The Nebraska arrived at San Francisco, March 27th, and Muir lost no time
there after he set foot on land. To his friends he was accustomed to relate,
touches of humor, how he met on the street, the morning after debarkation,
a man with a kit of carpenter's tools on his shoulders. When he inquired
of him "the nearest way out of town to the wild part of the State," the
man set down his tools in evident astonishment and asked, "where do you
wish to go?" "Anywhere that's wild" was Muir's reply, and he was directed
to the Oakland Ferry with the remark that that would be as good a way out
of town as any.
On shipboard Muir had made the acquaintanceship of a young Englishman
by the name of Chilwell, "a most amusing and faithful companion," who eagerly
embraced the opportunity to visit Yosemite Valley with him. In those days
the usual route to Yosemite was by river steamer to Stockton, thence by
stage to Coulterville or Mariposa, and the remainder of way over the mountains
on horseback. But Muir disdained this "orthodox route," for "we had plenty
of time," he said, "and proposed drifting leisurely mountain ward by the
Santa Clara Valley, Pacheco Pass, and the San Joaquin Valley, and thence
to Yosemite by any road that we chanced to find; enjoying the flowers and
light; camping out in our blankets wherever overtaken by night and paying
very little compliance to roads or times."
In his autobiographical manuscript Muir passes in a few sentences over
the first part of this trip, intending according to his penciled directions
to fill in from a description already written. This must refer to the detailed
narrative published in Old and New in 1872, from which we excerpt
the paragraphs descriptive of his walk as far as the top of the Pacheco
Pass.
At this point Muir's unpublished memoirs resume the thread of the
narrative as follows:
At the top of the Pass I obtained my first view of the San Joaquin plain
and the glorious Sierra Nevada. Looking down from a height of fifteen hundred
feet, there, extending north and south as far as I could see lay a vast
level flower garden, smooth and level like a lake of gold--the floweriest
part of the world I had yet seen. From the eastern margin of the golden
plain arose the white Sierra. At the base ran a belt of gently sloping
purplish foothills lightly dotted with oaks, above that a broad dark zone
of coniferous forests and above is forest zone arose the lofty mountain
peaks, clad in snow. The atmosphere
was so clear that the nearest
of the mountain peaks on the axis of range were at a distance of more than
one hundred and fifty miles, they seemed to be at just the right distance
to be seen broadly in their relations to one another, marshaled in glorious
ranks and groups, their snowy robes smooch and bright that it seemed impossible
for a man to walk across the open folds without being seen, even at this
distance. Perhaps more than three hundred miles of the range was comprehended
in this one view.
Descending the pass and wading out into the bed of golden compost five
hundred miles long by forty or fifty wide, I found that the average depth
of the vegetation was over knee deep, and the flowers were so crowded together
that in walking through the midst of them and over them more than a hundred
were pressed down beneath the foot at every step. The yellow these compositae,
both of the ray and disc flowers, is extremely deep a rich and bossy, and
exceeds the purple of all the others in superficial quantity forty or fifty
times their whole amount. But to an observer who first looks downward,
then takes a wider and wider view, the yellow gradually fade and purple
predominates, because nearly all of the purple flowers are taller, In depth,
the purple stratum is about ten or twelve inches, the yellow seven or eight,
and down in the shade, out of sight, is another stratum of purple, one
inch in depth, for the ground forests of mosses are there, with purple
stems, and purple cups. The color beauty of these mosses, at least in mass,
was not made for human eyes, nor for the wild horses that inhabit these
plains, nor the antelopes, but perhaps the little creatures enjoy their
own beauty, and perhaps the insects that dwell in these forests and climb
their shining columns enjoy it. But we know that however faint, and however
shaded' no part of it is lost, for all color is received into the eyes
of God.
Crossing this greatest of flower gardens and the San Joaquin River at
Hill's Ferry, we followed the Merced River, which I knew drained Yosemite
Valley, and ascended the foothills from Snelling by way of Coulterville.
We had several accidents and adventures. At the little mining town of Coulterville
we bought flour and tea and made inquiries about roads and trails, and
the forests we would have to pass through. The storekeeper, an Italian, took
kindly pains to tell the pair of wandering wayfarers, new arrived in California,
that the winter had been very severe, that in some places the Yosemite
trail was still buried in snow eight or ten feet deep, and therefore we
would have to wait at least a month before we could possibly get into the
great valley, for we would surely get lost should we attempt to go on.
