, however thin
+around some of the hot, rainless months, is never completely broken.
+
+How long the various species of wild bees have lived in this
+honey-garden, nobody knows; probably ever since the main body of the
+present flora gained possession of the land, toward the close of the
+glacial period. The first brown honey-bees brought to California are
+said to have arrived in San Francisco in March, 1853. A bee-keeper by
+the name of Shelton purchased a lot, consisting of twelve swarms, from
+some one at Aspinwall, who had brought them from New York. When landed
+at San Francisco, all the hives contained live bees, but they finally
+dwindled to one hive, which was taken to San Jose. The little immigrants
+flourished and multiplied in the bountiful pastures of the Santa Clara
+Valley, sending off three swarms the first season. The owner was killed
+shortly afterward, and in settling up his estate, two of the swarms were
+sold at auction for $105 and $110 respectively. Other importations were
+made, from time to time, by way of the Isthmus, and, though great pains
+were taken to insure success, about one half usually died on the way.
+Four swarms were brought safely across the plains in 1859, the hives
+being placed in the rear end of a wagon, which was stopped in the
+afternoon to allow the bees to fly and feed in the floweriest places
+that were within reach until dark, when the hives were closed.
+
+In 1855, two years after the time of the first arrivals from New York, a
+single swarm was brought over from San Jose, and let fly in the Great
+Central Plain. Bee-culture, however, has never gained much attention
+here, notwithstanding the extraordinary abundance of honey-bloom, and
+the high price of honey during the early years. A few hives are found
+here and there among settlers who chanced to have learned something
+about the business before coming to the State. But sheep, cattle, grain,
+and fruit raising are the chief industries, as they require less skill
+and care, while the profits thus far have been greater. In 1856 honey
+sold here at from one and a half to two dollars per pound. Twelve years
+later the price had fallen to twelve and a half cents. In 1868 I sat
+down to dinner with a band of ravenous sheep-shearers at a ranch on the
+San Joaquin, where fifteen or twenty hives were kept, and our host
+advised us not to spare the large pan of honey he had placed on the
+table, as it was the cheapest article he had to offer. In all my walks,
+however, I have never come upon a regular bee-ranch in the Central
+Valley like those so common and so skilfully managed in the southern
+counties of the State. The few pounds of honey and wax produced are
+consumed at home, and are scarcely taken into account among the coarser
+products of the farm. The swarms that escape from their careless owners
+have a weary, perplexing time of it in seeking suitable homes. Most of
+them make their way to the foot-hills of the mountains, or to the trees
+that line the banks of the rivers, where some hollow log or trunk may be
+found. A friend of mine, while out hunting on the San Joaquin, came upon
+an old coon trap, hidden among some tall grass, near the edge of the
+river, upon which he sat down to rest. Shortly afterward his attention
+was attracted to a crowd of angry bees that were flying excitedly about
+his head, when he discovered that he was sitting upon their hive, which
+was found to contain more than 200 pounds of honey. Out in the broad,
+swampy delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, the little
+wanderers have been known to build their combs in a bunch of rushes, or
+stiff, wiry grass, only slightly protected from the weather, and in
+danger every spring of being carried away by floods. They have the
+advantage, however, of a vast extent of fresh pasture, accessible only
+to themselves.
+
+The present condition of the Grand Central Garden is very different from
+that we have sketched. About twenty years ago, when the gold placers had
+been pretty thoroughly exhausted, the attention of fortune-seekers--not
+home-seekers--was, in great part, turned away from the mines to the
+fertile plains, and many began experiments in a kind of restless, wild
+agriculture. A load of lumber would be hauled to some spot on the free
+wilderness, where water could be easily found, and a rude box-cabin
+built. Then a gang-plow was procured, and a dozen mustang ponies, worth
+ten or fifteen dollars apiece, and with these hundreds of acres were
+stirred as easily as if the land had been under cultivation for years,
+tough, perennial roots being almost wholly absent. Thus a ranch was
+established, and from these bare wooden huts, as centers of desolation,
+the wild flora vanished in ever-widening circles. But the arch
+destroyers are the shepherds, with their flocks of hoofed locusts,
+sweeping over the ground like a fire, and trampling down every rod that
+escapes the plow as completely as if the whole plain were a cottage
+garden-plot without a fence. But notwithstanding these destroyers, a
+thousand swarms of bees may be pastured here for every one now gathering
+honey. The greater portion is still covered every season with a
+repressed growth of bee-flowers, for most of the species are annuals,
+and many of them are not relished by sheep or cattle, while the rapidity
+of their growth enables them to develop and mature their seeds before
+any foot has time to crush them. The ground is, therefore, kept sweet,
+and the race is perpetuated, though only as a suggestive shadow of the
+magnificence of its wildness.
+
+The time will undoubtedly come when the entire area of this noble valley
+will be tilled like a garden, when the fertilizing waters of the
+mountains, now flowing to the sea, will be distributed to every acre,
+giving rise to prosperous towns, wealth, arts, etc. Then, I suppose,
+there will be few left, even among botanists, to deplore the vanished
+primeval flora. In the mean time, the pure waste going on--the wanton
+destruction of the innocents--is a sad sight to see, and the sun may
+well be pitied in being compelled to look on.
