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July 8. Now away we go toward
the topmost mountains. Many, still, small voices, as well as the noon
thunder, are calling, "Come higher." Farewell, blessed dell, woods, gardens,
streams, birds, squirrels, lizards, and a thousand others. Farewell.
Farewell.
Up through the woods the
hoofed locusts streamed beneath a cloud of brown dust. Scarcely were they
driven a hundred yards from the old corral ere they seemed to know that at
last they were going to new pastures, and rushed wildly ahead, crowding
through gaps in the brush, jumping, tumbling like exulting hurrahing
flood-waters escaping through a broken dam. A man on each flank kept
shouting advice to the leaders, who in their famishing condition were
behaving like Gadarene swine; two others drivers were busy with stragglers,
helping them out of brush tangles; the Indian, calm, alert, silently watched
for wanderers likely to be overlooked; the two dogs ran here and there, at a
loss to know what was best to be done, while the Don, soon far in the rear,
was trying to keep in sight of his troublesome wealth.
As soon as the boundary of
the old eaten-out range was passed the hungry horde suddenly became calm,
like a mountain stream in a meadow. Thenceforward they were allowed to eat
their way as slowly as they wished, care being taken only to keep them
headed toward the summit of the Merced and Tuolumne divide. Soon the two
thousand flattened paunches were bulged out with sweet-pea vines and grass,
and the gaunt, desperate creatures, more like wolves than sheep, became
bland and governable, while the howling drivers changed to gentle shepherds,
and sauntered in peace.
Toward sundown we reached
Hazel Green, a charming spot on the summit of the dividing ridge between the
basins of the Merced and Tuolumne, where there is a small brook flowing
through hazel and dogwood thickets beneath magnificent silver firs and
pines. Here, we are camped for the night, our big fire, heaped high with
rosiny logs and branches, is blazing like a sunrise, gladly giving back the
light slowly sifted from the sunbeams of centuries of summers; and in the
glow of that old sunlight how impressively surrounding objects are brought
forward in relief against the outer darkness! Grasses, larkspurs,
columbines, lilies, hazel bushes, and the great trees form a circle around
the fire like thoughtful spectators, gazing and listening with human-like
enthusiasm. The night breeze is cool, for all day we have been climbing into
the upper sky, the home of the cloud mountains we so long have admired. How
sweet and keen the air! Every breath a blessing. Here the sugar pine reaches
its fullest development in size and beauty and number of individuals,
filling every swell and hollow and down-plunging ravine almost to the
exclusion of other species. A few yellow pines are still to be found as
companions, and in the coolest places silver firs; but noble as these are,
the sugar pine is king, and spreads long protecting arms above them while
they rock and wave in sign of recognition.
We have now reached a height of six thousand
feet. In the forenoon we passed along a flat part of the dividing ridge that
is planted with manzanita (Arctostaphylos), some specimens the largest I
have seen. I measured one, the bole of which is four feet in diameter and
only eighteen inches high from the ground, where it dissolves into many
wide-spreading branches forming a broad round head about ten or twelve feet
high, covered with clusters of small narrow-throated pink bells. The leaves
are pale green, glandular, and set on edge by a twist of the petiole. The
branches seem naked; for the chocolate-colored bark is very smooth and thin,
and is shed off in flakes that curl when dry. The wood is red,
close-grained, hard, and heavy. I wonder how old these curious tree-bushes
are, probably as old as the great pines. Indians and bears and birds and fat
grubs feast on the berries, which look like small apples, often rosy on one
side, green on the other. The Indians are said to make a kind of beer or
cider out of them. There are many species. This one, Arctostaphylos pungens,
is common hereabouts. No need have they to fear the wind, so low they are
and steadfastly rooted. Even the fires that sweep the woods seldom destroy
them utterly, for they rise again from the root, and some of the dry ridges
they grow on are seldom touched by fire. I must try to know them better.
