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THE sustained grandeur of the
High Sierra is strikingly illustrated by the great height of the passes.
Between latitude 36° 20' and 38° the lowest pass, gap, gorge, or notch of
any kind cutting across the axis of the range, as far as I have discovered,
exceeds nine thousand feet in height above the level of the sea; while the
average height of all that are in use, either by Indians or whites, is
perhaps not less than eleven thousand feet, and not one of these is a
carriage pass.
Farther north a carriage road
has been constructed through what is known as the Sonora Pass, on the head
waters of the Stanislaus and Walker's Rivers, the summit of which is about
ten thousand feet above the sea. Substantial wagon roads have also been
built through the Carson and Johnson passes, near the head of Lake Tahoe,
over which immense quantities of freight were hauled from California to the
mining regions of Nevada, before the construction of the Central Pacific
Railroad.
Still farther north a
considerable number of comparatively low passes occur, some of which are
accessible to wheeled vehicles, and through these rugged defiles during the
exciting years of the gold period long emigrant trains with footsore cattle
wearily toiled. After the toilworn adventurers had escaped a thousand
dangers and had crawled thousands of miles across the plains the snowy
Sierra at last loomed in sight, the eastern wall of the land of gold. And as
with shaded eyes they gazed through the tremulous haze of the desert, with
what joy must they have descried the pass through which they were to enter
the better land of their hopes and dreams!
Between the Sonora Pass and the southern
extremity of the High Sierra, a distance of nearly one hundred and sixty
miles, there are only five passes through which trails conduct from one side
of the range to the other. These are barely practicable for animals; a pass
in these regions meaning simply any notch or canon through which one may, by
the exercise of unlimited patience, make out to lead a mule, or a
sure-footed mustang; animals that can slide or jump as well as walk. Only
three of the five passes may be said to be in use, namely, the Kearsarge,
Mono, and Virginia Creek; the tracks leading through the others being only
obscure Indian trails, not graded in the least, and scarcely traceable by
white men; for much of the way is over solid rock and earthquake avalanche
taluses, where the unshod ponies of the Indians leave no appreciable sign.
Only skilled mountaineers are able to detect the marks that serve to guide
the Indians, such as slight abrasions of the looser rocks, the displacement
of stones here and there, and bent bushes and weeds. A general knowledge of
the topography is, then, the main guide, enabling one to determine where the
trail ought to go - must go. One of these Indian trails crosses the range by
a nameless pass between the head waters of the south and middle forks of the
San Joaquin, the other between the north and middle forks of the same river,
just to the south of "The Minarets"; this last being about nine thousand
feet high, is the lowest of the five. The Kearsarge is the highest, crossing
the summit near the head of the south fork of King's River, about eight
miles to the north of Mount Tyndall, through the midst of the most
stupendous rock scenery. The summit of this pass is over twelve thousand
feet above sea-level; nevertheless, it is one of the safest of the five, and
is used every summer, from July to October or November, by hunters,
prospectors, and stock-owners, and to some extent by enterprising
pleasure-seekers also. For, besides the surpassing grandeur of the scenery
about the summit, the trail, in ascending the western flank of the range,
conducts through a grove of the giant sequoias, and through the magnificent
Yosemite Valley of the south fork of King's River. This is, perhaps, the
highest traveled pass on the North American continent.
The Mono Pass lies to the east of Yosemite
Valley, at the head of one of the tributaries of the south fork of the
Tuolumne. This is the best known and most extensively traveled of all that
exist in the High Sierra. A trail was made through it about the time of the
Mono gold excitement, in the year 1858, by adventurous miners and
prospectors — men who would build a trail down the throat of darkest Erebus
on the way to gold. Though more than a thousand feet lower than the
Kearsarge, it is scarcely less sublime in rock-scenery, while in snowy,
falling water it far surpasses it. Being so favorably situated for the
stream of Yosemite travel, the more adventurous tourists cross over through
this glorious gateway to the volcanic region around Mono Lake. It has
therefore gained a name and fame above every other pass in the range.