+
+The bee-pastures of the Coast Ranges last longer and are more varied
+than those of the great plain, on account of differences of soil and
+climate, moisture, and shade, etc. Some of the mountains are upward of
+4000 feet in height, and small streams, springs, oozy bogs, etc., occur
+in great abundance and variety in the wooded regions, while open parks,
+flooded with sunshine, and hill-girt valleys lying at different
+elevations, each with its own peculiar climate and exposure, possess the
+required conditions for the development of species and families of
+plants widely varied.
+
+Next the plain there is, first, a series of smooth hills, planted with a
+rich and showy vegetation that differs but little from that of the plain
+itself--as if the edge of the plain had been lifted and bent into
+flowing folds, with all its flowers in place, only toned down a little
+as to their luxuriance, and a few new species introduced, such as the
+hill lupines, mints, and gilias. The colors show finely when thus held
+to view on the slopes; patches of red, purple, blue, yellow, and white,
+blending around the edges, the whole appearing at a little distance like
+a map colored in sections.
+
+Above this lies the park and chaparral region, with oaks, mostly
+evergreen, planted wide apart, and blooming shrubs from three to ten
+feet high; manzanita and ceanothus of several species, mixed with
+rhamnus, cercis, pickeringia, cherry, amelanchier, and adenostoma, in
+shaggy, interlocking thickets, and many species of hosackia, clover,
+monardella, castilleia, etc., in the openings.
+
+The main ranges send out spurs somewhat parallel to their axes,
+inclosing level valleys, many of them quite extensive, and containing a
+great profusion of sun-loving bee-flowers in their wild state; but these
+are, in great part, already lost to the bees by cultivation.
+
+Nearer the coast are the giant forests of the redwoods, extending from
+near the Oregon line to Santa Cruz. Beneath the cool, deep shade of
+these majestic trees the ground is occupied by ferns, chiefly woodwardia
+and aspidiums, with only a few flowering plants--oxalis, trientalis,
+erythronium, fritillaria, smilax, and other shade-lovers. But all along
+the redwood belt there are sunny openings on hill-slopes looking to the
+south, where the giant trees stand back, and give the ground to the
+small sunflowers and the bees. Around the lofty redwood walls of these
+little bee-acres there is usually a fringe of Chestnut Oak, Laurel, and
+Madrono, the last of which is a surpassingly beautiful tree, and a great
+favorite with the bees. The trunks of the largest specimens are seven or
+eight feet thick, and about fifty feet high; the bark red and chocolate
+colored, the leaves plain, large, and glossy, like those of _Magnolia
+grandiflora_, while the flowers are yellowish-white, and urn-shaped, in
+well-proportioned panicles, from five to ten inches long. When in full
+bloom, a single tree seems to be visited at times by a whole hive of
+bees at once, and the deep hum of such a multitude makes the listener
+guess that more than the ordinary work of honey-winning must be going
+on.
+
+How perfectly enchanting and care-obliterating are these withdrawn
+gardens of the woods--long vistas opening to the sea--sunshine sifting
+and pouring upon the flowery ground in a tremulous, shifting mosaic, as
+the light-ways in the leafy wall open and close with the swaying
+breeze--shining leaves and flowers, birds and bees, mingling together in
+springtime harmony, and soothing fragrance exhaling from a thousand
+thousand fountains! In these balmy, dissolving days, when the deep
+heart-beats of Nature are felt thrilling rocks and trees and everything
+alike, common business and friends are happily forgotten, and even the
+natural honey-work of bees, and the care of birds for their young, and
+mothers for their children, seem slightly out of place.
+
+To the northward, in Humboldt and the adjacent counties, whole hillsides
+are covered with rhododendron, making a glorious melody of bee-bloom in
+the spring. And the Western azalea, hardly less flowery, grows in massy
+thickets three to eight feet high around the edges of groves and woods
+as far south as San Luis Obispo, usually accompanied by manzanita; while
+the valleys, with their varying moisture and shade, yield a rich variety
+of the smaller honey-flowers, such as mentha, lycopus, micromeria,
+audibertia, trichostema, and other mints; with vaccinium, wild
+strawberry, geranium, calais, and goldenrod; and in the cool glens along
+the stream-banks, where the shade of trees is not too deep, spiraea,
+dog-wood, heteromeles, and calycanthus, and many species of rubus form
+interlacing tangles, some portion of which continues in bloom for
+months.
+
+Though the coast region was the first to be invaded and settled by white
+men, it has suffered less from a bee point of view than either of the
+other main divisions, chiefly, no doubt, because of the unevenness of
+the surface, and because it is owned and protected instead of lying
+exposed to the flocks of the wandering "sheepmen." These remarks apply
+more particularly to the north half of the coast. Farther south there is
+less moisture, less forest shade, and the honey flora is less varied.
