of the funeral pile, lifted up both hands, and gazed steadily and
silently at the sun. She might have been five minutes in this statuesque
position, her face full of strange, half-animal intensity of expression,
her eyes glittering, the whole hard figure glowing with a deep bronze
reflection. Suddenly she sprang back with the old wild shriek, seized a
brand from one of the camp-fires, and lighted the funeral heap, when all
the Indians came out, and grouped themselves in little knots around it.
Sally the Old’s children clung about an old mummy of a squaw, who
squatted upon the ground and rocked her body to and fro, making a low
cry as of an animal in pain. All the Indians looked serious; a group,
who Jerry said were relatives, seemed stupefied with grief. Upon a few
faces falling tears glistened in the light of the fire, which now shot
up red tongues high in the air, lighting up with weird distinctness
every feature of the whole group. Flames slowly lapped over, consuming
the blanket, and caught the willow pappoose basket. When Buck saw this
the tears streamed from his eyes; he waved his hands eloquently, looking
up to heaven, and uttered heartbroken sobs. The pappoose basket crackled
for a moment, flashed into a blaze, and was gone. The two old women
yelled their sharp death-cry, dancing, posturing, gesticulating toward
the fire, and in slow, measured chorus all the Indians intoned in
pathetic measure, “Himalaya! Himalaya!” looking first at the mound of
fire and then out upon the fading sunset.
It was all indescribably strange: monarch pines standing in solemn ranks
far back into the dusky heart of the forest, glowing and brightening
with pulsating reflections of firelight; the ring of Indians, crouching,
standing fixed like graven images, or swaying mechanically to and fro;
each tattered scarlet and white rag of their utterly squalid garments,
every expression of barbaric grief or dull stolidity, being brought
strongly out by the red, flaming fire.
Buck watched with wet eyes that slow-consuming fire burn to ashes the
body of his wife of many years, the mother of his group of poor,
frightened children. Not a stoical savage, but a despairing husband,
stood before us. I felt him to be human. The body at last sank into a
bed of flames which shot up higher than ever with fountains of sparks,
and sucked together, hiding the remains forever from view. At this Buck
sprang to the front and threw himself at the fire; but the two old women
seized each a hand and dragged him back to his children, when he fell
into a fit of stupor.
As we walked home Jerry was quick to ask, “Didn’t I tell you Injuns has
feelings inside of ’em?” I answered promptly that I was convinced; and
long after, as I lay awake through many night-hours listening to that
shrill death-wail, I felt as if any policy toward the Indians based upon
the assumption of their being brutes or devils was nothing short of a
blot on this Christian century.
My sleep was light, and sunrise found me dressed, still listening, as
under a kind of spell, to the mourners, who, though evidently exhausted,
at brief intervals uttered the cry. Alone, and filled with serious
reflections, I strolled over to the rancheria, finding every one there
up and about his morning duties.
The tar-heads, withdrawn some distance into the forest, sat leaning
against a stump, chatting and grinning together, now and then screeching
by turns.
I asked Revenue Stamp, a good-natured, middle-aged Indian, where Buck
was. He pointed to his hut, and replied, with an affable smile, “He
whiskey drunk.” “And who,” I inquired, “is that fat girl with him?”
“Last night he take her; new squaw,” was the answer. I could hardly
believe, but it was the actual truth; and I went back to camp an
enlightened but disillusioned man. I left that day, and never had an
opportunity to “free my mind” to Jerry. Since then I guardedly avoid all
discussion of the “Indian question.” When interrogated, I dodge, or
protest ignorance; when pressed, I have been known to turn the subject;
or, if driven to the wall, I usually confess my opinion that the Quakers
will have to work a great reformation in the Indian before he is really
fit to be exterminated.
The mill-people and Indians told us of a wonderful group of big trees
(_Sequoia gigantea_), and about one particular tree of unequalled size.
We found them easily, after a ride of a few miles in a northerly
direction from our camp, upon a wide, flat-topped spur, where they grew,
as is their habit elsewhere, in company with several other coniferous
species, all grouped socially together, heightening each other’s beauty
by contrasts of form and color.
