BLOODY CA—ON AND MONO LAKE
_August 21._ Have just returned from a fine wild excursion across the
range to Mono Lake, by way of the Mono or Bloody Cañon Pass. Mr. Delaney
has been good to me all summer, lending a helping, sympathizing hand at
every opportunity, as if my wild notions and rambles and studies were
his own. He is one of those remarkable California men who have been
overflowed and denuded and remodeled by the excitements of the gold
fields, like the Sierra landscapes by grinding ice, bringing the harder
bosses and ridges of character into relief,—a tall, lean, big-boned,
big-hearted Irishman, educated for a priest in Maynooth College,—lots
of good in him, shining out now and then in this mountain light.
Recognizing my love of wild places, he told me one evening that I ought
to go through Bloody Cañon, for he was sure I should find it wild
enough. He had not been there himself, he said, but had heard many of
his mining friends speak of it as the wildest of all the Sierra passes.
Of course I was glad to go. It lies just to the east of our camp and
swoops down from the summit of the range to the edge of the Mono Desert,
making a descent of about four thousand feet in a distance of about four
miles. It was known and traveled as a pass by wild animals and the
Indians long before its discovery by white men in the gold year of 1858,
as is shown by old trails which come together at the head of it. The
name may have been suggested by the red color of the metamorphic slates
in which the cañon abounds, or by the blood stains on the rocks from the
unfortunate animals that were compelled to slide and shuffle over the
sharp-angled boulders.
Early in the morning I tied my notebook and some bread to my belt, and
strode away full of eager hope, feeling that I was going to have a
glorious revel. The glacier meadows that lay along my way served to
soothe my morning speed, for the sod was full of blue gentians and
daisies, kalmia and dwarf vaccinium, calling for recognition as old
friends, and I had to stop many times to examine the shining rocks over
which the ancient glacier had passed with tremendous pressure, polishing
them so well that they reflected the sunlight like glass in some places,
while fine striæ, seen clearly through a lens, indicated the direction
in which the ice had flowed. On some of the sloping polished pavements
abrupt steps occur, showing that occasionally large masses of the rock
had given way before the glacial pressure, as well as small particles;
moraines, too, some scattered, others regular like long curving
embankments and dams, occur here and there, giving the general surface
of the region a young, new-made appearance. I watched the gradual
dwarfing of the pines as I ascended, and the corresponding dwarfing of
nearly all the rest of the vegetation. On the slopes of Mammoth
Mountain, to the south of the pass, I saw many gaps in the woods
reaching from the upper edge of the timber-line down to the level
meadows, where avalanches of snow had descended, sweeping away every
tree in their paths as well as the soil they were growing in, leaving
the bedrock bare. The trees are nearly all uprooted, but a few that had
been extremely well anchored in clefts of the rock were broken off near
the ground. It seems strange at first sight that trees that had been
allowed to grow for a century or more undisturbed should in their old
age be thus swished away at a stroke. Such avalanches can only occur
under rare conditions of weather and snowfall. No doubt on some
positions of the mountain slopes the inclination and smoothness of the
surface is such that avalanches must occur every winter, or even after
every heavy snowstorm, and of course no trees or even bushes can grow in
their channels. I noticed a few clean-swept slopes of this kind. The
uprooted trees that had grown in the pathway of what might be called
“century avalanches” were piled in windrows, and tucked snugly against
the wall-trees of the gaps, heads downward, excepting a few that were
carried out into the open ground of the meadows, where the heads of the
avalanches had stopped. Young pines, mostly the two-leaved and the
white-barked, are already springing up in these cleared gaps. It would
be interesting to ascertain the age of these saplings, for thus we
should gain a fair approximation to the year that the great avalanches
occurred. Perhaps most or all of them occurred the same winter. How glad
I should be if free to pursue such studies!
Near the summit at the head of the pass I found a species of dwarf
willow lying perfectly flat on the ground, making a nice, soft, silky
gray carpet, not a single stem or branch more than three inches high;
but the catkins, which are now nearly ripe, stand erect and make a
close, nearly regular gray growth, being larger than all the rest of the
plants. Some of these interesting dwarfs have only one catkin—willow
bushes reduced to their lowest terms. I found patches of dwarf vaccinium
also forming smooth carpets, closely pressed to the ground or against
the sides of stones, and covered with round pink flowers in lavish
abundance as if they had fallen from the sky like hail. A little higher,
almost at the very head of the pass, I found the blue arctic daisy and
purple-flowered bryanthus, the mountain’s own darlings, gentle
mountaineers face to face with the sky, kept safe and warm by a thousand
miracles, seeming always the finer and purer the wilder and stormier
their homes. The trees, tough and resiny, seem unable to go a step
farther; but up and up, far above the tree-line, these tender plants
climb, cheerily spreading their gray and pink carpets right up to the
very edges of the snow-banks in deep hollows and shadows. Here, too, is
the familiar robin, tripping on the flowery lawns, bravely singing the
same cheery song I first heard when a boy in Wisconsin newly arrived
from old Scotland. In this fine company sauntering enchanted, taking no
heed of time, I at length entered the gate of the pass, and the huge
rocks began to close around me in all their mysterious impressiveness.