As to the forests, the trees, he said, were very large; some of the pines
eight or ten feet in diameter.
In reply I told him that it would be delightful to see snow ten feet
deep and trees ten feet thick, even if lost, but I never got lost in wild
woods. "Well," said he, "go, if you must, but I have warned you; and anyhow
you must have a gun, for there are bears in the mountains, but you must
not shoot at them unless they come for you and are very, very close up."
So at last, at Mr. Chilwell's anxious suggestion, we bought an old army
musket, with a few pounds of quail shot and large buckshot, good, as the
merchant assured us, for either birds or bears.
Our bill of fare in camps was simple--tea and cakes, the latter made
from flour without leaven and toasted on the coals--and of course we shunned
hotels in the valley, seldom indulging even in crackers, as being too expensive.
Chilwell, being an Englishman, loudly lamented being compelled to live
on so light a diet, flour and water, as he expressed it, and hungered for
flesh; therefore he made desperate efforts to shoot something to eat, particularly
quails and grouse, but he was invariably unsuccessful and declared the
gun was worthless. I told him I thought that it was good enough if properly
loaded and aimed, though perhaps sighted too high, and promised to show
him at the first opportunity how to load and shoot.
Many of the herbaceous plants of the flowing foothills were the same
as those of the plain and had already gone to seed and withered. But at
a height of one thousand feet or so we found many of the lily family blooming
in all their glory, the Calochortus especially, a charming genus like European
tulips, but finer, and many species of two new shrubs--especially, Ceanothus
and Adenostoma. The oaks, beautiful trees with blue foliage and white bark,
forming open groves, gave a fine park effect. Higher, we met the first
of the pines, with long gray foliage, large stout cones, and wide-spreading
heads like palms. Then yellow pines, growing gradually more abundant as
we ascended. At Bower Cave on the north fork of the Merced the streams
were fringed with willows and azalea, ferns, flowering dogwood, etc. Here,
too, we enjoyed the strange beauty of the Cave in a limestone hill.
At Deer Flat the wagon-road ended in a trail which we traced up the
side of the dividing ridge parallel to the Merced and Tuolumne to Crane
Flat, lying at a height of six thousand feet, where we found a noble forest
of sugar pine, silver fir, libocedrus, Douglas spruce, the first of the
noble Sierra forests, the noblest coniferous forests in the world, towering
in all their unspoiled beauty and grandeur around a sunny, gently sloping
meadow. Here, too, we got into the heavy winter snow--a fine change from
the burning foothills and plains.
Some mountaineer had tried to establish a claim to the Flat by building
a little cabin of sugar pine shakes, and though we had arrived early in
the afternoon I decided to camp here for the night as the trail was buried
in the snow which was about six feet deep, and I wanted to examine the
topography and plan our course. Chilwell cleared away the snow from the
door and floor of the cabin, and made a bed in it of boughs of fernlike
silver fir, though I urged the same sort of bed made under the trees on
the snow. But he had the house habit.
After camp arrangements were made he reminded me of my promise about
the gun, hoping eagerly for improvement of our bill of fare, however slight.
Accordingly I loaded the gun, paced off thirty yards from the cabin, or
shanty, and told Mr. Chilwell to pin a piece of paper on the wall and see
if I could not put shot into it and prove the gun's worth. So he pinned
a piece on the shanty wall and vanished around the corner, calling out,
"Fire away."
I supposed that he had gone some distance back of the cabin, but instead
he went inside of it and stood up against the mark that he had himself
placed on the wall, and as the shake wall of soft sugar pine was only about
half an inch thick, the shot passed through it and into his shoulder. He
came rushing: out, with his hand on his shoulder, crying in great concern,
"You've shot me, you've shot me, Scottie." The weather being cold, he fortunately
had on three coats and as many shirts. One of the coats was a heavy English
overcoat. I discovered that the shot had passed through all this clothing
and into his shoulder, and the embedded pellets had to be picked out with
the point of a penknife. I asked him how he could be so foolish as to stand
opposite the mark. "Because," he replied, "I never imagined the blank gun
would shoot through the side of the 'ouse."
