the john muir exhibit - writings - picturesque_california - chapter 2
Chapter 2
The Passes of the High Sierra
The roads that Nature has
opened through the heart of the High
Sierra are hard to travel. So the
sedate plodder of the lowlands would
say, whether accustomed to trace the
level furrows of fields, or the paved
streets of cities. But as people
oftentimes build better than they
know, so also do they walk and climb
and wander better than they know,
and so it comes, that urged onward
by a mysterious love of wild beauty
and adventure, we find ourselves far
from the beaten ways of life, toiling
through these rugged mountain
passes without thinking of a reason
for embracing with such
ungovernable enthusiasm so much
stem privation and hardship.
"Try not the pass" may sound in our ears, but despite the solemn
warning, come from whom it may, the passes will be tried until the end of
time, in the face of every danger of rock, avalanche, and blinding storm. And
whatever the immediate motive may be that starts us on our travels--wild
landscapes, or adventures, or mere love of gain, the passes themselves will in
the end be found better than anything to which they directly lead; calling
every faculty into vigorous action, rousing from soul-wasting apathy and
ease, and opening windows into the best regions of both earth and heaven.
The glaciers were the pass makers of the Sierra, and by them the ways of
all mountaineers have been determined. A short geological time before the
coming on of that winter of winters, called "The Glacial Period," a vast
deluge of molten rocks poured from many a chasm and crater on the flanks
and summit of the range, obliterating every distinction of peak and pass
throughout its northern portions, filling the lake basins, flooding ridge and
valley alike, and effacing nearly every feature of the pre-glacial landscapes.
Then, after these all-destroying fire-floods ceased to flow, but while the
great volcanic cones built up along the
axis of the range, still burned and
smoked, the whole Sierra passed under
the domain of ice and snow. Over the
bald, featureless, fire-blackened
mountains glaciers crawled, covering
them all from summit to base with a
mantle of ice; and thus with infinite
deliberation the work was begun of
sculpturing the range anew. Those
mighty agents of erosion, halting never
through unnumbered centuries, ground
and crushed the flinty lavas and granites
beneath their crystal folds. Particle by
particle, chip by chip, block by block the
work went on, wasting and building, until
in the fullness of time the mountains
were born again, the passes and the
summits between them, ridges and
canyons, and all the main features of the
range coming to the light nearly as we
behold them today.
Looking into the passes near the
summits, they seem singularly gloomy
and bare, like raw quarries of dead,
unfertilized stone--gashes in the cold
rock-bones of the mountains above the
region of life, empty as when they first
emerged from beneath the folds of the
ice-mantle. Faint indeed are the marks
of any kind of life, and at first sight they
may not be seen at all. Nevertheless
birds sing and flowers bloom in the
highest of them all, and in no part of the
range, north or south, is there any break
in the chain of life, however much it may
be wasted and turned aside by snow and
ice, and flawless granite.
Compared with the well-known passes of Switzerland, those of the south half of
the Sierra are somewhat higher, but they contain less ice and snow, and enjoy a
better summer climate, making them, upon the whole, more open and approachable.
A carriage-road has been constructed through the Sonora Pass, the summit of
which is 10,150 feet above the level of the sea--878 feet higher than the highest
carriage-pass in Switzerland--the Stelvio Pass.
In a distance of 140 miles between lat. 36° degrees 20' and 38° degrees the
lowest pass I have yet discovered exceeds 9,000 feet, and the average height of all
above sea-level is perhaps not far from 11,000 feet.
Substantial carriage-roads lead through the Carson and Johnson Passes near the
head of Lake Tahoe, over which immense quantities of freight were hauled from
California to the mining regions of Nevada prior to the construction of the Central
Pacific Railroad through the Donner Pass. Miles of mules and ponderous wagons
might then be seen slowly crawling beneath a cloud of dust through the majestic
forest aisles, the drivers shouting in every language, and making a din and disorder
strangely out of keeping with the solemn grandeur of the mountains about them.
To the northward of the memorable Donner Pass, 7,056 feet in height, a number
of lower passes occur, through whose rugged defiles long emigrant trains, with
footsore cattle and sun-cracked wagons a hundred times mended, wearily toiled
during the early years of the Gold Period. Coming from far, through a thousand
dangers, making a way over trackless wastes, the snowy Sierra at length loomed in
sight, to them the eastern wall of the Land of Gold. And as they gazed through the
tremulous haze of the desert, with what joy must they have descried the gateway
through which they were so soon to pass to the better land of all their golden hopes
and dreams!
