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THE Nebraska arrived at San
Francisco, March 27th, and Muir lost no time there after he set foot on
land. To his friends he was accustomed to relate, with touches of humor, how
he met on the street, the morning after debarkation, a man with a kit of
carpenter's tools on his shoulders. When he inquired of him "the nearest way
out of town to the wild part of the State," the man set down his tools in
evident astonishment and asked, "Where do you wish to go?" "Anywhere that's
wild," was Muir's reply, and he was directed to the Oakland Ferry with the
remark that that would be as good a way out of town as any.
On shipboard Muir had made
the acquaintanceship of a young Englishman by the name of ChilweII, "a most
amusing and faithful companion," who eagerly embraced the opportunity to
visit Yosemite Valley with him. In those days the usual route to Yosemite
was by river steamer to Stockton, thence by stage to Coulterville or
Mariposa, and the remainder of the way over the mountains on horseback. But
Muir disdained this "orthodox route," for "we had plenty of time," he said,
"and proposed drifting leisurely mountainward by the Santa Clara Valley,
Pacheco Pass, and the San Joaquin Valley, and thence to Yosemite by any road
that we chanced to find; enjoying the flowers and light; 'camping out' in
our blankets wherever overtaken by night and paying very little compliance
to roads or times."
In his autobiographical
manuscript Muir passes in a few sentences over the first part of this trip,
intending according to his penciled directions to fill in from a description
already written. This must refer to the detailed narrative published in "Old
and New" in 1872, from which we excerpt the paragraphs descriptive of his
walk as far as the top of the Pacheco Pass.
We crossed the bay by the
Oakland Ferry and proceeded up the Santa Clara valley to San José. This is
one of the most fertile of the many small valleys of the coast; its rich
bottoms are filled with wheat-fields, and orchards, and vineyards, and
alfalfa meadows.
It was now spring-time, and
the weather was the best we ever enjoyed. Larks and streams sang everywhere;
the sky was cloudless, and the whole valley was a lake of light. The
atmosphere was spicy and exhilarating, my companion acknowledging over his
national prejudices that it was the best he ever breathed more deliciously
fragrant than that which streamed over the hawthorn hedges of England. This
San J056 sky was not simply pure and bright, and mixed with plenty of
well-tempered sunshine, but it possessed a positive flavor, a taste that
thrilled throughout every tissue of the body. Every inspiration yielded a
well-defined piece of pleasure that awakened thousands of new palates
everywhere. Both my companion and myself had lived on common air for nearly
thirty years, and never before this discovered that our bodies contained
such multitudes of palates, or that this mortal flesh, so little valued by
philosophers and teachers, was possessed of so vast a capacity for
happiness.
We were new creatures, born
again; and truly not until this time were we fairly conscious that we were
horn at all. Never more, thought I as we strode forward at faster speed,
never more shall I sentimentalize about getting free from the flesh, for it
is steeped like a sponge in immortal pleasure.
The foothills of the valley
are in near view all the way to Gilroy, those of the Monte Diablo range on
our left, those of Santa Cruz on our right; they are smooth and flowing, and
come down to the bottom levels in curves of most surpassing beauty. They are
covered with flowers growing close together in cloud-shaped companies, acres
and hillsides in size, white, purple, and yellow, separate, yet blending
like the hills upon which they grow....
The Pacheco Pass was scarcely
less enchanting than the valley. It resounded with crystal waters, and the
loud shouts of thousands of quails. The California quail is a little larger
than the Bob White; not quite so plump in form. The male has a tall, slender
crest, wider at top than bottom, which he can hold straight up, or droop
backward on his neck, or forward over his bill, at pleasure; and, instead of
"Bob White," he shouts "pe-check-a," bearing down with a stiff, obstinate
emphasis on "check." Through a considerable portion of the pass the road
bends and mazes along the groves of a stream, or down in its pebbly bed,
leading one now deep in the shadows of dogwoods and alders, then out in the
light, through dry chaparral, over green carex meadows banked with violets
and ferns, and dry, plantless flood-beds of gravel and sand.
