of the granite forms; for the whole region, from plain to plain, is
built of this dense, solid rock, and is sculptured under chisel of cold
in shapes of great variety, yet all having a common spirit, which is
purely Gothic.
In the much discussed origin of this order of building I never remember
to have seen, though it can hardly have escaped mention, any suggestion
of the possibility of the Gothic having been inspired by granite forms.
Yet, as I sat on Mount Tyndall, the whole mountains shaped themselves
like the ruins of cathedrals,--sharp roof-ridges, pinnacled and statued;
buttresses more spired and ornamented than Milan’s; receding doorways
with pointed arches carved into black façades of granite, doors never to
be opened, innumerable jutting points, with here and there a single
cruciform peak, its frozen roof and granite spires so strikingly Gothic
I cannot doubt that the Alps furnished the models for early cathedrals
of that order.
I thoroughly enjoyed the silence, which, gratefully contrasting with the
surrounding tumult of form, conveyed to me a new sentiment. I have lain
and listened through the heavy calm of a tropical voyage, hour after
hour, longing for a sound; and in desert nights the dead stillness has
many a time awakened me from sleep. For moments, too, in my forest life,
the groves made absolutely no breath of movement; but there is around
these summits the soundlessness of a vacuum. The sea stillness is that
of sleep; the desert, of death--this silence is like the waveless calm
of space.
All the while I made my instrumental observations the fascination of the
view so held me that I felt no surprise at seeing water boiling over our
little faggot blaze at a temperature of one hundred and ninety-two
degrees F., nor in observing the barometrical column stand at 17.99
inches; and it was not till a week or so after that I realized we had
felt none of the conventional sensations of nausea, headache, and I
don’t know what all, that people are supposed to suffer at extreme
altitudes; but these things go with guides and porters, I believe, and
with coming down to one’s hotel at evening there to scold one’s
picturesque _aubergiste_ in a French which strikes upon his ear as a
foreign tongue; possibly all that will come to us with advancing time,
and what is known as “doing America.” They are already shooting our
buffaloes; it cannot be long before they will cause themselves to be
honorably dragged up and down our Sierras, with perennial yellow gaiter,
and ostentation of bath-tub.
Having completed our observations, we packed up the instruments, glanced
once again round the whole field of view, and descended to the top of
our icicle ladder. Upon looking over, I saw to my consternation that
during the day the upper half had broken off. Scars traced down upon the
snow-field below it indicated the manner of its fall, and far below,
upon the shattered _débris_, were strewn its white relics. I saw that
nothing but the sudden gift of wings could possibly take us down to the
snow-ridge. We held council, and concluded to climb quite round the peak
in search of the best mode of descent.
As we crept about the east face, we could look straight down upon Owen’s
Valley, and into the vast glacier gorges, and over piles of moraines and
fluted rocks, and the frozen lakes of the eastern slope. When we
reached the southwest front of the mountain we found that its general
form was that of an immense horseshoe, the great eastern ridge forming
one side, and the spur which descended to our camp the other, we having
climbed up the outer part of the toe. Within the curve of the horseshoe
was a gorge, cut almost perpendicularly down two thousand feet, its side
rough-hewn walls of rocks and snow, its narrow bottom almost a
continuous chain of deep blue lakes with loads of ice and _débris_
piles. The stream which flowed through them joined the waters from our
home grove, a couple of miles below the camp. If we could reach the
level of the lakes, I believed we might easily climb round them and out
of the upper end of the horseshoe, and walk upon the Kern plateau round
to our bivouac.
It required a couple of hours of very painstaking, deliberate climbing
to get down the first descent, which we did, however, without hurting
our barometer, and fortunately without the fatiguing use of the lasso;
reaching finally the uppermost lake, a granite bowlful of cobalt-blue
water, transparent and unrippled. So high and enclosing were the tall
walls about us, so narrow and shut in the cañon, so flattened seemed the
cover of sky, we felt oppressed after the expanse and freedom of our
hours on the summit.
The snow-field we followed, descending farther, was irregularly
honeycombed in deep pits, circular or irregular in form, and melted to a
greater or less depth, holding each a large stone embedded in the
bottom. It seems they must have fallen from the overhanging heights with
sufficient force to plunge into the snow.