I miss my river songs to-night. Here Hazel Creek
at its topmost springs has a voice like a bird. The wind-tones in the great
trees overhead are strangely impressive, all the more because not a leaf
stirs below them. But it grows late, and I must to bed. The camp is silent;
everybody asleep. It seems extravagant to spend hours so precious in sleep.
"He giveth his beloved sleep." Pity the poor beloved needs it, weak, weary,
forspent; oh, the pity of it, to sleep in the midst of eternal, beautiful
motion instead of gazing forever, like the stars.
July 9. Exhilarated with the mountain air, I
feel like shouting this morning with excess of wild animal joy. The Indian
lay down away from the fire last night, without blankets, having nothing on,
by way of clothing, but a pair of blue overalls and a calico shirt wet with
sweat. The night air is chilly at this elevation, and we gave him some
horse-blankets, but he didn't seem to care for them. A fine thing to be
independent of clothing where it is so hard to carry. When food is scarce,
he can live on whatever comes in his way — a few berries, roots, bird eggs,
grasshoppers, black ants, fat wasp or bumblebee larvae, without feeling that
he is doing anything worth mention, so I have been told.
Our course to-day was along the broad top of the
main ridge to a hollow beyond Crane Flat. It is scarce at all rocky, and is
covered with the noblest pines and spruces I have yet seen. Sugar pines from
six to eight feet in diameter are not uncommon, with a height of two hundred
feet or even more. The silver firs (Abies concolor and A. magnifica) are
exceedingly beautiful, especially the magnifica, which becomes more abundant
the higher we go. It is of great size, one of the most notable in every way
of the giant conifers of the Sierra. I saw specimens that measured seven
feet in diameter and over two hundred feet in height, while the average size
for what might be called full-grown mature trees can hardly be less than one
hundred and eighty or two hundred feet high and five or six feet in
diameter; and with these noble dimensions there is a symmetry and perfection
of finish not to be seen in any other tree, hereabout at least. The branches
are whorled in fives mostly, and stand out from the tall, straight,
exquisitely tapered bole in level collars, each branch regularly pinnated
like the fronds of ferns, and densely clad with leaves all around the
branchlets, thus giving them a singularly rich and sumptuous appearance. The
extreme top of the tree is a thick blunt shoot `pointing straight to the
zenith like an admonishing finger. The cones stand erect like casks on the
upper branches. They are about six inches long, three in diameter, blunt,
velvety, and cylindrical in form, and very rich and precious looking. The
seeds are about three quarters of an inch long, dark reddish brown with
brilliant iridescent purple wings, and when ripe, the cone falls to pieces,
and the seeds thus set free at a height of one hundred and fifty or two
hundred feet have a good send off and may fly considerable distances in a
good breeze; and it is when a good breeze is blowing that most of them are
shaken free to fly. The
other species, Abies concolor, attains nearly as great a height and
thickness as the magnifica, but the branches do not form such regular
whorls, nor are they so exactly pinnated or richly leaf-clad. Instead of
growing all around the branchlets, the leaves are mostly arranged in two
flat horizontal rows. The cones and seeds are like those of the magnifica in
form but less than half as large. The bark of the magnifica is reddish
purple and closely furrowed, that of the concolor gray and widely furrowed.
A noble pair. At Crane
Flat we climbed a thousand feet or more in a distance of about two miles,
the forest growing more dense and the silvery magnifica fir forming a still
greater portion of the whole. Crane Flat is a meadow with a wide sandy
border lying on the top of the divide. It is often visited by blue cranes to
rest and feed on their long journeys, hence the name. <It is about half a
mile long, draining into the Merced, sedgy in the middle, with a margin
bright with lilies, columbines, larkspurs, lupines, castilleia, then an
outer zone of dry, gently sloping ground starred with a multitude of small
flowers — eunanus, mimulus, gilia, with rosettes of spraguea, and tufts of
several species of eriogonum and the brilliant zauschneria. The noble forest
wall about it is made up of the two silver firs and the yellow and sugar
pines, which here seem to reach their highest pitch of beauty and grandeur;
for the elevation, six thousand feet or a little more, is not too great for
the sugar and yellow pines or too low for the magnifica fir, while the
concolor seems to find this elevation the best possible. About a mile from
the north end of the flat there is a grove of Sequoia gigantea, the king of,
all the conifers. Furthermore, the Douglas "spruce (Pseudotsuga Douglasii)
and Libocedrus decurrens, and a few two-leaved pines, occur here and there,
forming a small part of the forest. Three pines, two silver firs, one
Douglas spruce, one sequoia, — all of them, except the two-leaved pine,
colossal trees, — are found here together, an assemblage of conifers
unrivaled on the globe.
