MOUNTAINEERING IN THE
SIERRA NEVADA
MOUNTAINEERING IN THE
SIERRA NEVADA
BY
CLARENCE KING
“Altiora petimus”
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1902
COPYRIGHT, 1871, BY
JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
To
JOSIAH DWIGHT WHITNEY
AND HIS STAFF
MY COMRADES OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CALIFORNIA
THESE MOUNTAINEERING NOTES
ARE CORDIALLY INSCRIBED
NOTE
This book, originally published in 1871, has long been out of print,
though in constant demand. Its publication was discontinued owing to the
desire of the author to make certain emendations in the text, a work
that the arduous activities of a professional scientific life left him
no leisure to perform. A few changes, indicated by him, have been made.
Otherwise the text of the present edition is that of the last, the
revised and enlarged edition of 1874. Only the fastidiousness to which
the extraordinary literary quality of the book is itself due, could
suggest further modification of what is here republished with the motive
of restoring to print and circulation a work too perfect in form and of
too rare a quality to be allowed to lapse. It is accordingly with the
view of renewing the accessibility of a genuine classic of American
literature that the present edition is presented.
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
Mountaineers will realize, from these descriptions of Sierra climbs, how
few dangers we encountered which might not have been avoided by time and
caution. Since the uncertain perils of glacier work and snow copings do
not exist in California, except on the northeast flank of Mount Shasta,
our climbs proved safe and easy in comparison with the more serious
Alpine ascents. And now that the topography of the higher Sierra has
been all explored by the Geological Survey, nearly every peak is found
to have an accessible side. Our difficulties and our joys were those of
the pioneer.
My own share in the great work of exploring the Sierra under Professor
Whitney has been small indeed beside that of the senior assistants of
the Survey, Professors Brewer and Hoffmann. Theirs were the long, hard
years of patient labor, theirs the real conquest of a great terra
incognita; and if in these chapters I have not borne repeated witness to
their skill and courage, it is not because I have failed in warm
appreciation, but simply because my own mountaineering has always been
held by me as of slight value, and not likely to be weighed against
their long-continued service.
There are turning-points in all men’s lives which must give them both
pause and retrospect. In long Sierra journeys the mountaineer looks
forward eagerly, gladly, till pass or ridge-crest is gained, and then,
turning with a fonder interest, surveys the scene of his march; letting
the eye wander over each crag and valley, every blue hollow of pine-land
or sunlit gem of alpine meadow; discerning perchance some gentle
reminder of himself in yon thin blue curl of smoke floating dimly upward
from the smouldering embers of his last camp-fire. With a lingering look
he starts forward, and the closing pass-gate with its granite walls
shuts away the retrospect, yet the delightful picture forever after
hangs on the gallery wall of his memory. It is thus with me about
mountaineering; the pass which divides youth from manhood is traversed,
and the serious service of science must hereafter claim me. But as the
cherished memories of Sierra climbs go ever with me, I may not lack the
inspiring presence of sunlit snow nor the calming influence of those
broad noble views. It is the mountaineer’s privilege to carry through
life this wealth of unfading treasure. At his summons the white peaks
loom above him as of old; the camp-fire burns once more for him, his
study walls recede in twilight revery, and around him are gathered again
stately columns of pine. If the few chapters I have gathered from these
agreeable memories to make this little book are found to possess an
interest, if along the peaks I have sought to describe there is
reflected, however faintly, a ray of that pure, splendid light which
thrills along the great Sierra, I shall not have amused myself with my
old note-books in vain.
NEW YORK, March, 1874.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE RANGE 1
II. THROUGH THE FOREST. 1864 30
III. THE ASCENT OF MOUNT TYNDALL. 1864 60
IV. THE DESCENT OF MOUNT TYNDALL. 1864 94
V. THE NEWTYS OF PIKE. 1864 117
VI. KAWEAH’S RUN. 1864 139
VII. AROUND YOSEMITE WALLS. 1864 165
VIII. A SIERRA STORM. 1864 191
IX. MERCED RAMBLINGS. 1866 219
X. CUT-OFF COPPLES’S. 1870 254
XI. SHASTA. 1870 275
XII. SHASTA FLANKS. 1870 303
XIII. MOUNT WHITNEY. 1871-1873 324
XIV. THE PEOPLE 366
MOUNTAINEERING IN THE SIERRA NEVADA
I
THE RANGE
The western margin of this continent is built of a succession of
mountain chains folded in broad corrugations, like waves of stone upon
whose seaward base beat the mild, small breakers of the Pacific.
By far the grandest of all these ranges is the Sierra Nevada, a long and
massive uplift lying between the arid deserts of the Great Basin and the
Californian exuberance of grain-field and orchard; its eastern slope, a
defiant wall of rock plunging abruptly down to the plain; the western, a
long, grand sweep, well watered and overgrown with cool, stately
forests; its crest a line of sharp, snowy peaks springing into the sky
and catching the _alpenglow_ long after the sun has set for all the rest
of America.
The Sierras have a structure and a physical character which are
individual and unique. To Professor Whitney and his corps of the
Geological Survey of California is due the honor of first gaining a
scientific knowledge of the form, plan, and physical conditions of the
Sierras. How many thousands of miles, how many toilsome climbs, we made,
and what measure of patience came to be expended, cannot be told; but
the general harvest is gathered in, and already a volume of great
interest (the forerunner of others) has been published.
