Brewer was going to re-engage, as general aid, a certain Dane, Jan
Hoesch, who, besides being a faultless mule-packer, was a rapid and
successful financier, having twice, when the field-purse was low and
remittances delayed, enriched us by what he called “dealing bottom
stock” in his little evening games with the honest miners. Not
ungrateful for that, I, however, detested the fellow with great
cordiality.
“If I don’t take him, will you be responsible for packing mules and for
daily bread?” said Brewer to me, the morning of our departure from
Oakland. “I will.” “Then we’ll take your man Cotter; only, when the
pack-saddles roll under the mules’ bellies, I shall light my pipe and go
botanizing. _Sabe?_”
So my friend, Richard Cotter, came into the service, and the
accomplished but filthy Jan opened a poker and rum shop on one of the
San Francisco wharves, where he still mixes drinks and puts up jobs of
“bottom stock.” Secretly I longed for him as we came down the Pacheco
Pass, the packs having loosened with provoking frequency. The animals of
our small exploring party were upon a footing of easy social equality
with us. All were excellent except mine. The choice of Hobson (whom I
take to have been the youngest member of some company) falling
naturally to me, I came to be possessed of the only hopeless animal in
the band. Old Slum, a dignified roan mustang of a certain age, with the
decorum of years and a conspicuous economy of force retained not a few
of the affectations of youth, such as snorting theatrically and shying,
though with absolute safety to the rider, Professor Brewer. Hoffman’s
mount was a young half-breed, full of fire and gentleness. The mare
Bess, my friend Gardiner’s pet, was a light-bay creature, as full of
spring and perception as her sex and species may be. A rare mule, Cate,
carried Cotter. Nell and Jim, two old geological mules, branded with
Mexican hieroglyphics from head to tail, were bearers of the loads.
My Buckskin was incorrigibly bad. To begin with, his anatomy was
desultory and incoherent, the maximum of physical effort bringing about
a slow, shambling gait quite unendurable. He was further cursed with a
brain wanting the elements of logic, as evinced by such _non sequiturs_
as shying insanely at wisps of hay, and stampeding beyond control when I
tried to tie him to a load of grain. My sole amusement with Buckskin
grew out of a psychological peculiarity of his, namely, the unusual
slowness with which waves of sensation were propelled inward toward the
brain from remote parts of his periphery. A dig of the spurs
administered in the flank passed unnoticed for a period of time varying
from twelve to thirteen seconds, till the protoplasm of the brain
received the percussive wave; then, with a suddenness which I never
wholly got over, he would dash into a trot, nearly tripping himself up
with his own astonishment.
A stroke of good fortune completed our outfit and my happiness by
bringing to Visalia a Spaniard who was under some manner of financial
cloud. His horse was offered for sale, and quickly bought for me by
Professor Brewer. We named him Kaweah, after the river and its Indian
tribe. He was young, strong, fleet, elegant, a pattern of fine modelling
in every part of his bay body and fine black legs; every way good, only
fearfully wild, with a blaze of quick electric light in his dark eye.
Shortly after sunrise one fresh morning we made a point of putting the
packs on very securely, and, getting into our saddles, rode out toward
the Sierras.
The group of farms surrounding Visalia is gathered within a belt through
which several natural, and many more artificial, channels of the Kaweah
flow. Groves of large, dark-foliaged oaks follow this irrigated zone;
the roads, nearly always in shadow, are flanked by small ranch-houses,
fenced in with rank jungles of weeds and rows of decrepit pickets.
There is about these fresh ruins, these specimens of modern decay, an
air of social decomposition not pleasant to perceive. Freshly built
houses, still untinted by time, left in rickety disorder, half-finished
windows, gates broken down or unhinged, and a kind of sullen neglect
staring everywhere. What more can I say of the people than that they
are chiefly immigrants who subsist upon pork?