We passed a number of charming garden-like
meadows lying on top of the divide or hanging like ribbons down its sides,
imbedded in the glorious forest. Some are taken up chiefly with the tall
white-flowered Veratrum Californicum, with boat-shaped leaves about a foot
long, eight or ten inches wide, and veined like those of cypripedium, — a
robust, hearty, liliaceous plant, fond of water and determined to be seen.
Columbine and larkspur grow on the dryer edges of the meadows, with a tall
handsome lupine standing waist-deep in long grasses and sedges. Castilleias,
too, of several species make a bright show with beds of violets at their
feet. But the glory of these forest meadows is a lily (L. parvum). The
tallest are from seven to eight feet high with magnificent racemes of ten to
twenty or more small orange-colored flowers; they stand out free in open
ground, with just enough grass and other companion plants about them to
fringe their feet, and show them off to best advantage. This is a grand
addition to my lily acquaintances, — a true mountaineer, reaching prime
vigor and beauty at a height of seven thousand feet or thereabouts. It
varies, I find, very much in size even in the same meadow, not only with the
soil, but with age. I saw a specimen that had only one flower, and another
within a stone's throw had twenty-five. And to think that the sheep should
be allowed in these lily meadows! after how many centuries of Nature's care
planting and watering them, tucking the bulbs in snugly below winter frost,
shading the tender shoots with clouds drawn above them like curtains,
pouring refreshing rain, making them perfect in beauty, and keeping them
safe by a thousand miracles; yet, strange to say, allowing the trampling of
devastating sheep. One might reasonably look for a wall of fire to fence
such gardens. So extravagant is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending
plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea,
garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men,
bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees, but as far as I have
seen, man alone, and the animals he tames, destroy these gardens. Awkward,
lumbering bears, the Don tells me, love to wallow in them in hot weather,
and deer with their sharp feet cross them again and again, sauntering and
feeding, yet never a lily have I seen spoiled by them. Rather, like
gardeners, they seem to cultivate them, pressing and dibbling as required.
Anyhow not a leaf or petal seems misplaced.
The trees round about them seem as perfect in
beauty and form as the lilies, their boughs whorled like lily leaves in
exact order. This evening, as usual, the glow of our campfire is working
enchantment on everything within reach of its rays. Lying beneath the firs,
it is glorious to see them dipping their spires in the starry sky, the sky
like one vast lily meadow in bloom! How can I close my eyes on so precious a
night? July 10. A
Douglas squirrel, peppery, pungent autocrat of the woods, is barking
overhead this morning, and the small forest birds, so seldom seen when one
travels noisily, are out on sunny branches along the edge of the meadow
getting warm, taking a sun bath and dew bath — a fine sight. How charming
the sprightly confident looks and ways of these little feathered people of
the trees! They seem sure of dainty, wholesome breakfasts, and where are so
many breakfasts to come from? How helpless should we find ourselves should
we try to set a table for them of such buds, seeds, insects, etc., as would
keep them in the pure wild health they enjoy! Not a headache or any other
ache amongst them, I guess. As for the irrepressible Douglas squirrels, one
never thinks of their breakfasts or the possibility of hunger, sickness or
death; rather they seem like stars above chance or change, even though we
may see them at times busy gathering burrs, working hard for a living.