The ancient history of the Sierras goes back to a period when the
Atlantic and Pacific were one ocean, in whose depths great accumulations
of sand and powdered stone were gathering and being spread out in level
strata.
It is not easy to assign the age in which these submarine strata were
begun, nor exactly the boundaries of the embryo continents from whose
shores the primeval breakers ground away sand and gravel enough to form
such incredibly thick deposits.
It appears most likely that the Sierra region was submerged from the
earliest Palæozoic, or perhaps even the Azoic, age. Slowly the deep
ocean valley filled up, until, in the late Triassic period, the
uppermost tables were in water shallow enough to drift the sands and
clays into wave and ripple ridges. With what immeasurable patience, what
infinite deliberation, has nature amassed the materials for these
mountains! Age succeeded age; form after form of animal and plant life
perished in the unfolding of the great plan of development, while the
suspended sands of that primeval sea sank slowly down and were stretched
in level plains upon the floor of stone.
Early in the Jurassic period an impressive and far-reaching movement of
the earth’s crust took place, during which the bed of the ocean rose in
crumpled waves towering high in the air and forming the mountain
framework of the Western United States. This system of upheavals reached
as far east as Middle Wyoming and stretched from Mexico probably into
Alaska. Its numerous ridges and chains, having a general northwest
trend, were crowded together in one broad zone whose western and most
lofty member is the Sierra Nevada. During all of the Cretaceous period,
and a part of the Tertiary, the Pacific beat upon its seaward
foot-hills, tearing to pieces the rocks, crumbling and grinding the
shores, and, drifting the powdered stone and pebbles beneath its waves,
scattered them again in layers. This submarine table-land fringed the
whole base of the range and extended westward an unknown distance under
the sea. To this perpetual sea-wearing of the Sierra Nevada base was
added the detritus made by the cutting out of cañons, which in great
volumes continually poured into the Pacific, and was arranged upon its
bottom by currents.
In the late Tertiary period a chapter of very remarkable events
occurred. For a second time the evenly laid beds of the sea-bottom were
crumpled by the shrinking of the earth. The ocean flowed back into
deeper and narrower limits, and, fronting the Sierra Nevada, appeared
the present system of Coast Ranges. The intermediate depression, or
sea-trough as I like to call it, is the valley of California, and is
therefore a more recent continental feature than the Sierra Nevada. At
once then from the folded rocks of the Coast Ranges, from the Sierra
summits and the inland plateaus, and from numberless vents caused by the
fierce dynamical action, there poured out a general deluge of melted
rock. From the bottom of the sea sprang up those fountains of lava whose
cooled material forms many of the islands of the Pacific, and all along
the coast of America, like a system of answering beacons, blazed up
volcanic chimneys. The rent mountains glowed with outpourings of molten
stone. Sheets of lava poured down the slopes of the Sierra, covering an
immense proportion of its surface, only the high granite and metamorphic
peaks reaching above the deluge. Rivers and lakes floated up in a cloud
of steam and were gone forever. The misty sky of these volcanic days
glowed with innumerable lurid reflections, and at intervals along the
crest of the range great cones arose, blackening the sky with their
plumes of mineral smoke. At length, having exhausted themselves, the
volcanoes burned lower and lower, and at last by far the greater number
went out altogether. With a tendency to extremes which “development”
geologists would hesitate to admit, nature passed under the dominion of
ice and snow.
The vast amount of ocean water which had been vaporized floated over the
land, condensed upon hill-tops, chilled the lavas, and finally buried
beneath an icy covering all the higher parts of the mountain system.
According to well-known laws, the overburdened summits unloaded
themselves by a system of glaciers. The whole Sierra crest was one pile
of snow, from whose base crawled out the ice-rivers, wearing their
bodies into the rock, sculpturing as they went the forms of valleys, and
brightening the surface of their tracks by the friction of stones and
sand which were bedded, armor-like, in their nether surface. Having made
their way down the slope of the Sierra, they met a lowland temperature
of sufficient warmth to arrest and waste them. At last, from causes
which are too intricate to be discussed at present, they shrank slowly
back into the higher summit fastnesses, and there gradually perished,
leaving only a crest of snow. The ice melted, and upon the whole
plateau, little by little, a thin layer of soil accumulated, and,
replacing the snow, there sprang up a forest of pines, whose shadows
fall pleasantly to-day over rocks which were once torrents of lava and
across the burnished pathways of ice. Rivers, pure and sparkling, thread
the bottom of these gigantic glacier valleys. The volcanoes are extinct,
and the whole theatre of this impressive geological drama is now the
most glorious and beautiful region of America.
As the characters of the _Zauberflöte_ passed safely through the trial
of fire and the desperate ordeal of water, so, through the terror of
volcanic fires and the chilling empire of ice, has the great Sierra come
into the present age of tranquil grandeur.