Rare exceptions of comfort and thrift shine out sometimes, with neat
dooryards, well-repaired dwellings, and civilized-looking children. In
these I never saw the mother of the family sitting cross-legged, smoking
a corncob pipe, nor the father loafing about with a fiddle or shot-gun.
Our backs were now turned to this farm-belt, the road leading us out
upon the open plain in our first full sight of the Sierras.
Grand and cool swelled up the forest; sharp and rugged rose the wave of
white peaks, their vast fields of snow rolling over the summit in broad,
shining masses.
Sunshine, exuberant vegetation, brilliant plant life, occupied our
attention hour after hour until the middle of the second day. At last,
after climbing a long, weary ascent, we rode out of the dazzling light
of the foot-hills into a region of dense woodland, the road winding
through avenues of pines so tall that the late evening light only came
down to us in scattered rays. Under the deep shade of these trees we
found an air pure and gratefully cool. Passing from the glare of the
open country into the dusky forest, one seems to enter a door and ride
into a vast covered hall. The whole sensation is of being roofed and
enclosed. You are never tired of gazing down long vistas, where, in
stately groups, stand tall shafts of pine. Columns they are, each with
its own characteristic tinting and finish, yet all standing together
with the air of relationship and harmony. Feathery branches, trimmed
with living green, wave through the upper air, opening broken glimpses
of the far blue, and catching on their polished surfaces reflections of
the sun. Broad streams of light pour in, gilding purple trunks and
falling in bright pathways along an undulating floor. Here and there are
wide, open spaces, around which the trees group themselves in majestic
ranks.
Our eyes often ranged upward, the long shafts leading the vision up to
green, lighted spires, and on to the clouds. All that is dark and cool
and grave in color, the beauty of blue umbrageous distance, all the
sudden brilliance of strong local lights tinted upon green boughs or red
and fluted shafts, surround us in ever-changing combination as we ride
along these winding roadways of the Sierra.
We had marched a few hours over high, rolling, wooded ridges, when in
the late afternoon we reached the brow of an eminence and began to
descend. Looking over the tops of the trees beneath us, we saw a
mountain basin fifteen hundred feet deep surrounded by a rim of
pine-covered hills. An even, unbroken wood covered these sweeping slopes
down to the very bottom, and in the midst, open to the sun, lay a
circular green meadow, about a mile in diameter.
As we descended, side wood-tracks, marked by the deep ruts of timber
wagons, joined our road on either side, and in the course of an hour we
reached the basin and saw the distant roofs of Thomas’s Saw-Mill Ranch.
We crossed the level disc of meadow, fording a clear, cold mountain
stream, flowing, as the best brooks do, over clean, white granite sand,
and near the northern margin of the valley, upon a slight eminence, in
the edge of a magnificent forest, pitched our camp.
The hills to the westward already cast down a sombre shadow, which fell
over the eastern hills and across the meadow, dividing the basin half in
golden and half in azure green. The tall young grass was living with
purple and white flowers. This exquisite carpet sweeps up over the bases
of the hills in green undulations, and strays far into the forest in
irregular fields. A little brooklet passed close by our camp and flowed
down the smooth green _glacis_ which led from our little eminence to the
meadow. Above us towered pines two hundred and fifty feet high, their
straight, fluted trunks smooth and without a branch for a hundred feet.
Above that, and on to the very tops, the green branches stretched out
and interwove, until they spread a broad, leafy canopy from column to
column.
Professor Brewer determined to make this camp a home for the week during
which we were to explore and study all about the neighborhood. We were
on a great granite spur, sixty miles from east to west by twenty miles
wide, which lies between the Kaweah and King’s River cañons. Rising in
bold sweeps from the plain, this ridge joins the Sierra summit in the
midst of a high group. Experience had taught us that the cañons are
impassable by animals for any great distance; so the plan of campaign
was to find a way up over the rocky crest of the spur as far as mules
could go.