We found ferns in abundance
in the pass. .. Also in this rich garden pass we gathered many fine grasses
and carices, and brilliant penstemons, azure and scarlet, and mints and
lilies, and scores of others, strangers to us, but beautiful and pure as
ever enjoyed the sun or shade of a mountain home.
At this point Muir's
unpublished memoirs resume the thread of the narrative as follows:
At the top of the Pass I
obtained my first view of the San Joaquin plain and the glorious Sierra
Nevada. Looking down from a height of fifteen hundred feet, there, extending
north and south as far as I could see lay a vast level flower garden, smooth
and level like a lake of gold the floweriest part of the world I had yet
seen. From the eastern margin of the golden plain arose the white Sierra. At
the base ran a belt of gently sloping purplish foothills lightly dotted with
oaks, above that a broad dark zone of coniferous forests, and above this
forest zone arose the lofty mountain peaks, clad in snow. The atmosphere was
so clear that although the nearest of the mountain peaks on the axis of the
range were at a distance of more than one hundred and fifty miles, they
seemed to be at just the right distance to be seen broadly in their
relationship to one another, marshaled in glorious ranks and groups, their
snowy robes so smooth and bright that it seemed impossible for a man to walk
across the open folds without being seen, even at this distance. Perhaps
more than three hundred miles of the range was comprehended in this one
view.
Descending the pass and
wading out into the bed of golden compositae five hundred miles long by
forty or fifty wide, I found that the average depth of the vegetation was
over knee-deep, and the flowers were so crowded together that in walking
through the midst of them and over them more than a hundred were pressed
down beneath the foot at every step. The yellow of these composit, both of
the ray and disc flowers, is extremely deep and rich and bossy, and exceeds
the purple of all the others in superficial quantity forty or fifty times
their whole amount. But to an observer who first looks downward, then takes
a wider and wider view, the yellow gradually fades, and purple predominates,
because nearly all of the purple flowers are taller. In depth, the purple
stratum is about ten or twelve inches, the yellow seven or eight, and down
in the shade, out of sight, is another stratum of purple, one inch in depth,
for the ground forests of mosses are there, with purple stems, and purple
cups. The color- beauty of these mosses, at least in the mass, was not made
for human eyes, nor for the wild horses that inhabit these plains, nor the
antelopes, but perhaps the little creatures enjoy their own beauty, and
perhaps the insects that dwell in these forests and climb their shining
columns enjoy it. But we know that however faint, and however shaded, no
part of it is lost, for all color is received into the eyes of God.
Crossing this greatest of
flower gardens and the San Joaquin River at Hill's Ferry, we followed the
Merced River, which I knew drained Yosemite Valley, and ascended the
foothills from Snelling by way of Coulterville. We had several accidents and
adventures. At the little mining town of Coulteryule we bought flour and tea
and made inquiries about roads and trails, and the forests we would have to
pass through. The storekeeper, an Italian, took kindly pains to tell the
pair of wandering wayfarers, new arrived in California, that the winter had
been a very severe one, that in some places the Yosemite trail was still
buried in snow eight or ten feet deep, and therefore we would have to wait
at least a month before we could possibly get into the great valley, for we
would surely get lost should we attempt to go on. As to the forests, the
trees, he said, were very large; some of the pines eight or ten feet in
diameter.
In reply I told him that it
would be delightful to see snow ten feet deep and trees ten feet thick, even
if lost, but I never got lost in wild woods. "Well," said he, "go, if you
must, but I have warned you; and anyhow you must have a gun, for there are
bears in the mountains, but you must not shoot at them unless they come for
you and are very, very close up." So at last, at Mr. Chilwell's anxious
suggestion, we bought an old army musket, with a few pounds of quail shot
and large buckshot, good, as the merchant assured us, for either birds or
bears.
Our bill of fare in camps was
simple - tea and cakes, the latter made from flour without leaven and
toasted on the coals - and of course we shunned hotels in the valley, seldom
indulging even in crackers, as being too expensive. ChilwelI, being an
Englishman, loudly lamented being compelled to live on so light a diet,
flour and water, as he expressed it, and hungered for flesh; therefore he
made desperate efforts to shoot something to eat, particularly quails and
grouse, but he was invariably unsuccessful and declared the gun was
worthless. I told him I thought that it was good enough if properly loaded
and aimed, though perhaps sighted too high, and promised to show him at the
first opportunity how to load and shoot.
