[Illustration]
The Mountains of California
by John Muir
Contents
I THE SIERRA NEVADA
II THE GLACIERS
III THE SNOW
IV A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA
V THE PASSES
VI THE GLACIER LAKES
VII THE GLACIER MEADOWS
VIII THE FORESTS
IX THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL
X A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS
XI THE RIVER FLOODS
XII SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS
XIII THE WATER-OUZEL
XIV THE WILD SHEEP
XV IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS
XVI THE BEE-PASTURES
[Illustration: HOOFED LOCUSTS.]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
HOOFED LOCUSTS
MOUNT TAMALPAIS—NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE
MAP OF THE SIERRA NEVADA
MOUNT SHASTA
MOUNT HOOD
MAP OF THE GLACIER COUNTRY
MOUNT RAINIER; NORTH PUYALLUP GLACIER FROM EAGLE CLIFF
KOLANA ROCK, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY
GENERAL GRANT TREE, GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK
MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY
MAP OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, SHOWING PRESENT RESERVATION BOUNDARY
RANCHERIA FALLS, HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY
VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CAÑON
LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS
THE DEATH OF A LAKE
SHADOW LAKE (MERCED LAKE), YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY
LAKE STARR KING
VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST
EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA
VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST
NUT PINE
THE GROVE FORM
LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN CHARACTER OF WOODS
SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE
YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES
FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE
PINUS PONDEROSA
SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH
INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME
FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS
VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR
SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA GLACIERS
SEQUOIA GIGANTEA. VIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK
MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAÑON—YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR
STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS
STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH
GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES
A DWARF PINE
OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES
PATE VALLEY, SHOWING THE OAKS. TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
TRACK OF DOUGLAS SQUIRREL ONCE DOWN AND UP A PINE-TREE WHEN SHOWING OFF TO A SPECTATOR
SEEDS, WINGS, AND SCALE OF SUGAR PINE
TRYING THE BOW
A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS
YELLOW PINE AND LIBOCEDRUS
BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY
WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING
ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL
OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT
THE OUZEL AT HOME
YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-COUND AT THE FOOT OF INDIAN CAÑON
SNOW-BOUND ON MOUNT SHASTA
HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM
HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP
CROSSING A CAÑON STREAM
WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE
INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP
A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA
WILD BEE GARDEN
IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.—WHITE SAGE
A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE.—CARDINAL FLOWER
WILD BUCKWHEAT.—A BEE-RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS
A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT.—SPANISH BAYONET
A BEE-KEEPER’S CABIN
CHAPTER I
THE SIERRA NEVADA
Go where you may within the bounds of California, mountains are ever in
sight, charming and glorifying every landscape. Yet so simple and
massive is the topography of the State in general views, that the main
central portion displays only one valley, and two chains of mountains
which seem almost perfectly regular in trend and height: the Coast
Range on the west side, the Sierra Nevada on the east. These two ranges
coming together in curves on the north and south inclose a magnificent
basin, with a level floor more than 400 miles long, and from 35 to 60
miles wide. This is the grand Central Valley of California, the waters
of which have only one outlet to the sea through the Golden Gate. But
with this general simplicity of features there is great complexity of
hidden detail. The Coast Range, rising as a grand green barrier against
the ocean, from 2000 to 8000 feet high, is composed of innumerable
forest-crowned spurs, ridges, and rolling hill-waves which inclose a
multitude of smaller valleys; some looking out through long,
forest-lined vistas to the sea; others, with but few trees, to the
Central Valley; while a thousand others yet smaller are embosomed and
concealed in mild, round-browed hills, each, with its own climate,
soil, and productions.
Making your way through the mazes of the Coast Range to the summit of
any of the inner peaks or passes opposite San Francisco, in the clear
springtime, the grandest and most telling of all California landscapes
is outspread before you. At your feet lies the great Central Valley
glowing golden in the sunshine, extending north and south farther than
the eye can reach, one smooth, flowery, lake-like bed of fertile soil.