We found our way easily enough over the deep snow, guided by the topography,
and discovered the trail on the brow of the valley just as the Bridal Veil
came in sight. I didn't know that it was one of the famous falls I had
read about, and calling Chilwell's attention to it I said, "See that dainty
little fall over there. I should like to camp at the foot of it to see
the ferns and lilies that may be there. It looks small from here, only
about fifteen or twenty feet, but it may be sixty or seventy." So little
did we then know of Yosemite magnitudes!
After spending eight or ten days in visiting the falls and the high
points of view around the walls, making sketches, collecting flowers and
ferns, etc., we decided to make the return trip by way of Wawona, then
owned by Galen Clark, the Yosemite pioneer. The night before the start
was made on the return trip we camped near the Bridal Veil Meadows, where,
as we lay eating our suppers by the light of the camp-fire, we were visited
by a brown bear. We heard him approaching by the heavy crackling of twigs.
Chilwell, in alarm, after listening a while, said, "I see it! I see it!
It's a bear, a grizzly! Where is the gun? You take the gun and shoot him--you
can shoot best." But the gun had only a charge of birdshot in it; therefore,
while the bear stood on the opposite side of the fire, at a distance of
probably twenty-five or thirty feet, I hastily loaded in a lot of buckshot.
The buckshot was too large to chamber and therefore it made a zigzag charge
on top of the birdshot charge, the two charges occupying about half
of the barrel. Thus armed, the gun held at rest pointed at the bear, we
sat hushed and motionless, according to instructions from the man who sold
the gun, solemnly waiting and watching, as full of fear as the musket of
shot. Finally, after sniffing and whining for his supper what seemed to
us a long time, the young inexperienced beast walked off. We were much
afraid of his return to attack us. We did not then know that bears never
attack sleeping campers, and dreading another visit we kept awake on guard
most of the night.
Like the Coulterville trail all the high-lying part of the Mariposa
trail was deeply snow-buried, but we found our way without the slightest
trouble, steering by the topography in a general way along the brow of the
canyon of the south fork of the Merced River, and in a day or two reached
Wawona. Here we replenished our little flour sack
and Mr. Clark gave us a piece of bear meat.
We then pushed eagerly on up the Wawona ridge through a magnificent
sugar pine forest and into the far-famed Mariposa Sequoia Grove. The sun
was down when we entered the Grove, but we soon had a good fire and at
supper that night we tasted bear meat for the first time. My flesh-hungry
companion ate it eagerly, though to me it seemed so rank and oily that
I was unable to swallow a single morsel
After supper we replenished the fire and gazed enchanted at the vividly
illumined brown boles of the giants towering about us, while the stars
sparkled in wonderful beauty above their huge domed heads. We camped here
long uncounted days, wandering about from tree to tree, taking no note
of time. The longer we gazed the more we admired not only their colossal
size, but their majestic beauty and dignity. Greatest of trees, greatest
of living things, their noble domes poised in unchanging repose seemed
to belong to the sky, while the great firs and pines about them looked
like mere latter-day saplings.
While we camped in the Mariposa Grove, the abundance of bear tracks
caused Mr. Chilwell no little alarm, and he proposed that we load the gun
properly with buckshot and without any useless birdshot; but there was
no means of drawing the charge--it had to be shot off. The recoil was so
great that it bruised his shoulder and sent him spinning like a
top. Casting down the miserable, kicking, bad luck musket among the Sequoia
cones and branches that littered the ground, he stripped and examined his
unfortunate shoulder and, in painful indignation and wrath, found it black
and blue and more seriously hurt by the bruising recoil blow than it was
by the shot at Crane Flat.
When we got down to the hot San Joaquin plain at Snelling the grain
fields were nearly ready for the reaper, and we began to inquire for a
job to replenish our remaining stock of money which was now very small,
though we had not spent much; the grand royal trip of more than a month
in the Yosemite region having cost us only about three dollars each. At
our last camp, in a bed of cobble-stones on the Merced River bottom, Mr.