Five distinct periods divide the history of the range. First, the slow
gathering of marine sediment within the early ocean during which
incalculable ages were consumed. Second, in the early Jurassic period
this level sea-floor came suddenly to be lifted into the air and
crumpled in folds, through whose yawning fissures and ruptured axes
outpoured wide zones of granite. Third, the volcanic age of fire and
steam. Fourth, the glacial period, when the Sierras were one broad field
of snow, with huge dragons of ice crawling down its slopes, and wearing
their armor into the rocks. Fifth, the present condition, which the
following chapters will describe, albeit in a desultory and inadequate
manner.
From latitude 35° to latitude 39° 30´ the Sierra lifts a continuous
chain, the profile culminating in several groups of peaks separated by
deeply depressed curves or sharp notches, the summits varying from eight
to fifteen thousand feet, seven to twelve thousand being the common
range of passes. Near its southern extremity, in San Bernardino County,
the range is cleft to the base with magnificent gateways opening through
into the desert. From Walker’s Pass for two hundred miles northward the
sky line is more uniformly elevated; the passes averaging nine thousand
feet high, the actual summit a chain of peaks from thirteen to fifteen
thousand feet. This serrated snow and granite outline of the Sierra
Nevada, projected against the cold, clear blue, is the blade of white
teeth which suggested its Spanish name.
Northward still the range gradually sinks; high peaks covered with
perpetual snow are rarer and rarer. Its summit rolls on in broken,
forest-covered ridges, now and then overlooked by a solitary pile of
metamorphic or irruptive rock. At length, in Northern California, where
it breaks down in a compressed medley of ridges, and open, level
expanses of plain, the axis is maintained by a line of extinct volcanoes
standing above the lowland in isolated positions. The most lofty of
these, Mount Shasta, is a cone of lava fourteen thousand four hundred
and forty feet high, its broad base girdled with noble forests, which
give way at eight thousand feet to a cap of glaciers and snow.
Beyond this to the northward the extension of the range is quite
difficult to definitely assign, for, geologically speaking, the Sierra
Nevada system occupies a broad area in Oregon, consisting of several
prominent mountain groups, while in a physical sense the chain ceases
with Shasta; the Cascades, which are the apparent topographical
continuation, being a tertiary structure formed chiefly of lavas which
have been outpoured long subsequent to the main upheaval of the Sierra.
It is not easy to point out the actual southern limit either, because
where the mountain mass descends into the Colorado desert it comes in
contact with a number of lesser groups of hills, which ramify in many
directions, all losing themselves beneath the tertiary and quartenary
beds of the desert.
For four hundred miles the Sierras are a definite ridge, broad and high,
and having the form of a sea-wave. Buttresses of sombre-hued rock,
jutting at intervals from a steep wall, form the abrupt eastern slopes;
irregular forests, in scattered growth, huddle together near the snow.
The lower declivities are barren spurs, sinking into the sterile flats
of the Great Basin.
Long ridges of comparatively gentle outline characterize the western
side, but this sloping table is scored from summit to base by a system
of parallel transverse cañons, distant from one another often less than
twenty-five miles. They are ordinarily two or three thousand feet deep,
falling at times in sheer, smooth-fronted cliffs, again in sweeping
curves like the hull of a ship, again in rugged, V-shaped gorges, or
with irregular, hilly flanks opening at last through gateways of low,
rounded foot-hills out upon the horizontal plain of the San Joaquin and
Sacramento.
Every cañon carries a river, derived from constant melting of the
perpetual snow, which threads its way down the mountain--a feeble type
of those vast ice-streams and torrents that formerly discharged the
summit accumulation of ice and snow while carving the cañons out from
solid rock. Nowhere on the continent of America is there more positive
evidence of the cutting power of rapid streams than in these very
cañons. Although much is due to this cause, the most impressive passages
of the Sierra valleys are actual ruptures of the rock; either the
engulfment of masses of great size, as Professor Whitney supposes in
explanation of the peculiar form of the Yosemite, or a splitting asunder
in yawning cracks. From the summits down half the distance to the
plains, the cañons are also carved out in broad, round curves by glacial
action. The summit-gorges themselves are altogether the result of frost
and ice. Here, even yet, may be studied the mode of blocking out
mountain peaks; the cracks riven by unequal contraction and expansion of
the rock; the slow leverage of ice, the storm, the avalanche.
The western descent, facing a moisture-laden, aërial current from the
Pacific, condenses on its higher portions a great amount of water, which
has piled upon the summits in the form of snow, and is absorbed upon the
upper plateau by an exuberant growth of forest. This prevalent wind,
which during most undisturbed periods blows continuously from the ocean,
strikes first upon the western slope of the Coast Range, and there
discharges, both as fog and rain, a very great sum of moisture; but,
being ever reinforced, it blows over their crest, and, hurrying
eastward, strikes the Sierras at about four thousand feet above
sea-level. Below this line the foothills are oppressed by an habitual
dryness, which produces a rusty olive tone throughout nearly all the
large conspicuous vegetation, scorches the red soil, and, during the
long summer, overlays the whole region with a cloud of dust.
Dull and monotonous in color, there are, however, certain elements of
picturesqueness in this lower zone. Its oak-clad hills wander out into
the great, plain-like coast promontories, enclosing yellow or, in
spring-time, green bays of prairie. The hill-forms are rounded, or
stretch in long, longitudinal ridges, broken across by the river cañons.
