I confess to a great liking for the Indian fashion of name-giving: every
man known by that phrase which best expresses him to whoso names him.
Thus he may be Mighty-Hunter, or Man-Afraid-of-a-Bear, according as he
is called by friend or enemy, and Scar-Face to those who knew him by the
eye's grasp only. No other fashion, I think, sets so well with the
various natures that inhabit in us, and if you agree with me you will
understand why so few names are written here as they appear in the
geography. For if I love a lake known by the name of the man who
discovered it, which endears itself by reason of the close-locked pines
it nourishes about its borders, you may look in my account to find it so
described. But if the Indians have been there before me, you shall have
their name, which is always beautifully fit and does not originate in
the poor human desire for perpetuity.
Nevertheless there are certain peaks, cañons, and clear meadow spaces
which are above all compassing of words, and have a certain fame as of
the nobly great to whom we give no familiar names. Guided by these you
may reach my country and find or not find, according as it lieth in you,
much that is set down here. And more. The earth is no wanton to give up
all her best to every comer, but keeps a sweet, separate intimacy for
each. But if you do not find it all as I write, think me not less
dependable nor yourself less clever. There is a sort of pretense allowed
in matters of the heart, as one should say by way of illustration, "I
know a man who...," and so give up his dearest experience without
betrayal. And I am in no mind to direct you to delectable places toward
which you will hold yourself less tenderly than I. So by this fashion of
naming I keep faith with the land and annex to my own estate a very
great territory to which none has a surer title.
The country where you may have sight and touch of that which is written
lies between the high Sierras south from Yosemite--east and south over a
very great assemblage of broken ranges beyond Death Valley, and on
illimitably into the Mojave Desert. You may come into the borders of it
from the south by a stage journey that has the effect of involving a
great lapse of time, or from the north by rail, dropping out of the
overland route at Reno. The best of all ways is over the Sierra passes
by pack and trail, seeing and believing. But the real heart and core of
the country are not to be come at in a month's vacation. One must summer
and winter with the land and wait its occasions. Pine woods that take
two and three seasons to the ripening of cones, roots that lie by in the
sand seven years awaiting a growing rain, firs that grow fifty years
before flowering,--these do not scrape acquaintance. But if ever you
come beyond the borders as far as the town that lies in a hill dimple at
the foot of Kearsarge, never leave it until you have knocked at the door
of the brown house under the willow-tree at the end of the village
street, and there you shall have such news of the land, of its trails
and what is astir in them, as one lover of it can give to another.