Brilliant light and strong color met our eyes at every glance--the rocks
of a deep purple-red tint, the pure alpine lakes of a cheerful sapphire
blue, the snow glitteringly white. The walls on either side for half
their height were planed and polished by glaciers, and from the smoothly
glazed sides the sun was reflected as from a mirror.
Mile after mile we walked cautiously over the snow and climbed round the
margins of lakes, and over piles of _débris_ which marked the ancient
terminal moraines. At length we reached the end of the horseshoe, where
the walls contracted to a gateway, rising on either side in immense,
vertical pillars a thousand feet high. Through this gateway we could
look down the valley of the Kern, and beyond to the gentler ridges where
a smooth growth of forest darkened the rolling plateau. Passing the last
snow, we walked through this gateway and turned westward round the spur
toward our camp. The three miles which closed our walk were alternately
through groves of _Pinus flexilis_ and upon plains of granite.
The glacier sculpture and planing are here very beautiful, the large
crystals of orthoclase with which the granite is studded being cut down
to the common level, their rosy tint making with the white base a
beautiful, burnished porphyry.
The sun was still an hour high when we reached camp, and with a feeling
of relaxation and repose we threw ourselves down to rest by the log,
which still continued blazing. We had accomplished our purpose.
During the last hour or two of our tramp Cotter had complained of his
shoes, which were rapidly going to pieces. Upon examination we found to
our dismay that there was not over half a day’s wear left in them, a
calamity which gave to our difficult homeward climb a new element of
danger. The last nail had been worn from my own shoes, and the soles
were scratched to the quick, but I believed them stout enough to hold
together till we should reach the main camp.
We planned a pair of moccasins for Cotter, and then spent a pleasant
evening by the camp-fire, rehearsing our climb to the detail, sleep
finally overtaking us and holding us fast bound until broad daylight
next morning, when we woke with a sense of having slept for a week,
quite bright and perfectly refreshed for our homeward journey.
After a frugal breakfast, in which we limited ourselves to a few cubic
inches of venison, and a couple of stingy slices of bread, with a single
meagre cup of diluted tea, we shouldered our knapsacks, which now sat
lightly upon toughened shoulders, and marched out upon the granite
plateau.
We had concluded that it was impossible to retrace our former way,
knowing well that the precipitous divide could not be climbed from this
side; then, too, we had gained such confidence in our climbing powers,
from constant victory, that we concluded to attempt the passage of the
great King’s Cañon, mainly because this was the only mode of reaching
camp, and since the geological section of the granite it exposed would
afford us an exceedingly instructive study.
The broad granite plateau which forms the upper region of the Kern
Valley slopes in general inclination up to the great divide. This
remarkably pinnacled ridge, where it approaches the Mount Tyndall wall,
breaks down into a broad depression where the Kern Valley sweeps
northward, until it suddenly breaks off in precipices three thousand
feet down into the King’s Cañon.
The morning was wholly consumed in walking up this gently inclined plane
of granite, our way leading over the glacier-polished foldings and along
graded undulations among labyrinths of alpine garden and wildernesses of
erratic bowlders, little lake-basins, and scattered clusters of dwarfed
and sombre pine.
About noon we came suddenly upon the brink of a precipice which sank
sharply from our feet into the gulf of the King’s Cañon. Directly
opposite us rose Mount Brewer, and up out of the depths of those vast
sheets of frozen snow swept spiry buttress-ridges, dividing the upper
heights into those amphitheatres over which we had struggled on our
outward journey. Straight across from our point of view was the chamber
of rock and ice where we had camped on the first night. The wall at our
feet fell sharp and rugged, its lower two-thirds hidden from our view by
the projections of a thousand feet of crags. Here and there as we looked
down, small patches of ice, held in rough hollows, rested upon the steep
surface, but it was too abrupt for any great fields of snow. I dislodged
a bowlder upon the edge and watched it bound down the rocky precipice,
dash over eaves a thousand feet below us, and disappear, the crash of
its fall coming up to us from the unseen depths fainter and fainter,
until the air only trembled with confused echoes.
