pitched all kinds of tents; built all kinds of fancy permanent
conveniences; erected all kinds of banners and signs advertising their
identity, and were generally having a nice, easy, healthful, jolly kind
of a time up there in the mountains. Their outfits they had either
brought in with their own wagons, or had had freighted. The store near
the bend of the Merced supplied all their needs. It was truly a
pleasant sight to see so many people enjoying themselves, for they were
mostly those in moderate circumstances to whom a trip on tourist lines
would be impossible. We saw bakers' and grocers' and butchers' wagons
that had been pressed into service. A man, his wife, and little baby
had come in an ordinary buggy, the one horse of which, led by the man,
carried the woman and baby to the various points of interest.
We reported to the official in charge, were allotted a camping and
grazing place, and proceeded to make ourselves at home.
During the next two days we rode comfortably here and there and looked
at things. The things could not be spoiled, but their effect was very
materially marred by the swarms of tourists. Sometimes they were
silly, and cracked inane and obvious jokes in ridicule of the grandest
objects they had come so far to see; sometimes they were detestable and
left their insignificant calling-cards or their unimportant names where
nobody could ever have any object in reading them; sometimes they were
pathetic and helpless and had to have assistance; sometimes they were
amusing; hardly ever did they seem entirely human. I wonder what there
is about the traveling public that seems so to set it apart, to make of
it at least a sub-species of mankind?
Among other things, we were vastly interested in the guides. They were
typical of this sort of thing. Each morning one of these men took a
pleasantly awe-stricken band of tourists out, led them around in the
brush awhile, and brought them back in time for lunch. They wore broad
hats and leather bands and exotic raiment and fierce expressions, and
looked dark and mysterious and extra-competent over the most trivial of
difficulties.
Nothing could be more instructive than to see two or three of these
imitation bad men starting out in the morning to "guide" a flock, say
to Nevada Falls. The tourists, being about to mount, have outdone
themselves in weird and awesome clothes--especially the women. Nine
out of ten wear their stirrups too short, so their knees are hunched
up. One guide rides at the head--great deal of silver spur, clanking
chain, and the rest of it. Another rides in the rear. The third rides
up and down the line, very gruff, very preoccupied, very careworn over
the dangers of the way. The cavalcade moves. It proceeds for about a
mile. There arise sudden cries, great but subdued excitement. The
leader stops, raising a commanding hand. Guide number three gallops
up. There is a consultation. The cinch-strap of the brindle shave-tail
is taken up two inches. A catastrophe has been averted. The noble
three look volumes of relief. The cavalcade moves again.
Now the trail rises. It is a nice, safe, easy trail. But to the
tourists it is made terrible. The noble three see to that. They pass
more dangers by the exercise of superhuman skill than you or I could
discover in a summer's close search. The joke of the matter is that
those forty-odd saddle-animals have been over that trail so many times
that one would have difficulty in heading them off from it once they
got started.
Very much the same criticism would hold as to the popular notion of the
Yosemite stage-drivers. They drive well, and seem efficient men. But
their wonderful reputation would have to be upheld on rougher roads
than those into the Valley. The tourist is, of course, encouraged to
believe that he is doing the hair-breadth escape; but in reality, as
mountain travel goes, the Yosemite stage-road is very mild.
This that I have been saying is not by way of depreciation. But it
seems to me that the Valley is wonderful enough to stand by itself in
men's appreciation without the unreality of sickly sentimentalism in
regard to imaginary dangers, or the histrionics of playing wilderness
where no wilderness exists.
As we went out, this time by the Chinquapin wagon-road, we met one
stage-load after another of tourists coming in. They had not yet
donned the outlandish attire they believe proper to the occasion, and
so showed for what they were,--prosperous, well-bred, well-dressed
travelers. In contrast to their smartness, the brilliancy of
new-painted stages, the dash of the horses maintained by the Yosemite
Stage Company, our own dusty travel-worn outfit of mountain ponies, our
own rough clothes patched and faded, our sheath-knives and firearms
seemed out of place and curious, as though a knight in medieval armor
were to ride down Broadway.