Many of the herbaceous plants
of the flowing foothills were the same as those of the plain and had already
gone to seed and withered. But at a height of one thousand feet or so we
found many of the lily family blooming in all their glory, the Calochortus
especially, a charming genus like European tulips, but finer, and many
species of two new shrubs especially, Ceanothus and Adenostoma. The oaks,
beautiful trees with blue foliage and white bark, forming open groves, gave
a fine park effect. Higher, we met the first of the pines, with long gray
foliage, large stout cones, and wide-spreading heads like palms. Then yellow
pines, growing gradually more abundant as we ascended. At Bower Cave on the
north fork of the Merced the streams were fringed with willows and azalea,
ferns, flowering dogwood, etc. Here, too, we enjoyed the strange beauty of
the Cave in a limestone hill.
At Deer Flat the wagon-road
ended in a trail which we traced up the side of the dividing ridge parallel
to the Merced and Tuolumne to Crane Flat, lying at a height of six thousand
feet, where we found a noble forest of sugar pine, silver fir, libocedrus,
Douglas spruce, the first of the noble Sierra forests, the noblest
coniferous forests in the world, towering in all their unspoiled beauty and
grandeur around a sunny, gently sloping meadow. Here, too, we got into the
heavy winter snow - a fine change from the burning foothills and plains.
Some mountaineer had tried to
establish a claim to the Flat by building a little cabin of sugar pine
shakes, and though we had arrived early in the afternoon I decided to camp
here for the night as the trail was buried in the snow which was about six
feet deep, and I wanted to examine the topography and plan our course.
Chilwell cleared away the snow from the door and floor of the cabin, and
made a bed in it of boughs of fernlike silver fir, though I urged the same
sort of bed made under the trees on the snow. But he had the house habit.
After camp arrangements were
made he reminded me of my promise about the gun, hoping eagerly for
improvement of our bill of fare, however slight. Accordingly I loaded the
gun, paced off thirty yards from the cabin, or shanty, and told Mr. Chilwell
to pin a piece of paper on the wall and see if I could not put shot into it
and prove the gun's worth. So he pinned a piece of an envelope on the shanty
wall and vanished around the corner, calling out, "Fire away."
I supposed that he had gone
some distance back of the cabin, but instead he went inside of it and stood
up against the mark that he had himself placed on the wall, and as the shake
wall of soft sugar pine was only about half an inch thick, the shot passed
through it and into his shoulder. He came rushing out, with his hand on his
shoulder, crying in great concern, "You've shot me, you've shot me,
Scottie." The weather being cold, he fortunately had on three coats and as
many shirts. One of the coats was a heavy English overcoat. I discovered
that the shot had passed through all this clothing and into his shoulder,
and the embedded pellets had to be picked out with the point of a penknife.
I asked him how he could be so foolish as to stand opposite the mark.
"Because," he replied, "I never imagined the blank gun would shoot through
the side of the 'ouse."
We found our way easily
enough over the deep snow, guided by the topography, and discovered the
trail on the brow of the valley just as the Bridal Veil came in sight. I
didn't know that it was one of the famous falls I had read about, and
calling Chilwell's attention to it I said, "See that dainty little fall over
there. I should like to camp at the foot of it to see the ferns and lilies
that may be there. It looks small from here, only about fifteen or twenty
feet, but it may be sixty or seventy." So little did we then know of
Yosemite magnitudes!