In the little excursions from this camp, which were made usually on
horseback, we became acquainted with the forest, and got a good
knowledge of the topography of a considerable region. On the heights
above King’s Cañon are some singularly fine assemblies of trees. Cotter
and I had ridden all one morning northeast from camp under the shadowy
roof of forest, catching but occasional glimpses out over the plateau,
until at last we emerged upon the bare surface of a ridge of granite,
and came to the brink of a sharp precipice. Rocky crags lifted just east
of us. The hour devoted to climbing them proved well spent.
A single little family of alpine firs growing in a niche in the granite
surface, and partly sheltered by a rock, made the only shadow, and just
shielded us from the intense light as we lay down by their roots. North
and south, as far as the eye could reach, heaved the broad, green waves
of plateau, swelling and merging through endless modulation of slope and
form.
Conspicuous upon the horizon, about due east of us, was a tall,
pyramidal mass of granite, trimmed with buttresses which radiated down
from its crest, each one ornamented with fantastic spires of rock.
Between the buttresses lay stripes of snow, banding the pale granite
peak from crown to base. Upon the north side it fell off, grandly
precipitous, into the deep upper cañon of King’s River. This gorge,
after uniting a number of immense rocky amphitheatres, is carved deeply
into the granite two and three thousand feet. In a slightly curved line
from the summit it cuts westward through the plateau, its walls, for the
most part, descending in sharp, bare slopes, or lines of ragged
_débris_, the resting-place of processions of pines. We ourselves were
upon the brink of the south wall; three thousand feet below us lay the
valley, a narrow, winding ribbon of green, in which, here and there,
gleamed still reaches of the river. Wherever the bottom widened to a
quarter or half a mile, green meadows and extensive groves occupied the
level region. Upon every niche and crevice of the walls, up and down
sweeping curves of easier descent, were grouped black companies of
trees.
The behavior of the forest is observed most interestingly from these
elevated points above the general face of the table-land. All over the
gentle undulations of the more level country sweeps an unbroken covering
of trees. Reaching the edge of the cañon precipices, they stand out in
bold groups upon the brink, and climb all over the more ragged and
broken surfaces of granite. Only the most smooth and abrupt precipices
are bare. Here and there a little shelf of a foot or two in width,
cracked into the face of the bluff, gives foothold to a family of
pines, who twist their roots into its crevices and thrive. With no soil
from which the roots may drink up moisture and absorb the slowly
dissolved mineral particles, they live by breathing alone, moist vapors
from the river below and the elements of the atmosphere affording them
the substance of life.
I believe no one can study from an elevated lookout the length and depth
of one of these great Sierra cañons without asking himself some profound
geological questions. Your eyes range along one or the other wall. The
average descent is immensely steep. Here and there side ravines break
down the rim in deep, lateral gorges. Again, the wall advances in sharp,
salient precipices, rising two or three thousand feet, sheer and naked,
with all the air of a recent fracture. At times the two walls approach
each other, standing in perpendicular gateways. Toward the summits the
cañon grows, perhaps, a little broader, and more and more prominent
lateral ravines open into it, until at last it receives the snow
drainage of the summit, which descends through broad, rounded
amphitheatres, separated from each other by sharp, castellated snow-clad
ridges.
Looking down the course of the river, vertical precipices are seen to be
less and less frequent, the walls inclining to each other more and more
gently, until they roll out on the north and south in round, wooded
ridges. Solid, massive granite forms the material throughout its whole
length. If you study the topography upon the plateaus above one of
these cañons, you will see that the ridges upon one side are reproduced
in the other, as if the outlines of wavy table-land topography had been
determined before the great cañon was made.
It is not easy to propose a solution for this peculiar structure. I
think, however, it is safe to say that actual rending asunder of the
mountain mass determined the main outlines. Upon no other theory can we
account for those blank walls. Where, in the upper course of the cañon,
they descend in a smooth, ship-like curve, and the rocks bear upon their
curved sides the markings and striations of glaciers, it is easy to see
that those terrible ice-engines gradually modified their form; and
toward the foot-hills the forces of aqueous erosion are clearly
indicated in the rounded forms and broad undulations of the two banks.