+
+The Sierra region is the largest of the three main divisions of the
+bee-lands of the State, and the most regularly varied in its
+subdivisions, owing to their gradual rise from the level of the Central
+Plain to the alpine summits. The foot-hill region is about as dry and
+sunful, from the end of May until the setting in of the winter rains, as
+the plain. There are no shady forests, no damp glens, at all like those
+lying at the same elevations in the Coast Mountains. The social
+compositae of the plain, with a few added species, form the bulk of the
+herbaceous portion of the vegetation up to a height of 1500 feet or
+more, shaded lightly here and there with oaks and Sabine Pines, and
+interrupted by patches of ceanothus and buckeye. Above this, and just
+below the forest region, there is a dark, heath-like belt of chaparral,
+composed almost exclusively of _Adenostoma fasciculata_, a bush
+belonging to the rose family, from five to eight feet high, with small,
+round leaves in fascicles, and bearing a multitude of small white
+flowers in panicles on the ends of the upper branches. Where it occurs
+at all, it usually covers all the ground with a close, impenetrable
+growth, scarcely broken for miles.
+
+Up through the forest region, to a height of about 9000 feet above
+sea-level, there are ragged patches of manzanita, and five or six
+species of ceanothus, called deer-brush or California lilac. These are
+the most important of all the honey-bearing bushes of the Sierra.
+_Chamaebatia foliolosa_, a little shrub about a foot high, with flowers
+like the strawberry, makes handsome carpets beneath the pines, and seems
+to be a favorite with the bees; while pines themselves furnish unlimited
+quantities of pollen and honey-dew. The product of a single tree,
+ripening its pollen at the right time of year, would be sufficient for
+the wants of a whole hive. Along the streams there is a rich growth of
+lilies, larkspurs, pedicularis, castilleias, and clover. The alpine
+region contains the flowery glacier meadows, and countless small gardens
+in all sorts of places full of potentilla of several species, spraguea,
+ivesia, epilobium, and goldenrod, with beds of bryanthus and the
+charming cassiope covered with sweet bells. Even the tops of the
+mountains are blessed with flowers,--dwarf phlox, polemonium, ribes,
+hulsea, etc. I have seen wild bees and butterflies feeding at a height
+of 13,000 feet above the sea. Many, however, that go up these dangerous
+heights never come down again. Some, undoubtedly, perish in storms, and
+I have found thousands lying dead or benumbed on the surface of the
+glaciers, to which they had perhaps been attracted by the white glare,
+taking them for beds of bloom.
+
+From swarms that escaped their owners in the lowlands, the honey-bee is
+now generally distributed throughout the whole length of the Sierra, up
+to an elevation of 8000 feet above sea-level. At this height they
+flourish without care, though the snow every winter is deep. Even higher
+than this several bee-trees have been cut which contained over 200
+pounds of honey.
+
+The destructive action of sheep has not been so general on the mountain
+pastures as on those of the great plain, but in many places it has been
+more complete, owing to the more friable character of the soil, and its
+sloping position. The slant digging and down-raking action of hoofs on
+the steeper slopes of moraines has uprooted and buried many of the
+tender plants from year to year, without allowing them time to mature
+their seeds. The shrubs, too, are badly bitten, especially the various
+species of ceanothus. Fortunately, neither sheep nor cattle care to feed
+on the manzanita, spiraea, or adenostoma; and these fine honey-bushes
+are too stiff and tall, or grow in places too rough and inaccessible, to
+be trodden under foot. Also the canon walls and gorges, which form so
+considerable a part of the area of the range, while inaccessible to
+domestic sheep, are well fringed with honey-shrubs, and contain
+thousands of lovely bee-gardens, lying hid in narrow side-canons and
+recesses fenced with avalanche taluses, and on the top of flat,
+projecting headlands, where only bees would think to look for them.
+
+But, on the other hand, a great portion of the woody plants that escape
+the feet and teeth of the sheep are destroyed by the shepherds by means
+of running fires, which are set everywhere during the dry autumn for the
+purpose of burning off the old fallen trunks and underbrush, with a view
+to improving the pastures, and making more open ways for the flocks.
+These destructive sheep-fires sweep through nearly the entire forest
+belt of the range, from one extremity to the other, consuming not only
+the underbrush, but the young trees and seedlings on which the
+permanence of the forests depends; thus setting in motion a long train
+of evils which will certainly reach far beyond bees and beekeepers.
+
+[Illustration: WILD BEE GARDEN.]
+
+The plow has not yet invaded the forest region to any appreciable
+extent, neither has it accomplished much in the foot-hills. Thousands of
+bee-ranches might be established along the margin of the plain, and up
+to a height of 4000 feet, wherever water could be obtained. The climate
+at this elevation admits of the making of permanent homes, and by moving
+the hives to higher pastures as the lower pass out of bloom, the annual
+yield of honey would be nearly doubled. The foot-hill pastures, as we
+have seen, fail about the end of May, those of the chaparral belt and
+lower forests are in full bloom in June, those of the upper and alpine
+region in July, August, and September. In Scotland, after the best of
+the Lowland bloom is past, the bees are carried in carts to the
+Highlands, and set free on the heather hills. In France, too, and in
+Poland, they are carried from pasture to pasture among orchards and
+fields in the same way, and along the rivers in barges to collect the
+honey of the delightful vegetation of the banks. In Egypt they are taken
+far up the Nile, and floated slowly home again, gathering the
+honey-harvest of the various fields on the way, timing their movements
+in accord with the seasons. Were similar methods pursued in California
+the productive season would last nearly all the year.
+
+The average elevation of the north half of the Sierra is, as we have
+seen, considerably less than that of the south half, and small streams,
+with the bank and meadow gardens dependent upon them, are less abundant.