After spending eight or ten
days in visiting the falls and the high points of view around the walls,
making sketches, collecting flowers and ferns, etc., we decided to make the
return trip by way of Wawona, then owned by Galen Clark, the Yosemite
pioneer. The night before the start was made on the return trip we camped
near the Bridal Veil Meadows, where, as we lay eating our suppers by the
light of the camp-fire, we were visited by a brown bear. We heard him
approaching by the heavy crackling of twigs. Chilwell, in alarm, after
listening a while, said, "I see it! I see it! It's a bear, a grizzly! Where
is the gun? You take the gun and shoot him - you can shoot. best." But the
gun had only a charge of birdshot in it; therefore, while the bear stood on
the opposite side of the fire, at a distance of probably twenty-five or
thirty feet, I hastily loaded in a lot of buckshot. The buckshot was too
large to chamber and therefore it made a zigzag charge on top of the
birdshot charge, the two charges occupying about half of the barrel. Thus
armed, the gun held at rest pointed at the bear, we sat hushed and
motionless, according to instructions from the man who sold the gun,
solemnly waiting and watching, as full of fear as the musket of shot.
Finally, after sniffing and whining for his supper what seemed to us a long
time, the young inexperienced beast walked off. We were much afraid of his
return to attack us. We did not then know that bears never attack sleeping
campers, and dreading another visit we kept awake on guard most of the
night.
Like the Coulterville trail
all the high-lying part of the Mariposa trail was deeply snow-buried, but we
found our way without the slightest trouble, steering by the topography in a
general way along the brow of the cañon of the south fork of the Merced
River, and in a day or two reached Wawona. Here we replenished our little
flour sack and Mr. Clark gave us a piece of bear meat.
We then pushed eagerly on up
the Wawona ridge through a magnificent sugar pine forest and into the
far-famed Mariposa Sequoia Grove. The sun was down when we entered the
Grove, but we soon had a good fire and at supper that night we tasted bear
meat for the first time. My flesh-hungry companion ate it eagerly, though to
me it seemed so rank and oily that I was unable to swallow a single morsel.
After supper we replenished
the fire and gazed enchanted at the vividly illumined brown boles of the
giants towering about us, while the stars sparkled in wonderful beauty above
their huge domed heads. We camped here long uncounted days, wandering about
from tree to tree, taking no note of time. The longer we gazed the more we
admired not only their colossal size, but their majestic beauty and dignity.
Greatest of trees, greatest of living things, their noble domes poised in
unchanging repose seemed to belong to the sky, while the great firs and
pines about them looked like mere latter-day saplings.
While we camped in the
Mariposa Grove, the abundance of bear tracks caused Mr. Chilwell no little
alarm, and he proposed that we load the gun properly with buckshot and
without any useless birdshot; but there was no means of drawing the charge
-it had to be shot off. The recoil was so great that it bruised his shoulder
and sent him spinning like a top. Casting down the miserable, kicking, bad
luck musket among the Sequoia cones and branches that littered the ground,
he stripped and examined his unfortunate shoulder and, in painful
indignation and wrath, found it black and blue and more seriously hurt by
the bruising recoil blow than it was by the shot at Crane Flat.
When we got down to the hot
San Joaquin plain at Snelling the grain fields were nearly ready for the
reaper, and we began to inquire for a job to replenish our remaining stock
of money which was now very small, though we had not spent much; the grand
royal trip of more than a month in the Yosemite region having cost us only
about three dollars each. At our last camp, in a bed of cobble-stones on the
Merced River bottom, Mr. ChiIwell was more and more eagerly hungering for
meat. He tried to shoot one of the jack-rabbits cantering around us, but was
unable to hit any of them. I told him, when he begged me to take the gun,
that I would shoot one for him if he would drive it up to the camp. He ran
and shooed and threw cobble-stones without getting any of them up within
shooting distance as I took good care to warn the poor beasts by making
myself and the gun conspicuous. At last discovering the humor of the thing
he shouted: "I say, Scottie, this makes me think of a picture I once saw in
Punch - game-keepers driving partridges to be shot by a simpleton Cockney."
Then one of those curious
burrowing owls alighted on the top of a fence-post beside us, and I said,
"If you are so hungry for flesh why don't you shoot one of those owls?"
"Howls," he said in disgust, "are only vermin." I argued that that was mere
prejudice and custom, and that if stewed in a pot it would make good soup,
and the flesh, too, that he hungered for, might also be found to be fairly
good, but that if he didn't care for it, I didn't.
