head-waters of a small brook, named by emotional Mr. Hutchings, I
believe, the Virgin’s Tears, because from time to time from under the
brow of a cliff just south of El Capitan there may be seen a feeble
water-fall. I suspect this sentimental pleasantry is intended to bear
some relation to the Bridal Veil Fall opposite. If it has any such force
at all, it is a melancholy one, given by unusual gauntness and an aged
aspect, and by the few evanescent tears which this old virgin sheds.
A charming camp-ground was formed by bands of russet meadow wandering in
vistas through a stately forest of dark green fir-trees unusually
feathered to the base. Little, mahogany-colored pools surrounded with
sphagnum lay in the meadows, offering pleasant contrast of color. Our
camp-ground was among clumps of thick firs, which completely walled in
the fire, and made close, overhanging shelters for table and beds.
Gardiner, Cotter, and I felt thankful to our thermometer for owning up
frankly the chill of the next morning, as we left a generous camp-fire
and marched off through fir forest and among brown meadows and bare
ridges of rock toward El Capitan. This grandest of granite precipices is
capped by a sort of forehead of stone sweeping down to level, severe
brows, which jut out a few feet over the edge. A few weather-beaten,
battle-twisted, and black pines cling in clefts, contrasting in force
with the solid white stone.
We hung our barometer upon a stunted tree quite near the brink, and,
climbing cautiously down, stretched ourselves out upon an overhanging
block of granite, and looked over into the Yosemite Valley.
The rock fell under us in one sheer sweep of thirty-two hundred feet;
upon its face we could trace the lines of fracture and all prominent
lithological changes. Directly beneath, outspread like a delicately
tinted chart, lay the lovely park of Yosemite, winding in and out about
the solid white feet of precipices which sank into it on either side;
its sunlit surface invaded by the shadow of the south wall; its spires
of pine, open expanses of buff and drab meadow, and families of umber
oaks rising as background for the vivid green river-margin and flaming
orange masses of frosted cottonwood foliage.
Deep in front the Bridal Veil brook made its way through the bottom of
an open gorge, and plunged off the edge of a thousand-foot cliff,
falling in white water-dust and drifting in pale, translucent clouds out
over the tree-tops of the valley.
Directly opposite us, and forming the other gatepost of the valley’s
entrance, rose the great mass of Cathedral Rocks,--a group quite
suggestive of the Florence Duomo.
But our grandest view was eastward, above the deep, sheltered valley and
over the tops of those terrible granite walls, out upon rolling ridges
of stone and wonderful granite domes. Nothing in the whole list of
irruptive products, except volcanoes themselves, is so wonderful as
these domed mountains. They are of every variety of conoidal form,
having horizontal sections accurately elliptical, ovoid, or circular,
and profiles varying from such semi-circles as the cap behind the
Sentinel to the graceful, infinite curves of the North Dome. Above and
beyond these stretch back long, bare ridges connecting with sunny summit
peaks. The whole region is one solid granite mass, with here and there
shallow soil layers, and a thin, variable forest which grows in
picturesque mode, defining the leading lines of erosion as an artist
deepens here and there a line to hint at some structural peculiarity.
A complete physical exposure of the range, from summit to base, lay
before us. At one extreme stand sharpened peaks, white in fretwork of
glistening icebank, or black where tower straight bolts of snowless
rock; at the other stretch away plains smiling with a broad, honest
brown under autumn sunlight. They are not quite lovable, even in distant
tranquillity of hue, and just escape being interesting, in spite of
their familiar rivers and associated belts of oaks. Nothing can ever
render them quite charming, for in the startling splendor of flower-clad
April you are surfeited with an embarrassment of beauty; at all other
times stunned by their poverty. Not so the summits; forever new, full of
individuality, rich in detail, and coloring themselves anew under every
cloud change or hue of heaven, they lay you under their spell.
From them the eye comes back over granite waves and domes to the sharp
precipice-edges overhanging Yosemite. We look down those vast, hard,
granite fronts, cracked and splintered, scarred and stained, down over
gorges crammed with _débris_, or dark with files of climbing pines.