Between the Sonora Pass and the southern extremity of the High Sierra, a
distance of a 160 miles, there is not a single carriage-road conducting from one
side of the range to the other, and only five passes with trails of the roughest
description. These are barely practicable for animals, a pass in this region meaning
simply any notch with its connecting canyon and ridges through which one may, by
the exercise of unlimited patience, make out to lead a surefooted mule or mustang,
one that can not only step well among loose stones, but also jump well down rugged
stairways, and slide with limbs firmly braced down smooth inclines of rock and
snow.
Only three of the five may be said to be in use--the Kearsarge, Mono, and
Virginia Creek passes--the tracks leading through the others being only obscure
Indian trails not graded in the least, and scarce at all traceable by white men. Much
of the way lies over solid pavements where the unshod ponies of the Indians leave
no appreciable sign, and across loose taluses where only a slight displacement is
visible here and there, and through thickets of weeds and bushes, leaving marks that
only skilled mountaineers can follow, while a general knowledge of the topography
must be looked to as the main guide.
One of these Indian trails leads through a nameless pass between the head
waters of the south and middle forks of the San Joaquin, another between the north
and middle forks of the same river, to the south of the Minarets, this last being
about 9,000 feet high, and the lowest of the five.
The Kearsarge is the highest. It crosses the summit of the range near the head
of the south fork of Kings River, about eight miles to the north of Mount Tyndall,
through the midst of the grandest scenery. The highest point on the trail is upward
of 12,000 feet above the sea. Nevertheless it is one of the safest of the five, and is
traveled every summer from July to October or November by hunters,
prospectors, and stock-owners, and also to some extent by enterprising pleasure-seekers.
For besides the surpassing grandeur of the scenery about the summit, the
trail in ascending the western flank of the range leads through a forest of the giant
Sequoias, and through the magnificent Kings River Valley, that rivals Yosemite in
the varied beauty and grandeur of its granite masonry and falling waters. This, as far
as I know, is probably the highest traveled pass on the American continent.
The Mono Pass lies to the east of Yosemite Valley, at the head of one of the
tributaries of the South Fork of the Tuolumne, and is the best known of all the High
Sierra passes. A rough trail, invisible mostly, was made through it about the time of
the Mono and Aurora gold excitements, in the year 1858, and it has been in use
ever since by mountaineers of every description. Though more than a thousand feet
lower than the Kearsarge it is scarcely inferior in sublimity of rock-scenery, while
in snowy, loud-sounding water it far surpasses the Kearsarge.
The Virginia Creek Pass, situated a few miles to the northward, at the head of
the southmost tributary of Walker River, is somewhat lower, but less traveled than
the Mono. It is used chiefly by "Sheep-men" who drive their flocks through it on
the way to Nevada, and roaming bands of Pah Ute Indians, who may be seen
occasionally in long straggling files, strangely attired, making their way to the
hunting grounds of the western slope, or returning laden with game of startling
variety.
These are all the traveled passes of the high portion of the range of which I have
any knowledge. But leaving wheels and pack-animals out of the question, the free
mountaineer, carrying only a little light dry food strapped firmly on his shoulders,
and an axe for ice-work, can make his way across the Sierra almost everywhere, and
at any time of year when the weather is calm. To him nearly every notch between
the peaks is a pass, though much patient step-cuffing is in some cases required up
and down steeply inclined glaciers and ice-walls, and cautious scrambling over
precipices that at first sight appear hopelessly inaccessible to the inexperienced
lowlander. All the passes make their steepest ascents on the east flank of the range,
where the average rise is nearly a thousand feet to the mile, while on the west it is
about two hundred feet. Another marked difference between the east and west
portions of the passes is that the former begin between high moraine embankments
at the very foot of the range, and follow the canyons, while the latter can hardly be
said to begin until an elevation of from seven to ten thousand feet or more is
reached by following the ridges, the canyons on the west slope being accessible
only to the birds and the roaring falling rivers. Approaching the range from the grey
levels of Mono and Owens Valley the steep short passes are in full view between
the peaks, their feet in hot sand, their heads in snow, the courses of the more direct
being disclosed nearly all the way from top to bottom. But from the west side one
sees nothing of the pass sought for until nearing the summit, after spending days in
threading the forests on the main dividing ridges between the canyons of the rivers,
most of the way even the highest peaks being hidden.