According to the few barometrical observations made upon it, its highest
point is 10,765 feet above the sea. The other pass of the five we have been
considering is somewhat lower, and crosses the axis of the range a few miles
to the north of the Mono Pass, at the head of the southernmost tributary of
Walker's River. It is used chiefly by roaming bands of the Pah Ute Indians
and "sheep-men." But,
leaving wheels and animals out of the question, the free mountaineer with a
sack of bread on his shoulders and an axe to cut steps in ice and frozen
snow can make his way across the range almost everywhere, and at any time of
year when the weather is calm. To him nearly every notch between the peaks
is a pass, though much patient step-cutting is at times required up and down
steeply inclined glaciers, with cautious climbing over precipices that at
first sight would seem hopelessly inaccessible.
In pursuing my studies, I have crossed from side to side of the range at
intervals of a few miles all along the highest portion of the chain, with
far less real danger than one would naturally count on. And what fine
wildness was thus revealed — storms and avalanches, lakes and waterfalls,
gardens and meadows, and interesting animals — only those will ever know who
give the freest and most buoyant portion of their lives to climbing and
seeing for themselves.
To the timid traveler, fresh from the
sedimentary levels of the lowlands, these highways, however picturesque and
grand, seem terribly forbidding — cold, dead, gloomy gashes in the bones of
the mountains, and of all Nature's ways the ones to be most cautiously
avoided. Yet they are full of the finest and most telling examples of
Nature's love; and though hard to travel, none are safer. For they lead
through regions that lie far above the ordinary haunts of the devil, and of
the pestilence that walks in darkness. True, there are innumerable places
where the careless step will be the last step; and a rock falling from the
cliffs may crush without warning like lightning from the sky; but what then?
Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the lowlands, and these
mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine, places to die in,
compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few places in this world
are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain
passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and
call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick
should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate
they kill, they cure a thousand.
All the passes make their steepest ascents on
the eastern flank. On this side the average rise is not far from a thousand
feet to the mile, while on the west it is about two hundred feet. Another
marked difference between the eastern and western portions of the passes is
that the former begin at the very foot of the range, while the latter can
hardly be said to begin lower than an elevation of from seven to ten
thousand feet. Approaching the range from the gray levels of Mono and Owen's
Valley on the east, the traveler sees before him the steep, short passes in
full view, fenced in by rugged spurs that come plunging down from the
shoulders of the peaks on either side, the courses of the more direct being
disclosed from top to bottom without interruption. But from the west one
sees nothing of the way he may be seeking until near the summit, after days
have been spent in threading the forests growing on the main dividing ridges
between the river canons.
It is interesting to observe how surely the
alp-crossing animals of every kind fall into the same trails. The more
rugged and inaccessible the general character of the topography of any
particular region, the more surely will the trails of white men, Indians,
bears, wild sheep, etc., be found converging into the best passes. The
Indians of the western slope venture cautiously over the passes in settled
weather to attend dances, and obtain loads of pine nuts and the larvae of a
small fly that breeds in Mono and Owen's Lakes, which, when dried, forms an
important article of food; while the Pah Utes cross over from the east to
hunt the deer and obtain supplies of acorns; and it is truly astonishing to
see what immense loads the haggard old squaws make out to carry barefooted
through these rough passes, oftentimes for a distance of sixty or seventy
miles. They are always accompanied by the men, who stride on, unburdened and
erect, a little in advance, kindly stooping at difficult places to pile
stepping-stones for their patient, pack-animal wives, just as they would
prepare the way for their ponies.
Bears evince great sagacity as mountaineers, but
although they are tireless and enterprising travelers they seldom cross the
range. I have several times tracked them through the Mono Pass, but only in
late years, after cattle and sheep had passed that way, when they doubtless
were following to feed on the stragglers and on those that had been killed
by falling over the rocks. Even the wild sheep, the best mountaineers of
all, choose regular passes in making journeys across the summits. Deer
seldom cross the range in either direction. I have never yet observed a
single specimen of the mule-deer of the Great Basin west of the summit, and
rarely one of the black-tailed species on the eastern slope, notwithstanding
many of the latter ascend the range nearly to the summit every summer, to
feed in the wild gardens and bring forth their young.
