IN THE YOSEMITE VALLEY.
From the Calaveras Big Trees to the Yosemite is one hundred and eight
miles, and it took me three days to make the journey. The wheelman,
Mr. J. A. Hasley, whom I met the day I reached Denver, who made a
good companion on the trip to Pike's Peak and across the plains to
Salt Lake City, and who bore the blazing hot sun of California as far
as the Trees, there decided not to continue the trip farther. For
several days it was evident he was beginning to lose interest in
sight-seeing, after a month's constant application to it, and when
he had the misfortune to lose his purse with something over twenty
dollars in it, he decided to get to San Francisco by the quickest and
cheapest route, which was by the Stockton boat, an opposition line of
steamers taking passengers for ten cents, a distance of one hundred
miles. So now I am alone again. The first of the three days' journey
was used up in coasting most of the fifteen miles down to Murphy's,
over the same road we had worked so hard in getting up to the Big
Trees, and then getting a few miles in a southerly direction beyond
the Stanislaus River.
During the afternoon, while riding along on the side of a high hill,
I passed a sign, which read "500 yards to the Natural Bridge, the
world's greatest wonder, and don't you forget that." Believing it to
be a fraud of some kind, I left the machine and walked down a steep
narrow path to the bottom of a ravine, perhaps 500 feet below the
level of the road. Here were two men clearing out the entrance to a
cave from which ran a good-sized stream of water. The surroundings
looked as if a land-slide had once choked up the ravine, but that
the stream of water had finally worked its way through underneath
the mass of rocks and earth, and had formed a tunnel perhaps four
hundred feet long and twenty or thirty feet high. Water was constantly
dripping from the roof of the tunnel, forming stalactites of various
sizes and shapes. To more fully impress me with the importance of his
discovery, the old bachelor who owned the place, stated that it had
taken forty-two millions of years to bring the place into its present
form and shape. Whether it had or not, I felt well paid for visiting
a place of which I knew nothing until I saw the sign.
The Stanislaus and the Tuolumne Rivers flow down from the Sierras in
a westerly direction, and in going southerly from the Big Trees to the
Yosemite, one must naturally cross them. The crossing is easy enough;
there is no trouble about that. It is getting down to them that causes
the trouble, and getting up away from them again. The profile of the
route I took resembled an immense letter W. It is a thousand feet
down to the Stanislaus River, and twelve hundred or more down to the
Tuolumne, and the two rivers are but a few miles apart.
The zigzag road down to the rivers is too steep and dangerous to
coast, and once down, walking is the only way up again. When I came
to the Tuolumne River, I believe I could have thrown a stone down
to the suspension bridge, a thousand feet or more below, and yet
it took four miles of walking to get down to it, and after climbing
up five miles farther, I could look across the valley about a mile
and see where I had been three or four hours before. I would not
believe it till I looked, but the thermometer was 105° down at the
bridge. Notwithstanding all this there was something about such
mountain scenery, combined with the roar of the river so far below,
that compensated for the heat and fatigue. Probably half the entire
distance between the Trees and the Valley had to be traveled afoot on
the hot road, but there is another grand view of the Tuolumne River,
and a small grove of big trees to vary the monotony of the last twenty
miles of hill climbing.
When we left Sacramento, it was with the vague impression that it
was somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred and fifty miles to
the Yosemite, but the first day out the distance was reduced to below
two hundred by some one of whom we made inquiries. We were entirely
ignorant of the nearest route, but by making frequent inquiries we
kept on, generally in the right direction. The second day the entire
distance was further reduced to one hundred and twenty-five miles,
then the distance from the Trees to the Valley was put at twenty-five
miles by some one who knew it all, but such good news was not lasting,
for the very next man who had "traveled over that section," said it
was one hundred and seventy-five miles between the two places.
And so it was throughout the entire trip: First, we were almost
there, then at night, perhaps fifty miles farther away than in the
morning. Finally, after six days of hard work, with one object, the
Yosemite constantly in view, the answer to an inquiry came back,
"eight miles down to the hotel," and in less than a mile, while
rounding a bend in the road, the grandest sight I have lived to see,
suddenly burst upon me. It was sudden, because I supposed it would
be five miles farther before I should see anything but fine trees
and bushes, and grand beyond description. I forgot my aching feet
and tired legs, and walked along almost unconscious of them, down
the zigzag road into the valley, which runs up in a northeasterly
direction, the road entering it at the lower end.
The word valley hardly describes it, for the sides are perpendicular
and almost a mile high, and this immense chasm is ten miles long and
hardly a mile wide. The roar of the Merced River, so many thousand
feet almost perpendicularly below, is heard even before one gets a
glimpse of the river itself or even the valley, and my first thought
was, is there any bottom to this chasm. On the opposite side of the
valley I recognized Bridal Veil Fall from the many views I had seen of
it, and a little farther down the road, which runs dangerously near
the edge of precipices four and five hundred feet high, El Capitan
came suddenly into sight, the most prominent object to be seen in
the whole valley from that point of view.