Looking back from our isolated crag in the direction of our morning’s
ride, we saw the green hills break down into the basin of Thomas’s Mill,
but the disc of meadow lay too deep to be seen. Forests, dense and
unbroken, grew to the base of our cliff. The southern sunlight reflected
from its polished foliage gave to this whole sea of spiry tops a
peculiar golden green, through which we looked down among giant red and
purple trunks upon beds of bright mountain flowers. As the afternoon
lengthened, the summit rank of peaks glowed warmer and warmer under
inclined rays. The granite flushed with rosy brightness between the
fields of glittering golden snow. A mild, pearly haziness came gradually
to obscure the ordinary cold-blue sky, and, settling into cañon depths,
and among the vast, open corridors of the summit, veiled the savage
sharpness of their details.
I lay several hours sketching the outlines of the summit, studying out
the systems of alpine drainage, and getting acquainted with the long
chain of peaks, that I might afterward know them from other points of
view. I became convinced from the great apparent elevation and the wide
fields of snow that we had not formerly deceived ourselves as to their
great height. Warned at length by the deepening shadow in the King’s
Cañon, by the heightened glow suffusing the peaks, and the deep purple
tone of the level expanse of forest, all forerunners of twilight, we
quitted our eyrie, crept carefully down over half-balanced blocks of
_débris_ to the horses, and, mounting, were soon headed homeward, in
what seemed, by contrast, to be almost a nocturnal darkness.
Wherever the ground opened level before us we gave our horses the rein,
and went at a free gallop through the forest; the animals realized that
they were going home, and pressed forward with the greatest spirit. A
good-sized log across our route seemed to be an object of special
amusement to Kaweah, who seized the bits in his teeth, and, dancing up,
crouched, and cleared it with a mighty bound, in a manner that was
indeed inspiring, yet left one with the impression that once was enough
of that sort of thing. Fearing some manner of hostilities with him, I
did my very best to quiet Kaweah, and by the end of an hour had gotten
him down to a sensible, serious walk. I noticed that he insisted upon
following his tracks of the morning’s march, and was not contented
unless I let him go on the old side of every tree. Thus I became so
thoroughly convinced of his faculty to follow the morning’s trail that I
yielded all control of him, giving myself up to the enjoyment of the
dimly lighted wood.
As the sun at last set, the shadow deepened into an impressive gloom;
mighty trunks, rising into that dark region of interlocking boughs, only
vaguely defined themselves against the twilight sky. We could no longer
see our tracks, and the confused rolling topography looked alike
whichever way we turned. Kaweah strode on in his confident way, and I
was at last confirmed as to his sagacity by passing one after another
the objects we had noted in the morning. Thus for a couple of hours we
rode in the darkness. At length the rising moon poured down through
broken tents of foliage its uncertain silvery light, which had the
effect of deepening all the shadows, and lighting up in the strangest
manner little local points. Here and there ahead of us the lighted trees
rose like pillars of an ancient temple. The forest, which an hour before
overpowered us with a sense of its dark enclosure, opened on in distant
avenues as far as the eye could reach. As we rode through denser or
more open passages the moon sailed into clear, violet sky, or was
obscured again by the sharply traced crests of the pines. Ravines, dark
and unfathomable, yawned before us, their flanks half in shadow, half in
weird, uncertain light. Blocks of white granite gleamed here and there
in contrast with the general depth of shade. At last, descending a hill,
there shone before us a red light; the horses plunged forward at a
gallop, and in a moment we were in camp. After this ride we supped,
relishing our mountain fare, and then lay down upon blankets before a
camp-fire for the mountaineer’s short evening. One keeps awake under
stimulus of the sparkling, frosty air for awhile, and then turns in for
the night, sleeping till daybreak with a light, sound sleep.