I finally pictured the flavor
of the soup so temptingly that with watering lips he consented to try it,
and the poor owl was shot. When he came to dress it the pitiful little red
carcass seemed so worthless a morsel that he was tempted to throw it away,
but I said, "No; now that you have it ready for the pot, boil it and at
least enjoy the soup." So it was boiled in the teapot and bravely devoured,
though he insisted that he did not like the flavor of either the soup or the
meat. He charged. me, saying: "Now, Scottie, if you go to England with me to
see my folks, after our fortunes are made, don't you tell them as 'ow we 'ad
a howl for supper." He was always trying to persuade me to go to England
with him.
Next day we got a job in a
harvest field at Hope- ton and were seated at a table once more. Mr.
Chilwell never tired of describing the meanness and misery of so pure a
vegetable diet as was ours on the Yosemite trip. "Just think of it," said
he, "we lived a whole month on flour and water!" He ate so many hot biscuits
at that table, and so much beans and boiled pork, that he was sick for three
or four days afterwards, a trick the despised Yosemite diet never played
him.
This Yosemite trip only made
me hungry for another far longer and farther reaching, and I determined to
set out again as soon as I had earned a little money to get near views of
the mountains in all their snowy grandeur, and study the wonderful forests,
the noblest of their kind I had ever seen - sugar pines eight and nine feet
in diameter, with cones nearly two feet long, silver firs more than two
hundred feet in height, Douglas spruce and libocedrus, and the kingly
Sequoias.
After the harvest was over
Mr. Chilwell left me, but I remained with-Mr. Egleston several months to
break mustang horses; then ran a ferry boat at Merced Falls for travel
between Stockton and Mariposa. That same fall 1 made a lot of money
sheep-shearing, and after the shearing was over one of the sheep-men of the
neighborhood, Mr. John Connel, nicknamed Smoky Jack, begged me to take care
of one of his bands of sheep, because the then present shepherd was about to
quit. He offered thirty dollars a month and board and assured me that it
would be a "foin aisy job."
I said that I didn't know
anything about sheep, except the shearing of them, didn't know the range,
and that his flock would probably be scattered over the plains and lost; but
he said he would risk me, that "the sheep would show me the range, and all
would go smooth and aisy." At length, considering that, being out every day,
a fine opportunity would be offered to watch the growth of the flowery
vegetation, and to study the birds and beasts, insects, weather, etc., I
dared the job, and sure enough, as my employer said, the sheep soon showed
me their range, leading me a wild chase in their search for grass over the
dry sun-beaten plains.
Smoky Jack was known far and
wide, and I soon learned that he was a queer character. Unmarried, living
alone, playing the game of money making, he had already become sheep-rich -
the owner of three or four bands, as the flocks are called. He had commenced
his career as a sheep-man when he was poor, with only a score or two of
coarse-wooled ewes, which he herded himself and faithfully followed and
improved until they had multiplied into thousands.
He lived mostly on beans. In
the morning after his bean breakfast he filled his pockets from the pot with
dripping beans for luncheon, which he ate in handfuls as he followed the
flock. His overalls and boots soon, of course, became thoroughly saturated,
and instead of wearing thin, wore thicker and stouter, and by sitting down
to rest from time to time, parts of all the vegetation, leaves, petals,
etc., were embedded in them, together with wool fibers, butterfly wings,
mica crystals, fragments of nearly everything that part of the world
contained - rubbed in, embedded and coarsely stratified, so that these
wonderful garments grew to have a rich geological and biological
significance, like those of Mr. Delaney's shepherd.
Replying to my inquiry where
the sheep were, he directed me to follow the road between French Bar and
Snelling four or five miles, and "when you see a cabin on a little hill,
that's the place." I found the place, and a queer place it proved to be. The
shepherd whom I was to relieve hailed me with delight and within a few
minutes of my arrival set off, exulting in his freedom. I begged him to stay
until morning and show me the range, but this he refused, saying that it was
quite unnecessary for him to show me the range; all I had to do was simply
to let down the corral bars and the starving sheep would soon explain and
explore the range.