The glaciers are the pass-makers, and it is by
them that the courses of all mountaineers are predestined. Without exception
every pass in the Sierra was created by them without the slightest aid or
predetermining guidance from any of the cataclysmic agents. I have seen
elaborate statements of the amount of drilling and blasting accomplished in
the construction of the railroad across the Sierra, above Donner Lake; but
for every pound of rock moved in this way, the glaciers which descended east
and west through this same pass, crushed and carried away more than a
hundred tons. The
so-called practicable road passes are simply those portions of the range
more degraded by glacial action than the adjacent portions, and degraded in
such a way as to leave the summits rounded, instead of sharp; while the
peaks, from the superior strength and hardness of their rocks, or from more
favorable position, having suffered less degradation, are left towering
above the passes as if they had been heaved into the sky by some force
acting from beneath.
The scenery of all the passes, especially at the head, is of the wildest and
grandest description, — lofty peaks massed together and laden around their
bases with ice and snow; chains of glacier lakes; cascading streams in
endless variety, with glorious views, westward over a sea of rocks and
woods, and eastward over strange ashy plains, volcanoes, and the dry,
dead-looking ranges of the Great Basin. Every pass, however, possesses
treasures of beauty all its own.
Having thus in a general way indicated the
height, leading features, and distribution of the principal passes, I will
now endeavor to describe the Mono Pass in particular, which may, I think, be
regarded as a fair example of the higher alpine passes in general.
The main portion of the Mono Pass is formed by
Bloody Canon, which begins at the summit of the range, and runs in a general
east-northeasterly direction to the edge of the Mono Plain.
The first white men who forced a way through its
somber depths were, as we have seen, eager gold-seekers. But the canon was
known and traveled as a pass by the Indians and mountain animals long before
its discovery by white men, as is shown by the numerous tributary trails
which come into it from every direction. Its name accords well with the
character of the "early times" in California, and may perhaps have been
suggested by the predominant color of the metamorphic slates in which it is
in great part eroded; or more probably by blood-stains made by the
unfortunate animals which were compelled to slip and shuffle awkwardly over
its rough, cutting rocks. I have never known an animal, either mule or
horse, to make its way through the canon, either in going up or down,
without losing more or less blood from wounds on the legs. Occasionally one
is killed outright — falling headlong and rolling over precipices like a
boulder. But such accidents are rarer than from the terrible appearance of
the trail one would be led to expect; the more experienced when driven loose
find their way over the dangerous places with a caution and sagacity that is
truly wonderful. During the gold excitement it was at times a matter of
considerable pecuniary importance to force a way through the canon with
pack-trains early in the spring while it was yet heavily blocked with snow;
and then the mules with their loads had sometimes to be let down over the
steepest drifts and avalanche beds by means of ropes.
A good bridle-path leads from Yosemite through
many a grove and meadow up to the head of the canon, a distance of about
thirty miles. Here the scenery undergoes a sudden and startling
condensation. Mountains, red, gray, and black, rise close at hand on the
right, whitened around their bases with banks of enduring snow; on the left
swells the huge red mass of Mount Gibbs, while in front the eye wanders down
the shadowy canon, and out on the warm plain of Mono, where the lake is seen
gleaming like a burnished metallic disk, with clusters of lofty volcanic
cones to the south of it.
When at length we enter the mountain gateway,
the somber rocks seem aware of our presence, and seem to come thronging
closer about us. Happily the ouzel and the old familiar robin are here to
sing us welcome, and azure daisies beam with trustfulness and sympathy,
enabling us to feel something of Nature's love even here, beneath the gaze
of her coldest rocks.
The effect of this expressive outspokenness on the part of the canon-rocks
is greatly enhanced by the quiet aspect of the alpine meadows through which
we pass just before entering the narrow gateway. The forests in which they
lie, and the mountain-tops rising beyond them, seem quiet and tranquil. We
catch their restful spirit, yield to the soothing influences of the
sunshine, and saunter dreamily on through flowers and bees, scarce touched
by a definite thought; then suddenly we find ourselves in the shadowy canon,
closeted with Nature in one of her wildest strongholds.