Just then I was startled by a lot of queer, hairy, muffled creatures
coming shuffling, shambling, wallowing toward me as if they had no
bones in their bodies. Had I discovered them while they were yet a good
way off, I should have tried to avoid them. What a picture they made
contrasted with the others I had just been admiring. When I came up to
them, I found that they were only a band of Indians from Mono on their
way to Yosemite for a load of acorns. They were wrapped in blankets made
of the skins of sage-rabbits. The dirt on some of the faces seemed
almost old enough and thick enough to have a geological significance;
some were strangely blurred and divided into sections by seams and
wrinkles that looked like cleavage joints, and had a worn abraded look
as if they had lain exposed to the weather for ages. I tried to pass
them without stopping, but they wouldn’t let me; forming a dismal circle
about me, I was closely besieged while they begged whiskey or tobacco,
and it was hard to convince them that I hadn’t any. How glad I was to
get away from the gray, grim crowd and see them vanish down the trail!
Yet it seems sad to feel such desperate repulsion from one’s fellow
beings, however degraded. To prefer the society of squirrels and
woodchucks to that of our own species must surely be unnatural. So with
a fresh breeze and a hill or mountain between us I must wish them
Godspeed and try to pray and sing with Burns, “It’s coming yet, for a’
that, that man to man, the warld o’er, shall brothers be for a’ that.”
How the day passed I hardly know. By the map I have come only about ten
or twelve miles, though the sun is already low in the west, showing how
long I must have lingered, observing, sketching, taking notes among the
glaciated rocks and moraines and Alpine flower-beds.
At sundown the somber crags and peaks were inspired with the ineffable
beauty of the alpenglow, and a solemn, awful stillness hushed everything
in the landscape. Then I crept into a hollow by the side of a small lake
near the head of the cañon, smoothed a sheltered spot, and gathered a
few pine tassels for a bed. After the short twilight began to fade I
kindled a sunny fire, made a tin cupful of tea, and lay down to watch
the stars. Soon the night-wind began to flow from the snowy peaks
overhead, at first only a gentle breathing, then gaining strength, in
less than an hour rumbled in massive volume something like a boisterous
stream in a boulder-choked channel, roaring and moaning down the cañon
as if the work it had to do was tremendously important and fateful; and
mingled with these storm tones were those of the waterfalls on the
north side of the cañon, now sounding distinctly, now smothered by the
heavier cataracts of air, making a glorious psalm of savage wildness. My
fire squirmed and struggled as if ill at ease, for though in a sheltered
nook, detached masses of icy wind often fell like icebergs on top of it,
scattering sparks and coals, so that I had to keep well back to avoid
being burned. But the big resiny roots and knots of the dwarf pine could
neither be beaten out nor blown away, and the flames, now rushing up in
long lances, now flattened and twisted on the rocky ground, roared as if
trying to tell the storm stories of the trees they belonged to, as the
light given out was telling the story of the sunshine they had gathered
in centuries of summers.