Lower the precipice-feet are wrapped in meadow and grove, and beyond,
level and sunlit, lies the floor,--that smooth, river-cut park, with
exquisite perfection of finish.
The dome-like cap of Capitan is formed of concentric layers like the
peels of an onion, each one about two or three feet thick. Upon the
precipice itself, either from our station on an overhanging crevice, or
from any point of opposite cliff or valley bottom, this structure is
seen to be superficial, never descending more than a hundred feet.
In returning to camp we followed a main ridge, smooth and white under
foot, but shaded by groves of alpine firs. Trees which here reach mature
stature, and in apparent health, stand rooted in white gravel, resulting
from surface decomposition. I am sure their foliage is darker than can
be accounted for by effect of white contrasting earth. Wherever, in deep
depressions, enough wash soil and vegetable mould have accumulated,
there the trees gather in thicker groups, lift themselves higher, spread
out more and finer-feathered branches; sometimes, however, richness of
soil and perfection of condition prove fatal through overcrowding. They
are wonderfully like human communities. One may trace in an hour’s walk
nearly all the laws which govern the physical life of men.
Upon reaching camp we found Longhurst in a deep, religious calm, happy
in his mind, happy, too, in the posture of his body, which was reclining
at ease upon a comfortable blanket-pile before the fire; a verse of the
hymn “Coronation” escaped murmurously from his lips, rising at times in
shaky crescendos, accompanied by a waving and desultory movement of the
forefinger. He had found among our medicines a black bottle of brandy,
contrived to induce a mule to break it, and, just to save as much as
possible while it was leaking, drank with freedom. Anticipating any
possible displeasure of ours, Longhurst had collected his wits and
arrived at a most excellent dinner, crowning the repast with a duff,
accurately globular, neatly brecciated with abundant raisins, and
drowned with a foaming sauce, to which the last of the brandy imparted
an almost pathetic flavor.
The evening closed with moral remark and spiritual song from Longhurst,
and the morning introduced us to our prosaic labor of running the
boundary line,--a task which consumed several weeks, and occupied nearly
all of our days. I once or twice found time to go down to the
cliff-edges again for the purpose of making my geological studies.
An excursion which Cotter and I made to the top of the Three Brothers
proved of interest. A half-hour’s walk from camp, over rolling granite
country, brought us to a ridge which jutted boldly out from the plateau
to the edge of the Yosemite wall. Upon the southern side of this
eminence heads a broad, _débris_-filled ravine, which descends to the
valley bottom; upon the other side the ridge sends down its waters along
a steep declivity into a lovely mountain basin, where, surrounded by
forest, spreads out a level expanse of emerald meadow, with a bit of
blue lakelet in the midst. The outlet of this little valley is through a
narrow rift in the rocks leading down into the Yosemite fall.
Along the crest of our jutting ridge we found smooth pathway, and soon
reached the summit. Here again we were upon the verge of a precipice,
this time four thousand two hundred feet high. Beneath us the whole
upper half of the valley was as clearly seen as the southern half had
been from Capitan. The sinuosities of the Merced, those narrow, silvery
gleams which indicated the channel of the Yosemite creek, the broad
expanse of meadow, and _débris_ trains which had bounded down the
Sentinel slope, were all laid out under us, though diminished by immense
depth.
The loftiest and most magnificent parts of the walls crowded in a
semi-circle in front of us; above them the domes, lifted even higher
than ourselves, swept down to the precipice-edges. Directly to our left
we overlooked the goblet-like recess into which the Yosemite tumbles,
and could see the white torrent leap through its granite lip,
disappearing a thousand feet below, hidden from our view by projecting
crags; its roar floating up to us, now resounding loudly, and again
dying off in faint reverberations like the sounding of the sea.
Looking up upon the falls from the valley below, one utterly fails to
realize the great depth of the semi-circular alcove into which they
descend.
