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"Come let's to the fields, the
meads, and the mountains,
The forests invite us, the streams and the fountains."
Carlyle, Translations, vol. iii.
THE joyful, songful streams
of the Sierra are among the most famous and interesting in the world, and
draw the admiring traveler on and on through their wonderful canons, year
after year, unwearied. After long wanderings with them, tracing them to
their fountains, learning their history and the forms they take in their
wild works and ways throughout the different seasons of the year, we may
then view them together in one magnificent show, outspread over all the
range like embroidery, their silvery branches interlacing on a thousand
mountains, singing their way home to the sea: the small rills, with hard
roads to travel, dropping from ledge to ledge, pool to pool, like chains of
sweet-toned bells, slipping gently over beds of pebbles and sand, resting in
lakes, shining, spangling, shimmering, lapping the shores with whispering
ripples, and shaking over- leaning bushes and grass; the larger streams and
rivers in the canons displaying noble purity and beauty with ungovernable
energy, rushing down smooth inclines in wide foamy, sheets fold over fold,
springing up here and there in magnificent whirls, scattering crisp clashing
spray for the sunbeams to iris, bursting with hoarse reverberating roar
through rugged gorges and boulder dams, booming in falls, gliding, glancing
with cool soothing murmuring, through long forested reaches richly
embowered, - filling the grand canons with glorious song, and giving life to
all the landscape.
The present rivers of the
Sierra are still young, and have made but little mark as yet on the grand
caflons prepared for them by the ancient glaciers. Only a very short
geological time ago they all lay buried beneath the glaciers they drained,
singing in low smothered or silvery ringing tones in crystal channels, while
the summer weather melted the ice and snow of the surface or gave showers.
At first only in warm weather was any part of these buried rivers displayed
in the light of day; for as soon as frost prevailed the surface rills
vanished, though the streams beneath the ice and in the body of it flowed on
all the year.
When, toward the close of the
glacial period, the ice mantle began to shrink and recede from the lowlands,
the lower portions of the rivers were developed, issuing from cavelike
openings on the melting margin and growing longer as the ice withdrew; while
for many a century the tributaries and upper portions of the trunks remained
covered. In the fullness of time these also were set free in the sunshine,
to take their places in the newborn landscapes; each tributary with its
smaller branches being gradually developed like the main trunks, as the
climatic changes went on. At first all of them were muddy with glacial
detritus, and they became clear only after the glaciers they drained had
receded beyond lake basins in which the sediments were dropped.
This early history is clearly
explained by the present rivers of southeastern Alaska. Of those draining
glaciers that discharge into arms of the sea, only the rills on the surface
of the ice, and upboiling, eddying, turbid currents in the tide water in
front of the terminal ice wall, are visible. 'Where glaciers, in the first
stage of decadence, have receded from the shore, short sections of the
trunks of the rivers that are to take their places may be seen rushing out
from caverns and tunnels in the melting front, - rough, roaring,
detritus-laden torrents, foaming and tumbling over outspread terminal
moraines to the sea, perhaps without a single bush or flower to brighten
their raw, shifting banks. Again, in some of the warmer canons and valleys
from which the trunk glaciers have been melted, the main trunks of the
rivers are well developed, and their banks planted with fine forests, while
their upper branches, lying high on the snowy mountains, are still buried
beneath shrinking residual glaciers; illustrating every stage of
development, from icy darkness to light, and from muddiness to crystal
clearness.
Now that the hard grinding
sculpture work of the glacial period is done, the whole bright band of
Sierra rivers run clear all the year, except when the snow is melting fast
in the warm spring weather, and during extraordinary winter floods and the
heavy thunderstorms of summer called cloud-bursts. Even then they are not
muddy above the foothill mining region, unless the moraines have been
loosened and the vegetation destroyed by sheep; for the rocks of the upper
basins are clean, and the most able streams find but little to carry save
the spoils of the forest, -trees, branches, flakes of bark, cones, leaves,
pollen dust, etc., - with scales of mica, sand grains, and boulders, which
are rolled along the bottom of the steep parts of the main channels. Short
sections of a few of the highest tributaries heading in glaciers are of
course turbid with finely ground rock mud, but this is dropped in the first
lakes they enter.