On through the forest ever higher we go, a cloud
of dust dimming the way, thousands of feet trampling leaves and flowers, but
in this mighty wilderness they seem but a feeble band, and a thousand
gardens will escape their blighting touch. They cannot hurt the trees,
though some of the seedlings suffer, and should the woolly locusts be
greatly multiplied, as on account of dollar value they are likely to be,
then the forests, too, may in time be destroyed. Only the sky will then be
safe, though hid from view by dust and smoke, incense of a bad sacrifice.
Poor, helpless, hungry sheep, in great part misbegotten, without good right
to be, semi-manufactured, made less by God than man, born out of time and
place, yet their voices are strangely human and call out one's pity.
Our way is still along the Merced and Tuolumne
divide, the streams on our right going to swell the songful Yosemite River,
those on our left to the songful Tuolumne, slipping through sunny carex and
lily meadows, and breaking into song down a thousand ravines almost as soon
as they are born. A more tuneful set of streams surely nowhere exists, or
more sparkling crystal pure, now gliding with tinkling whisper, now with
merry dimpling rush, in and out through sunshine and shade, shimmering in
pools, uniting their currents, bouncing, dancing from form to form over
cliffs and inclines, ever more beautiful the farther they go until they pour
into the main glacial rivers.
All day I have been gazing in growing admiration
at the noble groups of the magnificent silver fir which more and more is
taking the ground to itself. y The woods above Crane Flat still continue
comparatively open, letting in the sunshine on the brown needle-strewn
ground. Not only are the individual trees admirable in symmetry and superb
in foliage and port, but half a dozen or more often form temple groves in
which the trees are so nicely graded in size and position as to seem one.
Here, indeed, is the tree-lover's paradise. The dullest eye in the world
must surely be quickened by such trees as these.
Fortunately the sheep need little attention, as
they are driven slowly and allowed to nip and nibble as they like. Since
leaving Hazel Green we have been following the Yosemite trail; visitors to
the famous valley coming by way of Coulterville and Chinese Camp pass this
way — the two trails uniting at Crane Flat— and enter the valley on the
north side. Another trail enters on the south side by way of Mariposa. The
tourists we saw were in parties of from three or four to fifteen or twenty,
mounted on mules or small mustang ponies. A strange show they made, winding
single file through the solemn woods in gaudy attire, scaring the wild
creatures, and one might fancy that even the great pines would be disturbed
and groan aghast. But what may we say of ourselves and the flock?
We are now camped at Tamarack Flat, within four
or five miles of the lower end of Yosemite. Here is another fine meadow
embosomed in the woods, with a deep, clear stream gliding through it, its
banks rounded and beveled with a thatch of dipping sedges. The flat is named
after the two-leaved pine (Pines contorta, var. Murrayana), common here,
especially around the cool margin of the meadow. On rocky ground it is a
rough, thickset tree, about forty to sixty feet high and one to three feet
in diameter, bark thin and gummy, branches rather naked, tassels, leaves,
and cones small. But in damp, rich soil it grows close and slender, and
reaches a height at times of nearly a hundred feet. Specimens only six
inches in diameter at the ground are often fifty or sixty feet in height, as
slender and sharp in outline as arrows, like the true tamarack (larch) of
the Eastern States; hence the name, though it is a pine.
July 11. The Don has gone ahead on one of the
pack animals to spy out the land to the north of Yosemite in search of the
best point for a central camp. Much higher than this we cannot now go, for
the upper pastures, said to be better than any hereabouts, are still buried
in heavy winter snow. Glad I am that camp is to be fixed in the Yosemite
region, for many a glorious ramble I'll have along the top of the walls, and
then what landscapes I shall find with their new mountains and canons,
forests and gardens, lakes and streams and falls.