In a rather open glade, where the ground was for the most part green
with herbage, and conspicuously starred with upland flowers, stood the
largest shaft we observed. A fire had formerly burned off a small
segment of its base, not enough, however, to injure the symmetrical
appearance. It was a slowly tapering, regularly round column of about
forty feet in diameter at the base, and rising two hundred and
seventy-four feet, adorned with a few huge branches, which start
horizontally from the trunk, but quickly turn down and spray out. The
bark, thick but not rough, is scored up and down at considerable
intervals with deep, smooth grooves, and is of brightest cinnamon color,
mottled in purple and yellow.
That which impresses one most after its vast bulk the grand, pillar-like
stateliness, is the thin and inconspicuous foliage, which feathers out
delicately on the boughs like a mere mist of pale apple-green. It would
seem nothing when compared with the immense volume of tree for which it
must do the ordinary respirative duty; but doubtless the bark performs a
large share of this, its papery lamination and porous structure fitting
it eminently for that purpose.
Near this “King of the Mountains” grew three other trees; one a
sugar-pine (_Pinus Lambertiana_) of about eight feet in diameter, and
hardly less than three hundred feet high (although we did not measure
it, estimating simply by comparison of its rise above the _Sequoia_,
whose height was quite accurately determined). For a hundred and fifty
feet the pine was branchless, and as round as if turned, delicate
bluish-purple in hue, and marked with a net-work of scorings. The
branches, in nearly level poise, grew long and slenderly out from the
shaft, well covered with dark yellow-green needles. The two remaining
trees were firs (_Picea grandis_), which sprang from a common root,
dividing slightly, as they rose, a mass of feathery branches, whose load
of polished blue-green foliage, for the most part, hid the dark
wood-brown trunk. Grace, exquisite, spire-like, taper boughs, whose
plumes of green float lightly upon the air, elasticity and symmetry are
its characteristics.
In all directions this family continue grouping themselves, always with
attractive originality. There is something memorable in the harmonious
yet positive colors of this sort of forest. First, the foliage and trunk
of each separate tree contrasts finely,--cinnamon and golden apple-green
in the _Sequoia_, dark purple and yellowish-green for the pine, deep
wood-color and bluish-green of fir.
The sky, which at this elevation of six thousand feet is deep, pure blue
and often cloudless, is seen through the tracery of boughs and
tree-tops, which cast downward fine and filmy shadows across the glowing
trunks. Altogether, it is a wonderful setting for the _Sequoia_. The two
firs, judging by many of equal size whose age I have studied, were about
three hundred years old; the pine, still hale and vigorous, not less
than five hundred; and for the “King of the Mountains” we cannot assign
a probable age of less than two thousand years.
A mountain, a fossil from deepest geological horizon, a ruin of human
art, carry us back into the perspective of centuries with a force that
has become, perhaps, a little conventional. No imperishableness of
mountain-peak or of fragment of human work, broken pillar or sand-worn
image half lifted over pathetic desert,--none of these link the past and
to-day with anything like the power of these monuments of living
antiquity, trees that began to grow before the Christian era, and, full
of hale vitality and green old age, still bid fair to grow broad and
high for centuries to come. Who shall predict the limits of this
unexampled life? There is nothing which indicates suffering or
degeneracy in the _Sequoia_ as a species. I find pathological hints that
several other far younger species in the same forest are gradually
giving up their struggle for existence. That singular species _Pinus
Sabiniana_ appears to me to suffer death-pains from foot-hill extremes
of temperature and dryness, and notably from ravenous parasites of the
mistletoe type. At the other extreme the _Pinus flexilis_ has about half
given up the fight against cold and storms. Its young are dwarfed or
huddled in thickets, with such mode of growth that they may never make
trees of full stature; while higher up, standing among bare rocks and
fields of ice, far above all living trees, are the stark, white
skeletons of noble dead specimens, their blanched forms rigid and
defiant, preserved from decay by a marvellous hardness of fibre, and
only wasted by the cutting of storm-driven crystals of snow. Still the
_Sequoia_ maintains perfect health.
It is, then, the vast respiring power, the atmosphere, the bland,
regular climate, which give such long life, and not any richness or
abundance of food received from the soil.
If one loves to gather the material for travellers’ stories, he may find
here and there a hollow fallen trunk through whose heart he may ride for
many feet without bowing the head. But if he love the tree for its own
grand nature, he may lie in silence upon the soft forest floor, in
shadow or sunny warmth, if he please, and spend many days in wonder,
gazing upon majestic shafts, following their gold and purple flutings
from broad, firmly planted base up and on through the few huge branches
and among the pale clouds of filmy green traced in open network upon the
deep blue of the sky.