On the northern part of the
range, mantled with porous fissured volcanic rocks, the fountain waters sink
and flow below the surface for considerable distances, groping their way in
the dark like the draining streams of glaciers, and at last bursting forth
in big generous springs, filtered and cool and exquisitely clear. Some of
the largest look like lakes, their waters welling straight up from the
bottom of deep rock basins in quiet massive volume giving rise to young
rivers. Others issue from horizontal clefts in sheer bluffs, with loud
tumultuous roaring that may be heard half a mile or more. Magnificent
examples of these great northern spring fountains, twenty or thirty feet
deep and ten to nearly a hundred yards wide, abound on the main branches of
the Feather, Pitt, McCloud, and Fall rivers.
The springs of the Yosemite
Park, and the high Sierra in general, though many times more numerous, are
comparatively small, oozing from moraines and snowbanks in thin, flat
irregular currents which remain on the surface or near it, the rocks of the
south half of the range being mostly flawless impervious granite; and since
granite is but slightly soluble, the streams are particularly pure. -
Nevertheless, though they are all clear, and in the upper and main central
forest regions delightfully lively and cool, they vary somewhat in color and
taste as well as temperature, on account of differences, however slight, in
exposure, and in the rocks and vegetation with which they come in contact.
Some are more exposed than others to winds and sunshine in their falls and
thin plumelike cascades; the amount of dashing, mixing, and airing the
waters of each receive varies considerably; and there is always more or less
variety in the kind and quantity of the vegetation they flow through, and in
the time they lie in shady or sunny lakes and bogs.
The water of one of the
branches of the north fork of Owens River, near the southeastern boundary of
the Park, at an elevation of ninety-five hundred feet above the sea, is the
best I ever found. It is not only delightfully cool and bright, but brisk,
sparkling, exhilarating, and so positively delicious to the taste that a
party of friends I led to it twenty-five years ago still praise it, and
refer to it as "that wonderful champagne water"; though, comparatively, the
finest wine is a coarse and vulgar drink. The party camped about a week in a
pine grove on the edge of a little round sedgy meadow through which the
stream ran bank full, and drank its icy water on frosty mornings, before
breakfast, and at night about as eagerly as in the heat of the day; lying
down and taking massy draughts direct from the brimming flood, lest the
touch of a cup might disturb its celestial flavor. On one of my excursions I
took pains to trace this stream to its head springs. It is mostly derived
from snow that lies in heavy drifts and avalanche heaps on or near the axis
of the range. It flows first in flat sheets over coarse sand or shingle
derived from a granite ridge and the metamorphic slates of Red Mountain.
Then, gathering its many small branches, it runs through beds of moraine
material, and a series of lakelets and meadows and frosty juicy bogs
bordered with heathworts and linked together by short bouldery reaches.
Below these, growing strong with tribute drawn from many a snowy fountain on
either side, the glad stream goes dashing and swirling through clumps of the
white-barked pine, and tangled willow and alder thickets enriched by the
fragrant herbaceous vegetation usually found about them. And just above the
level camp meadow it is chafed and churned and beaten white over and over
again in crossing a talus of big earthquake boulders, giving it a very
thorough airing. But to what the peculiar indefinable excellence of this
water is due I don't know; for other streams in adjacent canons are aired in
about the same way, and draw traces of minerals and plant essences from
similar sources. The best mineral water yet discovered in the Park flows
from the Tuolumne soda springs, on the north side of the Big Meadow.
Mountaineers like it and ascribe every healing virtue to it, but in no way
can any of these waters be compared with the Owens River champagne.
It is a curious fact that the
waters of some of the Sierra lakes and streams are invisible, or nearly so,
under certain weather conditions. This is noticed by mountaineers, hunters,
and prospectors, wide-awake, sharp-eyed observers, little likely to be
fooled by fine whims. One of these mountain men, whom I had nursed while a
broken leg was mending, always gratefully reported the wonders he found.
Once, returning from a trip on the head-waters of the Tuolumne, he came
running eagerly, crying: "Muir, I've found the queerest lake in the
mountains! It's high up where nothing grows; and when it is n't shiny you
can't see it, and you walk right into it as if there was nothing there. The
first you know of that lake you are in it, and get tripped up by the water,
and hear the splash." The waters of Illilouette Creek are nearly invisible
in the autumn; so that, in following the channel, jumping from boulder to
boulder after a shower, you will frequently drag your feet in the apparently
surfaceless pools.