The more rugged and inaccessible the general character of the topography of
any particular region, the more surely will the trails of white men, Indians, bears,
deer, wild sheep, etc., converge into the best passes. The Indians of the west slope
venture cautiously across the range in settled weather to attend dances and obtain
loads of pine-nuts and the larvae of a small fly that
breeds in Mono and Owens lakes, while the desert Indians cross to the west for
acorns and to hunt, fight, etc. The women carry the heavy burdens with marvelous
endurance over the sharpest stones barefooted, while the men stride on erect a
little in advance, stooping occasionally to pile up stepping-stones for them against
steep rock-fronts, just as they would prepare the way in difficult places for their
ponies. Sometimes, delaying their journeys until too late in the season, they are
overtaken by heavy snowstorms and perish miserably, not all their skill in
mountain-craft being sufficient to save them under the fierce onsets of the most violent of
autumn storms when caught unprepared. Bears evince great sagacity as
mountaineers, but they seldom cross the range. I have several times tracked them
through the Mono Pass, but only in late years, after cattle and sheep had passed that
way, when they doubtless were following to feed on the stragglers and those that
had fallen over the precipices. Even the wild sheep, the best mountaineers of all,
choose regular passes in crossing the summits on their way to their summer or
winter pastures. Deer seldom cross over from one side of the range to the other. I
have never seen the Mule-deer of the Great Basin west of the summit, and rarely
the Black-tailed species on the eastern slopes, notwithstanding many of the latter
ascend the range nearly to the head of the canyons among the peaks every summer
to hide and feed in the wild gardens, and bring forth their young.
Having thus indicated in a general way the height, geographical position, and
leading features of the main passes, we will now endeavor to see the Mono Pass
more in detail, since it may, I think, be regarded as a good example of the higher
passes accessible to the ordinary traveler in search of exhilarating scenery and
adventure. The greater portion of it is formed by Bloody Canyon, which heads on
the summit of the range, and extends in a general east-northeasterly direction to the
edge of the Mono Plain. Long before its discovery by the whites, this wonderful
canyon was known as a pass by the Indians of the neighborhood, as is shown by
their many old trails leading into it from every direction. But little have they
marked the grand canyon itself, hardly more than the birds have in flying through its
shadows. No stone tells a word of wild foray or raid. Storm-winds and avalanches
keep it swept fresh and clean.
The first white men that forced a way through its sombre depths with
pack-animals were companies of eager adventurous miners, men who would build a trail
down the throat of the darkest inferno on their way to gold. The name Bloody
Canyon may have been derived from the red color of the metamorphic slates in
which it is in great part eroded, or more probably from the blood stains made by
the unfortunate animals that were compelled to slide and shuffle awkwardly over
the rough cutting edges of the rocks, in which case it is too well named, for I have
never known mules or horses, however sure-footed, to make their way either up or
down the canyon, without leaving a trail more or less marked with blood.
Occasionally one is
killed outright by falling over some precipice like a boulder. But such
instances are less common than the appearance of the place would lead one
to expect, the more experienced, when driven loose, picking their way with
wonderful sagacity.
During the exciting times that followed the discovery of gold near Mono
Lake it frequently became a matter of considerable pecuniary importance to
force a way through the canyon with pack trains early in the spring, while it
was yet heavily choked with winter snow. Then, though the way was smooth,
it was steep and slippery, and the footing of the animals giving way, they
sometimes rolled over sidewise with their loads, or end over end, compelling
the use of ropes in sliding them down the steepest slopes where it was
impossible to walk.
A good bridle-path leads from Yosemite through the Big Tuolumne
Meadows to the head of the canyon. Here the scenery shows a sudden and
startling condensation. Mountains red, black, and grey rise close at hand on
the right, white in the shadows with banks of enduring snow. On the left
swells the huge red mass of Mt. Gibbs, while in front the eye wanders down
the tremendous gorge, and out on the warm plain of Mono, where the lake is
seen in its setting of grey light
like a burnished disc of metal,
volcanic cones to the south of
it, and the smooth mountain
ranges of Nevada beyond
fading in the purple distance.