The stars shone clear in the strip of sky between the huge dark cliffs;
and as I lay recalling the lessons of the day, suddenly the full moon
looked down over the cañon wall, her face apparently filled with eager
concern, which had a startling effect, as if she had left her place in
the sky and had come down to gaze on me alone, like a person entering
one’s bedroom. It was hard to realize that she was in her place in the
sky, and was looking abroad on half the globe, land and sea, mountains,
plains, lakes, rivers, oceans, ships, cities with their myriads of
inhabitants sleeping and waking, sick and well. No, she seemed to be
just on the rim of Bloody Cañon and looking only at me. This was indeed
getting near to Nature. I remember watching the harvest moon rising
above the oak trees in Wisconsin apparently as big as a cart-wheel and
not farther than half a mile distant. With these exceptions I might say
I never before had seen the moon, and this night she seemed so full of
life and so near, the effect was marvelously impressive and made me
forget the Indians, the great black rocks above me, and the wild uproar
of the winds and waters making their way down the huge jagged gorge. Of
course I slept but little and gladly welcomed the dawn over the Mono
Desert. By the time I had made a cupful of tea the sunbeams were pouring
through the cañon, and I set forth, gazing eagerly at the tremendous
walls of red slates savagely hacked and scarred and apparently ready to
fall in avalanches great enough to choke the pass and fill up the chain
of lakelets. But soon its beauties came to view, and I bounded lightly
from rock to rock, admiring the polished bosses shining in the slant
sunshine with glorious effect in the general roughness of moraines and
avalanche taluses, even toward the head of the cañon near the highest
fountains of the ice. Here, too, are most of the lowly plant people seen
yesterday on the other side of the divide now opening their beautiful
eyes. None could fail to glory in Nature’s tender care for them in so
wild a place. The little ouzel is flitting from rock to rock along the
rapid swirling Cañon Creek, diving for breakfast in icy pools, and
merrily singing as if the huge rugged avalanche-swept gorge was the most
delightful of all its mountain homes. Besides a high fall on the north
wall of the cañon, apparently coming direct from the sky, there are many
narrow cascades, bright silvery ribbons zigzagging down the red cliffs,
tracing the diagonal cleavage joints of the metamorphic slates, now
contracted and out of sight, now leaping from ledge to ledge in filmy
sheets through which the sunbeams sift. And on the main Cañon Creek, to
which all these are tributary, is a series of small falls, cascades, and
rapids extending all the way down to the foot of the cañon, interrupted
only by the lakes in which the tossed and beaten waters rest. One of the
finest of the cascades is outspread on the face of a precipice, its
waters separated into ribbon-like strips, and woven into a diamond-like
pattern by tracing the cleavage joints of the rock, while tufts of
bryanthus, grass, sedge, saxifrage form beautiful fringes. Who could
imagine beauty so fine in so savage a place? Gardens are blooming in all
sorts of nooks and hollows,—at the head alpine eriogonums, erigerons,
saxifrages, gentians, cowania, bush primula; in the middle region
larkspur, columbine, orthocarpus, castilleia, harebell, epilobium,
violets, mints, yarrow; near the foot sunflowers, lilies, brier rose,
iris, lonicera, clematis.
One of the smallest of the cascades, which I name the Bower Cascade, is
in the lower region of the pass, where the vegetation is snowy and
luxuriant. Wild rose and dogwood form dense masses overarching the
stream, and out of this bower the creek, grown strong with many
indashing tributaries, leaps forth into the light, and descends in a
fluted curve thick-sown with crisp flashing spray. At the foot of the
cañon there is a lake formed in part at least by the damming of the
stream by a terminal moraine. The three other lakes in the cañon are in
basins eroded from the solid rock, where the pressure of the glacier was
greatest, and the most resisting portions of the basin rims are
beautifully, tellingly polished. Below Moraine Lake at the foot of the
cañon there are several old lake-basins lying between the large lateral
moraines which extend out into the desert. These basins are now
completely filled up by the material carried in by the streams, and
changed to dry sandy flats covered mostly by grass and artemisia and
sun-loving flowers. All these lower lake-basins were evidently formed by
terminal moraine dams deposited where the receding glacier had lingered
during short periods of less waste, or greater snowfall, or both.
Looking up the cañon from the warm sunny edge of the Mono plain my
morning ramble seems a dream, so great is the change in the vegetation
and climate. The lilies on the bank of Moraine Lake are higher than my
head, and the sunshine is hot enough for palms. Yet the snow round the
arctic gardens at the summit of the pass is plainly visible, only about
four miles away, and between lie specimen zones of all the principal
climates of the globe. In little more than an hour one may swoop down
from winter to summer, from an Arctic to a torrid region, through as
great changes of climate as one would encounter in traveling from
Labrador to Florida.
The Indians I had met near the head of the cañon had camped at the foot
of it the night before they made the ascent, and I found their fire
still smoking on the side of a small tributary stream near Moraine
Lake; and on the edge of what is called the Mono Desert, four or five
miles from the lake, I came to a patch of elymus, or wild rye, growing
in magnificent waving clumps six or eight feet high, bearing heads six
to eight inches long. The crop was ripe, and Indian women were gathering
the grain in baskets by bending down large handfuls, beating out the
seed, and fanning it in the wind. The grains are about five eighths of
an inch long, dark-colored and sweet. I fancy the bread made from it
must be as good as wheat bread. A fine squirrelish employment this wild
grain gathering seems, and the women were evidently enjoying it,
laughing and chattering and looking almost natural, though most Indians
I have seen are not a whit more natural in their lives than we civilized
whites. Perhaps if I knew them better I should like them better. The
worst thing about them is their uncleanliness. Nothing truly wild is
unclean. Down on the shore of Mono Lake I saw a number of their flimsy
huts on the banks of streams that dash swiftly into that dead sea,—mere
brush tents where they lie and eat at their ease. Some of the men were
feasting on buffalo berries, lying beneath the tall bushes now red with
fruit. The berries are rather insipid, but they must needs be wholesome,
since for days and weeks the Indians, it is said, eat nothing else. In
the season they in like manner depend chiefly on the fat larvæ of a fly
that breeds in the salt water of the lake, or on the big fat corrugated
caterpillars of a species of silkworm that feeds on the leaves of the
yellow pine. Occasionally a grand rabbit-drive is organized and hundreds
are slain with clubs on the lake shore, chased and frightened into a
dense crowd by dogs, boys, girls, men and women, and rings of sage brush
fire, when of course they are quickly killed. The skins are made into
blankets. In the autumn the more enterprising of the hunters bring in a
good many deer, and rarely a wild sheep from the high peaks. Antelopes
used to be abundant on the desert at the base of the interior
mountain-ranges. Sage hens, grouse, and squirrels help to vary their
wild diet of worms; pine nuts also from the small interesting _Pinus
monophylla_, and good bread and good mush are made from acorns and wild
rye. Strange to say, they seem to like the lake larvæ best of all. Long
windrows are washed up on the shore, which they gather and dry like
grain for winter use. It is said that wars, on account of encroachments
on each other’s worm-grounds, are of common occurrence among the various
tribes and families. Each claims a certain marked portion of the shore.