Looking back at El Capitan, its sharp, vertical front was projected
against far blue foot-hills, the creamy whiteness of sunlit granite cut
upon aërial distance, clouds and cold blue sky shutting down over white
crest and jetty pine-plumes, which gather helmet-like upon its upper
dome. Perspective effects are marvellously brought out by the stern,
powerful reality of such rock bodies as Capitan. Across their terrible,
blade-like precipice-edges you look on and down over vistas of cañon and
green hillswells, the dark color of pine and fir broken by bare spots of
harmonious red or brown, and changing with distance into purple, then
blue, which reaches on farther into the brown monotonous plains. Beyond,
where the earth’s curve defines its horizon, dim serrations of Coast
Range loom indistinctly on the hazy air. From here those remarkable
fracture results, the Royal Arches, a series of recesses carved into the
granite front, beneath the North Dome, are seen in their true
proportions.
The concentric structure, which covers the dome with a series of plates,
penetrates to a greater depth than usual. The Arches themselves are
only fractured edges of these plates, resulting from the intersection
of a cliff-plane with the conoidal shells.
We had seen the Merced group of snow-peaks heretofore from the west, but
now gained a more oblique view, which began to bring out the thin
obelisk-form of Mount Clark, a shape of great interest from its
marvellous thinness. Mount Starr King, too, swelled up to its commanding
height, the most elevated of the domes.
Looking in the direction of the Half-Dome, I was constantly impressed
with the inclination of the walls, with the fact that they are never
vertical for any great depth. This is observed, too, remarkably in the
case of El Capitan, whose apparently vertical profile is very slant, the
actual base standing twelve hundred feet in advance of the brow.
For a week the boundary survey was continued northeast and parallel to
the cliff-wall, about a mile back from its brink, following through
forests and crossing granite spurs until we reached the summit of that
high, bare chain which divides the Virgin’s Tears from Yosemite Creek,
and which, projecting southward, ends in the Three Brothers. East of
this the declivity falls so rapidly to the valley of the upper Yosemite
Creek that chaining was impossible, and we were obliged to throw our
line across the cañon, a little over a mile, by triangulation. This
completed, we resumed it on the North Dome spur, transferring our camp
to a bit of alpine meadow south of the Mono trail, and but a short
distance from the North Dome itself.
After the line was finished here, and a system of triangles determined
by which we connected our northern points with those across the chasm of
the Yosemite, we made several geological excursions along the cliffs,
studying the granite structure, working out its lithological changes,
and devoting ourselves especially to the system of moraines and glacier
marks which indicate direction and volume of the old ice-flow.
An excursion to the summit of the North Dome was exceedingly
interesting. From the rear of our camp we entered immediately a dense
forest of conifers, which stretched southward along the summit of the
ridge until solid granite, arresting erosion, afforded but little
foothold. As usual, among the cracks, and clinging around the bases of
bowlders, a few hardy pines manage to live, almost to thrive; but as we
walked groups became scarcer, trees less healthy, all at last giving way
to bare, solid stone. The North Dome itself, which is easily reached,
affords an impressive view up the Illilluette and across upon the
fissured front of the Half-Dome. It is also one of the most interesting
specimens of conoidal structure, since not only is its mass divided by
large, spherical shells, but each of these is subdivided by a number of
lesser, divisional planes. No lithological change is, however,
noticeable between the different shells. The granite is composed
chiefly of orthoclase, transparent vitreous quartz, and about an equal
proportion of black mica and hornblende. Here and there adularia occurs,
and, very sparingly, albite.
With no difficulty, but some actual danger, I climbed down a smooth
granite roof-slope to where the precipice of Royal Arches makes off, and
where, lying upon a sharp, neatly fractured edge, I was able to look
down and study those purple markings which are vertically striped upon
so many of these granite cliffs. I found them to be bands of lichen
growth which follow the curves of occasional water-flow. During any
great rain-storm, and when snow upon the uplands is suddenly melted,
innumerable streams, many of them of considerable volume, find their way
to the precipice-edge, and pour down its front. Wherever this is the
case, a deep purple lichen spreads itself upon the granite, and forms
those dark cloudings which add so greatly to the variety and interest of
the cliffs.