A long look at the pass to the south of Mount Brewer, where we had
parted from our friends, animated us with courage to begin the descent,
which we did with utmost care, for the rocks, becoming more and more
glacier-smoothed, afforded us hardly any firm footholds. When down about
eight hundred feet we again rolled rocks ahead of us, and saw them
disappear over the eaves, and only heard the sound of their stroke after
many seconds, which convinced us that directly below lay a great
precipice.
At this juncture the soles came entirely off Cotter’s shoes, and we
stopped upon a little cliff of granite to make him moccasins of our
provision bags and slips of blanket, tying them on as firmly as we could
with the extra straps and buckskin thongs. Climbing with these proved so
insecure that I made Cotter go behind me, knowing that under ordinary
circumstances I could stop him if he fell.
Here and there in the clefts of the rocks grew stunted pine bushes,
their roots twisted so firmly into the crevices that we laid hold of
them with the utmost confidence whenever they came within our reach. In
this way we descended to within fifty feet of the brink, having as yet
no knowledge of the cliffs below, except our general memory of their
aspect from the Mount Brewer wall.
The rock was so steep that we descended in a sitting posture, clinging
with our hands and heels. I heard Cotter say, “I think I must take off
these moccasins and try it barefooted, for I don’t believe I can make
it.” These words were instantly followed by a startled cry, and I looked
round to see him slide quickly toward me, struggling and clutching at
the smooth granite. As he slid by I made a grab for him with my right
hand, catching him by the shirt, and, throwing myself as far in the
other direction as I could, seized with my left hand a little pine tuft,
which held us. I asked Cotter to edge along a little to the left, where
he could get a brace with his feet and relieve me of his weight, which
he cautiously did. I then threw a couple of turns with the lasso round
the roots of the pine bush, and we were safe, though hardly more than
twenty feet from the brink. The pressure of curiosity to get a look over
that edge was so strong within me that I lengthened out sufficient lasso
to reach the end, and slid slowly to the edge, where, leaning over, I
looked down, getting a full view of the wall for miles. Directly
beneath, a sheer cliff of three or four hundred feet stretched down to a
pile of _débris_ which rose to unequal heights along its face, reaching
the very crest not more than a hundred feet south of us. From that point
to the bottom of the cañon, broken rocks, ridges rising through vast
sweeps of _débris_, tufts of pine and frozen bodies of ice covered the
further slope.
I returned to Cotter, and, having loosened ourselves from the pine bush,
inch by inch we crept along the granite until we supposed ourselves to
be just over the top of the _débris_ pile, where I found a firm brace
for my feet, and lowered Cotter to the edge. He sang out, “All right!”
and climbed over on the uppermost _débris_, his head only remaining in
sight of me; when I lay down upon my back, making knapsack and body do
friction duty, and, letting myself move, followed Cotter and reached his
side.
From that point the descent required two hours of severe, constant
labor, which was monotonous of itself, and would have proved excessively
tiresome but for the constant interest of glacial geology beneath us.
When at last we reached the bottom and found ourselves upon a velvety
green meadow, beneath the shadow of wide-armed pines, we realized the
amount of muscular force we had used up, and threw ourselves down for a
rest of half an hour, when we rose, not quite renewed, but fresh enough
to finish the day’s climb.
In a few minutes we stood upon the rocks just above King’s River,--a
broad, white torrent fretting its way along the bottom of an impassable
gorge. Looking down the stream, we saw that our right bank was a
continued precipice, affording, so far as we could see, no possible
descent to the river’s margin, and indeed, had we gotten down, the
torrent rushed with such fury that we could not possibly have crossed
it. To the south of us, a little way up stream, the river flowed out
from a broad, oval lake, three quarters of a mile in length, which
occupied the bottom of the granite basin. Unable to cross the torrent,
we must either swim the lake or climb round its head. Upon our side the
walls of the basin curved to the head of the lake in sharp, smooth
precipices, or broken slopes of _débris_, while on the opposite side its
margin was a beautiful shore of emerald meadow, edged with a continuous
grove of coniferous trees. Once upon this other side, we should have
completed the severe part of our journey, crossed the gulf, and have
left all danger behind us; for the long slope of granite and ice which
rose upon the west side of the cañon and the Mount Brewer wall opposed
to us no trials save those of simple fatigue.