Chilwell was more and more eagerly hungering for meat. He tried to shoot
one of the jack-rabbits cantering around us, but was unable to hit any
of them. I told him, when he begged me to take the gun, that I would shoot
one for him if he would drive it up to the camp. He ran and shooed and
threw cobble-stones without getting any of them up within shooting distance
as I took good care to warn the poor beasts by making myself and the gun
conspicuous. At last discovering the humor of the thing he shouted:
"I say, Scottie, this makes me think of a picture
I once saw in Punch--game-keepers
driving partridges to be shot by a simpleton Cockney."
Then one of those curious burrowing owls alighted on the top of a fencepost
beside us, and I said, "If you are so hungry for flesh why don't you shoot
one of those owls?" "Howls," he said in disgust, "are only vermin." I argued
that that was mere prejudice and custom, and that if stewed in a pot it
would make good soup, and the flesh, too, that he hungered for, might also
be found to be fairly good, but that if he didn't care for it, I didn't.
I finally pictured the flavor of the soup so temptingly that with watering
lips he consented to try it, and the poor owl was shot. When he came to
dress
it the pitiful little red carcass seemed so worthless
a morsel that he was tempted to throw it away, but I said, "No; now that
you have it ready for the pot, boil it and at least enjoy the soup." So
it was boiled in the teapot and bravely devoured, though he insisted that
he did not like the flavor of either the soup or the meat. He charged me,
saying: "Now, Scottie, if you go to England with me to see my folks, after
our fortunes are made, don't you tell them as 'ow we 'ad a howl for supper."
He was always trying to persuade me to go to England with him.
Next day we got a job in a harvest field at Hopeton and were seated
at a table once more. Mr. Chilwell never tired of describing the meanness
and misery of so pure a vegetable diet as was ours on the Yosemite trip.
"Just think of it," said he, "we lived a whole month on flour and water!"
He ate so many hot biscuits at that table, and so much beans and boiled pork,
that he was sick for three or four days afterwards, a trick the despised
Yosemite diet never played him.
This Yosemite trip only made me hungry for another far longer and farther
reaching, and I determined to set out again as soon as I had earned little
money to get near views of the mountains in all their snowy grandeur, and
study the wonderful forests, the noblest of their kind I had ever
seen--sugar pines eight and nine feet in diameter,
with cones nearly two feet long,
silver furs more than two hundred feet in height, Douglas spruce and
libocedrus, and the kingly Sequoias.
After the harvest was over Mr. Chilwell left me, but I remained with
Mr. Egleston several months to break mustang horses; then ran a ferry boat
Merced Falls for travel between Stockton and Mariposa. That same fall made
a lot of money sheep-shearing, and after the shearing was over one the
sheep-men of the neighborhood, Mr. John Cannel, nicknamed Smoky Jack, begged
me to take care of one of his bands of sheep, because the then present
shepherd was about to quit. He offered thirty dollars a month a board and
assured me that it would be a "foin aisy job."
I said that I didn't know anything about sheep, except the shearing
them, didn't know the range, and that his flock would probably be scatter
over the plains and lost; but he said he would risk me, that "the sheep
would show me the range, and all would go smooth and aisy." At length,
considering that, being out every day, a fine opportunity would be offered
to watch the growth of the flowery vegetation, and to study the birds and
beasts, insects, weather, etc., I dared the job, and sure enough, as my
employer said, the sheep soon showed me their range, leading me a wild
chase in their search for grass over the dry sunbeaten plains.
Smoky Jack was known far and wide, and I soon learned that he was queer
character. Unmarried, living alone, playing the game of money making, he
had already become sheep-rich--the owner of three or four bands as the flocks
are called. He had commenced his career as a sheep-man when he was
poor, with only a score or two of coarse-woofed ewes, which he herded himself
and faithfully followed and improved until they had multiplied in thousands.
He lived mostly on beans. In the morning after his bean breakfast he
filled his pockets from the pot with dripping beans for luncheon, which
he ate in handfuls as he followed the flock. His overalls and boots soon,
of course, became thoroughly saturated, and instead of wearing thin, wore
thicker and stouter, and by sitting down to rest from time to time, parts
of all the vegetation, leaves, petals, etc., were embedded in them, together
with wool fibers, butterfly wings, mica crystals, fragments of nearly everything
that part of the world contained rubbed in, embedded and coarsely stratified,
so that these wonderful garments grew to have a rich geological and biological
significance, like chose of Mr. Delaney's shepherd.