+Around the head waters of the Yuba, Feather, and Pitt rivers, the
+extensive tablelands of lava are sparsely planted with pines, through
+which the sunshine reaches the ground with little interruption. Here
+flourishes a scattered, tufted growth of golden applopappus, linosyris,
+bahia, wyetheia, arnica, artemisia, and similar plants; with manzanita,
+cherry, plum, and thorn in ragged patches on the cooler hill-slopes. At
+the extremities of the Great Central Plain, the Sierra and Coast Ranges
+curve around and lock together in a labyrinth of mountains and valleys,
+throughout which their floras are mingled, making at the north, with its
+temperate climate and copious rainfall, a perfect paradise for bees,
+though, strange to say, scarcely a single regular bee-ranch has yet been
+established in it.
+
+Of all the upper flower fields of the Sierra, Shasta is the most
+honeyful, and may yet surpass in fame the celebrated honey hills of
+Hybla and hearthy Hymettus. Regarding this noble mountain from a bee
+point of view, encircled by its many climates, and sweeping aloft from
+the torrid plain into the frosty azure, we find the first 5000 feet from
+the summit generally snow-clad, and therefore about as honeyless as the
+sea. The base of this arctic region is girdled by a belt of crumbling
+lava measuring about 1000 feet in vertical breadth, and is mostly free
+from snow in summer. Beautiful lichens enliven the faces of the cliffs
+with their bright colors, and in some of the warmer nooks there are a
+few tufts of alpine daisies, wall-flowers and pentstemons; but,
+notwithstanding these bloom freely in the late summer, the zone as a
+whole is almost as honeyless as the icy summit, and its lower edge may
+be taken as the honey-line. Immediately below this comes the forest
+zone, covered with a rich growth of conifers, chiefly Silver Firs, rich
+in pollen and honey-dew, and diversified with countless garden openings,
+many of them less than a hundred yards across. Next, in orderly
+succession, comes the great bee zone. Its area far surpasses that of the
+icy summit and both the other zones combined, for it goes sweeping
+majestically around the entire mountain, with a breadth of six or seven
+miles and a circumference of nearly a hundred miles.
+
+Shasta, as we have already seen, is a fire-mountain created by a
+succession of eruptions of ashes and molten lava, which, flowing over
+the lips of its several craters, grew outward and upward like the trunk
+of a knotty exogenous tree. Then followed a strange contrast. The
+glacial winter came on, loading the cooling mountain with ice, which
+flowed slowly outward in every direction, radiating from the summit in
+the form of one vast conical glacier--a down-crawling mantle of ice upon
+a fountain of smoldering fire, crushing and grinding for centuries its
+brown, flinty lavas with incessant activity, and thus degrading and
+remodeling the entire mountain. When, at length, the glacial period
+began to draw near its close, the ice-mantle was gradually melted off
+around the bottom, and, in receding and breaking into its present
+fragmentary condition, irregular rings and heaps of moraine matter were
+stored upon its flanks. The glacial erosion of most of the Shasta lavas
+produces detritus, composed of rough, sub-angular boulders of moderate
+size and of porous gravel and sand, which yields freely to the
+transporting power of running water. Magnificent floods from the ample
+fountains of ice and snow working with sublime energy upon this prepared
+glacial detritus, sorted it out and carried down immense quantities from
+the higher slopes, and reformed it in smooth, delta-like beds around the
+base; and it is these flood-beds joined together that now form the main
+honey-zone of the old volcano.
+
+Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, has Mother
+Nature accomplished her beneficent designs--now a flood of fire, now a
+flood of ice, now a flood of water; and at length an outburst of organic
+life, a milky way of snowy petals and wings, girdling the rugged
+mountain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams beating against its
+sides had broken into a foam of plant-bloom and bees, as sea-waves break
+and bloom on a rock shore.
+
+In this flowery wilderness the bees rove and revel, rejoicing in the
+bounty of the sun, clambering eagerly through bramble and hucklebloom,
+ringing the myriad bells of the manzanita, now humming aloft among
+polleny willows and firs, now down on the ashy ground among gilias and
+buttercups, and anon plunging deep into snowy banks of cherry and
+buckthorn. They consider the lilies and roll into them, and, like
+lilies, they toil not, for they are impelled by sun-power, as
+water-wheels by water-power; and when the one has plenty of
+high-pressure water, the other plenty of sunshine, they hum and quiver
+alike. Sauntering in the Shasta bee-lands in the sun-days of summer, one
+may readily infer the time of day from the comparative energy of
+bee-movements alone--drowsy and moderate in the cool of the morning,
+increasing in energy with the ascending sun, and, at high noon,
+thrilling and quivering in wild ecstasy, then gradually declining again
+to the stillness of night. In my excursions among the glaciers I
+occasionally meet bees that are hungry, like mountaineers who venture
+too far and remain too long above the bread-line; then they droop and
+wither like autumn leaves. The Shasta bees are perhaps better fed than
+any others in the Sierra. Their field-work is one perpetual feast; but,
+however exhilarating the sunshine or bountiful the supply of flowers,
+they are always dainty feeders. Humming-moths and hummingbirds seldom
+set foot upon a flower, but poise on the wing in front of it, and reach
+forward as if they were sucking through straws. But bees, though, as
+dainty as they, hug their favorite flowers with profound cordiality, and
+push their blunt, polleny faces against them, like babies on their
+mother's bosom. And fondly, too, with eternal love, does Mother Nature
+clasp her small bee-babies, and suckle them, multitudes at once, on her
+warm Shasta breast.