We are now about seven thousand feet above the
sea, and the nights are so cool we have to pile coats and extra clothing on
top of our blankets. Tamarack Creek is icy cold, delicious, exhilarating
champagne water. It is flowing bank-full in the meadow with silent speed,
but only a few hundred yards below our camp the ground is bare gray granite
strewn with boulders, large spaces being without a single tree or only a
small one here and there anchored in narrow seams and cracks. The boulders,
many of them very large, are not in piles or scattered like rubbish among
loose crumbling debris as if weathered out of the solid as boulders of
disintegration; they mostly occur singly, and are lying on a clean pavement
on which the sunshine falls in a glare that contrasts with the shimmer of
light and shade we have been accustomed to in the leafy woods. And, strange
to say, these boulders lying so still and deserted, with no moving force
near them, no boulder carrier anywhere in sight, were nevertheless brought
from a distance, as difference in color and composition shows, quarried and
carried and laid down here each in its place; nor have they stirred, most of
them, through calm and storm since first they arrived. They look lonely
here, strangers in a strange land, — huge blocks, angular mountain chips,
the largest twenty or thirty feet in diameter, the chips that Nature has
made in modeling her landscapes, fashioning the forms of her mountains and
valleys. And with what tool were they quarried and carried? On the pavement
we find its marks. The most resisting unweathered portion of the surface is
scored and striated in a rigidly parallel way, indicating that the region
has been overswept by a glacier from the northeastward, grinding down the
general mass of the mountains, scoring and polishing, producing a strange,
raw, wiped appearance, and dropping whatever boulders it chanced to be
carrying at the time it was melted at the close of the Glacial Period. A
fine discovery this. As for the forests we have been passing through, they
are probably growing on deposits of soil most of which has been laid down by
this same ice agent in the form of moraines of different sorts, now in great
part disintegrated and outspread by post-glacial weathering.
Out of the grassy meadow and down over this
ice-planed granite runs the glad young Tamarack Creek, rejoicing, exulting,
chanting, dancing in white, glowing, irised falls and cascades on its way to
the Merced Canon, a few miles below Yosemite, falling more than three
thousand feet in a distance of about two miles.
All the Merced streams are wonderful singers,
and Yosemite is the centre where the main tributaries meet. From a point
about half a mile from our camp we can see into the lower end of the famous
valley, with its wonderful cliffs and groves, a grand page of mountain
manuscript that I would gladly give my life to be able to read. How vast it
seems, how short human life when we happen to think of it, and how little we
may learn, however hard we try! Yet why bewail our poor inevitable
ignorance? Some of the external beauty is always in sight, enough to keep
every fibre of us tingling, and this we are able to gloriously enjoy though
the methods of its creation may lie beyond our ken. Sing on, brave Tamarack
Creek, fresh from your snowy fountains, plash and swirl and dance to your
fate in the sea; bathing, cheering every living thing along your way.
Have greatly enjoyed all this huge day,
sauntering and seeing, steeping in the mountain influences, sketching,
noting, pressing flowers, drinking ozone and Tamarack water. Found the white
fragrant Washington lily, the finest of all the Sierra lilies. Its bulbs are
buried in shaggy chaparral tangles, I suppose for safety from pawing bears;
and its magnificent panicles sway and rock over the top of the rough
snow-pressed bushes, while big, bold, blunt-nosed bees drone and mumble in
its polleny bells. A lovely flower, worth going hungry and footsore endless
miles to see. The whole world seems richer now that I have found this plant
in so noble a landscape.
A log house serves to mark a claim to the
Tamarack meadow, which may become valuable as a station in case travel to
Yosemite should greatly increase. Belated parties occasionally stop here. A
white man with an Indian woman is holding possession of the place.
Sauntered up the meadow about sundown, out of
sight of camp and sheep and all human mark, into the deep peace of the
solemn old woods, everything glowing with Heaven's unquenchable enthusiasm.
July 12. The Don has returned, and again we go
on pilgrimage. "Looking over the Yosemite Creek country," he said, "from the
tops of the hills you see nothing but rocks and patches of trees; but when
you go down into the rocky desert you find no end of small grassy banks and
meadows, and so the country is not half so lean as it looks. There we'll go
and stay until the snow is melted from the upper country."