The pine nuts are delicious—large quantities are gathered every autumn.
The tribes of the west flank of the range trade acorns for worms and
pine nuts. The squaws carry immense loads on their backs across the
rough passes and down the range, making journeys of about forty or fifty
miles each way.
The desert around the lake is surprisingly flowery. In many places among
the sage bushes I saw mentzelia, abronia, aster, bigelovia, and gilia,
all of which seemed to enjoy the hot sunshine. The abronia, in
particular, is a delicate, fragrant, and most charming plant.
[Illustration: MONO LAKE AND VOLCANIC CONES, LOOKING SOUTH]
[Illustration: HIGHEST MONO VOLCANIC CONES (NEAR VIEW)]
Opposite the mouth of the cañon a range of volcanic cones extends
southward from the lake, rising abruptly out of the desert like a chain
of mountains. The largest of the cones are about twenty-five hundred
feet high above the lake level, have well-formed craters, and all of
them are evidently comparatively recent additions to the landscape. At a
distance of a few miles they look like heaps of loose ashes that have
never been blest by either rain or snow, but, for a’ that and a’ that,
yellow pines are climbing their gray slopes, trying to clothe them and
give beauty for ashes. A country of wonderful contrasts. Hot deserts
bounded by snow-laden mountains,—cinders and ashes scattered on
glacier-polished pavements,—frost and fire working together in the
making of beauty. In the lake are several volcanic islands, which show
that the waters were once mingled with fire.
Glad to get back to the green side of the mountains, though I have
greatly enjoyed the gray east side and hope to see more of it. Reading
these grand mountain manuscripts displayed through every vicissitude of
heat and cold, calm and storm, upheaving volcanoes and down-grinding
glaciers, we see that everything in Nature called destruction must be
creation—a change from beauty to beauty.
Our glacier meadow camp north of the Soda Springs seems more beautiful
every day. The grass covers all the ground though the leaves are
thread-like in fineness, and in walking on the sod it seems like a plush
carpet of marvelous richness and softness, and the purple panicles
brushing against one’s feet are not felt. This is a typical glacier
meadow, occupying the basin of a vanished lake, very definitely bounded
by walls of the arrowy two-leaved pines drawn up in a handsome orderly
array like soldiers on parade. There are many other meadows of the same
kind hereabouts imbedded in the woods. The main big meadows along the
river are the same in general and extend with but little interruption
for ten or twelve miles, but none I have seen are so finely finished
and perfect as this one. It is richer in flowering plants than the
prairies of Wisconsin and Illinois were when in all their wild glory.
The showy flowers are mostly three species of gentian, a purple and
yellow orthocarpus, a golden-rod or two, a small blue pentstemon almost
like a gentian, potentilla, ivesia, pedicularis, white violet, kalmia,
and bryanthus. There are no coarse weedy plants. Through this flowery
lawn flows a stream silently gliding, swirling, slipping as if careful
not to make the slightest noise. It is only about three feet wide in
most places, widening here and there into pools six or eight feet in
diameter with no apparent current, the banks bossily rounded by the
down-curving mossy sod, grass panicles over-leaning like miniature pine
trees, and rugs of bryanthus spreading here and there over sunken
boulders. At the foot of the meadow the stream, rich with the juices of
the plants it has refreshed, sings merrily down over shelving rock
ledges on its way to the Tuolumne River. The sublime, massive Mount Dana
and its companions, green, red, and white, loom impressively above the
pines along the eastern horizon; a range or spur of gray rugged granite
crags and mountains on the north; the curiously crested and battlemented
Mount Hoffman on the west; and the Cathedral Range on the south with
its grand Cathedral Peak, Cathedral Spires, Unicorn Peak, and several
others, gray and pointed or massively rounded.