Excepting a few low, warm
slopes, fountain snow usually covers all the Yosemite Park from November or
December to May, most of it until June or July, while on the coolest parts
of the north slopes of the mountains, at a height of eleven to thirteen
thousand feet, it is perpetual. It seldom lies at a greater depth than two
or three feet on the lower margin, ten feet over the middle forested region,
or fifteen to twenty feet in the shadowy canons and cirques among the peaks
of the Summit, except where it is drifted, or piled in avalanche heaps at
the foot of long converging slopes to form perennial fountains.
The first crop of snow
crystals that whitens the mountains and refreshes the streams usually falls
in September or October, in the midst of charming Indian summer weather,
often while the goldenrods and gentians are in their prime; but these Indian
summer snows, like some of the late ones that bury the June gardens, vanish
in a day or two, and garden work goes on with accelerated speed. The grand
winter storms that load the mountains with enduring fountain snow seldom set
in before the end of November. The fertile clouds, descending, glide about
and hover in brooding silence, as if thoughtfully examining the forests and
streams with reference to the work before them; then small flakes or single
crystals appear, glinting and swirling in zigzags and spirals; and soon the
thronging feathery masses fill the sky and make darkness like night,
hurrying wandering mountaineers to their winter quarters. The first fall is
usually about two to four feet deep. Then with intervals of bright weather,
not very cold, storm succeeds storm, heaping snow on snow, until from thirty
to fifty or sixty feet has fallen; but on account of heavy settling and
compacting, and the waste from evaporation and melting, the depth in the
middle region, as stated above, rarely exceeds ten feet. Evaporation never
wholly ceases, even in the coldest weather, and the sunshine between storms
melts the surface more or less. Waste from melting also goes on at the
bottom from summer heat stored in the rocks, as is shown by the rise of the
streams after the first general storm, and their steady sustained flow all
winter.
In the deep sugar-pine and
silver-fir woods, up to a height of eight thousand feet, most of the snow
lies where it falls, in one smooth universal fountain, until set free in the
streams. But in the lighter forests of the two-leaved pine, and on the bleak
slopes above the timber line, there is much wild drifting during storms
accompanied by high winds, and for a day or two after they have fallen, when
the temperature is low, and the snow dry and dusty. Then the trees, bending
in the darkening blast, roar like feeding lions; the frozen lakes are
buried; so also are the streams, which now flow in dark tunnels, as if
another glacial period had come. On high ridges, where the winds have a free
sweep, magnificent overcurling cornices are formed, which, with the
avalanche piles, last as fountains almost all summer; and when an
exceptionally high wind is blowing from the north, the snow, rolled,
drifted, and ground to dust, is driven up the converging northern slopes of
the peaks and sent flying for miles in the form of bright wavering banners,
displayed in wonderful clearness and beauty against the sky.
The greatest storms, however,
are usually followed by a deep, peculiar silence, especially profound and
solemn in the forests; and the noble trees stand hushed and motionless, as
if under a spell, until the morning sunbeams begin to sift through their
laden spires. Then the snow, shifting and falling from the top branches,
strikes the lower ones in succession, and dislodges bossy masses all the way
down. Thus each tree is enveloped in a hollow conical avalanche of fairy
fineness, silvery white, irised on the outside; while the relieved branches
spring up and wave with startling effect in the general stillness, as if
moving of their own volition. These beautiful tree avalanches, hundreds of
which may be seen falling at once on fine mornings after storms, pile their
snow in raised rings around corresponding hollows beneath the trees, making
the forest mantle somewhat irregular, but without greatly influencing its
duration and the flow of the streams.
The large storm avalanches
are most abundant on the Summit peaks of the range. They descend the broad,
steep slopes, as well as narrow gorges and couloirs, with grand roaring and
booming, and glide in graceful curves out on the glaciers they so
bountifully feed.
Down in the main canons of
the middle region broad masses are launched over the brows of cliffs three
or four thousand feet high, which, worn to dust by friction in falling so
far through the air, oftentimes hang for a minute or two in front of the
tremendous precipices like gauzy half-transparent veils, gloriously
beautiful when the sun is shining through them. Most of the caņon
avalanches, however, flow in regular channels, like the cascades of
tributary streams. When the snow first gives way on the upper slopes of
their basins a dull muffled rush and rumble is heard, which, increasing with
heavy deliberation, seems to draw rapidly nearer with appalling intensity of
tone. Presently the wild flood comes in sight, bounding out over bosses and
sheer places, leaping from bench to bench, spreading and narrowing and
throwing off clouds of whirling diamond dust like a majestic foamy cataract.