I was glad to hear that the high snow made a
stay in the Yosemite region necessary, for I am anxious to see as much of it
as possible. What fine times I shall have sketching, studying plants and
rocks, and scrambling about the brink of the great valley alone, out of
sight and sound of camp!
We saw another party of Yosemite tourists
to-day. Somehow most of these travelers seem to care but little for the
glorious objects about them, though enough to spend time and money and
endure long rides to see the famous valley. And when they are fairly within
the mighty walls of the temple and hear the psalms of the falls, they will
forget themselves and become devout. Blessed, indeed, should be every
pilgrim in these holy mountains!
We moved slowly eastward along the Mono Trail,
and early in the afternoon unpacked and camped on the bank of Cascade Creek.
The Mono Trail crosses the range by the Bloody Canon Pass to gold mines near
the north end of Mono Lake. These mines were reported to be rich when first
discovered, and a grand rush took place, making a trail necessary. A few
small bridges were built over streams where fording was not practicable on
account of the softness of the bottom, sections of fallen trees cut out, and
lanes made through thickets wide enough to allow the passage of bulky packs;
but over the greater part of the way scarce a stone or shovelful of earth
has been moved. The
woods we passed through are composed almost wholly of A bies magnifica, the
companion species, concolor, being mostly left behind on account of
altitude, while the increasing elevation seems grateful to the charming
magnifica. No words can do anything like justice to this noble tree. At one
place many had fallen during some heavy wind-storm, owing to the loose sandy
character of the soil, which offered no secure anchorage. The soil is mostly
decomposed and disintegrated moraine material.
The sheep are lying down on a bare rocky spot
such as they like, chewing the cud in grassy peace. Cooking is going on,
appetites growing keener every day. No lowlander can appreciate the mountain
appetite, and the facility with which heavy food called "grub" is disposed
of. Eating, walking, resting, seem alike delightful, and one feels inclined
to shout lustily on rising in the morning like a crowing cock. Sleep and
digestion as clear as the air. Fine spicy plush boughs for bedding we shall
have to-night, and a glorious lullaby from this cascading creek. Never was
stream more fittingly named, for as far as I have traced it above and below
our camp it is one continuous bouncing, dancing, white bloom of cascades.
And at the very last unwearied it finishes its wild course in a grand leap
of three hundred feet or more to the bottom of the main Yosemite canon near
the fall of Tamarack Creek, a few miles below the foot of the valley. These
falls almost rival some of the far-famed Yosemite falls. Never shall I
forget these glad cascade songs, the low booming, the roaring, the keen,
silvery clashing of the cool water rushing exulting from form to form
beneath irised spray; or in the deep still night seen white in the darkness,
and its multitude of voices sounding still more impressively sublime. Here I
find the little water ouzel as much at home as any linnet in a leafy grove,
seeming to take the greater delight the more boisterous the stream. The
dizzy precipices, the swift dashing energy displayed, and the thunder tones
of the sheer falls are awe-inspiring, but there is nothing awful about this
little bird. Its song is sweet and low, and all its gestures, as it flits
about amid the loud uproar, bespeak strength and peace and joy.
Contemplating these darlings of Nature coming forth from spray-sprinkled
nests on the brink of savage streams, Samson's riddle comes to mind, "Out of
the strong cometh forth sweetness." A yet finer bloom is this little bird
than the foam-bells in eddying pools. Gentle bird, a precious message you
bring me. We may miss the meaning of the torrent, but thy sweet voice, only
love is in it. July 13.