Along its eastern margin rises the mighty Sierra, miles in height,
reposing like a smooth, cumulous cloud in the sunny sky, and so
gloriously colored, and so luminous, it seems to be not clothed with
light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.
Along the top, and extending a good way down, you see a pale,
pearl-gray belt of snow; and below it a belt of blue and dark purple,
marking the extension of the forests; and along the base of the range a
broad belt of rose-purple and yellow, where lie the minor’s gold-fields
and the foot-hill gardens. All these colored belts blending smoothly
make a wall of light ineffably fine, and as beautiful as a rainbow, yet
firm as adamant.
When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, from the
summit of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or
plowed as yet, was one furred, rich sheet of golden compositae, and the
luminous wall of the mountains shone in all its glory. Then it seemed
to me the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but
the Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it,
rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light,
seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday
radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the alpenglow,
and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of
irised spray, it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light,
the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever
seen.
The Sierra is about 500 miles long, 70 miles wide, and from 7000 to
nearly 15,000 feet high. In general views no mark of man is visible on
it, nor anything to suggest the richness of the life it cherishes, or
the depth and grandeur of its sculpture. None of its magnificent
forest-crowned ridges rises much above the general level to publish its
wealth. No great valley or lake is seen, or river, or group of
well-marked features of any kind, standing out in distinct pictures.
Even the summit-peaks, so clear and high in the sky, seem comparatively
smooth and featureless. Nevertheless, glaciers are still at work in the
shadows of the peaks, and thousands of lakes and meadows shine and
bloom beneath them, and the whole range is furrowed with cañons to a
depth of from 2000 to 5000 feet, in which once flowed majestic
glaciers, and in which now flow and sing a band of beautiful rivers.
Though of such stupendous depth, these famous cañons are not raw,
gloomy, jagged-walled gorges, savage and inaccessible. With rough
passages here and there they still make delightful pathways for the
mountaineer, conducting from the fertile lowlands to the highest icy
fountains, as a kind of mountain streets full of charming life and
light, graded and sculptured by the ancient glaciers, and presenting,
throughout all their courses, a rich variety of novel and attractive
scenery, the most attractive that has yet been discovered in the
mountain-ranges of the world.
In many places, especially in the middle region of the western flank of
the range, the main cañons widen into spacious valleys or parks,
diversified like artificial landscape-gardens, with charming groves and
meadows, and thickets of blooming bushes, while the lofty, retiring
walls, infinitely varied in form and sculpture, are fringed with ferns,
flowering-plants of many species, oaks, and evergreens, which find
anchorage on a thousand narrow steps and benches; while the whole is
enlivened and made glorious with rejoicing streams that come dancing
and foaming over the sunny brows of the cliffs to join the shining
river that flows in tranquil beauty down the middle of each one of
them.
The walls of these park valleys of the Yosemite kind are made up of
rocks mountains in size, partly separated from each other by narrow
gorges and side-cañons; and they are so sheer in front, and so
compactly built together on a level floor, that, comprehensively seen,
the parks they inclose look like immense halls or temples lighted from
above. Every rock seems to glow with life. Some lean back in majestic
repose; others, absolutely sheer, or nearly so, for thousands of feet,
advance their brows in thoughtful attitudes beyond their companions,
giving welcome to storms and calms alike, seemingly conscious yet
heedless of everything going on about them, awful in stern majesty,
types of permanence, yet associated with beauty of the frailest and
most fleeting forms; their feet set in pine-groves and gay emerald
meadows, their brows in the sky; bathed in light, bathed in floods of
singing water, while snow-clouds, avalanches, and the winds shine and
surge and wreathe about them as the years go by, as if into these
mountain mansions Nature had taken pains to gather her choicest
treasures to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with
her.
[Illustration: MOUNT TAMALPAIS—NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE.]