Compared with cascades and falls, avalanches are short-lived, and the sharp
clashing sounds so common in dashing water are usually wanting; but in their
deep thunder tones and pearly purple-tinged whiteness, and in dress, gait,
gestures, and general behavior, they are much alike.
Besides these common storm
avalanches there are two other kinds, the annual and the century, which
still further enrich the scenery, though their influence on fountains is
comparatively small. Annual avalanches are composed of heavy compacted snow
which has been subjected to frequent alternations of frost and thaw. They
are developed on caņon and mountain sides, the greater number of them, at
elevations of from nine to ten thousand feet, where the slopes are so
inclined that the dry snows of winter accumulate and hold fast until the
spring thaws sap their foundations and make them slippery. Then away in
grand style go the ponderous icy masses, adorned with crystalline spray
without any cloudy snow dust; some of the largest descending more than a
mile with even, sustained energy and directness like thunderbolts. The grand
century avalanches, that mow wide swaths through the upper forests, occur on
shady mountain sides about ten to twelve thousand feet high, where, under
ordinary conditions, the snow accumulated from winter to winter lies at rest
for many years, allowing trees fifty to a hundred feet high to grow
undisturbed on the slopes below them. On their way through the forests they
usually make a clean sweep, stripping off the soil as well as the trees,
clearing paths two or three hundred yards wide from the timber line to the
glacier meadows, and piling the uprooted trees, head downward, in windrows
along the sides like lateral moraines. Scars and broken branches on the
standing trees bordering the gaps record the side depth of the overwhelming
flood; and when we come to count the annual wood rings of the uprooted
trees, we learn that some of these colossal avalanches occur only once in
about a century, or even at still wider intervals.
Few mountaineers go far
enough, during the snowy months, to see many avalanches, and fewer still
know the thrilling exhilaration of riding on them. In all my wild
mountaineering I have enjoyed only one avalanche ride; and the start was so
sudden, and the end came so soon, I thought but little of the danger that
goes with this sort of travel, though one thinks fast at such times. One
calm, bright morning in Yosemite, after a hearty storm had given three or
four feet of fresh snow to the mountains, being eager to see as many
avalanches as possible, and gain wide views of the peaks and forests arrayed
in their new robes, before the sunshine had time to change or rearrange
them, I set out early to climb by a side caņon to the top of a commanding
ridge a little over three thousand feet above the valley. On account of the
looseness of the snow that blocked the caņon I knew the climb would be
trying, and estimated it might require three or four hours. But it proved
far more difficult than I had foreseen. Most of the way I sank waist-deep,
in some places almost out of sight; and after spending the day to within
half an hour of sundown in this loose, baffling snow work, I was still
several hundred feet below the summit. Then my hopes were reduced to getting
up in time for the sunset, and a quick, sparkling home-going beneath the
stars. But I was not to get top views of any sort that day; for deep
trampling near the caņon head, where the snow was strained, started an
avalanche, and I was swished back down to the foot of the caņon as if by
enchantment. The plodding, wallowing ascent of about a mile had taken all
day, the undoing descent perhaps a minute. When the snow suddenly gave way,
I instinctively threw myself on my back and spread my arms, to try to keep
from sinking. Fortunately, though the grade of the caņon was steep, it was
not interrupted by step levels or precipices big enough to cause outbounding
or free plunging. On no part of the rush was I buried. I was only moderately
imbedded on the surface or a little below it, and covered with a hissing
back-streaming veil of dusty snow particles; and as the whole mass beneath
or about me joined in the flight I felt no friction, though tossed here and
there, and lurched from side to side. And when the torrent swedged and came
to rest, I found myself on the top of the crumpled pile, without a single
bruise or scar. Hawthorne says that steam has spiritualized travel,
notwithstanding the smoke, friction, smells, and clatter of boat and rail
riding. This flight in a milky way of snow flowers was the most spiritual of
all my travels; and, after many years, the mere thought of it is still an
exhilaration.