I do not know how many stages there were. We turned our pack-horses
out for them all, dashing back and forth along the line, coercing the
diabolical Dinkey. The road was too smooth. There were no
obstructions to surmount; no dangers to avert; no difficulties to
avoid. We could not get into trouble, but proceeded as on a county
turnpike. Too tame, too civilized, too representative of the tourist
element, it ended by getting on our nerves. The wilderness seemed to
have left us forever. Never would we get back to our own again. After
a long time Wes, leading, turned into our old trail branching off to
the high country. Hardly had we traveled a half mile before we heard
from the advance guard a crash and a shout.
"What is it, Wes?" we yelled.
In a moment the reply came,--
"Lily's fallen down again,--thank God!"
We understood what he meant. By this we knew that the tourist zone was
crossed, that we had left the show country, and were once more in the
open.
XVII
THE MAIN CREST
The traveler in the High Sierras generally keeps to the west of the
main crest. Sometimes he approaches fairly to the foot of the last
slope; sometimes he angles away and away even down to what finally
seems to him a lower country,--to the pine mountains of only five or
six thousand feet. But always to the left or right of him, according
to whether he travels south or north, runs the rampart of the system,
sometimes glittering with snow, sometimes formidable and rugged with
splinters and spires of granite. He crosses spurs and tributary ranges
as high, as rugged, as snow-clad as these. They do not quite satisfy
him. Over beyond he thinks he ought to see something great,--some wide
outlook, some space bluer than his trail can offer him. One day or
another he clamps his decision, and so turns aside for the simple and
only purpose of standing on the top of the world.
We were bitten by that idea while crossing the Granite Basin. The
latter is some ten thousand feet in the air, a cup of rock five or six
miles across, surrounded by mountains much higher than itself. That
would have been sufficient for most moods, but, resting on the edge of
a pass ten thousand six hundred feet high, we concluded that we surely
would have to look over into Nevada.
We got out the map. It became evident, after a little study, that by
descending six thousand feet into a box cañon, proceeding in it a few
miles, and promptly climbing out again, by climbing steadily up the
long narrow course of another box cañon for about a day and a half's
journey, and then climbing out of that to a high ridge country with
little flat valleys, we would come to a wide lake in a meadow eleven
thousand feet up. There we could camp. The mountain opposite was
thirteen thousand three hundred and twenty feet, so the climb from the
lake became merely a matter of computation. This, we figured, would
take us just a week, which may seem a considerable time to sacrifice to
the gratification of a whim. But such a glorious whim!
We descended the great box cañon, and scaled its upper end, following
near the voices of a cascade. Cliffs thousands of feet high hemmed us
in. At the very top of them strange crags leaned out looking down on
us in the abyss. From a projection a colossal sphinx gazed solemnly
across at a dome as smooth and symmetrical as, but vastly larger than,
St. Peter's at Rome.
The trail labored up to the brink of the cascade. At once we entered a
long narrow aisle between regular palisaded cliffs.
The formation was exceedingly regular. At the top the precipice fell
sheer for a thousand feet or so; then the steep slant of the debris,
like buttresses, down almost to the bed of the river. The lower parts
of the buttresses were clothed with heavy chaparral, which, nearer
moisture, developed into cottonwoods, alders, tangled vines, flowers,
rank grasses. And away on the very edge of the cliffs, close under the
sky, were pines, belittled by distance, solemn and aloof, like Indian
warriors wrapped in their blankets watching from an eminence the
passage of a hostile force.
We caught rainbow trout in the dashing white torrent of the river. We
followed the trail through delicious thickets redolent with perfume;
over the roughest granite slides, along still dark aisles of forest
groves, between the clefts of boulders so monstrous as almost to seem
an insult to the credulity. Among the chaparral, on the slope of the
buttress across the river, we made out a bear feeding. Wes and I sat
ten minutes waiting for him to show sufficiently for a chance. Then we
took a shot at about four hundred yards, and hit him somewhere so he
angled down the hill furiously. We left the Tenderfoot to watch that
he did not come out of the big thicket of the river bottom where last
we had seen him, while we scrambled upstream nearly a mile looking for
a way across. Then we trailed him by the blood, each step one of
suspense, until we fairly had to crawl in after him; and shot him five
times more, three in the head, before he gave up not six feet from us;
and shouted gloriously and skinned that bear. But the meat was badly
bloodshot, for there were three bullets in the head, two in the chest
and shoulders, one through the paunch, and one in the hind quarters.