I found it extremest pleasure to lie there alone on the dizzy brink,
studying the fine sculpture of cliff and crag, overlooking the
arrangement of _débris_ piles, and watching that slow, grand growth of
afternoon shadows. Sunset found me there, still disinclined to stir, and
repaid my laziness by a glorious spectacle of color. At this hour there
is no more splendid contrast of light and shade than one sees upon the
western gateway itself,--dark-shadowed Capitan upon one side profiled
against the sunset sky, and the yellow mass of Cathedral Rocks rising
opposite in full light, while the valley is divided equally between
sunshine and shade. Pine groves and oaks, almost black in the shadow,
are brightened up to clear red-browns where they pass out upon the
lighted plain. The Merced, upon its mirror-like expanses, here reflects
deep blue from Capitan, and there the warm Cathedral gold. The last
sunlight reflected from some curious, smooth surfaces upon rocks east of
the Sentinel, and about a thousand feet above the valley. I at once
suspected them to be glacier marks, and booked them for further
observation.
My next excursion was up to Mount Hoffmann, among a group of
snow-fields, whose drainage gathers at last through lakes and brooklets
to a single brook (the Yosemite), and flows twelve miles in a broad arc
to its plunge over into the valley. From the summit, which is of a
remarkably bedded, conoidal mass of granite, sharply cut down in
precipices fronting the north, is obtained a broad, commanding view of
the Sierras from afar, by the heads of several San Joaquin branches, up
to the ragged volcanic piles about Silver Mountain.
From the top I climbed along slopes, and down by a wide _détour_ among
frozen snow-banks and many little basins of transparent blue water, amid
black shapes of stunted fir, and over the confused wreck of rock and
tree-trunk thrown rudely in piles by avalanches whose tracks were fresh
enough to be of interest.
Upon reaching the bottom of a broad, open glacier-valley, through whose
middle flows the Yosemite Creek and its branches, I was surprised to
find the streams nearly all dry; that the snow itself, under influence
of cold, was a solid ice mass, and the Yosemite Creek, even after I had
followed it down for miles, had entirely ceased to flow. At intervals
the course of the stream was carried over slopes of glacier-worn
granite, ending almost uniformly in shallow rock basins, where were
considerable ponds of water, in one or two instances expanding to the
dignity of lakelets.
The valley describes an arc whose convexity is in the main turned to the
west, the stream running nearly due west for about four miles, turning
gradually to the southward, and, having crossed the Mono trail, bending
again to the southeast, after which it discharges over the verge of the
cliff. An average breadth of this valley is about half a mile; its form
a shallow, elliptical trough, rendered unusually smooth by the erosive
action of old glaciers. _Roches moutonnées_ break its surface here and
there, but in general the granite has been planed down into remarkable
smoothness. All along its course a varying rubbish of angular bowlders
has been left by the retiring ice, whose material, like that of the
whole country, is of granite; but I recognized prominently black
sienitic granite from the summit of Mount Hoffmann, which, from superior
hardness, has withstood disintegration, and is perhaps the most
frequent material of glacier-blocks. The surface modelling is often of
the most finished type; especially is this the case wherever the granite
is highly silicious, its polish becoming then as brilliant as a marble
mantel. In very feldspathic portions, and particularly where orthoclase
predominates, the polished surface becomes a crust, usually about
three-quarters of an inch thick, in which the ordinary appearance of the
minerals has been somewhat changed, the rock-surface, by long pressure,
rendered extremely dense, and in a measure separated from the underlying
material. This smooth crust is constantly breaking off in broad flakes.
The polishing extended up the valley sides to a height of about seven
hundred feet.
The average section of the old glacier was perhaps six hundred feet
thick by half a mile in width. I followed its course from Mount Hoffmann
down as far as I could ride, and then, tying my horse only a little way
from the brink of the cliff, I continued downward on foot, walking upon
the dry stream-bed. I found here and there a deep pit-hole, sometimes
twenty feet deep, carved in mid-channel, and often full of water. Just
before reaching the cliff verge the stream enters a narrow, sharp cut
about one hundred and twenty feet in depth, and probably not over thirty
feet wide. The bottom and sides of this granite lip, here and there, are
evidently glacier-polished, but the greater part of the scorings have
been worn away by the attrition of sands. A peculiar, brilliant polish,
which may be seen there to-day, is wholly the result of recent sand
friction.
It was noon when I reached the actual lip, and crept with extreme
caution down over smooth, rounded granite, between towering walls, to
where the Yosemite Fall makes its wonderful leap. Polished rock curved
over too dangerously for me to lean out and look down over the
cliff-front itself. A stone gate dazzlingly gilded with sunlight formed
the frame through which I looked down upon that lovely valley.