Left alone, I examined the
dismal little hut with dismay. A Dutch oven, frying-pan, and a few tin cups
lay on the floor; a rickety stool and a bedstead, with a tick made of a wool
sack, stuffed with straw and castoff overalls left by shearers, constituted
the furniture. I went outside, looking for a piece of clean ground to lie
down on, but no such ground was to be found. Every yard of it was strewn
with some sort of sheep camp detritus, bits of shriveled woolly skin, bacon
rinds, bones, horns and skulls mixed with aH sorts of mysterious compound
unclean rubbish! I therefore had to go back into the shanty and spread my
blankets on the dirt floor as the least dangerous part of the establishment.
Next morning, by the time I
had fried some pancakes and made a cup of tea, the sunbeams were streaming
through the wide vertical seams of the shanty wall, and I made haste to open
the corral. The sheep were crowding around the gate, and as soon as it was
opened, poured forth like a boisterous uncontrollable flood, and soon the
whole flock was so widely outspread and scattered over the plain, it seemed
impossible that the mad starving creatures could ever be got together again.
I ran around from side to side, headed the leaders off again and again, and
did my best to confine the size of the flock to an area of a square mile or
so.
About noon, to my delight and
surprise, they lay down to rest and allowed me to do the same for an hour or
so. Then they again scattered, but not so far nor so wildly, and I was still
more surprised about half an hour before sundown, while I was wondering how
I could ever get them driven back into the corral, to see them gather of
their own accord into long parallel files, across Dry Creek on the bank of
which the corral stood, and pour back into the corral and quietly lie down.
This ended my first day of sheep-herding.
After the winter rains had
set in, and the grass had grown to a height of three or four inches, herding
became easy, for they quietly filled themselves; but at this time, just
before the rain, when not a green leaf is to be seen, when the dead summer
vegetation is parched and crumpled into dust and fragments of sterns, the
sheep are always hungry and unmanageable; but when full of green grass the
entire flock moves as one mild, bland, contented animal. This year the
winter rains did not set in until the middle of December. Then Dry Creek
became a full, deep, stately flowing river; every hollow in the hills was
flooded, every channel so long dry carried a rushing, gurgling, happy
stream.
Being out every day I had the
advantage of watching the coming of every species of plant. Mosses and
liverworts, no trace of which could be seen when dry and crumpled, now
suddenly covered the entire plain with a soft velvet robe of living green.
Then, at first one by one, the different species of flowering plants
appeared, pushing up with marvelous rapidity and bursting into bloom, until
all the ground was covered with golden cornposit, interrupted and enriched
here and there with charming beds of violets, mints, clover, mariposa
tulips, etc.
It was very interesting, too,
to watch the awakening and coming to light and life of the many species of
ants and other insects after their deathlike sleep during the cold rainy
season; and the ground squirrels coming out of their burrows to sun
themselves and feed on the fresh vegetation; and to watch the nesting birds
and hear them sing - especially the meadow-larks which were in great
abundance and sang as if every note was transformed sunshine.
Plovers in great numbers and
of several species came to feed with snipes and geese and swans.
It was interesting, too, to
watch the long-eared hares, or jack-rabbits as they are called, as they
cantered over the flowery plain, or confidingly mingled with the flock.
Several times I saw inquisitive sheep interviewing the rabbits as they sat
erect, even touching noses and indulging apparently in interesting gossip.
My dog was fond of chasing the hares, but they bounded along carelessly, and
never were so closely pressed as to be compelled to dive into a burrow. They
apparently trusted entirely to their speed of foot; but as soon as a golden
eagle came in sight they made for the nearest burrow in terrified haste.
Then, feeling safe, they would turn around and look out the door to watch
the movements of their enemy.
Occasionally I have seen an
eagle alight within a yard or two of the door of a burrow into which a hare
had been chased, and observed their gestures while the hare and eagle looked
each other in the face for an hour at a time, the eagle apparently hoping
that the hare might venture forth. When, however, a hare was surprised at
any considerable distance from a burrow, the eagle, in swift pursuit,
rapidly overtakes it and strikes it down with his elbow, then wheels around,
picks it up and carries it to some bare hilltop to feast at leisure.