Above this zone of red earth, softly modelled undulations, and dull,
grayish groves, with a chain of mining towns, dotted ranches and
vineyards, rise the swelling middle heights of the Sierras, a broad,
billowy plateau cut by sharp, sudden cañons, and sweeping up, with its
dark, superb growth of coniferous forest to the feet of the
summit-peaks.
For a breadth of forty miles, all along the chain, is spread this
continuous belt of pines. From Walker’s Pass to Sitka one may ride
through an unbroken forest, and will find its character and aspect vary
constantly in strict accordance with the laws of altitude and moisture,
each of the several species of coniferous trees taking its position with
an almost mathematical precision. Where low gaps in the Coast Range give
free access to the western wind, there the forest sweeps downward and
encamps upon the foot-hills, and, continuing northward, it advances
toward the coast, securing for itself over this whole distance about the
same physical conditions; so that a tree which finds itself at home on
the shore of Puget’s Sound, in the latitude of Middle California has
climbed the Sierras to a height of six thousand feet, finding there its
normal requirements of damp, cool air. As if to economize the whole
surface of the Sierra, the forest is mainly made up of twelve species of
coniferæ, each having its own definitely circumscribed limits of
temperature, and yet being able successively to occupy the whole middle
Sierra up to the foot of the perpetual snow. The average range in
altitude of each species is about twenty-five hundred feet, so that you
pass imperceptibly from the zone of one species into that of the next.
Frequently three or four are commingled, their varied habit,
characteristic foliage, and richly colored trunks uniting to make the
most stately of forests.
In the centre of the coniferous belt is assembled the most remarkable
family of trees. Those which approach the perpetual snow are imperfect,
gnarled, storm-bent; full of character and suggestion, but lacking the
symmetry, the rich, living green, and the great size of their lower
neighbors. In the other extreme of the pine-belt, growing side by side
with foothill oaks, is an equally imperfect species, which, although
attaining a very great size, still has the air of an abnormal tree. The
conditions of drought on the one hand, and rigorous storms on the other,
injure and blast alike, while the more verdant centre, furnishing the
finest conditions, produces a forest whose profusion and grandeur fill
the traveller with the liveliest admiration.
Toward the south the growth of the forest is more open and grove-like,
the individual trees becoming proportionally larger and reaching their
highest development. Northward its density increases, to the injury of
individual pines, until the branches finally interlock, and at last on
the shores of British Columbia the trunks are so densely assembled that
a dead tree is held in its upright position by the arms of its fellows.
At the one extremity are magnificent purple shafts ornamented with an
exquisitely delicate drapery of pale golden and dark blue green; at the
other the slender spars stand crowded together like the fringe of masts
girdling a prosperous port. The one is a great, continuous grove, on
whose sunny openings are innumerable brilliant parterres; the other is a
dismal thicket, a sort of gigantic canebrake, void of beauty, dark,
impenetrable, save by the avenues of streams, where one may float for
days between sombre walls of forest. From one to the other of these
extremes is an imperceptible transition; only in the passage of hundreds
of miles does the forest seem to thicken northward, or the majesty of
the single trees appear to be impaired by their struggle for room.
Near the centre is the perfection of forest. At the south are the finest
specimen trees, at the north the densest accumulations of timber. In
riding throughout this whole region and watching the same species from
the glorious ideal life of the south gradually dwarfed toward the
north, until it becomes a mere wand; or in climbing from the scattered,
drought-scourged pines of the foot-hills up through the zone of finest
vegetation to those summit crags, where, struggling against the power of
tempest and frost, only a few of the bravest trees succeed in clinging
to the rocks and to life,--one sees with novel effect the inexorable
sway which climatic conditions hold over the kingdom of trees.
Looking down from the summit, the forest is a closely woven vesture,
which has fallen over the body of the range, clinging closely to its
form, sinking into the deep cañons, covering the hill-tops with even
velvety folds, and only lost here and there where a bold mass of rock
gives it no foothold, or where around the margin of the mountain lakes
bits of alpine meadow lie open to the sun.
Along its upper limit the forest zone grows thin and irregular; black
shafts of alpine pines and firs clustering on sheltered slopes, or
climbing in disordered processions up broken and rocky faces. Higher,
the last gnarled forms are passed, and beyond stretches the rank of
silent, white peaks, a region of rock and ice lifted above the limit of
life.
In the north, domes and cones of volcanic formation are the summit, but
for about three hundred miles in the south it is a succession of sharp
granite aiguilles and crags. Prevalent among the granitic forms are
singularly perfect conoidal domes, whose symmetrical figures, were it
not for their immense size, would impress one as having an artificial
finish.
The alpine gorges are usually wide and open, leading into amphitheatres,
whose walls are either rock or drifts of never-melting snow. The
sculpture of the summit is very evidently glacial. Beside the ordinary
phenomena of polished rocks and moraines, the larger general forms are
clearly the work of frost and ice; and, although this ice-period is only
feebly represented to-day, yet the frequent avalanches of winter and
freshly scored mountain flanks are constant suggestions of the past.