Since we were much in want of meat, this grieved us. But that noon
while we ate, the horses ran down toward us, and wheeled, as though in
cavalry formation, looking toward the hill and snorting. So I put down
my tin plate gently, and took up my rifle, and without rising shot that
bear through the back of the neck. We took his skin, and also his hind
quarters, and went on.
By the third day from Granite Basin we reached the end of the long
narrow cañon with the high cliffs and the dark pine-trees and the very
blue sky. Therefore we turned sharp to the left and climbed laboriously
until we had come up into the land of big boulders, strange spare
twisted little trees, and the singing of the great wind.
The country here was mainly of granite. It out-cropped in dikes, it
slid down the slopes in aprons, it strewed the prospect in boulders and
blocks, it seamed the hollows with knife-ridges. Soil gave the
impression of having been laid on top; you divined the granite beneath
it, and not so very far beneath it, either. A fine hair-grass grew
close to this soil, as though to produce as many blades as possible in
the limited area.
But strangest of all were the little thick twisted trees with the rich
shaded umber color of their trunks. They occurred rarely, but still in
sufficient regularity to lend the impression of a scattered
grove-cohesiveness. Their limbs were sturdy and reaching fantastically.
On each trunk the colors ran in streaks, patches, and gradations from a
sulphur yellow, through browns and red-orange, to a rich red-umber.
They were like the earth-dwarfs of German legend, come out to view the
roof of their workshop in the interior of the hill; or, more subtly,
like some of the more fantastic engravings of Gustave Dore.
We camped that night at a lake whose banks were pebbled in the manner
of an artificial pond, and whose setting was a thin meadow of the fine
hair-grass, for the grazing of which the horses had to bare their
teeth. All about, the granite mountains rose. The timber-line, even of
the rare shrub-like gnome-trees, ceased here. Above us was nothing
whatever but granite rock, snow, and the sky.
It was just before dusk, and in the lake the fish were jumping eagerly.
They took the fly well, and before the fire was alight we had caught
three for supper. When I say we caught but three, you will understand
that they were of good size. Firewood was scarce, but we dragged in
enough by means of Old Slob and a riata to build us a good fire. And
we needed it, for the cold descended on us with the sharpness and vigor
of eleven thousand feet.
For such an altitude the spot was ideal. The lake just below us was
full of fish. A little stream ran from it by our very elbows. The
slight elevation was level, and covered with enough soil to offer a
fairly good substructure for our beds. The flat in which was the lake
reached on up narrower and narrower to the foot of the last slope,
furnishing for the horses an admirable natural corral about a mile
long. And the view was magnificent.
First of all there were the mountains above us, towering grandly serene
against the sky of morning; then all about us the tumultuous slabs and
boulders and blocks of granite among which dare-devil and hardy little
trees clung to a footing as though in defiance of some great force
exerted against them; then below us a sheer drop, into which our brook
plunged, with its suggestion of depths; and finally beyond those depths
the giant peaks of the highest Sierras rising lofty as the sky,
shrouded in a calm and stately peace.
Next day the Tenderfoot and I climbed to the top. Wes decided at the
last minute that he hadn't lost any mountains, and would prefer to fish.
The ascent was accompanied by much breathlessness and a heavy pounding
of our hearts, so that we were forced to stop every twenty feet to
recover our physical balance. Each step upward dragged at our feet
like a leaden weight. Yet once we were on the level, or once we ceased
our very real exertions for a second or so, the difficulty left us, and
we breathed as easily as in the lower altitudes.
The air itself was of a quality impossible to describe to you unless
you have traveled in the high countries. I know it is trite to say
that it had the exhilaration of wine, yet I can find no better simile.
We shouted and whooped and breathed deep and wanted to do things.