Entering the mountain
gateway the sombre rocks seem
to come close about us, as if
conscious of our presence.
Happily the ouzel and old
familiar robin are here to sing
us welcome, and azure daisies
beaming with sympathy,
enabling us to feel something
of Nature's love even here, beneath the gaze
of her coldest rocks. The peculiar
impressiveness of the huge rocks is enhanced
by the quiet aspect of the wide Alpine
meadows through which the trail meanders
just before entering the narrow pass. The
forests in which they lie, and the mountaintops rising beyond them, seem hushed and
tranquil. Yielding to their soothing influences, we saunter on among flowers and
bees scarce conscious of any definite thought; then suddenly we find ourselves in
the huge, dark jaws of the canyon, closeted with nature in one of her wildest
strongholds.
After the first bewildering impression begins to wear off, and we become
reassured by the glad birds and flowers, a chain of small lakes is seen, extending
from the very summit of the pass, linked together by a silvery stream, that seems to
lead the way and invite us on. Those near the summit are set in bleak rough rock-bowls,
scantily fringed with sedges. Winter storms drive snow through the canyon
in blinding drifts, and avalanches shoot from the heights rushing and booming like
waterfalls. Then are these sparkling tams filled and buried leaving no sign of their
existence. In June and July they begin to blink and thaw out like sleepy eyes;
sedges thrust up their short brown spikes about their shores, the daisies bloom in
turn, and the most profoundly snow-buried of them all is at length warmed and
dressed as if winter were only the dream of a night. Red Lake is the lowest of the
chain and also the largest. It seems rather dull and forbidding, at first sight, lying
motionless in its deep, dark bed, seldom stiffed during the day by any wind strong
enough to make a wave.
The canyon wall rises sheer from the water's edge on the south, but on the
opposite side there is sufficient space and sunshine for a fine garden. Daisies star
the sod about the margin of it, and the center is lighted with tall lilies, castilleias,
larkspurs and columbines, while leafy willows make a fine protecting hedge; the
whole forming a joyful outburst of warm, rosy plantlife keenly emphasized by the
raw, flinty baldness of the onlooking cliffs.
After resting in the lake the happy stream sets forth again on its travels warbling
and trilling like an ouzel, ever delightfully confiding, no matter how rough the way;
leaping, gliding, hither, thither, foaming or clear, and displaying the beauty of its
virgin wildness at every bound.
One of its most beautiful developments is the Diamond Cascade, situated a
short distance below Red Lake. The crisp water is first dashed into coarse granular
spray that sheds off the light in quick flashing lances, mixed farther down with
loose dusty foam; then it is divided into a diamond pattern by tracing the diagonal
cleavage joints that intersect the face of the precipice over which it pours. Viewed
in front, it resembles a wide sheet of embroidery of definite pattern, with an outer
covering of fine mist, the whole varying with the temperature and the volume of
water. Scarce a flower may be seen along its snowy border. A few bent pines took
on from a distance, and small fringes of cassiope and rock-ferns grow in fissures
near the head, but these are so lowly and undemonstrative only the attentive
observer will be likely to notice them.
A little below the Diamond Cascade, on the north wall of the canyon, there is a
long, narrow fall about two thousand feet in height that makes a fine, telling show
of itself in contrast with the dull, red rocks over which it
hangs. A ragged talus curves up against the cliff in front of it, overgrown with a
tangle of snow-pressed willows, in which it disappears with many a surge, and
swirl, and plashing leap, and finally wins its way, still grey with foam, to a
confluence with the main canyon stream.
Below this point the climate is no longer arctic. Butterflies become more
abundant, grasses with showy purple panicles wave above your shoulders, and the
deep summery drone of the bumble-bee thickens the air. Pinus Albicaulis, the tree
mountaineer that climbs highest and braves the coldest blasts, is found in dwarfed,
wind-bent clumps throughout the upper half of the canyon, gradually becoming
more erect, until it is joined by the two-leafed pine, which again is succeeded by the
taller yellow and mountain pines. These, with the burly juniper and trembling aspen,
rapidly grow larger as they descend into the richer sunshine, forming groves that
block the view; or they stand more apart in picturesque groups here and there,
making beautiful and obvious harmony with each other, and with the rocks.