Strikingly contrasted are the two countries bordering the Sierra on
either side. Along the western base is the plain of California, an
elliptical basin four hundred and fifty miles long by sixty-five broad;
level, fertile, well watered, half tropically warmed; checkered with
farms of grain, ranches of cattle, orchard and vineyard, and homes of
commonplace opulence, towns of bustling thrift. Rivers flow over it,
bordered by lines of oaks which seem characterless or gone to sleep,
when compared with the vitality, the spring, and attitude of the same
species higher up on the foot-hills. It is a region of great industrial
future within a narrow range, but quite without charms for the student
of science. It has a certain impressive breadth when seen from some
overlooking eminence, or when in early spring its brilliant carpet of
flowers lies as a foreground over which the dark pine-land and white
crest of the Sierra loom indistinctly.
From the Mexican frontier up into Oregon, a strip of actual desert lies
under the east slope of the great chain, and stretches eastward
sometimes as far as five hundred miles, varied by successions of bare,
white ground, effervescing under the hot sun with alkaline salts, plains
covered by the low, ashy-hued sage-plant, high, barren, rocky ranges,
which are folds of metamorphic rocks, and piled-up lavas of bright red
or yellow colors; all over-arched by a sky which is at one time of a
hot, metallic brilliancy, and again the tenderest of evanescent purple
or pearl.
Utterly opposed are the two aspects of the Sierras from these east and
west approaches. I remember how stern and strong the chain looked to me
when I first saw it from the Colorado desert.
It was in early May, 1866. My companion, Mr. James Terry Gardiner, and I
got into the saddle on the bank of the Colorado River, and headed
westward over the road from La Paz to San Bernardino. My mount was a
tough, magnanimous sort of mule, who at all times did his very best;
that of my friend, an animal still hardier, but altogether wanting in
moral attributes. He developed a singular antipathy for my mule, and
utterly refused to march within a quarter of a mile of me; so that over
a wearying route of three hundred miles we were obliged to travel just
beyond the reach of a shout. Hour after hour, plodding along at a
dog-trot, we pursued our solitary way without the spice of
companionship, and altogether deprived of the melodramatic satisfaction
of loneliness.
Far ahead of us a white line traced across the barren plain marked our
road. It seemed to lead to nowhere, except onward over more and more
arid reaches of desert. Rolling hills of crude color and low, gloomy
contour rose above the general level. Here and there the eye was
arrested by a towering crag, or an elevated, rocky mountain group, whose
naked sides sank down into the desert, unrelieved by the shade of a
solitary tree. The whole aspect of nature was dull in color, and gloomy
with an all-pervading silence of death. Although the summer had not
fairly opened, a torrid sun beat down with cruel severity, blinding the
eye with its brilliance, and inducing a painful slow fever. The very
plants, scorched to a crisp, were ready, at the first blast of a
sirocco, to be whirled away and ground to dust. Certain bare zones lay
swept clean of the last dry stems across our path, marking the track of
whirlwinds. Water was only found at intervals of sixty or seventy miles,
and, when reached, was more of an aggravation than a pleasure,--bitter,
turbid, and scarce; we rode for it all day, and berated it all night,
only to leave it at sunrise with a secret fear that we might fare worse
next time.
About noon on the third day of our march, having reached the borders of
the Chabazon Valley, we emerged from a rough, rocky gateway in the
mountains, and I paused while my companion made up his quarter of a
mile, that we might hold council and determine our course, for the water
question was becoming serious; springs which looked cool and seductive
on our maps proving to be dried up and obsolete upon the ground.
A fresh mule and a lively man get along, to be sure, well enough; but
after all it is at best with perfunctory tolerance on both sides, a sort
of diplomatic interchange of argument, the man suggesting with bridle,
or mildly admonishing with spurs; but when the high contracting parties
get tired, the _entente cordiale_ goes to pieces, and actual hostilities
open, in which I never knew a man to come out the better.
I had noticed a shambling uncertainty during the last half-hour’s trot,
and those invariable indicators, “John’s” long, furry ears, either
lopped diagonally down on one side, or lay back with ill omen upon his
neck.
Gardiner reached me in a few minutes, and we dismounted to rest the
tired mules, and to scan the landscape before us. We were on the margin
of a great basin whose gently shelving rim sank from our feet to a
perfectly level plain, which stretched southward as far as the eye could
reach, bounded by a dim, level horizon, like the sea, but walled in to
the west, at a distance of about forty miles, by the high, frowning wall
of the Sierras. This plain was a level floor, as white as marble, and
into it the rocky spurs from our own mountain range descended like
promontories into the sea. Wide, deeply indented white bays wound in and
out among the foot-hills, and, traced upon the barren slopes of this
rocky coast, was marked, at a considerable elevation above the plain,
the shore-line of an ancient sea,--a white stain defining its former
margin as clearly as if the water had but just receded. On the dim,
distant base of the Sierras the same primeval beach could be seen. This
water-mark, the level, white valley, and the utter absence upon its
surface of any vegetation, gave a strange and weird aspect to the
country, as if a vast tide had but just ebbed, and the brilliant,
scorching sun had hurriedly dried up its last traces of moisture.