+
+Besides the common honey-bee there are many other species here--fine
+mossy, burly fellows, who were nourished on the mountains thousands of
+sunny seasons before the advent of the domestic species. Among these are
+the bumblebees, mason-bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters.
+Butterflies, too, and moths of every size and pattern; some broad-winged
+like bats, flapping slowly, and sailing in easy curves; others like
+small, flying violets, shaking about loosely in short, crooked flights
+close to the flowers, feasting luxuriously night and day. Great numbers
+of deer also delight to dwell in the brushy portions of the
+bee-pastures.
+
+Bears, too, roam the sweet wilderness, their blunt, shaggy forms
+harmonizing well with the trees and tangled bushes, and with the bees,
+also, notwithstanding the disparity in size. They are fond of all good
+things, and enjoy them to the utmost, with but little troublesome
+discrimination--flowers and leaves as well as berries, and the bees
+themselves as well as their honey. Though the California bears have as
+yet had but little experience with honeybees, they often succeed in
+reaching their bountiful stores, and it seems doubtful whether bees
+themselves enjoy honey with so great a relish. By means of their
+powerful teeth and claws they can gnaw and tear open almost any hive
+conveniently accessible. Most honey-bees, however, in search of a home
+are wise enough to make choice of a hollow in a living tree, a
+considerable distance above the ground, when such places are to be had;
+then they are pretty secure, for though the smaller black and brown
+bears climb well, they are unable to break into strong hives while
+compelled to exert themselves to keep from falling, and at the same time
+to endure the stings of the fighting bees without having their paws free
+to rub them off. But woe to the black bumblebees discovered in their
+mossy nests in the ground! With a few strokes of their huge paws the
+bears uncover the entire establishment, and, before time is given for a
+general buzz, bees old and young, larvae, honey, stings, nest, and all
+are taken in one ravishing mouthful.
+
+Not the least influential of the agents concerned in the superior
+sweetness of the Shasta flora are its storms--storms I mean that are
+strictly local, bred and born on the mountain. The magical rapidity with
+which they are grown on the mountain-top, and bestow their charity in
+rain and snow, never fails to astonish the inexperienced lowlander.
+Often in calm, glowing days, while the bees are still on the wing, a
+storm-cloud may be seen far above in the pure ether, swelling its pearl
+bosses, and growing silently, like a plant. Presently a clear, ringing
+discharge of thunder is heard, followed by a rush of wind that comes
+sounding over the bending woods like the roar of the ocean, mingling
+raindrops, snow-flowers, honey-flowers, and bees in wild storm harmony.
+
+Still more impressive are the warm, reviving days of spring in the
+mountain pastures. The blood of the plants throbbing beneath the
+life-giving sunshine seems to be heard and felt. Plant growth goes on
+before our eyes, and every tree in the woods, and every bush and flower
+is seen as a hive of restless industry. The deeps of the sky are mottled
+with singing wings of every tone and color; clouds of brilliant
+chrysididae dancing and swirling in exquisite rhythm, golden-barred
+vespidae, dragon-flies, butterflies, grating cicadas, and jolly,
+rattling grasshoppers, fairly enameling the light.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.--WHITE SAGE.]
+
+On bright, crisp mornings a striking optical effect may frequently be
+observed from the shadows of the higher mountains while the sunbeams are
+pouring past overhead. Then every insect, no matter what may be its own
+proper color, burns white in the light. Gauzy-winged hymenoptera,
+moths, jet-black beetles, all are transfigured alike in pure, spiritual
+white, like snowflakes.
+
+In Southern California, where bee-culture has had so much skilful
+attention of late years, the pasturage is not more abundant, or more
+advantageously varied as to the number of its honey-plants and their
+distribution over mountain and plain, than that of many other portions
+of the State where the industrial currents flow in other channels. The
+famous White Sage (_Audibertia_), belonging to the mint family,
+flourishes here in all its glory, blooming in May, and yielding great
+quantities of clear, pale honey, which is greatly prized in every market
+it has yet reached. This species grows chiefly in the valleys and low
+hills. The Black Sage on the mountains is part of a dense, thorny
+chaparral, which is composed chiefly of adenostoma, ceanothus,
+manzanita, and cherry--not differing greatly from that of the southern
+portion of the Sierra, but more dense and continuous, and taller, and
+remaining longer in bloom. Stream-side gardens, so charming a feature of
+both the Sierra and Coast Mountains, are less numerous in Southern
+California, but they are exceedingly rich in honey-flowers, wherever
+found,--melilotus, columbine, collinsia, verbena, zauschneria, wild
+rose, honeysuckle, philadelphus, and lilies rising from the warm, moist
+dells in a very storm of exuberance. Wild buckwheat of many species is
+developed in abundance over the dry, sandy valleys and lower slopes of
+the mountains, toward the end of summer, and is, at this time, the main
+dependence of the bees, reinforced here and there by orange groves,
+alfalfa fields, and small home gardens.