Our course all day has been eastward over the rim of Yosemite Creek basin
and down about halfway to the bottom, where we have encamped on a sheet of
glacier-polished granite, a firm foundation for beds. Saw the tracks of a
very large bear on the trail, and the Don talked of bears in general. I said
I should like to see the maker of these immense tracks as he marched along,
and follow him for days, without disturbing him, to learn something of the
life of this master beast of the wilderness. Lambs, the Don told me, born in
the lowland, that never saw or heard a bear, snort and run in terror when
they catch the scent, showing how fully they have inherited a knowledge of
their enemy. Hogs, mules, horses, and cattle are afraid of bears, and are
seized with ungovernable terror when they approach, particularly hogs and
mules. Hogs are frequently driven to pastures in the foothills of the Coast
Range and Sierra where acorns are abundant, and are herded in droves of
hundreds like sheep. When a bear comes to the range they promptly leave it,
emigrating in a body, usually in the night time, the keepers being powerless
to prevent; they thus show more sense than sheep, that simply scatter in the
rocks and brush and await their fate. Mules flee like the wind with or
without riders when they see a bear, and, if picketed, sometimes break their
necks in trying to break their ropes, though I have not heard of bears
killing mules or horses. Of hogs they are said to be particularly fond,
bolting small ones, bones and all, without choice of parts. In particular,
Mr. Delaney assured me that all kinds of bears in the Sierra are very shy,
and that hunters found far greater difficulty in getting within gunshot of
them than of deer or indeed any other animal in the Sierra, and if I was
anxious to see much of them I should have to wait and watch with endless
Indian patience and pay no attention to anything else.
Night is coming on, the gray rock waves are
growing dim in the twilight. How raw and young this region appears! Had the
ice sheet that swept over it vanished but yesterday, its traces on the more
resisting portions about our camp could hardly be more distinct than they
now are. The horses and sheep and all of us, indeed, slipped on the
smoothest places. July
14. How deathlike is sleep in this mountain air, and quick the awakening
into newness of life! A calm dawn, yellow and purple, then floods of
sun-gold, making everything tingle and glow.
In an hour or two we came to Yosemite Creek, the
stream that makes the greatest of all the Yosemite falls. It is about forty
feet wide at the Mono Trail crossing, and now about four feet in average
depth, flowing about three miles an hour. The distance to the verge of the
Yosemite wall, where it makes its tremendous plunge, is only about two miles
from here. Calm, beautiful, and nearly silent, it glides with stately
gestures, a dense growth of the slender two-leaved pine along its banks, and
a fringe of willow, purple spirea, sedges, daisies, lilies, and columbines.
Some of the sedges and willow boughs dip into the current, and just outside
of the close ranks of trees there is a sunny flat of washed gravelly sand
which seems to have been deposited by some ancient flood. It is covered with
millions of erethrea, eriogonum, and oxytheca, with more flowers than
leaves, forming an even growth, slightly dimpled and ruffled here and there
by rosettes of Spraguea umbellata. Back of this flowery strip there is a
wavy upsloping plain of solid granite, so smoothly ice-polished in many
places that it glistens in the sun like glass. In shallow hollows there are
patches of trees, mostly the rough form of the two-leaved pine, rather
scrawny looking where there is little or no soil. Also a few junipers (Juniperus
occidentalis), short and stout, with bright cinnamon-colored bark and gray
foliage, standing alone mostly, on the sun-beaten pavement, safe from fire,
clinging by slight joints, — a sturdy storm-enduring mountaineer of a tree,
living on sunshine and snow, maintaining tough health on this diet for
perhaps more than a thousand years.
Up towards the head of the basin I see groups of
domes rising above the wavelike ridges, and some picturesque castellated
masses, and dark strips and patches of silver fir, indicating deposits of
fertile soil. Would that I could command the time to study them! What rich
excursions one could make in this well-defined basin! Its glacial
inscriptions and sculptures, how marvelous they seem, how noble the studies
they offer! I tremble with excitement in the dawn of these glorious mountain
sublimities, but I can only gaze and wonder, and, like a child, gather here
and there a lily, half hoping I may be able to study and learn in years to
come. The drivers and
dogs had a lively, laborious time getting the sheep across the creek, the
second large stream thus far that they have been compelled to cross without
a bridge; the first being the North Fork of the Merced near Bower Cave. Men
and dogs, shouting and barking, drove the timid, water-fearing creatures in
a close crowd against the bank, but not one of the flock would launch away.