In the indistinct glare of the southern horizon, it needed but slight
aid from the imagination to see a lifting and tumbling of billows, as if
the old tide were coming; but they were only shudderings of heat. As we
sat there surveying this unusual scene, the white expanse became
suddenly transformed into a placid blue sea, along whose rippling shores
were the white blocks of roofs, groups of spire-crowned villages, and
cool stretches of green grove. A soft, vapory atmosphere hung over this
sea; shadows, purple and blue, floated slowly across it, producing the
most enchanting effect of light and color. The dreamy richness of the
tropics, the serene sapphire sky of the desert, and the cool, purple
distance of mountains, were grouped as by miracle. It was as if Nature
were about to repay us an hundred-fold for the lie she had given the
topographers and their maps.
In a moment the illusion vanished. It was gone, leaving the white desert
unrelieved by a shadow; a blaze of white light falling full on the
plain; the sun-struck air reeling in whirlwind columns, white with the
dust of the desert, up, up, and vanishing into the sky. Waves of heat
rolled like billows across the valley, the old shores became indistinct,
the whole lowland unreal. Shades of misty blue crossed over it and
disappeared. Lakes with ragged shores gleamed out, reflecting the sky,
and in a moment disappeared.
The bewildering effect of this natural magic, and perhaps the feverish
thirst, produced the impression of a dream, which might have taken fatal
possession of us but for the importunate braying of Gardiner’s mule,
whose piteous discords (for he made three noises at once) banished all
hallucination, and brought us gently back from the mysterious spectacle
to the practical question of water. We had but one canteen of that
precious elixir left; the elixir in this case being composed of one part
pure water, one part sand, one part alum, one part saleratus, with
liberal traces of Colorado mud, representing a very disgusting taste,
and very great range of geological formations.
To search for the mountain springs laid down upon our maps was probably
to find them dry, and afforded us little more inducement than to chase
the mirages. The only well-known water was at an oasis somewhere on the
margin of the Chabazon, and should, if the information was correct, have
been in sight from our resting-place.
We eagerly scanned the distance, but were unable, among the phantom
lakes and the ever-changing illusions of the desert, to fix upon any
probable point. Indian trails led out in all directions, and our only
clew to the right path was far in the northwest, where, looming against
the sky, stood two conspicuous mountain piles lifted above the general
wall of the Sierra, their bases rooted in the desert, and their
precipitous fronts rising boldly on each side of an open gateway. The
two summits, high above the magical stratum of desert air, were sharply
defined and singularly distinct in all the details of rock-form and
snow-field. From their position we knew them to be walls of the San
Gorgonio Pass, and through this gateway lay our road.
After brief deliberation we chose what seemed to be the most beaten road
leading in that direction, and I mounted my mule and started, leaving my
friend patiently seated in his saddle waiting for the _afflatus_ of his
mule to take effect. Thus we rode down into the desert, and hour after
hour travelled silently on, straining our eyes forward to a spot of
green which we hoped might mark our oasis.
So incredulous had I become that I prided myself upon having penetrated
the flimsy disguise of an unusually deceptive mirage, and
philosophized, to a considerable extent, upon the superiority of my
reason over the instinct of the mule, whose quickened pace and nervous
manner showed him to be, as I thought, a dupe.
Whenever there comes to be a clearly defined mental issue between man
and mule, the stubbornness of the latter is the expression of an
adamantine moral resolve, founded in eternal right. The man is
invariably wrong. Thus on this occasion, as at a thousand other times, I
was obliged to own up worsted, and I drummed for a while with Spanish
spurs upon the ribs of my conqueror, that being my habitual mode of
covering my retreat.
It _was_ the oasis, and not the mirage. John lifted up his voice, now
many days hushed, and gave out spasmodic gusts of barytone, which were
as dry and harsh as if he had drunk mirages only.
The heart of Gardiner’s mule relented. Of his own accord he galloped up
to my side, and, for the first time together, we rode forward to the
margin of the oasis. Under the palms we hastily threw off our saddles
and allowed the parched brutes to drink their fill. We lay down in the
grass, drank, bathed our faces, and played in the water like children.
We picketed our mules knee-deep in the freshest of grass, and, unpacking
our saddle-bags, sent up a smoke to heaven, and achieved that most
precious solace of the desert traveller, a pot of tea.
By and by we plunged into the pool, which was perhaps thirty feet long,
and deep enough to give us a pleasant swim. The water being almost
blood-warm, we absorbed it in every pore, dilated like sponges, and came
out refreshed.
It is well worth having one’s juices broiled out by a desert sun just to
experience the renewal of life from a mild parboil. That About’s “Man
with the Broken Ear,” under this same aqueous renovation, was ready to
fall in love with his granddaughter, no longer appears to me odd. Our
oasis spread out its disc of delicate green, sharply defined upon the
enamel-like desert which stretched away for leagues, simple, unbroken,
pathetic. Near the eastern edge of this garden, whose whole surface
covered hardly more than an acre, rose two palms, interlocking their
cool, dark foliage over the pool of pure water. A low, deserted cabin
with wide, overhanging, flat roof, which had long ago been thatched with
palm-leaves, stood close by the trees.
With its isolation, its strange, warm fountain, its charming vegetation
varied with grasses, trailing water-plants, bright parterres in which
were minute flowers of turquoise blue, pale gold, mauve, and rose, and
its two graceful palms, this oasis evoked a strange sentiment. I have
never felt such a sense of absolute and remote seclusion; the hot,
trackless plain and distant groups of mountain shut it away from all the
world. Its humid and fragrant air hung over us in delicious contrast
with the oven-breath through which we had ridden. Weary little birds
alighted, panting, and drank and drank again, without showing the least
fear of us. Wild doves fluttering down bathed in the pool and fed about
among our mules.