+
+The main honey months, in ordinary seasons, are April, May, June, July,
+and August; while the other months are usually flowery enough to yield
+sufficient for the bees.
+
+According to Mr. J.T. Gordon, President of the Los Angeles County
+Bee-keepers' Association, the first bees introduced into the county were
+a single hive, which cost $150 in San Francisco, and arrived in
+September, 1854.[1] In April, of the following year, this hive sent out
+two swarms, which were sold for $100 each. From this small beginning the
+bees gradually multiplied to about 3000 swarms in the year 1873. In 1876
+it was estimated that there were between 15,000 and 20,000 hives in the
+county, producing an annual yield of about 100 pounds to the hive--in
+some exceptional cases, a much greater yield.
+
+In San Diego County, at the beginning of the season of 1878, there were
+about 24,000 hives, and the shipments from the one port of San Diego for
+the same year, from July 17 to November 10, were 1071 barrels, 15,544
+cases, and nearly 90 tons. The largest bee-ranches have about a thousand
+hives, and are carefully and skilfully managed, every scientific
+appliance of merit being brought into use. There are few bee-keepers,
+however, who own half as many as this, or who give their undivided
+attention to the business. Orange culture, at present, is heavily
+overshadowing every other business.
+
+A good many of the so-called bee-ranches of Los Angeles and San Diego
+counties are still of the rudest pioneer kind imaginable. A man
+unsuccessful in everything else hears the interesting story of the
+profits and comforts of bee-keeping, and concludes to try it; he buys a
+few colonies, or gets them, from some overstocked ranch on shares, takes
+them back to the foot of some canon, where the pasturage is fresh,
+squats on the land, with, or without, the permission of the owner, sets
+up his hives, makes a box-cabin for himself, scarcely bigger than a
+bee-hive, and awaits his fortune.
+
+Bees suffer sadly from famine during the dry years which occasionally
+occur in the southern and middle portions of the State. If the rainfall
+amounts only to three or four inches, instead of from twelve to twenty,
+as in ordinary seasons, then sheep and cattle die in thousands, and so
+do these small, winged cattle, unless they are carefully fed, or removed
+to other pastures. The year 1877 will long be remembered as
+exceptionally rainless and distressing. Scarcely a flower bloomed on the
+dry valleys away from the stream-sides, and not a single grain-field
+depending upon rain was reaped. The seed only sprouted, came up a little
+way, and withered. Horses, cattle, and sheep grew thinner day by day,
+nibbling at bushes and weeds, along the shallowing edges of streams,
+many of which were dried up altogether, for the first time since the
+settlement of the country.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE. CARDINAL
+FLOWER.]
+
+In the course of a trip I made during the summer of that year through
+Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles
+counties, the deplorable effects of the drought were everywhere
+visible--leafless fields, dead and dying cattle, dead bees, and
+half-dead people with dusty, doleful faces. Even the birds and squirrels
+were in distress, though their suffering was less painfully apparent
+than that of the poor cattle. These were falling one by one in slow,
+sure starvation along the banks of the hot, sluggish streams, while
+thousands of buzzards correspondingly fat were sailing above them, or
+standing gorged on the ground beneath the trees, waiting with easy faith
+for fresh carcasses. The quails, prudently considering the hard times,
+abandoned all thought of pairing. They were too poor to marry, and so
+continued in flocks all through the year without attempting to rear
+young. The ground-squirrels, though an exceptionally industrious and
+enterprising race, as every farmer knows, were hard pushed for a living;
+not a fresh leaf or seed was to be found save in the trees, whose bossy
+masses of dark green foliage presented a striking contrast to the ashen
+baldness of the ground beneath them. The squirrels, leaving their
+accustomed feeding-grounds, betook themselves to the leafy oaks to gnaw
+out the acorn stores of the provident woodpeckers, but the latter kept
+up a vigilant watch upon their movements. I noticed four woodpeckers in
+league against one squirrel, driving the poor fellow out of an oak that
+they claimed. He dodged round the knotty trunk from side to side, as
+nimbly as he could in his famished condition, only to find a sharp bill
+everywhere. But the fate of the bees that year seemed the saddest of
+all. In different portions of Los Angeles and San Diego counties, from
+one half to three fourths of them died of sheer starvation. Not less
+than 18,000 colonies perished in these two counties alone, while in the
+adjacent counties the death-rate was hardly less.
+
+[Illustration: WILD BUCKWHEAT.--A BEE RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS.]