Here, too, in the middle region of deepest cañons are the grandest
forest-trees, the Sequoia, king of conifers, the noble Sugar and Yellow
Pines, Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, and the Silver Firs, each a giant of
its kind, assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all
other coniferous forests in the world, both in the number of its
species and in the size and beauty of its trees. The winds flow in
melody through their colossal spires, and they are vocal everywhere
with the songs of birds and running water. Miles of fragrant ceanothus
and manzanita bushes bloom beneath them, and lily gardens and meadows,
and damp, ferny glens in endless variety of fragrance and color,
compelling the admiration of every observer. Sweeping on over ridge and
valley, these noble trees extend a continuous belt from end to end of
the range, only slightly interrupted by sheer-walled cañons at
intervals of about fifteen and twenty miles. Here the great burly brown
bears delight to roam, harmonizing with the brown boles of the trees
beneath which they feed. Deer, also, dwell here, and find food and
shelter in the ceanothus tangles, with a multitude of smaller people.
Above this region of giants, the trees grow smaller until the utmost
limit of the timber line is reached on the stormy mountain-slopes at a
height of from ten to twelve thousand feet above the sea, where the
Dwarf Pine is so lowly and hard beset by storms and heavy snow, it is
pressed into flat tangles, over the tops of which we may easily walk.
Below the main forest belt the trees likewise diminish in size, frost
and burning drought repressing and blasting alike.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE SIERRA NEVADA]
The rose-purple zone along the base of the range comprehends nearly all
the famous gold region of California. And here it was that miners from
every country under the sun assembled in a wild, torrent-like rush to
seek their fortunes. On the banks of every river, ravine, and gully
they have left their marks. Every gravel- and boulder-bed has been
desperately riddled over and over again. But in this region the pick
and shovel, once wielded with savage enthusiasm, have been laid away,
and only quartz-mining is now being carried on to any considerable
extent. The zone in general is made up of low, tawny, waving
foot-hills, roughened here and there with brush and trees, and
outcropping masses of slate, colored gray and red with lichens. The
smaller masses of slate, rising abruptly from the dry, grassy sod in
leaning slabs, look like ancient tombstones in a deserted
burying-ground. In early spring, say from February to April, the whole
of this foot-hill belt is a paradise of bees and flowers. Refreshing
rains then fall freely, birds are busy building their nests, and the
sunshine is balmy and delightful. But by the end of May the soil,
plants, and sky seem to have been baked in an oven. Most of the plants
crumble to dust beneath the foot, and the ground is full of cracks;
while the thirsty traveler gazes with eager longing through the burning
glare to the snowy summits looming like hazy clouds in the distance.
The trees, mostly _Quercus Douglasii_ and _Pinus Sabiniana_, thirty to
forty feet high, with thin, pale-green foliage, stand far apart and
cast but little shade. Lizards glide about on the rocks enjoying a
constitution that no drought can dry, and ants in amazing numbers,
whose tiny sparks of life seem to burn the brighter with the increasing
heat, ramble industriously in long trains in search of food. Crows,
ravens, magpies—friends in distress—gather on the ground beneath the
best shade-trees, panting with drooping wings and bills wide open,
scarce a note from any of them during the midday hours. Quails, too,
seek the shade during the heat of the day about tepid pools in the
channels of the larger mid-river streams. Rabbits scurry from thicket
to thicket among the ceanothus bushes, and occasionally a long-eared
hare is seen cantering gracefully across the wider openings. The nights
are calm and dewless during the summer, and a thousand voices proclaim
the abundance of life, notwithstanding the desolating effect of dry
sunshine on the plants and larger animals. The hylas make a
delightfully pure and tranquil music after sunset; and coyotes, the
little, despised dogs of the wilderness, brave, hardy fellows, looking
like withered wisps of hay, bark in chorus for hours. Mining-towns,
most of them dead, and a few living ones with bright bits of
cultivation about them, occur at long intervals along the belt, and
cottages covered with climbing roses, in the midst of orange and peach
orchards, and sweet-scented hay-fields in fertile flats where water for
irrigation may be had. But they are mostly far apart, and make scarce
any mark in general views.