After straining over one hundred and fifty miles of silent desert,
hearing no sound but the shoes of our mules grating upon hot sand, after
the white glare, and that fever-thirst which comes from drinking
alkali-water, it was a deep pleasure to lie under the palms and look up
at their slow-moving green fans, and hear in those shaded recesses the
mild, sweet twittering of our traveller-friends, the birds, who stayed,
like ourselves, overcome with the languor of perfect repose.
Declining rapidly toward the west, the sun warned us to renew our
journey. Several hours’ rest and frequent deep draughts of water, added
to the feast of succulent grass, filled out and rejuvenated our
saddle-animals. John was far less an anatomical specimen than when I
unsaddled him, and Gardiner’s mule came up to be bridled with so
mollified a demeanor that it occurred to us as just possible he might
forget his trick of lagging behind; but with the old tenacity of purpose
he planted his forefeet, and waited till I was well out on the desert.
As I rode I watched the western prospect. Completely bounding the basin
in that direction rose the gigantic wall of the Sierra, its serrated
line sharply profiled against the evening sky. This dark barrier became
more and more shadowed, so that the old shore line and the lowland,
where mountain and plain joined, were lost. The desert melted in the
distance into the shadowed masses of the Sierra, which, looming higher
and higher, seemed to rise as the sun went down. Scattered snow-fields
shone along its crest; each peak and notch, every column of rock and
detail of outline, were black and sharp.
On either side of the San Gorgonio stood its two guardian peaks, San
Bernardino and San Jacinto, capped with rosy snow, and the pass itself,
warm with western light, opened hopefully before us. For a moment the
sun rested upon the Sierra crest, and then, slowly sinking, suffered
eclipse by its ragged, black profile. Through the slow hours of
darkening twilight a strange, ashy gloom overspread the desert. The
forms of the distant mountain chains behind us, and the old shore line
upon the Sierra base, stared at us with a strange, weird distinctness.
At last all was gray and vague, except the black silhouette of the
Sierras cut upon a band of golden heaven.
We at length reached their foot and, turning northward, rode parallel
with the base toward the San Gorgonio. In the moonless night huge, rocky
buttresses of the range loomed before us, their feet plunging into the
pale desert floor. High upon their fronts, perhaps five hundred feet
above us, was dimly traceable the white line of ancient shore. Over
drifted hills of sand and hard alkaline clay we rode along the bottom of
that primitive sea. Between the spurs deep mountain alcoves, stretching
back into the heart of the range, opened grand and shadowy; far at
their head, over crests of ridge and peak, loomed the planet Jupiter.
A long, wearisome ride of forty hours brought us to the open San
Gorgonio Pass. Already scattered beds of flowers tinted the austere face
of the desert; tufts of pale grass grew about the stones, and tall stems
of yucca bore up their magnificent bunches of bluish flowers. Upon all
the heights overhanging the road gnarled, struggling cedars grasp the
rock, and stretch themselves with frantic effort to catch a breath of
the fresh Pacific vapor. It is instructive to observe the difference
between those which lean out into the vitalizing wind of the pass, and
the fated few whose position exposes them to the dry air of the desert.
Vigor, soundness, nerve to stand on the edge of sheer walls,
flexibility, sap, fulness of green foliage, are in the one; a shroud of
dull olive-leaves scantily cover the thin, straggling, bayonet-like
boughs of the others; they are rigid, shrunken, split to the heart,
pitiful. We were glad to forget them as we turned a last buttress and
ascended the gentle acclivity of the pass.
Before us opened a broad gateway six or seven miles from wall to wall,
in which a mere swell of green land rises to divide the desert and
Pacific slopes. Flanking the pass along its northern side stands Mount
San Bernardino, its granite framework crowded up above the beds of more
recent rock about its base, bearing aloft tattered fragments of pine
forest, the summit piercing through a marbling of perpetual snow, up to
the height of ten thousand feet. Fronting it on the opposite wall rises
its compeer, San Jacinto, a dark crag of lava, whose flanks are cracked,
riven, and waterworn into innumerable ravines, each catching a share of
the drainage from the snow-cap, and glistening with a hundred small
waterfalls.
Numerous brooks unite to form two rivers, one running down the green
slope among ranches and gardens into the blooming valley of San
Bernardino, the other pouring eastward, shrinking as it flows out upon
the hot sands, till, in a few miles, the unslakable desert has drunk it
dry.
There are but few points in America where such extremes of physical
condition meet. What contrasts, what opposed sentiments, the two views
awakened! Spread out below us lay the desert, stark and glaring, its
rigid hill-chains lying in disordered grouping, in attitudes of the
dead. The bare hills are cut out with sharp gorges, and over their stone
skeletons scanty earth clings in folds, like shrunken flesh; they are
emaciated corses of once noble ranges now lifeless, outstretched as in a
long sleep. Ghastly colors define them from the ashen plain in which
their feet are buried. Far in the south were a procession of whirlwind
columns slowly moving across the desert in spectral dimness. A white
light beat down, dispelling the last trace of shadow, and above hung the
burnished shield of hard, pitiless sky.