By the end of May nearly all
of the marvelous vegetation of the plains has gone to seed and is so
scorched and sun-dried, it crumbles under foot as though it had literally
been cast into an oven. Then most of the flocks are driven into the green
pastures of the Sierra. A camp is made on the first favorable spot
commanding a considerable range, and when it is eaten out the camp is moved
to higher and higher pastures in succession, following the upward sweep of
grassy, flowery summer towards the summit of the Range.
Ever since I had visited
Yosemite the previous year I had longed to get back into the Sierra. When
the heavy snows were melting in the spring sunshine, opening the way to the
summits of the Range, and I was trying to plan a summer's excursion into
their midst, wondering how I could possibly carry food to last a whole
summer, Mr. Delaney, a neighbor of Smoky Jack's, noticing my love of plants
and seeing some of the drawings I had made in my note-books, urged me to go
to the mountains with his flock - not to herd the sheep, for the regular
shepherd was to take care of them, but simply to see that the shepherd did
his duties. He offered to carry my plant press and blankets, allow me to
make his mountain camps my headquarters while I was studying the adjacent
mountains, and perfect freedom to pursue my studies, and offering to pay me
besides, simply to see that the shepherd did not neglect his flock.
Mr. Delaney was an Irishman
who was educated at Maynooth College for a Catholic priest, a striking
contrast to his so-called "Smoky" neighbor. He was lean and tall, and I
naturally nicknamed him Don Quixote. I told him that I did not think I could
be of any practical use to him because I did not know the mountains, knew
nothing about the habits of sheep in the mountains, and that I feared that
in pushing through brush, fording torrents, and in attacks of bears and
wolves, the sheep would be scattered and not half of them ever see the
plains again. But he encouraged me by saying that he himself would go to the
mountains with the flock, to the first camp, and visit each camp in
succession from time to time, bringing letters and fresh provisions, and
seeing for himself how his flock was prospering; that the shepherd would do
all the herding and that I would be just as free to pursue my studies as if
there were no sheep in the question, to sketch and collect plants, and
observe the wild animals; but as he could not depend upon his shepherd his
fear was that the flock might be neglected, and scattered by bears, and that
my services would only be required in cases of accidents of that sort.
I therefore concluded to
accept his generous offer. The sheep were counted, the morning the start for
the mountains was made, as they passed out of the corral one by one. They
numbered two thousand and fifty, and were headed for the mountains. The
leaders of the flock had not gone a mile from the home camp before they
seemed to understand that they were on their way up to the high green
pastures where they had been the year before, and eagerly ran ahead, while
Don Quixote, with a rifle on his shoulder, led two pack animals, and the
shepherd and an Indian and Chinaman to assist in driving through the
foothills, and myself, marched in the rear.
Our first camp after crossing
the dusty, brushy foothills, which were scarcely less sunburned than the
plains, was made on a tributary of the North Fork of the Merced River at an
elevation of about three thousand feet above the sea. Here there were no
extensive grassy meadows, but the hills and hollows and recesses of the
mountain divide between the Merced and the Tuolumne waters were richly
clothed with grass and lupines, while clover of different species and
ceanothus bushes furnished pasture in fair abundance for several weeks,
while the many waterfalls on the upper branches of the river, the charming
lily gardens at the foot of them, and many new plants and animals to sketch
and study, afforded endless work according to my own heart.
The sheep were kept here too
long; the pasture within two or three miles of the camp was eaten bare,
while we waited day after day, more and more anxiously, for the coming of
the Don with provisions, and to assist and direct the moving of the camp to
higher fresh pasturage. Our own pasturage was also exhausted. We got out of
flour, and strange to say, although we had abundance of mutton and tea and
sugar, we began to suffer. After going without bread for about a week it was
difficult to swallow mutton, and our stomachs became more and more restless.
The shepherd tried to calm his rebellious stomach by chewing great
quantities of tobacco and swallowing most of the juice, and by making his
tea very strong, using a handful for each cup. Strange that in so fertile a
wilderness we should suffer distress for the want of a cracker, or a slice
of bread, while the Indians of the neighborhood sustained their merry, free
lives on clover, pine bark, lupines, fern roots, et cetera, with only now
and then a squirrel, deer or bear, badger or coon.