Every winter the High Sierra and the middle forest region get snow in
glorious abundance, and even the foot-hills are at times whitened. Then
all the range looks like a vast beveled wall of purest marble. The
rough places are then made smooth, the death and decay of the year is
covered gently and kindly, and the ground seems as clean as the sky.
And though silent in its flight from the clouds, and when it is taking
its place on rock, or tree, or grassy meadow, how soon the gentle snow
finds a voice! Slipping from the heights, gathering in avalanches, it
booms and roars like thunder, and makes a glorious show as it sweeps
down the mountain-side, arrayed in long, silken streamers and
wreathing, swirling films of crystal dust.
The north half of the range is mostly covered with floods of lava, and
dotted with volcanoes and craters, some of them recent and perfect in
form, others in various stages of decay. The south half is composed of
granite nearly from base to summit, while a considerable number of
peaks, in the middle of the range, are capped with metamorphic slates,
among which are Mounts Dana and Gibbs to the east of Yosemite Valley.
Mount Whitney, the culminating point of the range near its southern
extremity, lifts its helmet-shaped crest to a height of nearly 14,700
feet. Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a height of
14,440 feet at the northern extremity, and forms a noble landmark for
all the surrounding region within a radius of a hundred miles. Residual
masses of volcanic rocks occur throughout most of the granitic southern
portion also, and a considerable number of old volcanoes on the flanks,
especially along the eastern base of the range near Mono Lake and
southward. But it is only to the northward that the entire range, from
base to summit, is covered with lava.
From the summit of Mount Whitney only granite is seen. Innumerable
peaks and spires but little lower than its own storm-beaten crags rise
in groups like forest-trees, in full view, segregated by cañons of
tremendous depth and ruggedness. On Shasta nearly every feature in the
vast view speaks of the old volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in
Oregon, the icy volcanoes of Mount Pitt and the Three Sisters rise
above the dark evergreen woods. Southward innumerable smaller craters
and cones are distributed along the axis of the range and on each
flank. Of these, Lassen’s Butte is the highest, being nearly 11,000
feet above sea-level. Miles of its flanks are reeking and bubbling with
hot springs, many of them so boisterous and sulphurous they seem over
ready to become spouting geysers like those of the Yellowstone.
The Cinder Cone near marks the most recent volcanic eruption in the
Sierra. It is a symmetrical truncated cone about 700 feet high, covered
with gray cinders and ashes, and has a regular unchanged crater on its
summit, in which a few small Two-leaved Pines are growing. These show
that the age of the cone is not less than eighty years. It stands
between two lakes, which a short time ago were one. Before the cone was
built, a flood of rough vesicular lava was poured into the lake,
cutting it in two, and, overflowing its banks, the fiery flood advanced
into the pine-woods, overwhelming the trees in its way, the charred
ends of some of which may still be seen projecting from beneath the
snout of the lava-stream where it came to rest. Later still there was
an eruption of ashes and loose obsidian cinders, probably from the same
vent, which, besides forming the Cinder Cone, scattered a heavy shower
over the surrounding woods for miles to a depth of from six inches to
several feet.
The history of this last Sierra eruption is also preserved in the
traditions of the Pitt River Indians. They tell of a fearful time of
darkness, when the sky was black with ashes and smoke that threatened
every living thing with death, and that when at length the sun appeared
once more it was red like blood.
Less recent craters in great numbers roughen the adjacent region; some
of them with lakes in their throats, others overgrown with trees and
flowers, Nature in these old hearths and firesides having literally
given beauty for ashes. On the northwest side of Mount Shasta there is
a subordinate cone about 3000 feet below the summit, which, has been
active subsequent to the breaking up of the main ice-cap that once
covered the mountain, as is shown by its comparatively unwasted crater
and the streams of unglaciated lava radiating from it. The main summit
is about a mile and a half in diameter, bounded by small crumbling
peaks and ridges, among which we seek in vain for the outlines of the
ancient crater.