Groups of this ancient race grow along the middle heights of the Sierra
for almost two hundred miles, marking a line of groves through the
forest of lesser trees, still retaining their power of reproduction,
ripening cones with regularity, whose seed germinates, springs up, and
grows with apparently as great vital power as the descendants of younger
conifers. Nor are these their only remarkable characteristics. They
possess hardly any roots at all. Several in each grove have been blown
down, and lie slowly decomposing. They are found usually to have rested
upon the ground with a few short, pedestal-like feet penetrating the
earth for a little way.
Too soon for my pleasure, the time came when we must turn our backs upon
these stately groves and push up toward the snow. Our route lay
eastward, between the King’s and Kaweah rivers, rising as we marched;
the vegetation, as well as the barometer, accurately measuring the
change.
We reached our camp on the Big Meadow plateau on the 22nd of June, and
that night the thermometer fell to 20° above zero. This cold was
followed by a chilly, overcast morning, and about ten o’clock an
old-fashioned snowstorm set in. Wind howled fiercely through the trees,
coming down from the mountains in terribly powerful gusts. The green,
flower-colored meadow was soon buried under snow; and we explorers, who
had no tent, hid ourselves under piles of brush, and on the lee side of
hospitable stones. Our scant supply of blankets was a poor defence
against such inclemency; so we crawled out and made a huge camp-fire,
around which we sat for the rest of the day. During the afternoon we
were visited. A couple of hunters, with their rifles over their
shoulders, seeing the smoke of our camp-fire, followed it through the
woods and joined our circle. They were typical mountaineers,--outcasts
from society, discontented with the world, comforting themselves in the
solitude of nature by the occasional excitement of a bear-fight. One was
a half-breed Cherokee, rather over six feet high, powerfully built, and
picturesquely dressed in buckskin breeches and green jacket; a sort of
Trovatore hat completed his costume, and gave him an animated
appearance. The other was unmistakably a Pike-Countian, who had dangled
into a pair of butternut jeans. His greasy flannel shirt was pinned
together with thorns in lieu of buttons, and his hat fastened back in
the same way, having lost its stiffness by continual wetting. The
Cherokee had a long, manly stride, and the Pike a rickety sort of
shuffle. His anatomy was bad, his physical condition worse, and I think
he added to that a sort of pride in his own awkwardness. Seeming to have
a principle of suspension somewhere about his shoulders, which
maintained his head at about the right elevation above the ground, he
kept up a good rate in walking without apparently making an effort. His
body swayed with a peculiar, corkscrew motion, and his long Mississippi
rifle waved to and fro through the air.
We all noticed the utter contrast between them as these two men
approached our fire. The hunter’s taciturnity is a well-known _rôle_,
but they had evidently lived so long an isolated life that they were too
glad of any company to play it unfailingly; so it was they who opened
the conversation. We found that they were now camped only a half-mile
from us, were hunting for deer-skins, and had already accumulated a very
large number. They offered us plenty of venison, and were greatly
interested in our proposed journeys into the high mountains. From them
we learned that they had themselves penetrated farther than any others,
and had only given up the exploration after wandering fruitlessly among
the cañons for a month. They told us that not even Indians had crossed
the Sierras to the east, and that if we did succeed in reaching this
summit we would certainly be the first. We learned from them, also, that
a mile to the northward was a great herd of cattle in charge of a party
of Mexicans. Fleeing before the continued drought of the plains, all the
cattle-men of California drove the remains of their starved herds either
to the coast or to the High Sierras, and grazed upon the summer
pastures, descending in the autumn, and living upon the dry foot-hill
grasses, until, under the influence of winter rains, the plains again
clothe themselves with pasturage.
The following morning, having received a present of two deer from the
hunters, we packed our animals and started eastward, passing, after a
few minutes’ ride, the encampment of the Spaniards. About four thousand
cattle roamed over the plateau, and were only looked after once or twice
a week. The four Spaniards divided their time between drinking coffee
and playing cards. They were engaged in the latter amusement when we
passed them; and although we halted and tried to get some information,
they only answered us in monosyllables, and continued their game.