After the first bewildering impression begins to
wear off, we perceive that it is not altogether terrible; for besides the
reassuring birds and flowers we discover a chain of shining lakelets hanging
down from the very summit of the pass, and linked together by a silvery
stream. The highest are set in bleak, rough bowls, scantily fringed with
brown and yellow sedges. Winter storms blow snow through the canon in
blinding drifts, and avalanches shoot from the heights. Then are these
sparkling tarns filled and buried, leaving not a hint of their existence. In
June and July they begin to blink and thaw out like sleepy eyes, the carices
thrust up their short brown spikes, the daises bloom in turn, and the most
profoundly buried of them all is at length warmed and summered as if winter
were only a dream. Red
Lake is the lowest of the chain, and also the largest. It seems rather dull
and forbidding at first sight, lying motionless in its deep, dark bed. The
canon wall rises sheer from the water's edge on the south, but on the
opposite side there is sufficient space and sunshine for a sedgy daisy
garden, the center of which is brilliantly lighted with lilies, castilleias,
larkspurs, and columbines, sheltered from the wind by leafy willows, and
forming a most joyful outburst of plant life keenly emphasized by the chill
baldness of the onlooking cliffs.
After indulging here in a dozing, shimmering
lake rest, the happy stream sets forth again, warbling and trilling like an
ouzel, ever delightfully confiding, no matter how dark the way; leaping,
gliding, hither, thither, clear of foaming: manifesting the beauty of its
wildness in every sound and gesture.
One of its most beautiful developments is the
Diamond Cascade, situated a short distance below Red Lake. Here the tense,
crystalline water is first dashed into coarse, granular spray mixed with
dusty foam, and then divided into a diamond pattern by following the
diagonal cleavage joints that intersect the face of the precipice over which
it pours. Viewed in front, it resembles a strip of embroidery of definite
pattern, varying through the seasons with the temperature and the volume of
water. Scarce a flower may be seen along its snowy border. A few bent pines
look on from a distance, and small fringes of cassiope and rock-ferns are
growing in fissures near the head, but these are so lowly and
undemonstrative that only the attentive observer will be likely to notice
them. On the north wall
of the canon, a little below the Diamond Cascade, a glittering side stream
makes its appearance, seeming to leap directly out of the sky. It first
resembles a crinkled ribbon of silver hanging loosely down the wall, but
grows wider as it descends, and dashes the dull rock with foam. A long,
rough talus curves up against this part of the cliff, overgrown with
snow-pressed willows, in which the fall disappears with many an eager surge
and swirl and plashing leap, finally beating its way down to its confluence
with the main canon stream.
Below this point the climate is no longer
arctic. Butterflies become larger and more abundant, grasses with imposing
spread of panicle wave above your shoulders, and the summery drone of the
bumblebee thickens the air. The dwarf pine, the tree mountaineer that climbs
highest and braves the coldest blasts, is found scattered in sormbeaten
clumps from the summit of the pass about halfway down the canon. Here it is
succeeded by the hardy two-leaved pine, which is speedily joined by the
taller yellow and mountain pines. These, with the burly juniper, and
shimmering aspen, rapidly grow larger as the sunshine becomes richer,
forming groves that block the view; or they stand more apart here and there
in picturesque groups, that make beautiful and obvious harmony with the
rocks and with one another. Blooming underbrush becomes abundant, - azalea,
spiraa, and the brier-rose weaving fringes for the streams, and shaggy rugs
to relieve the stern, unflinching rock-bosses.