+
+Even the colonies nearest to the mountains suffered this year, for the
+smaller vegetation on the foot-hills was affected by the drought almost
+as severely as that of the valleys and plains, and even the hardy,
+deep-rooted chaparral, the surest dependence of the bees, bloomed
+sparingly, while much of it was beyond reach. Every swarm could have
+been saved, however, by promptly supplying them with food when their own
+stores began to fail, and before they became enfeebled and discouraged;
+or by cutting roads back into the mountains, and taking them into the
+heart of the flowery chaparral. The Santa Lucia, San Rafael, San
+Gabriel, San Jacinto, and San Bernardino ranges are almost untouched as
+yet save by the wild bees. Some idea of their resources, and of the
+advantages and disadvantages they offer to bee-keepers, may be formed
+from an excursion that I made into the San Gabriel Range about the
+beginning of August of "the dry year." This range, containing most of
+the characteristic features of the other ranges just mentioned,
+overlooks the Los Angeles vineyards and orange groves from the north,
+and is more rigidly inaccessible in the ordinary meaning of the word
+than any other that I ever attempted to penetrate. The slopes are
+exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot, and they are covered with
+thorny bushes from five to ten feet high. With the exception of little
+spots not visible in general views, the entire surface is covered with
+them, massed in close hedge growth, sweeping gracefully down into every
+gorge and hollow, and swelling over every ridge and summit in shaggy,
+ungovernable exuberance, offering more honey to the acre for half the
+year than the most crowded clover-field. But when beheld from the open
+San Gabriel Valley, beaten with dry sunshine, all that was seen of the
+range seemed to wear a forbidding aspect. From base to summit all seemed
+gray, barren, silent, its glorious chaparral appearing like dry moss
+creeping over its dull, wrinkled ridges and hollows.
+
+Setting out from Pasadena, I reached the foot of the range about
+sundown; and being weary and heated with my walk across the shadeless
+valley, concluded to camp for the night. After resting a few moments, I
+began to look about among the flood-boulders of Eaton Creek for a
+camp-ground, when I came upon a strange, dark-looking man who had been
+chopping cord-wood. He seemed surprised at seeing me, so I sat down with
+him on the live-oak log he had been cutting, and made haste to give a
+reason for my appearance in his solitude, explaining that I was anxious
+to find out something about the mountains, and meant to make my way up
+Eaton Creek next morning. Then he kindly invited me to camp with him,
+and led me to his little cabin, situated at the foot of the mountains,
+where a small spring oozes out of a bank overgrown with wild-rose
+bushes. After supper, when the daylight was gone, he explained that he
+was out of candles; so we sat in the dark, while he gave me a sketch of
+his life in a mixture of Spanish and English. He was born in Mexico, his
+father Irish, his mother Spanish. He had been a miner, rancher,
+prospector, hunter, etc., rambling always, and wearing his life away in
+mere waste; but now he was going to settle down. His past life, he said,
+was of "no account," but the future was promising. He was going to "make
+money and marry a Spanish woman." People mine here for water as for
+gold. He had been running a tunnel into a spur of the mountain back of
+his cabin. "My prospect is good," he said, "and if I chance to strike a
+good, strong flow, I'll soon be worth $5000 or $10,000. For that flat
+out there," referring to a small, irregular patch of bouldery detritus,
+two or three acres in size, that had been deposited by Eaton Creek
+during some flood season,--"that flat is large enough for a nice
+orange-grove, and the bank behind the cabin will do for a vineyard, and
+after watering my own trees and vines I will have some water left to
+sell to my neighbors below me, down the valley. And then," he continued,
+"I can keep bees, and make money that way, too, for the mountains above
+here are just full of honey in the summer-time, and one of my neighbors
+down here says that he will let me have a whole lot of hives, on shares,
+to start with. You see I've a good thing; I'm all right now." All this
+prospective affluence in the sunken, boulder-choked flood-bed of a
+mountain-stream! Leaving the bees out of the count, most fortune-seekers
+would as soon think of settling on the summit of Mount Shasta. Next
+morning, wishing my hopeful entertainer good luck, I set out on my
+shaggy excursion.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT, SPANISH BAYONET.]
+
+About half an hour's walk above the cabin, I came to "The Fall," famous
+throughout the valley settlements as the finest yet discovered in the
+San Gabriel Mountains. It is a charming little thing, with a low, sweet
+voice, singing like a bird, as it pours from a notch in a short ledge,
+some thirty-five or forty feet into a round mirror-pool. The face of the
+cliff back of it, and on both sides, is smoothly covered and embossed
+with mosses, against which the white water shines out in showy relief,
+like a silver instrument in a velvet case. Hither come the San Gabriel
+lads and lassies, to gather ferns and dabble away their hot holidays in
+the cool water, glad to escape from their commonplace palm-gardens and
+orange-groves. The delicate maidenhair grows on fissured rocks within
+reach of the spray, while broad-leaved maples and sycamores cast soft,
+mellow shade over a rich profusion of bee-flowers, growing among
+boulders in front of the pool--the fall, the flowers, the bees, the
+ferny rocks, and leafy shade forming a charming little poem of wildness,
+the last of a series extending down the flowery slopes of Mount San
+Antonio through the rugged, foam-beaten bosses of the main Eaton Canon.
+
+From the base of the fall I followed the ridge that forms the western
+rim of the Eaton basin to the summit of one of the principal peaks,
+which is about 5000 feet above sea-level. Then, turning eastward, I
+crossed the middle of the basin, forcing a way over its many subordinate
+ridges and across its eastern rim, having to contend almost everywhere
+with the floweriest and most impenetrable growth of honey-bushes I had
+ever encountered since first my mountaineering began. Most of the Shasta
+chaparral is leafy nearly to the ground; here the main stems are naked
+for three or four feet, and interspiked with dead twigs, forming a stiff
+_chevaux de frise_ through which even the bears make their way with
+difficulty. I was compelled to creep for miles on all fours, and in
+following the bear-trails often found tufts of hair on the bushes where
+they had forced themselves through.