To the eastward the plateau rose toward the high mountains in immense,
granite steps. We rode pleasantly through the forest over these level
tables, and climbed with difficulty the rugged, rock-strewn fronts, each
successive step bringing us nearer the mountains, and giving us a
far-reaching view. Here and there the granite rose through the forest
in broad, smooth domes; and many times we were obliged to climb these
rocky slopes at the peril of our animals’ lives. After several days of
marching and countermarching, we gave up the attempt to push farther in
a southeast direction, and turned north, toward the great cañon of
King’s River, which we hoped might lead us up to the Snow Group.
Reaching the brink of this gorge, we observed, about half-way down the
slope, and standing at equal levels on both flanks, singular
embankments--shelves a thousand feet in width--built at a height of
fifteen hundred feet above the valley bottom, their smooth, evenly
graded summits rising higher and higher to the eastward on the
cañon-wall until they joined the snow. They were evidently the lateral
moraines of a vast, extinct glacier, and that opposite us seemed to
offer an easy ride into the heart of the mountains. With great
difficulty we descended the long slope, through chaparral and forest,
reaching, at length, the level, smooth glacier bottom. Here, threading
its way through alternate groves and meadows, was the King’s River--a
stream not over thirty feet in width, but rushing with all the force of
a torrent. Its icy temperature was very refreshing after our weary climb
down the wall. By a series of long zigzags we succeeded in leading our
animals up the flank to the top of the north moraine, and here we found
ourselves upon a forest-covered causeway, almost as smooth as a railroad
embankment. Its fluted crest enclosed three separate pathways, each a
hundred feet wide, divided from one another by roughly laid trains of
rocks, showing it evidently to be a compound moraine. As we ascended
toward the mountains, the causeway was more and more isolated from the
cliff, until the depression between them widened to half a mile, and to
at least five hundred feet deep.
Throughout nearly a whole day we rode comfortably along at a gentle
grade, reaching at evening the region of the snow, where, among
innumerable huge granite blocks, we threaded our way in search of a
camp-ground. The mountain amphitheatre which gave rise to the King’s
River opened to the east, a broad valley, into which we at length
climbed; and, among scattered groves of alpine pines, and on patches of
meadow, rode eastward till twilight, watching the high pyramidal peak
which lay directly at the head of the gorge. By sunset we had gone as
far as we could take the animals, and, in full view of our goal, camped
for the night.
The form of the mountain at the head of our ravine was purely Gothic. A
thousand upspringing spires and pinnacles pierce the sky in every
direction, the cliffs and mountain-ridges are everywhere ornamented with
countless needle-like turrets. Crowning the wall to the south of our
camp were series of these jagged forms standing out against the sky like
a procession of colossal statues. Whichever way we turned we were met by
some extraordinary fulness of detail. Every mass seemed to have the
highest possible ornamental finish. Along the lower flanks of the
walls, tall, straight pines, the last of the forest, were relieved
against the cliffs, and the same slender forms, although carved in
granite, surmounted every ridge and peak.
Through this wide zone of forest we had now passed, and from its
perpetual shadow had come out among the few black groves of fir into a
brilliant alpine sunshine. The light, although surprisingly lively, was
of a purity and refinement quite different from the strong glare of the
plains.
III
THE ASCENT OF MOUNT TYNDALL
1864
Morning dawned brightly upon our bivouac among a cluster of dark firs in
the mountain corridor opened by an ancient glacier of King’s River into
the heart of the Sierras. It dawned a trifle sooner than we could have
wished, but Professor Brewer and Hoffman had breakfasted before sunrise,
and were off with barometer and theodolite upon their shoulders,
purposing to ascend our amphitheatre to its head and climb a great
pyramidal peak which swelled up against the eastern sky, closing the
view in that direction.
We who remained in camp spent the day in overhauling campaign materials
and preparing for a grand assault upon the summits. For a couple of
hours we could descry our friends through the field-glasses, their
minute, black forms moving slowly on among piles of giant _débris_; now
and then lost, again coming to view, and at last disappearing
altogether.
It was twilight of evening, and almost eight o’clock, when they came
back to camp, Brewer leading the way, Hoffman following; and as they
sat down by our fire without uttering a word, we read upon their faces
terrible fatigue. So we hastened to give them supper of coffee and soup,
bread and venison, which resulted, after a time, in our getting in
return the story of the day. For eight whole hours they had worked up
over granite and snow, mounting ridge after ridge, till the summit was
made about two o’clock.