Through this delightful wilderness, Canon Creek
roves without any constraining channel, throbbing and wavering; now in
sunshine, now in thoughtful shade; falling, swirling, flashing from side to
side in weariless exuberance of energy. A glorious milky way of cascades is
thus developed, of which Bower Cascade, though one of the smallest, is
perhaps the most beautiful of them all. It is situated in the lower region
of the pass, just where the sunshine begins to mellow between the cold and
warm climates. Here the glad creek, grown strong with tribute gathered from
many a snowy' fountain on the heights, sings richer strains, and becomes
more human and lovable at every step. Nov you may by its side find the rose
and homely yarrow, and small meadows full of bees and clover. At the head of
a low-browed rock, luxuriant dogwood bushes and willows arch over from bank
to bank, embowering the stream with their leafy branches; and drooping
plumes, kept in motion by the current, fringe the brow of the cascade in
front. From this leafy covert the stream leaps out into the light in a
fluted curve thick sown with sparkling crystals, and falls into a pool
filled with brown boulders, out of which it creeps gray with foam bells and
disappears in a tangle of verdure like that from which it came.
Hence, to the foot of the canon, the metamorphic
slates give place to granite, whose nobler sculpture calls forth expressions
of corresponding beauty from the stream in passing over it, — bright trills
of rapids, booming notes of falls, solemn hushes of smooth-gliding sheets,
all chanting and blending in glorious harmony. When, at length, its
impetuous alpine life is done, it slips through a meadow with scarce an
audible whisper, and falls asleep in Moraine Lake.
This water-bed is one of the finest I ever saw.
Evergreens wave soothingly about it, and the breath of flowers floats over
it like incense. Here our blessed stream rests from its rocky wanderings,
all its mountaineering done, — no more foaming rock leaping, no more wild,
exulting song. It falls into a smooth, glassy sleep, stirred only by the
night wind, which, coming down the canon, makes it croon and mutter in
ripples along its broidered shores.
Leaving the lake, it glides quietly through the
rushes, destined never more to touch the living rock. Henceforth its path
lies through ancient moraines and reaches of ashy sage plain, which nowhere
afford rocks suitable for the development of cascades or sheer falls. Yet
this beauty of maturity, though less striking, is of a still higher order,
enticing us lovingly on through gentian meadows and groves of rustling aspen
to Lake Mono, where, spirit-like, our happy stream vanishes in vapor, and
floats free again in the sky.
Bloody Canon, like every other in the Sierra,
was recently occupied by a glacier, which derived its fountain snows from
the adjacent summits, and descended into Mono Lake, at a time when its
waters stood at a much higher level than now. The principal characters in
which the history of the ancient glaciers is preserved are displayed here in
marvelous freshness and simplicity, furnishing the student with
extraordinary advantages for the acquisition of knowledge of this sort. The
most striking passages are polished and striated surfaces, which in many
places reflect the rays of the sun like smooth water. The dam of Red Lake is
an elegantly modeled rib of metamorphic slate, brought into relief because
of its superior strength, and because of the greater intensity of the
glacial erosion of the rock immediately above it, caused by a steeply
inclined tributary glacier, which entered the main trunk with a heavy
down-thrust at the head of the lake.
Moraine Lake furnishes an equally interesting
example of a basin formed wholly, or in part, by a terminal moraine dam
curved across the path of a stream between two lateral moraines.
At Moraine Lake the canon proper terminates,
although apparently continued by the two lateral moraines of the vanished
glacier. These moraines are about three hundred feet high, and extend
unbrokenly from the sides of the canon into the plain, a distance of about
five miles, curving and tapering in beautiful lines. Their sunward sides are
gardens, their shady sides are groves; the former devoted chiefly to
eriogonaa, compositae, and graminm; a square rod containing five or six
profusely flowered eriogonums of several species, about the same number of
bahia and linosyris, and a few grass tufts; each species being planted
trimly apart, with bare gravel between, as if cultivated artificially.
My first visit to Bloody Canon was made in the
summer of 1869, under circumstances well calculated to heighten the
impressions that are the peculiar offspring of mountains. I came from the
blooming tangles of Florida, and waded out into the plant-gold of the great
valley of California, when its flora was as yet untrodden. Never before had
I beheld congregations of social flowers half so extensive or half so
glorious. Golden composit covered all the ground from the Coast Range to the
Sierra like a stratum of curdled sunshine, in which I reveled for weeks,
watching the rising and setting of their innumerable suns; then I gave
myself up to be borne forward on the crest of the summer wave that sweeps
annually up the Sierra and spends itself on the snowy summits.