In the spring, after all the
avalanches are down and the snow is melting fast, it is glorious to hear the
streams sing out on the mountains. Every fountain swelling, countless rills
hurry together to the rivers at the call of the sun, - beginning to run and
sing soon after sunrise, increasing until toward sundown, then gradually
failing through the cold frosty hours of the night. Thus the volume of the
upper rivers, even in flood time, is nearly doubled during the day, rising
and falling as regularly as the tides of the sea. At the height of flood, in
the warmest June weather, they seem fairly to shout for joy, and clash their
upleaping waters together like clapping of hands; racing down the canons
with white manes flying in glorious exuberance of strength, compelling huge
sleeping boulders to wake up and join in the dance and song to swell their
chorus.
Then the plants also are in
flood; the hidden sap singing into leaf and flower, responding as faithfully
to the call of the sun as the streams from the snow, gathering along the
outspread roots like rills in their channels on the mountains, rushing up
the stems of herb and tree, swirling in their myriad cells like streams in
potholes, spreading along the branches and breaking into foamy bloom, while
fragrance, like a finer music, rises and flows with the winds.
About the same may be said of
the spring gladness of blood when the red streams surge and sing in accord
with the swelling plants and rivers, inclining animals and everybody to
travel in hurrahing crowds like floods, while exhilarating melody in color
and fragrance, form and motion, flows to the heart through all the
quickening senses.
In early summer the streams
are in bright prime, running crystal clear, deep and full, but not
overflowing their banks, - about as deep through the night as the day, the
variation so marked in spring being now too slight to be noticed. Nearly all
the weather is cloudless sunshine, and everything is at its brightest, -
lake, river, garden, and forest, with all their warm, throbbing life. Most
of the plants are in full leaf and flower; the blessed ouzels have built
their mossy huts, and are now singing their sweetest songs on
spray-sprinkled ledges beside the waterfalls.
In tranquil, mellow autumn,
when the year's work is about done, when the fruits are ripe, birds and
seeds out of their nests, and all the landscape is glowing like a benevolent
countenance at rest, then the streams are at their lowest ebb, - their wild
rejoicing soothed to thoughtful calm. All the smaller tributaries whose
branches do not reach back to the perennial fountains of the Summit peaks
shrink to whispering, tinkling currents. The snow of their basins gone, they
are now fed only by small moraine springs, whose waters are mostly
evaporated in passing over warm pavements, and in feeling their way from
pool to pool through the midst of boulders and sand. Even the main streams
are so low they may be easily forded, and their grand falls and cascades,
now gentle and approachable, have waned to sheets and webs of embroidery,
falling fold over fold in new and ever-changing beauty.
Two of the most songful of
the rivers, the Tuolumne and Merced, water nearly all the Park, spreading
their branches far and wide, like broad-headed oaks; and the highest
branches of each draw their sources from one and the same fountain on Mount
Lyell, at an elevation of about thirteen thousand feet above the sea. The
crest of the mountain, against which the head of the glacier rests, is worn
to a thin blade full of joints, through which a part of the glacial water
flows southward, giving rise to the highest trickling affluents of the
Merced; while the main drainage, flowing northward, gives rise to those of
the Tuolumne. After diverging for a distance of ten or twelve miles, these
twin rivers flow in a general westerly direction, descending rapidly for the
first thirty miles, and rushing in glorious apron cascades and falls from
one Yosemite valley to another. Below the Yosemites they descend in gray
rapids and swirling, swaying reaches, through the chaparral- clad canons of
the foothills and across the golden California plain, to their confluence
with the San Joaquin, where, after all their long wanderings, they are only
about ten miles apart.
The main canons are from
fifty to seventy miles long, and from two to four thousand feet deep, carved
in the solid flank of the range. Though rough in some places and hard to
travel, they are the most delightful of roads, leading through the grandest
scenery, full of life and motion, and offering most telling lessons in earth
sculpture. The walls, far from being unbroken, featureless cliffs, seem like
ranges of separate mountains, so deep and varied is their sculpture; rising
in lordly domes, towers, roundbrowed outstanding headlands, and clustering
spires, with dark, shadowy side canons between. But, however wonderful in
height and mass and fineness of finish, no anomalous curiosities are
presented, no "freaks of nature." All stand related in delicate rhythm, a
grand glacial rock song.