These snowy crests bounding our view at the eastward we had all along
taken to be the summits of the Sierra, and Brewer had supposed himself
to be climbing a dominant peak, from which he might look eastward over
Owen’s Valley and out upon leagues of desert. Instead of this, a vast
wall of mountains, lifted still higher than his peak, rose beyond a
tremendous cañon which lay like a trough between the two parallel ranks
of peaks. Hoffman showed us on his sketch-book the profile of this new
range, and I instantly recognized the peaks which I had seen from
Mariposa, whose great white pile had led me to believe them the highest
points of California.
For a couple of months my friends had made me the target of plenty of
pleasant banter about my “highest land,” which they lost faith in as we
climbed from Thomas’s Mill,--I, too, becoming a trifle anxious about it;
but now that the truth had burst upon Brewer and Hoffman, they could not
find words to describe the terribleness and grandeur of the deep cañon,
or for picturing those huge crags towering in line at the east. Their
peak, as indicated by the barometer, was in the region of thirteen
thousand four hundred feet, and a level across to the farther range
showed its crests to be at least fifteen hundred feet higher. They had
spent hours upon the summit scanning the eastern horizon, and ranging
downward into the labyrinth of gulfs below, and had come at last with
reluctance to the belief that to cross this gorge and ascend the eastern
wall of peaks was utterly impossible.
Brewer and Hoffman were old climbers, and their verdict of impossible
oppressed me as I lay awake thinking of it; but early next morning I had
made up my mind, and, taking Cotter aside, I asked him in an easy manner
whether he would like to penetrate the Terra Incognita with me at the
risk of our necks, provided Brewer should consent. In a frank,
courageous tone he answered after his usual mode, “Why not?” Stout of
limb, stronger yet in heart, of iron endurance, and a quiet, unexcited
temperament, and, better yet, deeply devoted to me, I felt that Cotter
was the one comrade I would choose to face death with, for I believed
there was in his manhood no room for fear or shirk.
It was a trying moment for Brewer when we found him and volunteered to
attempt a campaign for the top of California, because he felt a certain
fatherly responsibility over our youth, a natural desire that we should
not deposit our triturated remains in some undiscoverable hole among the
feldspathic granites; but, like a true disciple of science, this was at
last overbalanced by his intense desire to know more of the unexplored
region. He freely confessed that he believed the plan madness, and
Hoffman, too, told us we might as well attempt to get on a cloud as to
try the peak. As Brewer gradually yielded his consent, I saw by his
conversation that there was a possibility of success; so we spent the
rest of the day in making preparations.
Our walking-shoes were in excellent condition, the hobnails firm and
new. We laid out a barometer, a compass, a pocket-level, a set of wet
and dry thermometers, note-books, with bread, cooked beans, and venison
enough to last a week, rolled them all in blankets, making two
knapsack-shaped packs strapped firmly together, with loops for the arms,
which, by Brewer’s estimate, weighed forty pounds apiece.
Gardiner declared he would accompany us to the summit of the first range
to look over into the gulf we were to cross, and at last Brewer and
Hoffman also concluded to go up with us.
Quite too early for our profit we all betook ourselves to bed, vainly
hoping to get a long, refreshing sleep from which we should arise ready
for our tramp.
Never a man welcomed those first gray streaks in the east gladder than I
did, unless it may be Cotter, who has in later years confessed that he
did not go to sleep that night. Long before sunrise we had finished our
breakfast and were under way, Hoffman kindly bearing my pack, and Brewer
Cotter’s.
Our way led due east up the amphitheatre and toward Mount Brewer, as we
had named the great pyramidal peak.
Awhile after leaving camp, slant sunlight streamed in among gilded
pinnacles along the slope of Mount Brewer, touching here and there, in
broad dashes of yellow, the gray walls, which rose sweeping up on either
hand like the sides of a ship.
Our way along the valley’s middle ascended over a number of huge steps,
rounded and abrupt, at whose bases were pools of transparent snow-water,
edged with rude piles of erratic glacier blocks, scattered companies of
alpine firs, of red bark and having cypress-like darkness of foliage,
with fields of snow under sheltering cliffs, and bits of softest velvet
meadow clouded with minute blue and white flowers.