At the Big Tuolumne Meadows I remained more than
a month, sketching, botanizing, and climbing among the surrounding
mountains. The mountaineer with whom I then happened to be camping was one
of those remarkable men one so frequently meets in California, the hard
angles and bosses of whose characters have been brought into relief by the
grinding excitements of the gold period, until they resemble glacial
landscapes. But at this late day, my friend's activities had subsided, and
his craving for rest caused him to become a gentle shepherd and literally to
lie down with the lamb.
Recognizing the unsatisfiable longings of my
Scotch Highland instincts, he threw out some hints concerning Bloody Canon,
and advised me to explore it. "I have never seen it myself," he said, "for I
never was so unfortunate as to pass that way. But I have heard many a
strange story about it, and I warrant you will at least find it wild
enough." Then of course
I made haste to see it. Early next morning I made up a bundle of bread, tied
my notebook to my belt, and strode away in the bracing air, full of eager,
indefinite hope. The plushy lawns that lay in my path served to soothe my
morning haste. The sod in many places was starred with daisies and blue
gentians, over which I lingered. I traced the paths of the ancient glaciers
over many a shining pavement, and marked the gaps in the upper forests that
told the power of the winter avalanches. Climbing higher, I saw for the
first time the gradual dwarfing of the pines in compliance with climate, and
on the summit discovered creeping mats of the arctic willow overgrown with
silky catkins, and patches of the dwarf vaccinium with its round flowers
sprinkled in the grass like purple hail; while in every direction the
landscape stretched sublimely away in fresh wildness — a manuscript written
by the hand of Nature alone.
At length, as I entered the pass, the huge rocks
began to close around in all their wild, mysterious impressiveness, when
suddenly, as I was gazing eagerly about me, a drove of gray, hairy beings
came in sight, lumbering toward, me with a kind of boneless, wallowing
motion like bears. I
never turn back, though often so inclined, and in this particular instance,
amid such surroundings, everything seemed singularly unfavorable for the
calm acceptance of so grim a company. Suppressing my fears, I soon
discovered that although as hairy as bears and as crooked as summit pines,
the strange creatures were sufficiently erect to belong to our own species.
They proved to be nothing more formidable than Mono Indians dressed in the
skins of sage-rabbits. Both the men and the women begged persistently for
whiskey and tobacco, and seemed so accustomed to denials that I found it
impossible to convince them that I had none to give. Excepting the names of
these two products of civilization, they seemed to understand not a word of
English; but I afterward learned that they were on their way to Yosemite
Valley to feast awhile on trout and procure a load of acorns to carry back
through the pass to their huts on the shore of Mono Lake.
Occasionally a good countenance may be seen
among the Mono Indians, but these, the first specimens I had seen, were
mostly ugly, and some of them altogether hideous. The dirt on their faces
was fairly stratified, and seemed so ancient and so undisturbed it might
almost possess a geological significance. The older faces were, moreover,
strangely blurred and divided into sections by furrows that looked like the
cleavage joints of rocks, suggesting exposure on the mountains in a castaway
condition for ages. Somehow they seemed to have no right place in the
landscape, and I was glad to see them fading out of sight down the pass.
Then came evening, and the somber cliffs were
inspired with the ineffable beauty of the alpenglow. A solemn calm fell upon
everything. All the lower portion of the canon was in gloaming shadow, and I
crept into a hollow near one of the upper lakelets to smooth the ground in a
sheltered nook for a bed. When the short twilight faded, I kindled a sunny
fire, made a cup of tea, and lay down to rest and look at the stars. Soon
the night wind began to flow and pour in torrents among the jagged peaks,
mingling strange tones with those of the waterfalls sounding far below; and
as I drifted toward sleep I began to experience an uncomfortable feeling of
nearness to the furred Monos. Then the full moon looked down over the edge
of the canon wall, her countenance seemingly filled with intense concern,
and apparently so near as to produce a startling effect as if she had
entered my bedroom, forgetting all the world, to gaze on me alone.