Around the head of the lake were crags and precipices in singularly
forbidding arrangement. As we turned thither we saw no possible way of
overcoming them. At its head the lake lay in an angle of the vertical
wall, sharp and straight like the corner of a room; about three hundred
feet in height, and for two hundred and fifty feet of this a pyramidal
pile of blue ice rose from the lake, rested against the corner, and
reached within forty feet of the top. Looking into the deep blue water
of the lake, I concluded that in our exhausted state it was madness to
attempt to swim it. The only alternative was to scale that slender
pyramid of ice and find some way to climb the forty feet of smooth wall
above it; a plan we chose perforce, and started at once to put into
execution, determined that if we were unsuccessful we would fire a dead
log which lay near, warm ourselves thoroughly, and attempt the swim. At
its base the ice mass overhung the lake like a roof, under which the
water had melted its way for a distance of not less than a hundred feet,
a thin eave overhanging the water. To the very edge of this I cautiously
went, and, looking down into the lake, saw through its beryl depths the
white granite blocks strewn upon the bottom at least one hundred feet
below me. It was exceedingly transparent, and, under ordinary
circumstances, would have been a most tempting place for a dive; but at
the end of our long fatigue, and with the still unknown tasks ahead, I
shrank from a swim in such a chilly temperature.
We found the ice-angle difficultly steep, but made our way successfully
along its edge, clambering up the crevices melted between its body and
the smooth granite to a point not far from the top, where the ice had
considerably narrowed, and rocks overhanging it encroached so closely
that we were obliged to change our course and make our way with cut
steps out upon its front. Streams of water, dropping from the
overhanging rock-eaves at many points, had worn circular shafts into the
ice, three feet in diameter and twenty feet in depth. Their edges
offered us our only foothold, and we climbed from one to another,
equally careful of slipping upon the slope itself, or falling into the
wells. Upon the top of the ice we found a narrow, level platform, upon
which we stood together, resting our backs in the granite corner, and
looked down the awful pathway of King’s Cañon, until the rest nerved us
up enough to turn our eyes upward at the forty feet of smooth granite
which lay between us and safety. Here and there were small projections
from its surface, little, protruding knobs of feldspar, and crevices
riven into its face for a few inches.
As we tied ourselves together, I told Cotter to hold himself in
readiness to jump down into one of these in case I fell, and started to
climb up the wall, succeeding quite well for about twenty feet. About
two feet above my hands was a crack, which, if my arms had been long
enough to reach, would probably have led me to the very top; but I
judged it beyond my powers, and, with great care, descended to the side
of Cotter, who believed that his superior length of arm would enable him
to make the reach.
I planted myself against the rock, and he started cautiously up the
wall. Looking down the glare front of ice, it was not pleasant to
consider at what velocity a slip would send me to the bottom, or at what
angle, and to what probable depth, I should be projected into the
ice-water. Indeed, the idea of such a sudden bath was so annoying that I
lifted my eyes toward my companion. He reached my farthest point without
great difficulty, and made a bold spring for the crack, reaching it
without an inch to spare, and holding on wholly by his fingers. He thus
worked himself slowly along the crack toward the top, at last getting
his arms over the brink, and gradually drawing his body up and out of
sight. It was the most splendid piece of slow gymnastics I ever
witnessed. For a moment he said nothing; but when I asked if he was all
right, cheerfully repeated, “All right.”
It was only a moment’s work to send up the two knapsacks and barometer,
and receive again my end of the lasso. As I tied it round my breast,
Cotter said to me, in an easy, confident tone, “Don’t be afraid to bear
your weight.” I made up my mind, however, to make that climb without his
aid, and husbanded my strength as I climbed from crack to crack. I got
up without difficulty to my former point, rested there a moment, hanging
solely by my hands, gathered every pound of strength and atom of will
for the reach, then jerked myself upward with a swing, just getting the
tips of my fingers into the crack. In an instant I had grasped it with
my right hand also. I felt the sinews of my fingers relax a little, but
the picture of the slope of ice and the blue lake affected me so
strongly that I redoubled my grip, and climbed slowly along the crack
until I reached the angle and got one arm over the edge, as Cotter had
done. As I rested my body upon the edge and looked up at Cotter, I saw
that, instead of a level top, he was sitting upon a smooth, roof-like
slope, where the least pull would have dragged him over the brink. He
had no brace for his feet, nor hold for his hands, but had seated
himself calmly, with the rope tied around his breast, knowing that my
only safety lay in being able to make the climb entirely unaided;
certain that the least waver in his tone would have disheartened me, and
perhaps made it impossible. The shock I received on seeing this affected
me for a moment, but not enough to throw me off my guard, and I climbed
quickly over the edge. When we had walked back out of danger we sat down
upon the granite for a rest.