It was quite dark when I reached the hotel, which is half way up the
valley, and the next morning my feet were too tired to think of much
hill climbing, so I walked up the valley about a mile where it seems to
separate into two branches, and taking the right hand one, climbed up
a rocky trail to the Vernal Falls. Here the Merced, a comparatively
small stream, falls straight down three hundred and fifty feet,
sending mist and spray up the sides of the rocks in all directions,
making a roar that can be heard long before one gets in sight of
the falls. "You can't follow that trail up by the falls; we got wet
through trying it," said a couple of tourists whom I met just below
the falls, and they started off on another trail two miles farther
around. But I took the shorter route, up over slippery shelving rocks
that would let one slide quickly down into the pool where the waters
came thundering down from a height of perhaps thirty feet, and before I
got through the shower of mist and spray, up to the ladders that lead
to the top of the falls, I was wet through, too. Lying on the rocks,
the warm sun soon dried my clothes, and after a good meal at Snow's,
a small hotel situated midway between the Vernal and Nevada Falls,
I climbed up to the top of the Nevada Falls. Here the water comes
rushing down over high rocks, goes through a narrow gorge under the
bridge with a roar, and plunges over the cliff. Down a short distance,
the water strikes a projecting rock, and the whole river is sent out
with a twist into the air, one mass of white foam that spreads out
into hundreds of little white rockets that never explode, but fade
away into thin spray. Down farther, another projecting rock tears the
water to pieces again and sends it shooting out into the air, till,
when it reaches the bottom and has fallen a distance of fully seven
hundred feet, there is scarcely anything left of the water but foam.
All the afternoon I lay on the flat rock at the top of the falls,
and after sleeping and writing by turns, and resting all the time,
I became so accustomed to the roar that I hardly realized that the
water was rushing by me and falling almost directly down seven hundred
feet to the rocks below. The Cap of Liberty is a very appropriate
name for a mass of granite that rises up over half a mile within a
few rods of the top of the falls.
The next morning, after a good night's rest at Snow's, where the
roar of the falls makes a soothing sound, I started up the trail
for Clouds Rest. "O you can't miss your way. Just follow the trail,"
is what everybody says, landlords, guides, ranchmen, and everybody
of whom the question is asked: "Is there any trouble in finding the
way?" This was the case in Colorado and it is so here, and one starts
off on such trips with the impression that he has simply to follow
his nose and he will get there. But it is the easiest thing in the
world for a tenderfoot, like myself, to miss the way.
I had gone nearly three miles up the only fresh trail there was to
follow, when coming to a log hut I asked how far it was to Clouds
Rest. "This is not the way. You missed the trail back there a mile and
a half," and so I turned back and hunted for an hour, climbed over
boulders, small rocky ridges and fallen trees, tore one knee out of
my trousers, ripped open my stockings, and was on the point of going
back and giving up the whole trip, when I found what was the trail;
but a heavy rain had completely obliterated the foot prints three
days before and the trail itself was washed out of existence in many
places. But up I started and walked in the direction of the peak for
an hour or two, when the trail seemed to lead away from the object
of my trip, and so I started straight up the side of the mountain,
crawling up over rocks on my hands and knees, sometimes slipping back,
but always struggling on, till I finally reached the top. Then how
thankful I was that I had not turned back. The top of the peak is,
perhaps, twenty by thirty feet in area, and is ten thousand feet above
the sea. That is not very high compared with some mountain peaks, but
it is six thousand feet above the valley, and as I write these words
I can look down, almost straight down, eight hundred feet more than
a mile. Think of sitting in the front row of the gallery and looking
down into the parquet six thousand feet below. I am sitting in such
a place now, only there is no railing or protection in front. The
sight is enough to make one almost lose his senses. I had been on
top but a few minutes when there was a rumbling sound like thunder
not very far off, and I began to wish myself somewhere else. Whether
it was a rock falling or simply the reverberation of a gun I don't
know, but it made me feel very uncomfortable for a while. The peak
is the highest of any in sight for many miles, and one can look down
into the whole length of the Yosemite Valley as he would into a deep
trench. The river, looking white and slender down there so far, is
roaring on its downward course, but I can't hear it. The heavy pine
trees from one to two hundred feet high down there in the valley,
look like standing evergreens in a meadow. El Capitan, the Half Dome,
the Cap of Liberty, the North Dome, and all the other immense peaks
that rise up three or four thousand feet above the valley, I can look
down on as a tall man upon a crowd of boys.