Among the most interesting
and influential of the secondary features of caņon scenery are the great
avalanche taluses, that lean against the walls at intervals of a mile or
two. In the middle Yosemite region they are usually from three to five
hundred feet high, and are made up of huge, angular, well-preserved,
unshifting boulders, overgrown with gray lichens, trees, shrubs, and
delicate flowering plants. Some of the largest of the boulders are forty or
fifty feet cube, weighing from five to ten thousand tons; and where the
cleavage joints of the granite are exceptionally wide apart a few blocks may
be found nearly a hundred feet in diameter. These wonderful boulder piles
are distributed throughout all the canons of the range, completely choking
them in some of the narrower portions, and no mountaineer will be likely to
forget the savage roughness of the roads they make. Even the swift,
overbearing rivers, accustomed to sweep everything out of their way, are in
some places bridled and held in check by them. Foaming, roaring, in glorious
majesty of flood, rushing off long rumbling trains of ponderous blocks
without apparent effort, they are not able to move the largest, which,
withstanding all assaults for centuries, are left at rest in the channels
like islands, with gardens on their tops, fringed with foam below, with
flowers above.
On some points concerning the
origin of these taluses I was long in doubt. Plainly enough they were
derived from the cliffs above them, the size of each talus being
approximately measured by a scar on the wall, the rough angular surface of
which contrasts with the rounded, glaciated, unfractured parts. I saw also
that, instead of being slowly accumulated material, weathered off, boulder
by boulder, in the ordinary way, almost every talus had been formed
suddenly, in a single avalanche, and had not been increased in size during
the last three or four centuries; for trees three or four hundred years old
were growing on them, some standing at the top close to the wall, without a
bruise or broken branch, showing that scarcely a single boulder had fallen
among them since they were planted. Furthermore, all the taluses throughout
the range seemed, by the trees and lichens growing on them, to be of the
same age. All the phenomena pointed straight to a grand ancient earthquake.
But I left the question open for years, and went on from caņon to caņon,
observing again and again; measuring the heights of taluses throughout the
range on both flanks, and the variations in the angles of their surface
slopes; studying the way their boulders were assorted and related and
brought to rest, and the cleavage joints of the cliffs from whence they were
derived, cautious about making up my mind. Only after I had seen one made
did all doubt as to their formation vanish.
In Yosemite Valley, one
morning about two o'clock, I was aroused by an earthquake; and though I had
never before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange, wild thrilling
motion and rumbling could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, near
the Sentinel Rock, both glad and frightened, shouting, "A noble earthquake!"
feeling sure I was going to learn something. The shocks were so violent and
varied, and succeeded one another so closely, one had to balance in walking
as if on the deck of a ship among the waves, and it seemed impossible the
high cliffs should escape being shattered. In particular, I feared that the
sheer-fronted Sentinel Rock, which rises to a height of three thousand feet,
would be shaken down, and I took shelter back of a big pine, hoping I might
be protected from outbounding boulders, should any come so far. I was now
convinced that an earthquake had been the maker of the taluses, and positive
proof soon came. It was a calm moonlight night, and no sound was heard for
the first minute or two save a low muffled underground rumbling and a slight
rustling of the agitated trees, as if, in wrestling with the mountains,
Nature were holding her breath. Then, suddenly, out of the strange silence
and strange motion there came a tremendous roar. The Eagle Rock, a short
distance up the valley, had given way, and I saw it falling in thousands of
the great boulders I had been studying so long, pouring to the valley floor
in a free curve luminous from friction, making a terribly sublime and
beautiful spectacle, - an arc of fire fifteen hundred feet span, as true in
form and as steady as a rainbow, in the midst of the stupendous roaring rock
storm. The sound was inconceivably deep and broad and earnest, as if the
whole earth, like a living creature, had at last found a voice and were
calling to her sister planets. It seemed to me that if all the thunder I
ever heard were condensed into one roar it would not equal this rock roar at
the birth of a mountain talus. Think, then, of the roar that arose to heaven
when all the thousands of ancient caņon taluses throughout the length and
breadth of the range were simultaneously given birth.