These ruinous masses, and the deep glacial grooves that flute the sides
of the mountain, show that it has been considerably lowered and wasted
by ice; how much we have no sure means of knowing. Just below the
extreme summit hot sulphurous gases and vapor issue from irregular
fissures, mixed with spray derived from melting snow, the last feeble
expression of the mighty force that built the mountain. Not in one
great convulsion was Shasta given birth. The crags of the summit and
the sections exposed by the glaciers down the sides display enough of
its internal framework to prove that comparatively long periods of
quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which the
cooling lavas ceased to flow, and became permanent additions to the
bulk of the growing mountain. With alternate haste and deliberation
eruption succeeded eruption till the old volcano surpassed even its
present sublime height.
[Illustration: MOUNT SHASTA]
Standing on the icy top of this, the grandest of all the fire-mountains
of the Sierra, we can hardly fail to look forward to its next eruption.
Gardens, vineyards, homes have been planted confidingly on the flanks
of volcanoes which, after remaining steadfast for ages, have suddenly
blazed into violent action, and poured forth overwhelming floods of
fire. It is known that more than a thousand years of cool calm have
intervened between violent eruptions. Like gigantic geysers spouting
molten rock instead of water, volcanoes work and rest, and we have no
sure means of knowing whether they are dead when still, or only
sleeping.
Along the western base of the range a telling series of sedimentary
rocks containing the early history of the Sierra are now being studied.
But leaving for the present these first chapters, we see that only a
very short geological time ago, just before the coming on of that
winter of winters called the glacial period, a vast deluge of molten
rocks poured from many a chasm and crater on the flanks and summit of
the range, filling lake basins and river channels, and obliterating
nearly every existing feature on the northern portion. At length these
all-destroying floods ceased to flow. But while the great volcanic
cones built up along the axis still burned and smoked, the whole Sierra
passed under the domain of ice and snow. Then over the bald,
featureless, fire-blackened mountains, glaciers began to crawl,
covering them from the summits to the sea with a mantle of ice; and
then with infinite deliberation the work went on of sculpturing the
range anew. These mighty agents of erosion, halting never through
unnumbered centuries, crushed and ground the flinty lavas and granites
beneath their crystal folds, wasting and building until in the fullness
of time the Sierra was born again, brought to light nearly as we behold
it today, with glaciers and snow-crushed pines at the top of the range,
wheat-fields and orange-groves at the foot of it.
This change from icy darkness and death to life and beauty was slow, as
we count time, and is still going on, north and south, over all the
world wherever glaciers exist, whether in the form of distinct rivers,
as in Switzerland, Norway, the mountains of Asia, and the Pacific
Coast; or in continuous mantling folds, as in portions of Alaska,
Greenland, Franz-Joseph-Land, Nova Zembla, Spitzbergen, and the lands
about the South Pole. But in no country, as far as I know, may these
majestic changes be studied to better advantage than in the plains and
mountains of California.
Toward the close of the glacial period, when the snow-clouds became
less fertile and the melting waste of sunshine became greater, the
lower folds of the ice-sheet in California, discharging fleets of
icebergs into the sea, began to shallow and recede from the lowlands,
and then move slowly up the flanks of the Sierra in compliance with the
changes of climate. The great white mantle on the mountains broke up
into a series of glaciers more or less distinct and river-like, with
many tributaries, and these again were melted and divided into still
smaller glaciers, until now only a few of the smallest residual topmost
branches of the grand system exist on the cool slopes of the summit
peaks.
Plants and animals, biding their time, closely followed the retiring
ice, bestowing quick and joyous animation on the new-born landscapes.