The immediate surroundings of that mountain peak were absolutely barren
and absolutely still. How it was accomplished so high up I do not know,
but the entire structure on which we moved--I cannot say walked--was
composed of huge granite slabs. Sometimes these were laid side by side
like exaggerated paving flags; but oftener they were up-ended, piled in
a confusion over which we had precariously to scramble. And the
silence. It was so still that the very ringing in our ears came to a
prominence absurd and almost terrifying. The wind swept by noiseless,
because it had nothing movable to startle into noise. The solid
eternal granite lay heavy in its statics across the possibility of even
a whisper. The blue vault of heaven seemed emptied of sound.
But the wind did stream by unceasingly, weird in the unaccustomedness
of its silence. And the sky was blue as a turquoise, and the sun
burned fiercely, and the air was cold as the water of a mountain spring.
We stretched ourselves behind a slab of granite, and ate the luncheon
we had brought, cold venison steak and bread. By and by a marvelous
thing happened. A flash of wings sparkled in the air, a brave little
voice challenged us cheerily, a pert tiny rock-wren flirted his tail
and darted his wings and wanted to know what we were thinking of anyway
to enter his especial territory. And shortly from nowhere appeared two
Canada Jays, silent as the wind itself, hoping for a share in our meal.
Then the Tenderfoot discovered in a niche some strange, hardy alpine
flowers. So we established a connection, through these wondrous brave
children of the great mother, with the world of living things.
After we had eaten, which was the very first thing we did, we walked to
the edge of the main crest and looked over. That edge went straight
down. I do not know how far, except that even in contemplation we
entirely lost our breaths, before we had fallen half way to the bottom.
Then intervened a ledge, and in the ledge was a round glacier lake of
the very deepest and richest ultramarine you can find among your
paint-tubes, and on the lake floated cakes of dazzling white ice. That
was enough for the moment.
Next we leaped at one bound direct down to some brown hazy liquid shot
with the tenderest filaments of white. After analysis we discovered
the hazy brown liquid to be the earth of the plains, and the filaments
of white to be roads. Thus instructed we made out specks which were
towns. That was all.
The rest was too insignificant to classify without the aid of a
microscope.
And afterwards, across those plains, oh, many, many leagues, were the
Inyo and Panamit mountains, and beyond them Nevada and Arizona, and
blue mountains, and bluer, and still bluer rising, rising, rising
higher and higher until at the level of the eye they blended with the
heavens and were lost somewhere away out beyond the edge of the world.
We said nothing, but looked for a long time. Then we turned inland to
the wonderful great titans of mountains clear-cut in the crystalline
air. Never was such air. Crystalline is the only word which will
describe it, for almost it seemed that it would ring clearly when
struck, so sparkling and delicate and fragile was it. The crags and
fissures across the way--two miles across the way--were revealed
through it as through some medium whose transparence was absolute.
They challenged the eye, stereoscopic in their relief. Were it not for
the belittling effects of the distance, we felt that we might count the
frost seams or the glacial scorings on every granite apron. Far below
we saw the irregular outline of our lake. It looked like a pond a few
hundred feet down. Then we made out a pin-point of white moving
leisurely near its border. After a while we realized that the
pin-point of white was one of our pack-horses, and immediately the flat
little scene shot backwards as though moved from behind and
acknowledged its due number of miles. The miniature crags at its back
became gigantic; the peaks beyond grew thousands of feet in the
establishment of a proportion which the lack of "atmosphere" had
denied. We never succeeded in getting adequate photographs. As well
take pictures of any eroded little arroyo or granite cañon. Relative
sizes do not exist, unless pointed out.
"See that speck there?" we explain. "That's a big pine-tree. So by
that you can see how tremendous those cliffs really are."
And our guest looks incredulously at the speck.
There was snow, of course, lying cold in the hot sun. This phenomenon
always impresses a man when first he sees it. Often I have ridden with
my sleeves rolled up and the front of my shirt open, over drifts whose
edges, even, dripped no water. The direct rays seem to have absolutely
no effect. A scientific explanation I have never heard expressed; but
I suppose the cold nights freeze the drifts and pack them so hard that
the short noon heat cannot penetrate their density. I may be quite
wrong as to my reason, but I am entirely correct as to my fact.