Blooming underbrush also becomes abundant,--azalea, spiraea, and dogwood
weaving rich fringes for the stream, and shaggy rugs for the stem unflinching rock-bosses,
adding beauty to their strength, and fragrance to the winds and the breath of
the waterfalls. Through this blessed wilderness the canyon stream roams free,
without any restraining channel, stirring the bushes like a rustling breeze, throbbing
and wavering in wide swirls and zigzags, now in the sunshine, now in the shade;
dancing, falling, flashing from side to side beneath the lofty walls in weariless
exuberance of energy.
A glorious milky way of cascades is thus developed whose individual beauties
might well call forth volumes of description. Bower Cascade is among the
smallest, yet it is perhaps the most beautiful of them all. It is situated in the lower
region of the pass where the sunshine begins to mellow between the cold and warm
climates. Here the glad stream, grown strong with tribute gathered from many a
snowy fountain, sings richer strains, and becomes more human and lovable at every
step. Now you may see the rose and homely yarrow by its side, and bits of meadow
with clover, and bees. At the head of a low-browed rock, luxuriant cornel and
willow bushes arch over from side to side, embowering the stream with their leafy
branches; and waving plumes, kept in motion by the current, make a graceful fringe
in front.
From so fine a bower as this, after all its dashing among bare rocks on the
heights, the stream leaps out into the light in a fluted curve, thick-sown with
sparkling crystals, and falls into a pool among brown boulders, out of which it
creeps grey with foam, and disappears beneath a roof of verdure like that from
which it came. Hence to the foot of the canyon the metamorphic slates give place
to granite, whose nobler sculpture calls forth corresponding expressions of beauty
from the stream in passing over it--bright trills of rapids, booming notes of falls,
and the solemn hushing tones of smooth gliding sheets, all chanting and blending in
pure wild harmony. And when at length its impetuous alpine life is done, it slips
through a meadow at the foot
of the canyon, and rests in Moraine Lake. This lake, about a mile long, lying
between massive moraines piled up centuries ago by the grand old canyon glacier,
is the last of the beautiful beds of the stream. Tall silver firs wave soothingly about
its shores, and the breath of flowers, borne by the winds from the mountains, drifts
over it like incense. Henceforth the stream, now grow stately and tranquil, glides
through meadows full of gentians, and groves of rustling aspen, to its confluence
with Rush Creek, with which it flows across the desert and falls into the Dead Sea.
At Moraine Lake the canyon terminates, although apparently continued by two
lateral moraines of imposing dimensions and regularity of structure. They extend
out into the plain about five miles, with a height, toward their upper ends, of nearly
three hundred feet. Their cool, shady sides are evenly forested with silver-firs,
while the sides facing the sun are planted with showy flowers, a square rod
containing five to six profusely flowered eriogonums of several species, about the
same number of bahias and linosyris, and a few poppies, phloxes, gilias and
grasses, each species planted trimly apart with bare soil between as if cultivated
artificially.
My first visit to Bloody Canyon was made in the summer of 1869, under
circumstances well calculated to heighten the impressions that are the peculiar
offspring of mountains. I came from the blooming tangles of Florida, and waded
out into the plant-gold of the great Central plain of California while its unrivaled
flora was as yet untrodden. Never before had I beheld congregations of social
flowers half so extensive, or half so glorious. Golden compositae covered all the
ground from the Coast Range to the Sierra like a
stratum of denser sunshine, in which I reveled for weeks, then gave myself up to be
home forward on the crest of the summer plant-wave that sweeps annually up the
Sierra flank, and spends itself on its snowy summits. At the Big Tuolumne
Meadows I remained more than a month, sketching, botanizing, and climbing among
the surrounding mountains ere the fame of Bloody Canyon had reached me.
The mountaineer with whom I camped was one of those remarkable men so
frequently found in California, the bold angles of whose character have been
brought into relief by the grinding effects of the gold-period, like the features of
glacier landscapes. But at this late day my friend's activities had subsided, and his
craving for rest had caused him to become a gentle shepherd, and literally to lie
down with a lamb, on the smoothest meadows he could find. Recognizing my
Scotch Highland instincts, he threw out some hints about Bloody Canyon, and
advised me to explore it. "I have never seen it myself," he said, "for I never was so
unfortunate as to pass that way; but I have heard many a strange story about it; and I
warrant you will find it wild enough."