At length the Don came down
the long glen, and all our bread woes were ended. He brought with him not
only an abundance of provisions, but two men to assist in driving the flock
higher. One of these men was an Indian, and I was interested in watching his
behavior while eating, driving, and choosing a place to sleep at night. He
kept a separate camp, and how quick his eye was to notice a straggling
sheep, and how much better he seemed to understand the intentions and
motives of the flock than any of the other assistants.
Our next camp was made on the
north side of Yosemite Valley, about a mile back from the top of the wall.
Here for six weeks I reveled in the grandeur of Yosemite scenery, sketching
from the crown of North Dome, visiting the head of the great Yosemite Fall
and making excursions to the eastward to the top of Mount Hoffman and to
Lake Tenaya, enjoying the new plants. The greatest charm of our first camp
were the lily gardens, Lilium pardalinurn, with corollas large enough for
babies' bonnets. The species around our Yosemite camp was the mountain lily,
L. parvum, with from one or two to forty o: fifty flowers, the magnificent
panicles rising to the height of six or seven feet, or even higher.
The principal tree of the
forests at an elevation of eight thousand feet is the magnificent silver
fir. The tallest that I measured near camp was no less than two hundred and
forty feet in height, while with this grandeur and majesty is combined
exquisite beauty of foliage and flower and fruit; the branches like
sumptuous fern fronds, arranged in regular whorls around the stem, like the
leaves of lilies.
From this camp I made the
acquaintance on the top of Mount Hoffman of trees I had not seen before -
the beautiful mountain hemlock (Tsuga Mertensiana) and most graceful in form
of all the California conifers, and the curious dwarf pine (Pinus albicaulis)
that forms the timber-line. To tell the glories of this magnificent
camp-ground would require many a volume.
Here, for the first time, the
sheep were attacked by bears in the night and scattered. The morning light
showed a heap of dead sheep in the corral, killed by suffocation in piling
on top of each other and pressing against the wall of the corral, while only
two were carried out of the corral and half of the carcasses eaten. The
second day after this attack the corral was again visited, another lot of
sheep smothered and one carried off and half devoured. Just after we had
succeeded in gathering the scattered flock into one again the Don arrived,
and immediately ordered the camp moved, saying that the first robber bear
and perhaps others, would visit the camp every night, and that no noisy
watching, shooting, or building of fires would be of any avail to stop them.
Accordingly, next morning the flock was headed toward the high grassy
forests north of the Tuolumne meadows which we reached a few days later,
where abundance of the best pasturage was found. Here we stayed until the
approach of winter warned the Don to turn the flock toward the lowlands. At
this camp I had a glorious time climbing, studying, sketching, pressing new
plants, etc. But far from satisfied I determined to return next year and as
many other years as opportunities offered or were made.
When we arrived at the home
ranch the flock was corraled and counted, and strange to say, every sheep of
the two thousand and fifty was accounted for. A few had been killed for
mutton, one was killed by the bite of a rattlesnake, one broke its leg
jumping over a rock and had to be killed, one or two were sold to settlers
on the way down to the foothills, and so forth, besides those lost by bears.
This was a summer of greatest
enjoyment of all that I liked best. I climbed the surrounding mountains;
made the acquaintance of many new trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, the
main forest zones, glacier meadows, gardens and endless falls and cascades.
There, too, I made the acquaintance of some of the Mono Indians, who visited
our camp while on their annual deer hunt. The whole summer was crowded with
the noblest pictures and sculptures and monuments of nature's handiwork. I
explored the magnificent group of mountains at the head of the Tuolumne
River, crossed the range by the Mono Pass, visited Mono Lake and the range
of volcanic cones extending from its southern shore, making excursions from
camp into all the surrounding region, sketching, writing notes, pressing
plants, tracing the works and ways of the ancient glaciers, and reveling in
the glorious life and beauty of the unspoiled new-born wilderness. And when
at last the snow drove me out of it I determined to return to it again and
again as I was able. |