Another curious thing is that we met our mosquitoes only rarely below
the snow-line. The camping in the Sierras is ideal for lack of these
pests. They never bite hard nor stay long even when found. But just
as sure as we approached snow, then we renewed acquaintance with our
old friends of the north woods.
It is analogous to the fact that the farther north you go into the fur
countries, the more abundant they become.
By and by it was time to descend. The camp lay directly below us. We
decided to go to it straight, and so stepped off on an impossibly steep
slope covered, not with the great boulders and granite blocks, but with
a fine loose shale. At every stride we stepped ten feet and slid five.
It was gloriously near to flying. Leaning far back, our arms spread
wide to keep our balance, spying alertly far ahead as to where we were
going to land, utterly unable to check until we encountered a
half-buried ledge of some sort, and shouting wildly at every plunge, we
fairly shot downhill. The floor of our valley rose to us as the earth
to a descending balloon. In three quarters of an hour we had reached
the first flat.
There we halted to puzzle over the trail of a mountain lion clearly
printed on the soft ground. What had the great cat been doing away up
there above the hunting country, above cover, above everything that
would appeal to a well-regulated cat of any size whatsoever? We
theorized at length, but gave it up finally, and went on. Then a
familiar perfume rose to our nostrils. We plucked curiously at a bed
of catnip and wondered whether the animal had journeyed so far to enjoy
what is always such a treat to her domestic sisters.
It was nearly dark when we reached camp. We found Wes contentedly
scraping away at the bearskins.
"Hello," said he, looking up with a grin. "Hello, you dam fools! I'VE
been having a good time. I've been fishing."
XVIII
THE GIANT FOREST
Every one is familiar, at least by reputation and photograph, with the
Big Trees of California. All have seen pictures of stage-coaches
driving in passageways cut through the bodies of the trunks; of troops
of cavalry ridden on the prostrate trees. No one but has heard of the
dancing-floor or the dinner-table cut from a single cross-section; and
probably few but have seen some of the fibrous bark of unbelievable
thickness. The Mariposa, Calaveras, and Santa Cruz groves have become
household names.
The public at large, I imagine, meaning by that you and me and our
neighbors, harbor an idea that the Big Tree occurs only as a remnant,
in scattered little groves carefully fenced and piously visited by the
tourist. What would we have said to the information that in the very
heart of the Sierras there grows a thriving forest of these great
trees; that it takes over a day to ride throughout that forest; and
that it comprises probably over five thousand specimens?
Yet such is the case. On the ridges and high plateaus north of the
Kaweah River is the forest I describe; and of that forest the trees
grow from fifteen to twenty-six feet in diameter. Do you know what
that means? Get up from your chair and pace off the room you are in.
If it is a very big room, its longest dimension would just about
contain one of the bigger trunks. Try to imagine a tree like that.
It must be a columnar tree straight and true as the supports of a Greek
facade. The least deviation from the perpendicular of such a mass
would cause it to fall. The limbs are sturdy like the arms of
Hercules, and grow out from the main trunk direct instead of dividing
and leading that main trunk to themselves, as is the case with other
trees. The column rises with a true taper to its full height; then is
finished with the conical effect of the top of a monument. Strangely
enough the frond is exceedingly fine, and the cones small.
When first you catch sight of a Sequoia, it does not impress you
particularly except as a very fine tree. Its proportions are so
perfect that its effect is rather to belittle its neighbors than to
show in its true magnitude. Then, gradually, as your experience takes
cognizance of surroundings,--the size of a sugar-pine, of a boulder, of
a stream flowing near,--the giant swells and swells before your very
vision until he seems at the last even greater than the mere statistics
of his inches had led you to believe. And after that first surprise
over finding the Sequoia something not monstrous but beautiful in
proportion has given place to the full realization of what you are
beholding, you will always wonder why no one who has seen has ever
given any one who has not seen an adequate idea of these magnificent
old trees.