Next day I made up a package of bread, tied my notebook to my belt, and strode
away in the bracing air, every nerve and muscle tingling with eager indefinite hope,
and ready to give welcome to all the wilderness might offer. The plushy lawns
staffed with blue gentians and daisies soothed my morning haste, and made me
linger; they were all so fresh, so sweet, so peaceful.
Climbing higher, as the day passed away, I traced the paths of the ancient
glaciers over many a shining pavement, and marked the lanes in the upper forests
that told the power of the winter avalanches. Still higher, I noted the gradual
dwarfing of the pines in compliance with climate, and on the summit discovered
creeping mats of the arctic willow, low as the lowliest grasses; and patches of
dwarf vaccinium, with its round pink bells sprinkled over the sod as if they had
fallen from the sky like hail; while in every direction the landscape stretched
sublimely away in fresh wildness, a manuscript written by the hand of Nature alone.
At length, entering the gate of the pass, the huge rocks began to close around me
in all their mysterious impressiveness; and as I gazed awe-stricken down the
shadowy gulf, a drove of grey, hairy creatures came suddenly into view, lumbering
towards me with a kind of boneless wallowing motion like bears. However, grim
and startling as they appeared, they proved to be nothing more formidable than
Mono Indians dressed in a loose, shapeless way in the skins of sage rabbits sewed
together into square robes. Both the men and women begged persistently for
whiskey and tobacco, and seemed so accustomed to denials, that it was impossible
to convince them that I had none to give. Excepting the names of these two
luxuries, they spoke no English, but I afterwards learned that they were on their way
to Yosemite Valley to feast awhile on fish and flour, and procure a load of acorns
to carry back through the pass to their huts on the shore of Mono Lake.
A good countenance may now and then be discovered among the Monos,
but these, the first specimens I have seen, were mostly ugly, or altogether hideous.
The dirt on their faces was fairly stratified in the hollows, and seemed so ancient
and undisturbed as almost to possess a geological significance. The older faces
were, moreover, strangely blurred and divided into sections by furrows that looked
like some of the cleavage joints of rocks, suggesting exposure in a castaway
condition for ages. They seemed to have no right place in the landscape, and I was
glad to see them fading down the pass out of sight.
Then came evening, and the sombre cliffs were inspired with the ineffable
beauty of the alpenglow. A solemn calm fell upon every feature of the scene. All
the lower depths of the canyon were in the gloaming shadow, and one by one the
mighty rock fronts forming the walls grew dim and vanished in the thickening
darkness. Soon the night-wind began to flow and pour in torrents among the jagged
peaks, mingling its strange tones with those of the waterfalls sounding far below.
And as I lay by my camp-fire in a little hollow near one of the upper lakes listening
to the wild sounds, the great full moon looked down over the verge of the canyon
wall, her face seemingly filled with intense concern, and apparently so near as to
produce a startling effect, as if she had entered one's bedroom, forsaking all the
world besides to concentrate on me alone.
The night was full of strange weird sounds, and I gladly welcomed the morning.
Breakfast was soon done, and I set forth in the exhilarating freshness of the new
day, rejoicing in the abundance of pure wildness so closely pressed about me. The
stupendous rock walls, like two separate mountain ranges, stood forward in the
thin, bright light, hacked and scarred by centuries of storms, while down in the
bottom of the canyon, grooved and polished bosses heaved and glistened like
swelling sea-waves, telling a grand old story of the ancient glacier that once poured
its crushing floods above them.
Here for the first time I met the Artic daisies in all their perfection of pure
spirituality--gentle mountaineers, face to face with the frosty sky, kept safe and
warm, by a thousand miracles. I leaped lightly from rock to rock, glorying in the
eternal freshness and sufficiency of nature, and in the rugged tenderness with
which she nurtures her mountain darlings in the very homes and fountains of
storms.
Fresh beauty appeared at every step, delicate rock-ferns, and tufts of the fairest
flowers. Now another lake came to view, now a waterfall. Never fell light in
brighter spangles, never fell water in whiter foam. I seemed to float through the
canyon enchanted, feeling nothing of its roughness, and was out in the glaring
Mono levels ere I was aware.