A swallow rushed by me with the whiz of a bullet, making my heart
beat with excitement for the moment, and then I began to think how
nice it would be to fly down to some of the peaks below; but when
a person begins to think of flying in such a place it is dangerous
business. He might suddenly take it into his head to try it. The
peaks to the east are all covered with snow, and the whole country
for miles in every direction has a very light colored appearance,
the granite of which it is all composed giving it that look. The mass
of rocks that are entirely bare, free from all kinds of vegetation,
is fully one-half of the entire area of the country within view.
Straight across the valley, and only a little lower down, is a mass
of granite, smooth as a floor, containing hundreds of acres, with
scarcely a tree or shrub on it. It is less than a mile away, and yet
what an awful chasm between us, a chasm deeper than it is wide. The
distant views from Pike's Peak are more extended, but there are no
such perpendicular heights as are here seen on all sides.
I cannot give any good reason for feeling so, but it takes all the
courage I have to stay here and eat my luncheon and write what little
I have written. Sitting in the middle of this small area the only
objects seen over the edge are from five to six thousand feet below,
and it is only by going near the edge, which I don't like to do,
that I can see the immense granite mountain that supports this small,
flat surface, and the sight of that reassures me. But I can't endure
it any longer. It is not pleasant up here alone. I feel all the time
as if I was just on the point of losing control of myself. I keep
thinking what if I should jump off, how would it feel going down a
mile or more through the air. People who talk contemptuously of what
is called altitude sickness can never have experienced it.
After an hour's unpleasant stay on top I got back to Nevada Falls all
right and then took the new trail around to Glacier Point, where,
after twenty-five miles of climbing during the day, I was ready
to rest for the night. The next morning I went out to the point,
or, that is, within ten feet or so of the edge. Glacier Point is
nearly opposite Yosemite Falls, and a magnificent view of the valley,
including both its branches, is to be had from this place, although
it is nearly three thousand feet lower than Clouds Rest. The rock
projects out over the edge of the cliff, and an iron railing has
been placed there. They say, I don't know anything about it, myself,
for I did not go out to this railing, but they say you can look down
under yourself thirty-two hundred feet into the valley below. The
feeling was sufficiently unpleasant the first time I went up the
winding stairs on the inside of the dome of the capitol at Hartford,
but here the height is over twelve times as great, and I did not care
to try it, but some do go out there and have their pictures taken.
Down the trail to Barnard's again, and up the opposite side of the
valley to the foot of the Upper Yosemite Falls. Here a small stream
plunges over the edge of the rocks and falls directly down over sixteen
hundred feet, ten times as high as Niagara; before the water reaches
the bottom the wind has reduced it to little less than spray, and
just before I got to the foot of the cliff the wind suddenly changed
and I was drenched to my skin before I could get away. These falls
produce a peculiar sound down in the valley that is not heard at
all near them. It is that of falling rocks or suppressed thunder,
caused probably by the water being blown against the face of the
precipice. Whether it was the small volume of water compared with the
Nevada Falls, or having my ardor so suddenly dampened by the shower
bath, but the Yosemite Falls did not impress me as the other falls I
had seen did. On the way back, a gentleman just ahead of me suddenly
came upon a rattlesnake a yard long, and the man jumped into the air,
and ran back like a deer, but his courage returning he struck the
snake a well-directed blow with a stone, and now has the four rattles
in his pocket as a trophy.
On the way out of the valley, in the afternoon, I stopped at the
Bridal Veil Falls, which are nine hundred feet high. Here I met a
lady painting near the falls. Two days before that I first saw her at
the Nevada Falls, where, before night, she had put upon canvas a most
striking picture of the falls. Now she was doing the same here, and we
sat upon the rocks at the foot of the falls and had a most delightful
talk, for nearly an hour, on the advantages we had (she traveled
horseback) over common tourists who depend upon cars and stages.
Like the Yosemite, these falls reach the bottom all blown to spray,
and I began to perceive that after three days of this tremendous
sight-seeing such common heights as one or two thousand feet were
passed by unnoticed, and it took some such prominent figure as
El Capitan to awaken any special interest. This solid, smooth,
perpendicular piece of granite juts out boldly into the valley over
three thousand feet high, and it easily holds first place in point
of interest at the south end of the valley, as the Half Dome does at
the north end.
The Half Dome rises above the valley four thousand eight hundred feet,
and as its name indicates, one-half of the upper portion is rounded
and smooth like any dome, but it is split in half; the other side
being vertical from the top down for one thousand five hundred feet,
and the lower portion descending nearly perpendicularly. And as I
climb up out of the valley, over the Big Oak Flat route, and take a
last look at the gigantic object below, I try to form some idea how
this valley, different from any other in the world, could have been
formed. But all attempted theorizing upon this stupendous subject
proves unsatisfactory, and I am more than willing to leave the problem
for some other fellow to solve.
Distance traveled on the wheel, 2,874 miles.