Replying to my inquiry where the sheep were, he directed me to follow
the road between French Bar and Snelling four or five miles, and "when
you see a cabin on a little hill, that's the place." I found the place,
and a queer place it proved to be. The shepherd whom I was to relieve hailed
me with delight and within a few minutes of my arrival set off, exulting
in his freedom. I begged him to stay until morning and show me the range,
but this he refused, saying that it was unnecessary for him to show me
the range; all I had to do was simply to let down the corral bars and the
starving sheep would soon explain and explore the range.
Left alone, I examined the dismal little hut with dismay. A Dutch oven
frying-pan, and a few tin cups lay on the floor; a rickety stool and a
bedstead, with a tick made of a wool sack, stuffed with straw and cast-off
overalls left by shearers, constituted the furniture. I went outside, looking
for a piece of clean ground to lie down on, but no such ground was to be
found. Every yard of it was strewn with some sort of sheep camp detritus,
bits of shriveled woolly skin, bacon rinds, bones, horns and skulls mixed
with all sorts of mysterious compound unclean rubbish! I therefore had
to go back into the shanty and spread my blankets on the dirt floor as
the least dangerous part of the establishment.
Next morning, by the time I had fried some pancakes and made a cup of
tea, the sunbeams were streaming through the wide vertical seams of the
shanty wall, and I made haste to open the corral. The sheep were crowding
around the gate, and as soon as it was opened, poured forth like a boisterous
uncontrollable flood, and soon the whole flock was so widely outspread
and scattered over the plain, it seemed impossible that the mad starving
creatures could ever be got together again. I ran around from side to side,
headed the leaders off again and again, and did my best to confine the
size of the flock to an area of a square mile or so.
About noon, to my delight and surprise, they lay down to rest and allowed
me to do the same for an hour or so. Then they again scattered, but not
so far nor so wildly, and I was still more surprised about half an hour
before sundown, while I was wondering how I could ever get them driven
back into the corral, to see them gather of their own accord into long
parallel files, cross Dry Creek on the bank of which the corral stood,
and pour back into the corral and quietly lie down. This ended my first
day of sheep-herding.
After the winter rains had set in, and the grass had grown to a height
of
three or four inches, herding became easy, for they quietly
filled themselves; but at this time, just before the rain, when not a green
leaf is to be seen, when the dead summer vegetation is parched and crumpled
into dust and fragments of stems, the sheep are always hungry and unmanageable;
but when full of green grass the entire flock moves as one mild, bland,
contented animal. This year the winter rains did not set in until the middle
of December, Then Dry Creek became a full, deep, stately flowing river;
every hollow in the hills was flooded, every channel so long dry carried
a rushing, gurgling, happy stream.
Being out every day I had the advantage of watching the coming of every
species of plant. Mosses and liverworts, no trace of which could be seen
when dry and crumpled, now suddenly covered the entire plain with a soft
velvet robe of living green. Then, at first one by one, the different species
of flowering plants appeared, pushing up with marvelous rapidity and bursting
into bloom, until all the ground was covered with golden compositae, interrupted
and enriched here and there with charming beds of violets, mints, clover,
mariposa tulips, etc.
It was very interesting, too, to watch the awakening and coming to light
and life of the many species of ants and other insects after their deathlike
sleep during the cold rainy season; and the ground squirrels coming out
of their burrows to sun themselves and feed on the fresh vegetation; and
to watch the nesting birds and hear them sing--especially the meadow-larks
which were in great abundance and sang as if every note was transformed
sunshine. Plovers in great numbers and of several species came to feed
with snipes and geese and swans.
It was interesting, too, to watch the long-eared hares, or jack-rabbits
as they are called, as they cantered over the flowery plain, or confidingly
mingled with the flock. Several times I saw inquisitive sheep interviewing
the rabbits as they sat erect, even touching noses and indulging apparently
in interesting gossip. My dog was fond of chasing the hares, but they bounded
along carelessly, and never were so closely pressed as to be compelled
to dive into a burrow. They apparently trusted entirely to their speed
of foot; but as soon as a golden eagle came in sight they made for the
nearest burrow in terrified haste. Then, feeling safe, they would turn
around and look out the door to watch the movements of their enemy.