Looking back from the shore of Moraine Lake, my morning ramble seemed all
a dream. There curved Bloody Canyon, a mere glacier furrow two thousand and
three thousand feet deep, with moutonnée rocks advancing from the sides,
and braided together in the middle like rounded, swelling muscles. Here the lilies
were higher than my head, and the sunshine was
warm enough for palms. Yet the snow around the Arctic willows on the summit was
plainly visible, only a few miles away, and between lay narrow specimen belts of all
the principal climates of the globe.
About five miles below the foot of Moraine Lake, where the lateral moraines
terminate in the plain, there was a field of wild rye, growing in magnificent waving
bunches six to eight feet high, and bearing heads from six to twelve inches long.
Indian women were gathering the grain in baskets, bending down large handfuls of
the ears, beating them with sticks, and fanning out the rye in the wind. They formed
striking and picturesque groups as one caught glimpses of them here and there in
winding lanes and openings with splendid tufts arching overhead, while their
incessant chat and laughter proclaimed their careless joy.
I found the so-called Mono Desert, like the rye-field, in a high state of natural
cultivation with the wild rose and the delicate pink-flowered abronia; and
innumerable erigerons, gilias, phloxes, poppies and bush-compositae, growing not
only along stream-banks, but out in the hot sand and ashes in openings among the
sage-brush, and even in the craters of the highest volcanoes, cheering the grey
wilderness with their rosy bloom, and literally giving beauty for ashes.
Beyond the moraines the trail turns to the left toward Mono Lake, now in sight
around the spurs of the mountains, and touches its western shore at a distance from
the foot of the pass of about six miles. Skirting the lake, you make your way over
low bluffs and moraine piles, and through many a tangle of snow-crinkled aspens
and berry bushes, growing on the banks of fine, dashing streams that come from the
snows of the summits.
Here are the favorite camping grounds of the Indians, littered with piles of
pine-burrs from which the seeds have been beaten. Many of their fragile willow huts are
broken and abandoned; others arch airily over family groups that are seen lying at
ease, pictures of thoughtless contentment, their wild, animal eyes glowering at you
as you pass, their black shocks of hair perchance bedecked with red castilleias and
their bent, bulky stomachs filled with no white man knows what. Some of these
mountain streams pouring into the lake have deep and swift currents at the fording
places, and their channels are so roughly paved with boulders that crossing them at
the time of high water is rather dangerous. That Mono Lake should have no outlet,
while so many perennial streams flow into it, seems strange at first sight, before
the immense waste by evaporation in so dry an atmosphere is recognized. Most of
its shores being low, any considerable rise of its waters greatly enlarges its area,
followed of course by a corresponding increase of evaporation, which tends
towards constancy of level within comparatively narrow limit. Nevertheless, on the
flanks of the mountains, drawn in well-marked lines, you may see several ancient
beaches that mark the successive levels at which the lake stood toward the close of
the glacial period, the highest more than six hundred feet above the present level.
Then, under a climate as marked by
coolness and excessive moisture as the present by devouring drought, the
dimensions of the lake must have been vastly greater. Indeed, a study of the whole
plateau region, named by Fremont "the Great Basin," extending from the Sierra to
the Wahsatch mountains, a distance of 400 miles, shows that it was covered by
inland seas of fresh water that were only partially separated by the innumerable
hills and mountain ranges of the region, which then existed as islands, forming an
archipelago of unrivaled grandeur.