The night was full of strange sounds, and I
gladly welcomed the morning. Breakfast was soon done, and I set forth in the
exhilarating freshness of the new day, rejoicing in the abundance of pure
wildness so close about me. The stupendous rocks, hacked and scarred with
centuries of storms, stood sharply out in the thin early light, while down
in the bottom of the canon grooved and polished bosses heaved and glistened
like swelling sea waves, telling a grand old story of the ancient glacier
that poured its crushing floods above them.
Here for the first time I met the arctic daisies
in all their perfection of purity and spirituality, — gentle mountaineers
face to face with the stormy sky, kept safe and warm by a thousand miracles.
I leaped lightly from rock to rock, glorying in the eternal freshness and
sufficiency of Nature, and in the ineffable tenderness with which she
nurtures her mountain darlings in the very fountains of storms. Fresh beauty
appeared at every step, delicate rock ferns, and groups of the fairest
flowers. Now another lake came to view, now a waterfall. Never fell light in
brighter spangles, never fell water in whiter foam. I seemed to float
through the canon enchanted, feeling nothing of its roughness, and was out
in the Mono levels before I was aware.
Looking back from the shore of Moraine Lake, my
morning ramble seemed all a dream. There curved Bloody Canon, a mere glacial
furrow two thousand feet deep, with smooth rocks projecting from the sides
and braided together in the middle, like bulging, swelling muscles. Here the
lilies were higher than my head, and the sunshine was warm enough for palms.
Yet the snow around the arctic willows was plainly visible only four miles
away, and between were narrow specimen zones of all the principal climates
of the globe. On the
bank of a small brook that comes gurgling down the side of the left lateral
moraine, I found a camp-fire still burning, which no doubt belonged to the
gray Indians I had met on the summit, and I listened instinctively and moved
cautiously forward, half expecting to see some of their grim faces peering
out of the bushes.
Passing on toward the open plain, I noticed three well-defined terminal
moraines curved gracefully across the canon stream, and joined by long
splices to the two noble laterals. These mark the halting-places of the
vanished glacier when it was retreating into its summit shadows on the
breaking-up of the glacial winter.
Five miles below the foot of
Moraine Lake, just where the lateral moraines lose themselves in the plain,
there was a field of wild rye, growing in magnificent waving bunches six to
eight feet high, bearing heads from six to twelve inches long. Rubbing out
some of the grains, I found them about five eighths of an inch long, dark-colored,
and sweet. Indian women were gathering it in baskets, bending down large
handfuls, beating it out, and fanning it in the wind. They were quite
picturesque, coming through the rye, as one caught glimpses of them here and
there, in winding lanes and openings, with splendid tufts arching above
their heads, while their incessant chat and laughter showed their heedless
joy. Like the
rye-field, I found the so-called desert of Mono blooming in a high state of
natural cultivation with the wild rose, cherry, aster, and the delicate
abronia; also innumerable gilias, phloxes, poppies, and bush composite. I
observed their gestures and the various expressions of their corollas,
inquiring how they could be so fresh and beautiful out in this volcanic
desert. They told as happy a life as any plant company I ever met, and
seemed to enjoy even the hot sand and the wind.
But the vegetation of the pass has been in great
part destroyed, and the same may be said of all the more accessible passes
throughout the range. Immense numbers of starving sheep and cattle have been
driven through them into Nevada, trampling the wild gardens and meadows
almost out of existence. The lofty walls are untouched by any foot, and the
falls sing on unchanged; but the sight of crushed flowers and stripped,
bitten bushes goes far toward destroying the charm of wildness.
The canon should be seen in winter. A good,
strong traveler, who knows the way and the weather, might easily make a safe
excursion through it from Yosemite Valley on snowshoes during some tranquil
time, when the storms are hushed. The lakes and falls would be buried then;
but so, also, would be the traces of destructive feet, while the views of
the mountains in their winter garb, and the ride at lightning speed down the
pass between the snowy walls, would be truly glorious. |