Contrast with the strength of yellow rock and severe adamantine
sculpture threw over the landscape beyond a strange unreality, a soft,
aërial depth of purple tone quite as new to me as it was beautiful
beyond description. There, twenty-six hundred feet below, lay meadow and
river, oak and pine, and a broad shadow-zone cast by the opposite wall.
Over it all, even through the dark sky overhead, there seemed to be
poured some absolute color, some purple air, hiding details, and veiling
with its soft, amethystine obscurity all that hard, broken roughness of
the Sentinel cliffs. In this strange, vacant, stone corridor, this
pathway for the great Yosemite torrent, this sounding-gallery of
thunderous tumult, it was a strange sensation to stand, looking in vain
for a drop of water, listening vainly, too, for the faintest whisper of
sound, and I found myself constantly expecting some sign of the
returning flood.
From the lip I climbed a high point just to the east, getting a grand
view down the cliff, where a broad, purple band defined the Yosemite
spray line. There, too, I found unmistakable ice-striæ, showing that the
glacier of Mount Hoffmann had actually poured over the brink. At the
moments of such discovery, one cannot help restoring in imagination
pictures of the past. When we stand by river-bank or meadow of that fair
valley, looking up at the torrent falling bright under fulness of light,
and lovely in its graceful, wind-swayed airiness, we are apt to feel its
enchantment; but how immeasurably grander must it have been when the
great, living, moving glacier, with slow, invisible motion, crowded its
huge body over the brink, and launched blue ice-blocks down through the
foam of the cataract into that gulf of wild rocks and eddying mist!
The one-eyed mule, Bonaparte, I found tied where I had left him; and, as
usual, I approached him upon his blind side, able thus to get
successfully into my saddle, without danger to life or limb. I could
never become attached to the creature, although he carried me faithfully
many difficult and some dangerous miles, and for the reason that he made
a pretext of his half-blindness to commit excesses, such as crowding me
against trees and refusing to follow trails. Realizing how terrible
under reinforcement of hereditary transmission the peculiarly mulish
traits would have become, one is more than thankful to Nature for
depriving this singular hybrid of the capacity of handing them down.
Rather tired, and not a little bruised by untimely collision with trees,
I succeeded at last in navigating Bonaparte safely to camp, and turning
him over to his fellow, Pumpkinseed.
The nights were already very cold, our beds on frozen ground none of the
most comfortable; in fact, enthusiasm had quite as much to do with our
content as the blankets or Longhurst’s culinary art, which, enclosed now
by the narrow limit of bacon, bread, and beans, failed to produce such
dainties as thrice-turned slapjacks or plum-duffs of solemnizing memory.
One more geological trip finished my examination of this side of the
great valley. It was a two days’ ramble all over the granite ridges,
from the North Dome up to Lake Tenaya, during which I gathered ample
evidence that a broad sheet of glacier, partly derived from Mount
Hoffmann, and in part from the Mount Watkins Ridge and Cathedral Peak,
but mainly from the great Tuolumne glacier, gathered and flowed down
into the Yosemite Valley. Where it moved over the cliffs there are
well-preserved scarrings. The facts which attest this are open to
observation, and seem to me important in making up a statement of past
conditions.
We were glad to get back at last to our two little cabins in the valley,
although our serio-comic hangers-on, the Diggers, were gone, and the
great fall was dry.
A rest of one day proved refreshing enough for us to leave camp and
ascend by the Mariposa trail to Meadow Brook, where we made a bivouac,
from which Gardiner began his southern boundary line, and I renewed my
geological studies east of Inspiration Point.
I always go swiftly by this famous point of view now, feeling somehow
that I don’t belong to that army of literary travellers who have here
planted themselves and burst into rhetoric. Here all who make California
books, down to the last and most sentimental specimen who so much as
meditates a letter to his or her local paper, dismount and inflate. If
those firs could recite half the droll _mots_ they have listened to, or
if I dared tell half the delicious points I treasure, it would sound
altogether too amusing among these dry-enough chapters.