Occasionally I have seen an eagle alight within a yard or two of the
door of a burrow into which a hare had been chased, and observed their
gestures while the hare and eagle looked each other in the face for an
hour at a time, the eagle apparently hoping that the hare might venture
forth. When, however, a hare was surprised at any considerable distance
from a burrow, the eagle, in swift pursuit, rapidly overtakes it and strikes
it down with his elbow, then wheels around, picks it up and carries it
to some bare hilltop to feast at leisure.
By the end of May nearly all of the marvelous vegetation of the plains
has gone to seed and is so scorched and sun-dried, it crumbles under foot
as
though it had literally been cast into an oven. Then most
of the flocks are driven into the green pastures of the Sierra. A camp
is made on the first favorable spot commanding a considerable range, and
when it is eaten out the camp is moved to higher and higher pastures in
succession, following the upward sweep of grassy, flowery summer towards
the summit of the Range.
Ever since I had visited Yosemite the previous year I had longed to
get back into the Sierra. When the heavy snows were melting in the spring
sunshine, opening the way to the summits of the Range, and I was trying
to plan a summer's excursion into their midst, wondering how I could possibly
carry food to last a whole summer, Mr. Delaney, a neighbor of Smoky Jack's,
noticing my love of plants and seeing some of the drawings I had made in
my note-books, urged me to go to the mountains with his flock--not to herd
the sheep, for the regular shepherd was to take care of them, but simply
to see that the shepherd did his duties. He offered to carry my plant press
and blankets, allow me to make his mountain camps my headquarters while
I was studying the adjacent mountains, and perfect freedom to pursue my
studies, and offering to pay me besides, simply to see that the shepherd
did not neglect his flock.
Mr. Delaney was an Irishman who was educated at Maynooth College for
a Catholic priest, a striking contrast to his so-called "Smoky" neighbor.
He was lean and tall, and I naturally nicknamed him Don Quixote. I told
him that I did not think I could be of any practical use to him because
I did not know the mountains, knew nothing about the habits of sheep in
the mountains, and that I feared that in pushing through brush, fording
torrents, and in attacks of bears and wolves, the sheep would be scattered
and not half of them ever see the plains again. But he encouraged me by
saying that he himself would go to the mountains with the flock, to the
first camp, and visit each camp in succession from time to time, bringing
letters and fresh provisions, and seeing for himself how his flock was
prospering; that the shepherd would do all the herding and that I would
be just as free to pursue my studies as if there were no sheep in the question,
to sketch and collect plants, and observe the wild animals; but as he could
not depend upon his shepherd his fear was that the flock might be neglected,
and scattered by bears, and that my services would only be required in
cases of accidents of that sort.
I therefore concluded to accept his generous offer. The sheep were counted,
the morning the start for the mountains was made, as they passed out of
the corral one by one. They numbered two thousand and fifty, and were headed
for the mountains. The leaders of the flock had not gone a mile from the
home camp before they seemed to understand that they were on their way
up to the high green pastures where they had been the year before, and
eagerly ran ahead, while Don Quixote, with a rifle on his shoulder, led
two pack animals, and the shepherd and an Indian and Chinaman to assist
in driving through the foothills, and myself, marched in the rear.
Our first camp after crossing the dusty, brushy foothills, which were
Scarcely less sunburned than the plains, was made on a tributary of the
North
Fork of the Merced River at an elevation of about three
thousand feet above the sea. Here there were no extensive grassy meadows,
but the hills and hollows and recesses of the mountain divide between the
Merced and the Tuolumne waters were richly clothed with grass and lupines,
while clover of different species and ceanothus bushes furnished pasture
in fair abundance for several weeks, while the many waterfalls on the upper
branches of the river, the charming lily gardens at the foot of them, and
many new plants and animals to sketch and study, afforded endless work
according to my own heart.
The sheep were kept here too long; the pasture within two or three miles
of the camp was eaten bare, while we waited day after day, more and more
anxiously, for the coming of the Don with provisions, and to assist and
direct the moving of the camp to higher fresh pasturage. Our own pasturage
was also exhausted. We got out of flour, and strange to say, although we
had abundance of mutton and tea and sugar, we began to suffer. After going
without bread for about a week it was difficult to swallow mutton, and
our stomachs became more and more restless. The shepherd tried to calm
his rebellious stomach by chewing great quantities of tobacco and swallowing
most of the juice, and by making his tea very strong, using a handful for
each cup. Strange that in so fertile a wilderness we should suffer distress
for the want of a cracker, or a slice of bread, while the Indians of the
neighborhood sustained their merry, free lives on clover, pine bark, lupines,
fern roots, etc., with only now and then a squirrel.