+
+For 100 feet or so above the fall the ascent was made possible only by
+tough cushions of club-moss that clung to the rock. Above this the ridge
+weathers away to a thin knife-blade for a few hundred yards, and thence
+to the summit of the range it carries a bristly mane of chaparral. Here
+and there small openings occur on rocky places, commanding fine views
+across the cultivated valley to the ocean. These I found by the tracks
+were favorite outlooks and resting-places for the wild animals--bears,
+wolves, foxes, wildcats, etc.--which abound here, and would have to be
+taken into account in the establishment of bee-ranches. In the deepest
+thickets I found wood-rat villages--groups of huts four to six feet
+high, built of sticks and leaves in rough, tapering piles, like musk-rat
+cabins. I noticed a good many bees, too, most of them wild. The tame
+honey-bees seemed languid and wing-weary, as if they had come all the
+way up from the flowerless valley.
+
+After reaching the summit I had time to make only a hasty survey of the
+basin, now glowing in the sunset gold, before hastening down into one of
+the tributary canons in search, of water. Emerging from a particularly
+tedious breadth of chaparral, I found myself free and erect in a
+beautiful park-like grove of Mountain Live Oak, where the ground was
+planted with aspidiums and brier-roses, while the glossy foliage made a
+close canopy overhead, leaving the gray dividing trunks bare to show the
+beauty of their interlacing arches. The bottom of the canon was dry
+where I first reached it, but a bunch of scarlet mimulus indicated water
+at no great distance, and I soon discovered about a bucketful in a
+hollow of the rock. This, however, was full of dead bees, wasps,
+beetles, and leaves, well steeped and simmered, and would, therefore,
+require boiling and filtering through fresh charcoal before it could be
+made available. Tracing the dry channel about a mile farther down to its
+junction with a larger tributary canon, I at length discovered a lot of
+boulder pools, clear as crystal, brimming full, and linked together by
+glistening streamlets just strong enough to sing audibly. Flowers in
+full bloom adorned their margins, lilies ten feet high, larkspur,
+columbines, and luxuriant ferns, leaning and overarching in lavish
+abundance, while a noble old Live Oak spread its rugged arms over all.
+Here I camped, making my bed on smooth cobblestones.
+
+[Illustration: A BEE-KEEPER'S CABIN.--BURRIELIA (ABOVE).--MADIA
+(BELOW).]
+
+Next day, in the channel of a tributary that heads on Mount San Antonio,
+I passed about fifteen or twenty gardens like the one in which I
+slept--lilies in every one of them, in the full pomp of bloom. My third
+camp was made near the middle of the general basin, at the head of a
+long system of cascades from ten to 200 feet high, one following the
+other in close succession down a rocky, inaccessible canon, making a
+total descent of nearly 1700 feet. Above the cascades the main stream
+passes through a series of open, sunny levels, the largest of which are
+about an acre in size, where the wild bees and their companions were
+feasting on a showy growth of zauschneria, painted cups, and monardella;
+and gray squirrels were busy harvesting the burs of the Douglas Spruce,
+the only conifer I met in the basin.
+
+The eastern slopes of the basin are in every way similar to those we
+have described, and the same may be said of other portions of the range.
+From the highest summit, far as the eye could reach, the landscape was
+one vast bee-pasture, a rolling wilderness of honey-bloom, scarcely
+broken by bits of forest or the rocky outcrops of hilltops and ridges.
+
+Behind the San Bernardino Range lies the wild "sage-brush country,"
+bounded on the east by the Colorado River, and extending in a general
+northerly direction to Nevada and along the eastern base of the Sierra
+beyond Mono Lake.
+
+The greater portion of this immense region, including Owen's Valley,
+Death Valley, and the Sink of the Mohave, the area of which is nearly
+one fifth that of the entire State, is usually regarded as a desert, not
+because of any lack in the soil, but for want of rain, and rivers
+available for irrigation. Very little of it, however, is desert in the
+eyes of a bee.
+
+Looking now over all the available pastures of California, it appears
+that the business of beekeeping is still in its infancy. Even in the
+more enterprising of the southern counties, where so vigorous a
+beginning has been made, less than a tenth of their honey resources have
+as yet been developed; while in the Great Plain, the Coast Ranges, the
+Sierra Nevada, and the northern region about Mount Shasta, the business
+can hardly be said to exist at all. What the limits of its developments
+in the future may be, with the advantages of cheaper transportation and
+the invention of better methods in general, it is not easy to guess.
+Nor, on the other hand, are we able to measure the influence on bee
+interests likely to follow the destruction of the forests, now rapidly
+falling before fire and the ax. As to the sheep evil, that can hardly
+become greater than it is at the present day. In short, notwithstanding
+the wide-spread deterioration and destruction of every kind already
+effected, California, with her incomparable climate and flora, is still,
+as far as I know, the best of all the bee-lands of the world.
+
+
+[1] Fifteen hives of Italian bees were introduced into Los Angeles
+County in 1855, and in 1876 they had increased to 500. The marked
+superiority claimed for them over the common species is now attracting
+considerable attention.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Mountains of California, by John Muir
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