Pine-trees marched up the sun-warmed moraines in long, hopeful files,
taking the ground and establishing themselves as soon as it was ready
for them; brown-spiked sedges fringed the shores of the newborn lakes;
young rivers roared in the abandoned channels of the glaciers; flowers
bloomed around the feet of the great burnished domes,—while with quick
fertility mellow beds of soil, settling and warming, offered food to
multitudes of Nature’s waiting children, great and small, animals as
well as plants; mice, squirrels, marmots, deer, bears, elephants, etc.
The ground burst into bloom with magical rapidity, and the young
forests into bird-song: life in every form warming and sweetening and
growing richer as the years passed away over the mighty Sierra so
lately suggestive of death and consummate desolation only.
It is hard without long and loving study to realize the magnitude of
the work done on these mountains during the last glacial period by
glaciers, which are only streams of closely compacted snow-crystals.
Careful study of the phenomena presented goes to show that the
pre-glacial condition of the range was comparatively simple: one vast
wave of stone in which a thousand mountains, domes, cañons, ridges,
etc., lay concealed. And in the development of these Nature chose for a
tool not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the
stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly
falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea.
Laboring harmoniously in united strength they crushed and ground and
wore away the rocks in their march, making vast beds of soil, and at
the same time developed and fashioned the landscapes into the
delightful variety of hill and dale and lordly mountain that mortals
call beauty. Perhaps more than a mile in average depth has the range
been thus degraded during the last glacial period,—a quantity of
mechanical work almost inconceivably great. And our admiration must be
excited again and again as we toil and study and learn that this vast
job of rockwork, so far-reaching in its influences, was done by agents
so fragile and small as are these flowers of the mountain clouds.
Strong only by force of numbers, they carried away entire mountains,
particle by particle, block by block, and cast them into the sea;
sculptured, fashioned, modeled all the range, and developed its
predestined beauty. All these new Sierra landscapes were evidently
predestined, for the physical structure of the rocks on which the
features of the scenery depend was acquired while they lay at least a
mile deep below the pre-glacial surface. And it was while these
features were taking form in the depths of the range, the particles of
the rocks marching to their appointed places in the dark with reference
to the coming beauty, that the particles of icy vapor in the sky
marching to the same music assembled to bring them to the light. Then,
after their grand task was done, these bands of snow-flowers, these
mighty glaciers, were melted and removed as if of no more importance
than dew destined to last but an hour. Few, however, of Nature’s agents
have left monuments so noble and enduring as they. The great granite
domes a mile high, the cañons as deep, the noble peaks, the Yosemite
valleys, these, and indeed nearly all other features of the Sierra
scenery, are glacier monuments.
Contemplating the works of these flowers of the sky, one may easily
fancy them endowed with life: messengers sent down to work in the
mountain mines on errands of divine love. Silently flying through the
darkened air, swirling, glinting, to their appointed places, they seem
to have taken counsel together, saying, “Come, we are feeble; let us
help one another. We are many, and together we will be strong. Marching
in close, deep ranks, let us roll away the stones from these mountain
sepulchers, and set the landscapes free. Let us uncover these
clustering domes. Here let us carve a lake basin; there, a Yosemite
Valley; here, a channel for a river with fluted steps and brows for the
plunge of songful cataracts. Yonder let us spread broad sheets of soil,
that man and beast may be fed; and here pile trains of boulders for
pines and giant Sequoias. Here make ground for a meadow; there, for a
garden and grove, making it smooth and fine for small daisies and
violets and beds of heathy bryanthus, spicing it well with crystals,
garnet feldspar, and zircon.” Thus and so on it has oftentimes seemed
to me sang and planned and labored the hearty snow-flower crusaders;
and nothing that I can write can possibly exaggerate the grandeur and
beauty of their work. Like morning mist they have vanished in sunshine,
all save the few small companies that still linger on the coolest
mountainsides, and, as residual glaciers, are still busily at work
completing the last of the lake basins, the last beds of soil, and the
sculpture of some of the highest peaks.
[Illustration: MOUNT HOOD]