The charm of this forest life, in spite of its scientific interest, and
the constant succession of exquisite, highly colored scenes, would
string one’s feelings up to a high though monotonous key, were it not
for the half-droll, half-pathetic _genre_ picturesqueness which the
Digger Indians introduce. Upon every stream and on all the finer
camp-grounds throughout the whole forest are found these families of
Indians who migrate up here during the hot weather, fishing, hunting,
gathering pine-nuts, and lying off with that peculiar, bummerish ease,
which, associated with natural mock dignity, throws about them a
singular, and not infrequently deep interest.
I never forget certain bright June sunrises when I have seen the Indian
_paterfamilias_ gather together his little tribe and address them in the
heroic style concerning the vital importance of the grasshopper crop,
and the reverence due to the Giver of manzanita berries. You come upon
them as you travel the trails, proud-stepping “braves” leading the way,
unhampered and free, followed by troops of submissive squaws loaded down
with immense packages and baskets. Their death and burial customs, too,
have elements of weird, romantic interest.
I remember one morning when I was awakened before dawn by wild,
unearthly shrieks ringing through the forest and coming back again in
plaintive echoes from the hills all about. Beyond description wild,
these wails of violent grief followed each other with regular cadence,
dying away in long, despairing sobs. With a marvellous regularity they
recurred, never varying the simple refrain. My curiosity was aroused so
far as to get me out of my blankets, and, after a hurried bath in an icy
stream, I joined my mountaineer acquaintance, Jerry, who was _en route_
to the rancheria, “to see,” as he expressed it, “them _tar-heads_ howl.”
It seems my friend Buck, the Indian chief, had the night before lost his
wife, Sally the Old, and the shouts came from professional mourners
hired by her family to prepare the body and do up the necessary amount
of grief. Old widows and superannuated wives who have outlived other
forms of usefulness gladly enter this singular profession. They cut
their hair short, and, with each new death, plaster on a fresh cap of
pitch and ashes, daub the face with spots of tar, and, in general, array
themselves as funeral experts.
The rancheria was astir when we arrived. It was a mere group of half a
dozen smoky hovels, built of pine bark propped upon cones of poles, and
arranged in a semi-circle within the edge of the forest, fronting on a
brook and meadow. Jerry and I leaned our backs against a large tree, and
watched the group.
Buck’s shanty was deserted, the body of his wife lying outside upon a
blanket, being prepared by two of these funeral hags. Buck himself was
quietly stuffing his stomach with a breakfast of venison and acorns,
which were handed him at brief intervals by several sympathizing squaws.
Turning to Jerry with a countenance of stolid seriousness, he
laconically remarked, “My woman she die! Very bad. To-night, sundown”
(pointing to the sun), “she burn up.” Meanwhile the tar-heads rolled
Sally the Old over and over, all the while alternately howling the same
dismal phrase. Indian relatives and friends, having the general air of
animated rag-bags, arrived occasionally, and sat down in silence at a
fire a little removed from the other Diggers, never once saluting them.
As we walked back to our camp, I remarked on the stolid, cruel
expression of Buck’s face, but Jerry, to my surprise, bade me not judge
too hastily. He went on to explain that Indians have just as deep and
tender attachments, just as much good sense, and, to wind up with, “as
much human into ’em, as we edicated white folks.”
His own squaw had instilled this into Jerry’s naturally sentimental and
credulous heart, so I refrained from expressing my convictions
concerning Indians, which, I own, were formerly tinged with the most
sanguinary Caucasian prejudice.
Jerry came for me by appointment just before sunset, and we walked
leisurely across the meadow, and under lengthening pine shadows, to the
rancheria. No one was stirring. Buck and the two vicarious mourners sat
in his lodge door, uttering low, half-audible groans. In the opening
before the line of huts a low pile of dry logs had been carefully laid,
upon which, outstretched, and wrapped in a red blanket, lay the dead
form of Sally the Old, her face covered in careful folds. Upon her heart
were a grass-woven water-bowl and her last pappoose basket.