In all my experience of mountaineering I have never known an act of such
real, profound courage as this of Cotter’s. It is one thing, in a moment
of excitement, to make a gallant leap, or hold one’s nerves in the iron
grasp of will, but to coolly seat one’s self in the door of death, and
silently listen for the fatal summons, and this all for a friend,--for
he might easily have cast loose the lasso and saved himself,--requires
as sublime a type of courage as I know.
But a few steps back we found a thicket of pine overlooking our lake, by
which there flowed a clear rill of snow-water. Here, in the bottom of
the great gulf, we made our bivouac; for we were already in the deep
evening shadows, although the mountain-tops to the east of us still
burned in the reflected light. It was the luxury of repose which kept me
awake half an hour or so, in spite of my vain attempts at sleep. To
listen for the pulsating sound of waterfalls and arrowy rushing of the
brook by our beds was too deep a pleasure to quickly yield up.
Under the later moonlight I rose and went out upon the open rocks,
allowing myself to be deeply impressed by the weird Dantesque
surroundings--darkness, out of which to the sky towered stern, shaggy
bodies of rock; snow, uncertainly moonlit with cold pallor; and at my
feet the basin of the lake, still, black, and gemmed with reflected
stars, like the void into which Dante looked through the bottomless gulf
of Dis. A little way off there appeared upon the brink of a projecting
granite cornice two dimly seen forms; pines I knew them to be, yet their
motionless figures seemed bent forward, gazing down the cañon; and I
allowed myself to name them Mantuan and Florentine, thinking at the same
time how grand and spacious the scenery, how powerful their attitude,
and how infinitely more profound the mystery of light and shade, than
any of those hard, theatrical conceptions with which Doré has sought to
shut in our imagination. That artist, as I believe, has reached a
conspicuous failure from an overbalancing love of solid, impenetrable
darkness. There is in all his Inferno landscape a certain sharp boundary
between the real and unreal, and never the infinite suggestiveness of
great regions of half-light, in which everything may be seen, nothing
recognized. Without waking Cotter, I crept back to my blankets, and to
sleep.
The morning of our fifth and last day’s tramp must have dawned
cheerfully; at least, so I suppose from its aspect when we first came
back to consciousness, surprised to find the sun risen from the eastern
mountain-wall, and the whole gorge flooded with its direct light. Rising
as good as new from our mattress of pine twigs, we hastened to take
breakfast, and started up the long, broken slope of the Mount Brewer
wall. To reach the pass where we had parted from our friends required
seven hours of slow, laborious climbing, in which we took advantage of
every outcropping spine of granite and every level expanse of ice to
hasten at the top of our speed. Cotter’s feet were severely cut; his
tracks upon the snow were marked by stains of blood, yet he kept on with
undiminished spirit, never once complaining. The perfect success of our
journey so inspired us with happiness that we forgot danger and fatigue,
and chatted in liveliest strain.
It was about two o’clock when we reached the summit, and rested a moment
to look back over our new Alps, which were hard and distinct under
direct, unpoetic light; yet with all their dense gray and white
reality, their long, sculptured ranks, and cold, still summits, we gave
them a lingering, farewell look, which was not without its deep fulness
of emotion, then turned our backs and hurried down the _débris_ slope
into the rocky amphitheatre at the foot of Mount Brewer, and by five
o’clock had reached our old camp-ground. We found here a note pinned to
a tree, informing us that the party had gone down into the lower cañon,
five miles below, that they might camp in better pasturage.