The main storm was soon over,
and, eager to see the newborn talus, I ran up the valley in the moonlight
and climbed it before the huge blocks, after their wild fiery flight, had
come to complete rest. They were slowly settling into their places, chafing,
grating against one another, groaning, and whispering; but no motion was
visible except in a stream of small fragments pattering down the face of the
cliff at the head of the talus. A cloud of dust particles, the smallest of
the boulders, floated out across the whole breadth of the valley and formed
a ceiling that lasted until after sunrise; and the air was loaded with the
odor of crushed Douglas spruces, from a grove that had been mowed down and
mashed like weeds.
Sauntering about to see what
other changes had been made, I found the Indians in the middle of the
valley, terribly frightened, of course, fearing the angry spirits of the
rocks were trying to kill them. The few whites wintering in the valley were
assembled in front of the old Hutchings Hotel, comparing notes and
meditating flight to steadier ground, seemingly as sorely frightened as the
Indians. It is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from
whatever cause, and earthquakes make everybody earnest. Shortly after
sunrise, a low blunt muffled rumbling, like distant thunder, was followed by
another series of shocks, which, though not nearly so severe as the first,
made the cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and the big pines and oaks
thrill and swish and wave their branches with startling effect. Then the
groups of talkers were suddenly hushed, and the solemnity on their faces was
sublime. One in particular of these winter neighbors, a rather thoughtful,
speculative man, with whom I had often conversed, was a firm believer in the
cataclysmic origin of the valley; and I now jokingly remarked that his wild
tumble-down-and-engulfment hypothesis might soon be proved, since these
underground rumblings and shakings might be the forerunners of another
Yosemite-making cataclysm, which would perhaps double the depth of the
valley by swallowing the floor, leaving the ends of the wagon roads and
trails three or four thousand feet in the air. Just then came the second
series of shocks, and it was fine to see how awfully silent and solemn he
became. his belief in the existence of a mysterious abyss, into which the
suspended floor of the valley and all the domes and battlements of the walls
might at any moment go roaring down, mightily troubled him. To cheer and
tease him into another view of the case, I said: "Come, cheer up; smile -a
little and clap your hands, now that kind Mother Earth is trotting us on her
knee to amuse us and make us good." But the well-meant joke seemed
irreverent and utterly failed, as if only -prayerful terror could rightly
belong to the wild beauty- making business. Even after all the heavier
shocks were over, I could do nothing to reassure him. On the contrary, he
handed me the keys of his little store, and, with a companion of like mind,
fled to the lowlands. In about a month he returned; but a sharp shock
occurred that very day, which sent him flying again.
The rocks trembled more or
less every day for over two months, - and I kept a bucket of water on my
table to learn what I could of the movements. The blunt thunder-tones in the
depths of the mountains were usually followed by sudden jarring, horizontal
thrusts from the northward, often succeeded by twisting, up- jolting
movements. Judging by its effects, this Yosemite, or Inyo earthquake, as it
is sometimes called, was gentle as compared with the one that gave rise to
the grand talus system of the range and did so much for the caņon scenery.
Nature, usually so deliberate in her operations, then created, as we have
seen, a new set of features, simply by giving the mountains a shake, -
changing not only the high peaks and Cliffs, but the streams. As soon as
these rock avalanches fell every stream began to sing new songs; for in many
places thousands of boulders were hurled into their channels, roughening and
half damming them, compelling the waters to surge and roar in rapids where
before they were gliding smoothly. Some of the streams were completely
dammed, driftwood, leaves, etc., filling the interstices between the
boulders, thus giving rise to lakes and level reaches; and these again,
after being gradually filled in, to smooth meadows, through which the
streams now silently meander; while at the same time some of the taluses
took the places of old meadows and groves. Thus rough places were made
smooth, and smooth places rough. But on the whole, by what at first sight
seemed pure confusion and ruin, the landscapes were enriched; for gradually
every talus, however big the boulders composing it, was covered with groves
and gardens, and made a finely proportioned and ornamental base for the
sheer cliffs. In this beauty work, every boulder is prepared and measured
and put in its place more thoughtfully than are the stones of temples. If
for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled,
chaotic dumps, climb to the top of one of them, tie your mountain shoes
firmly over the instep, and with braced nerves run down without any
haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with
even speed. You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly
discover the music and poetry of rock piles, - a fine lesson; and all
nature's wildness tells the same story. Storms of every sort, torrents,
earthquakes, cataclysms, "convulsions of nature," etc., however mysterious
and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the
song of creation, varied expressions of God's love. |