The lake water is as clear as the snow-strearns that feed it, but intensely acrid
and nauseating from the excessive quantities of salts accumulated by evaporation
beneath a burning sun. Of course no fish can live in it, but large flocks of geese,
ducks, and swans come from beyond the mountains at certain seasons, and gulls
also in great numbers, to breed on a group of volcanic islands that rise near the
center of the lake, thus making the dead, bitter sea lively and cheerful while they
stay. The eggs of the gulls used to be gathered for food by the Indians, who floated
to the islands on rafts made of willows; but since the occurrence of a great storm
on the lake a few years ago, that overtook them on their way back from the islands,
they have not ventured from the shore. Their rafts were broken up and many were
drowned. This disaster, which some still living have good cause to remember,
together with certain superstitious fears concerning evil spirits supposed to dwell
in the lake and rule its waves, make them content with the safer and far more
important product of the shores, chief of which is the larvae of a small fly that
breeds in the slimy froth in the shallows. When the worms are ripe,
and the waves have collected them and driven them up the beach in rich oily
windrows, then old and young make haste to the curious harvest, and gather he
living grain in baskets and buckets of every description. After being washed and
dried in the sun it is stored for winter. Raw or cooked, it is regarded as a fine
luxury, and delicious dressing for other kinds of food acorn-mush, clover-salad,
grass-seed-pudding, etc. So important is this small worm to the neighboring tribes,
it forms a subject of dispute about as complicated and perennial as the
Newfoundland cod. After waging worm-wars until everybody is weary and hungry,
the belligerents mark off boundary lines, assigning stated sections of the shores to
each tribe, where the harvest may be gathered in peace until fresh quarrels have
time to grow. Tribes too feeble to establish rights must needs procure their worm
supply from their more fortunate neighbors, giving nuts, acorns or ponies in
exchange.
This "diet of worms" is further enriched by a large, fat caterpillar, a species of
silk-worm found on the yellow pines to the south of the lake; and as they also
gather the seeds of this pine, they get a double crop from it--meat and bread from
the same tree.
Forbidding as this grey, ashy wilderness is to the dweller in green fields, to the
red man it is a paradise full of all the good things of life. A Yosemite Indian with
whom I was acquainted while living in the valley, went over the mountains to Mono
every year on a pleasure trip, and when I asked what could induce him to go to so
poor a country when, as a hotel servant, he enjoyed all the white man's good things
in abundance, he replied, that Mono
had better things to eat than anything to be found in the hotel--plenty deer, plenty
wild sheep, plenty antelope, plenty worm, plenty berry, plenty sagehen, plenty
rabbit--drawing a picture of royal abundance that from his point of view surpassed
everything else the world had to offer.
A sail on the lake develops many a fine picture--the natives along the curving
shores seen against so grand a mountain background; water birds stirring the glassy
surface into white dancing spangles; the islands, black, pink and grey, rising into a
cloud of white wings of gulls; volcanoes dotting the hazy plain; and, grandest of all
overshadowing all, the mighty barrier wall of the Sierra, heaving into the sky from
the water's edge, and stretching away to north and south with its marvelous wealth
of peaks and crests and deep-cutting notches keenly defined, or fading away in the
soft purple distance; cumulus clouds swelling over all in huge mountain bosses of
pearl, building a mountain range of cloud upon a range of rock, the one as firmly
sculptured, and as grand and showy and substantial as the other.
The magnificent cluster of volcanoes to the south of the lake may easily be
visited from the foot of Bloody Canyon, the distance being only about six miles.
The highest of the group rises about 2,700 feet above the lake. They are all
post-glacial in age, having been erupted from what was once the bottom of the south end
of the lake, through stratified glacial drift. During their numerous periods of
activity they have scattered showers of ashes and cinders over all the adjacent
plains and mountains within a radius of twenty to thirty miles.
Nowhere within the bounds of our wonder-filled land are the antagonistic
forces of fire and ice brought more closely and contrastingly together. So striking
are the volcanic phenomena, we seem to be among the very hearths and firesides
of nature. Then turning to the mountains while standing in drifting ashes, we behold
huge moraines issuing from the cool jaws of the great canyons, marking the
pathways of glaciers that crawled down the mountain sides laden with debris and
pushed their frozen floods into the deep waters of the lake in thundering icebergs,
as they are now descending into the inland waters of Alaska, not a single Arctic
character being wanting, where now the traveler is blinded in a glare of tropical
light.
Americans are little aware as yet of the grandeur of their own land, as is too
often manifested by going on foreign excursions, while the wonders of our
unrivaled plains and mountains are left unseen. We have Laplands and Labradors
of our own, and streams from glacier-caves--rivers of mercy sacred as the
Himalaya-born Ganges. We have our Shasta Vesuvius also, and bay, with its Golden
Gate, beautiful as the Bay of Naples. And here among our inland plains are African
Saharas, dead seas, and deserts, dotted with oases, where congregate the travelers,
coming in long caravans--the trader with his goods and gold, and the Indian with his
weapons--the Bedouin of the California desert.
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