At length the Don came down the long glen, and all our bread woes were
ended. He brought with him not only an abundance of provisions, but two
men to assist in driving the flock higher. One of these men was an Indian,
and I was interested in watching his behavior while eating, driving,
and choosing a place to sleep at night.
He kept a separate camp, and how quick] his
eye was to notice a straggling sheep, and how much better he seemed to
understand the intentions and motives of the flock than any of the other
assistants.
Our next camp was made on the north side of Yosemite Valley, about a
mile back from the top of the wall. Here for six weeks I reveled in the
grandeur of Yosemite scenery, sketching from the crown of North Dome, visiting
the head of the great Yosemite Fall and making excursions to the eastward
to the top of Mount Hoffmann and to Lake Tenaya, enjoying the new plants.
The greatest charm of our first camp were the lily gardens, Lilium
pardalinum, with corollas large enough for babies' bonnets. The species
around our Yosemite camp was the mountain lily, L. parvum, with
from one or two to forty or fifty flowers, the magnificent panicles rising
to the height of six or seven feet, or even higher.
The principal tree of the forests at an elevation of eight thousand
feet is the magnificent silver fir. The tallest that I measured near camp
was no less than two hundred and forty feet in height, while with this
grandeur and majesty is combined exquisite beauty of foliage and flower
and fruit; the branches like sumptuous fern fronds, arranged in regular
whorls round the stem like the leaves of lilies. From this camp I made
the acquaintance on the top of Mount
Hoffmann of trees I had
not seen before--the beautiful mountain hemlock
(Tsuga Mertensiana)
and most graceful in form of all the California conifers, and the curious
dwarf pine (Pinus albicaulis) that forms the timberline. To tell
the glories of this magnificent camp-ground would require many a volume.
Here, for the first time, the sheep were attacked by bears in the night
and scattered. The morning light showed a heap of dead sheep in the corral,
killed by suffocation in piling on top of each other and pressing against
the wall of the corral, while only two were carried out of the corral and
half of the carcasses eaten. The second day after this attack the corral
was again visited, another lot of sheep smothered and one carried off and
half devoured. Just after we had succeeded in gathering the scattered flock
into one again the Don arrived, and immediately ordered the camp moved,
saying that the first robber bear and perhaps others, would visit the camp
every night, and that no noisy watching, shooting, or building of fires
would be of any avail to stop them. Accordingly, next morning the flock
was headed toward the high grassy forests north of the Tuolumne meadows
which we reached a few days later, where abundance of the best pasturage
was found. Here we stayed until the approach of winter warned the Don to
turn the flock toward the lowlands. At this camp I had a glorious time
climbing, studying, sketching, pressing new plants, etc. But far from satisfied
I determined to return next year and as many other years as opportunities
offered or were made.
When we arrived at the home ranch the flock was corralled and counted
and strange to say, every sheep of the two thousand and fifty was accounted
for. A few had been killed for mutton, one was killed by the bite of a
rattlesnake, one broke its leg jumping over a rock and had to be killed,
one or two were sold to settlers on the way down to the foothills, and
so forth, besides those lost by bears. This was a summer of greatest enjoyment
of all that I liked best. I climbed the surrounding mountains; made the
acquaintance of many new trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, the main
forest zones, glacier meadows, gardens and endless falls and cascades.
There, too, I made the acquaintance of some of the Mono Indians, who visited
our camp while on their annual deer hunt. The whole summer was crowded
with the noblest pictures and sculptures and monuments of nature's handiwork.
I explored the magnificent group of mountains at the head of the Tuolumne
River crossed the range by the Mono Pass, visited Mono Lake and the range
of volcanic cones extending from its southern shore, making excursions
from camp into all the surrounding region, sketching, writing notes, pressing
plants, tracing the works and ways of the ancient glaciers, and reveling
in the glorious life and beauty of the unspoiled new-born wilderness. And
when at last the snow drove me out of it I determined to return to it again
and again as I was able.
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