While thus jammed, the Don and the shepherd rushed through the frightened
crowd to stampede those in front, but this would only cause a break
backward, and away they would scamper through the stream-bank trees and
scatter over the rocky pavement. Then with the aid of the dogs the runaways
would again be gathered and made to face the stream, and again the compacted
mass would break away, amid wild shouting and barking that might well have
disturbed the stream itself and marred the music of its falls, to which
visitors no doubt from all quarters of the globe were listening. "Hold them
there! Now hold them there!" shouted the Don; "the front ranks will soon
tire of the pressure, and be glad to take to the water, then all will jump
in and cross in a hurry." But they did nothing of the kind; they only
avoided the pressure by breaking back in scores and hundreds, leaving the
beauty of the banks sadly trampled.
If only one could be got to cross over, all
would make haste to follow; but that one could not be found. A lamb was
caught, carried across, and tied to a bush on the opposite bank, where it
cried piteously for its mother. But though greatly concerned, the mother
only called it back. That play on maternal affection failed, and we began to
fear that we should be forced to make a long roundabout drive and cross the
wide-spread tributaries of the creek in succession. This would require
several days, but it had its advantages, for I was eager to see the sources
of so famous a stream. Don Quixote, however, determined that they must ford
just here, and immediately began a sort of siege by cutting down slender
pines on the bank and building a corral barely large enough to hold the
flock when well pressed together. And as the stream would form one side of
the corral he believed that they could easily be forced into the water.
In a few hours the inclosure was completed, and
the silly animals were driven in and rammed hard against the brink of the
ford. Then the Don, forcing a way through the compacted mass, pitched a few
of the terrified unfortunates into the stream by main strength; but instead
of crossing over, they swam about close to the bank, making desperate
attempts to get back into the flock. Then a dozen or more were shoved off,
and the Don, tall like a crane and a good natural wader, jumped in after
them, seized a struggling wether, and dragged it to the opposite shore. But
no sooner did he let it go than it jumped into the stream and swam back to
its frightened companions in the corral, thus manifesting sheep-nature as
unchangeable as gravitation. Pan with his pipes would have had no better
luck, I fear. We were now pretty well baffled. The silly creatures would
suffer any sort of death rather than cross that stream. Calling a council,
the dripping Don declared that starvation was now the only likely scheme to
try, and that we might as well camp here in comfort and let the besieged
flock grow hungry and cool, and come to their senses, if they had any. In a
few minutes after being thus let alone, an adventurer in the foremost rank
plunged in, and swam bravely to the farther shore. Then suddenly all rushed
in pell-mell together, trampling one another under water, while we vainly
tried to hold them back. The Don jumped into the thickest of the gasping,
gurgling, drowning mass, and shoved them right and left as if each sheep was
a piece of floating timber. The current also served to drift them apart; a
long bent column was soon formed, and in a few minutes all were over and
began baaing and feeding as if nothing out of the common had happened. That
none were drowned seems wonderful. I fully expected that hundreds would gain
the romantic fate of being swept into Yosemite over the highest waterfall in
the world. As the day
was far spent, we camped a little way back from the ford, and let the
dripping flock scatter and feed until sundown. The wool is dry now, and
calm, cud-chewing peace has fallen on all the comfortable band, leaving no
trace of the watery battle. I have seen fish driven out of the water with
less ado than was made in driving these animals into it. Sheep brain must
surely be poor stuff. Compare today's exhibition with the performances of
deer swimming quietly across broad and rapid rivers, and from island to
island in seas and lakes; or with dogs, or even with the squirrels that, as
the story goes, cross the Mississippi River on selected chips, with tails
for sails comfortably trimmed to the breeze. A sheep can hardly be called an
animal; an entire flock is required to make one foolish individual. |