Sinking to the _west_ from our feet the gentle golden-green _glacis_
sloped away, flanked by rolling hills covered with a fresh, vernal
carpet of grass, and relieved by scattered groves of dark oak-trees.
Upon the distant valley were checkered fields of grass and grain just
tinged with the first ripening yellow. The bounding Coast Ranges lay in
the cool shadow of a bank of mist which drifted in from the Pacific,
covering their heights. Flocks of bright clouds floated across the sky,
whose blue was palpitating with light, and seemed to rise with infinite
perspective. Tranquillity, abundance, the slow, beautiful unfolding of
plant life, dark, shadowed spots to rest our tired eyes upon, the shade
of giant oaks to lie down under, while listening to brooks, contralto
larks, and the soft, distant lowing of cattle.
I have given the outlines of aspect along our ride across the Chabazon,
omitting many amusing incidents and some _genre_ pictures of rare
interest among the Kaweah Indians, as I wished simply to illustrate the
relations of the Sierra with the country bordering its east base,--the
barrier looming above a desert.
In Nevada and California, farther north, this wall rises more grandly,
but its face rests upon a modified form of desert plains of less extent
than the Colorado, and usually covered with sage-plants and other brushy
_compositæ_ of equally pitiful appearance. Large lakes of complicated
saline waters are dotted under the Sierra shadow, the ancient terraces
built upon foot-hill and outlying volcanic ranges indicating their
former expansion into inland seas; and farther north still, where
plains extend east of Mount Shasta, level sheets of lava form the
country, and open, black, rocky channels, for the numerous branches of
the Sacramento and Klamath.
Approaching the Sierras anywhere from the west, one will perceive a
totally different topographical and climatic condition. From the Coast
Range peaks especially one obtains an extended and impressive prospect.
I had fallen behind the party one May evening of our march across
Pacheco’s Pass, partly because some wind-bent oaks trailing almost
horizontally over the wild-oat surface of the hills, and marking, as a
living record, the prevalent west wind, had arrested me and called out
compass and note-book; and because there had fallen to my lot an
incorrigibly deliberate mustang to whom I had abandoned myself to be
carried along at his own pace, comforted withal that I should get in too
late to have any hand in the cooking of supper. We reached the crest,
the mustang coming to a conspicuous and unwarrantable halt; I yielded,
however, and sat still in the saddle, looking out to the east.
Brown foot-hills, purple over their lower slopes with “fil-a-ree”
blossoms, descended steeply to the plain of California, a great, inland,
prairie sea, extending for five hundred miles, mountain-locked, between
the Sierras and coast hills, and now a broad, arabesque surface of
colors. Miles of orange-colored flowers, cloudings of green and white,
reaches of violet which looked like the shadow of a passing cloud,
wandering in natural patterns over and through each other, sunny and
intense along near our range, fading in the distance into pale,
bluish-pearl tones, and divided by long, dimly seen rivers, whose
margins were edged by belts of bright emerald green. Beyond rose three
hundred miles of Sierra half lost in light and cloud and mist, the
summit in places sharply seen against a pale, beryl sky, and again
buried in warm, rolling clouds. It was a mass of strong light, soft,
fathomless shadows, and dark regions of forest. However, the three belts
upon its front were tolerably clear. Dusky foot-hills rose over the
plain with a coppery gold tone, suggesting the line of mining towns
planted in its rusty ravines,--a suggestion I was glad to repel, and
look higher into that cool, solemn realm where the pines stand,
green-roofed, in infinite colonnade. Lifted above the bustling industry
of the plains and the melodramatic mining theatre of the foot-hills, it
has a grand, silent life of its own, refreshing to contemplate even from
a hundred miles away.
While I looked the sun descended; shadows climbed the Sierras, casting a
gloom over foot-hill and pine, until at last only the snow summits,
reflecting the evening light, glowed like red lamps along the mountain
wall for hundreds of miles. The rest of the Sierra became invisible. The
snow burned for a moment in the violet sky, and at last went out.
II
THROUGH THE FOREST
1864
Visalia is the name of a small town embowered in oaks upon the Tulare
Plain in Middle California, where we made our camp one May evening of
1864.
Professor Whitney, our chief, the State Geologist, had sent us out for a
summer’s campaign in the High Sierras, under the lead of Professor
William H. Brewer, who was more sceptical than I as to the result of the
mission.
Several times during the previous winter Mr. Hoffman and I, while on
duty at the Mariposa goldmines, had climbed to the top of Mount Bullion,
and gained, in those clear January days, a distinct view of the High
Sierra, ranging from the Mount Lyell group many miles south to a vast
pile of white peaks, which, from our estimate, should lie near the heads
of the King’s and Kaweah rivers. Of their great height I was fully
persuaded; and Professor Whitney, on the strength of these few
observations, commissioned us to explore and survey the new Alps.
We numbered five in camp:--Professor Brewer; Mr. Charles F. Hoffman,
chief topographer; Mr. James T. Gardiner, assistant surveyor; myself,
assistant geologist; and our man-of-all-work, to whom science already
owes its debts.