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Title: Our National Parks

Author: John Muir

Release Date: December 15, 2019 [eBook #60929]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR NATIONAL PARKS ***

[Illustration]




OUR NATIONAL PARKS

by John Muir


Contents

 PREFACE
Chapter I. The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West
Chapter II. The Yellowstone National Park
Chapter III. The Yosemite National Park
Chapter IV. The Forests of the Yosemite Park
Chapter V. The Wild Gardens of the Yosemite Park
Chapter VI. Among the Animals of the Yosemite
Chapter VII. Among the Birds of the Yosemite
Chapter VIII. The Fountains and Streams of the Yosemite National Park
Chapter IX. The Sequoia and General Grant National Parks
Chapter X. The American Forests
 Appendix
 Index

List of Illustrations

 John Muir in Muir Woods (1909)
 Map showing the National Forests, Parks, and Monuments of the United
 States
 Cassiope
 Mt. Rainier and Alpine Firs (_Abies lasiocarpa_)
 The Grand Cañon of Colorado
 Minerva Terrace, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone Park
 Great Falls and Grand Cañon, Yellowstone Park
 Looking South from the Summit of Mt. Washburn, Yellowstone Park
 A Thunder-Storm in the Sierras
 Glacier Monument (Fairview Dome)
 Along the Crest of the High Sierras from the Summit of Mt. Lyell
 (13,090 feet)
 California Cones
 Yellow Pine (Yosemite Valley Form)
 A California Life-Oak
 A Yosemite Cañon Cliff (El Capitan)
 California Azaleas
 Mariposa Tulips and the Snow Plant
 Alpine Phlox and _Polemonium confertum_
 A Cinnamon Bear
 Deer Feeding in the Forest
 A Mountain Woodchuck
 A Trout Stream in the Sierra Nevada (King’s River)
 Mono Desert from Mono Pass
 Liberty Cap and Nevada Falls, Yosemite Valley
 Water Ouzels in a Mountain Stream
 “Fountain Snow” on the High Sierras (Mt. Lyell Group)
 A Mountain Stream in June (Merced Creek and Vernal Falls, Yosemite)
 A Sierra Cañon (King’s River Cañon from Lookout Peak)
 A Giant Sequoia
 Midsummer in the Sequoia Forest
 “General Grant” Sequoia in General Grant National Park
 In a Puget Sound Forest
 Sugar Pine

All the illustrations are from photographs made for this book by
Herbert W. Gleason.

[Illustration: John Muir in Muir Woods (1909).]




TO
CHARLES SPRAGUE SARGENT
STEADFAST LOVER AND DEFENDER
OF OUR COUNTRY’S FORESTS
THIS LITTLE BOOK
Is Affectionately Dedicated




NOTE


For the tables of information concerning the National Parks and
National Monuments printed in the Appendix to this volume the reader is
indebted to Mr. ALLEN CHAMBERLAIN, who has been at much pains to
accumulate data not easily obtainable elsewhere. The map at the
beginning of the book has also been compiled by Mr. Chamberlain from
authoritative government sources.




PREFACE


In this book, made up of sketches first published in the Atlantic
Monthly, I have done the best I could to show forth the beauty,
grandeur, and all-embracing usefulness of our wild mountain forest
reservations and parks, with a view to inciting the people to come and
enjoy them, and get them into their hearts, that so at length their
preservation and right use might be made sure.

Martinez, California
_September_, 1901

[Illustration: Map showing the National Forests, Parks, and Monuments
of the United States.

INDEX TO THE MAP

(There are two National Forests in Florida and two in Michigan which
are included in the table on page 373 are not shown on the map.)

NATIONAL PARKS

(In black on map)

1. Yellowstone, Wyo., Mont., and Ida.
2. Hot Springs, Ark.
3. Sequoia, Cal.
4. Yosemite, Cal.
5. General Grant, Cal.
6. Casa Grande, Ariz.
7. Mt. Rainier, Wash.
8. Crater Lake, Ore.
9. Platt, Okla.
10. Wind Cave, S. D.
11. Sully’s Hill, N. D.
12. Mesa Verde, Colo.
13. Glacier (see pp. 368, 369), Mont.

NATIONAL MONUMENTS
(Cross-hatched)
14. Devil’s Tower, Wyo.
15. Petrified Forest, Ariz.
16. Montezuma Castle, Ariz.
17. El Morro, N. M.
18. Chaco Canyon, N. M.
19. Lassen Peak, Cal.
20. Cinder Cone, Cal.
21. Gila Cliff-Dwellings, N. M.
22. Tonto, Ariz.
23. Muir Woods, Cal.
24. Grand Canyon, Ariz.
25. Pinnacles, Cal.
26. Jewel Cave, S. D.
27. Natural Bridges, Utah
28. Lewis and Clark Cavern, Mont.
29. Tumacocori, Ariz.
30. Wheeler, Colo.
31. Mt. Olympus, Wash.
32. Navajo, Ariz.
33. Oregon Caves, Ore.

NATIONAL FORESTS
(Shaded)
34. Absaroka, Mont.
35. Alamo, N. M.
36. Angeles, Cal.
37. Apache, Ariz.
38. Arapaho, Colo.
39. Arkansas, Ark.
40. Ashley, Utah and Wyo.
41. Battlement, Colo.
42. Beartooth, Mont.
43. Beaverhead, Ida. and Mont.
44. Bighorn, Wyo.
45. Bitterroot, Mont.
46. Blackfeet, Mont.
47. Black Hills, S. D.
48. Boise, Ida.
49. Bonneville, Wyo.
50. Cabinet, Mont.
51. Cache, Ida. and Utah
52. California, Cal.
53. Caribou, Ida. and Wyo.
54. Carson, N. M.
55. Cascade, Ore.
56. Challis, Ida.
57. Chelan, Wash.
58. Cheyenne, Wyo.
59. Chiricahua, Ariz. and N. M.
60. Clearwater, Ida.
61. Cleveland, Cal.
62. Cochetopa, Colo.
63. Coconino, Ariz.
64. Cœur d’Alene, Ida.
65. Columbia, Wash.
66. Colville, Wash.
67. Coronado, Ariz.
68. Crater, Cal. and Ore.
69. Crook, Ariz.
70. Custer, Mont.
71. Dakota, N. D.
72. Datil, N. M.
73. Deerlodge, Mont.
74. Deschutes, Ore.
75. Dixie, Ariz. and Utah
76. Fillmore, Utah
77. Fishlake, Utah
78. Flathead, Mont.
79. Fremont, Ore.
80. Gallatin, Mont.
81. Garces, Ariz.
82. Gila, N. M.
83. Gunnison, Colo.
84. Hayden, Wyo. and Colo.
85. Helena, Mont.
86. Holy Cross, Colo.
87. Humboldt, Nev.
88. Idaho, Ida.
89. Inyo, Cal. and Nev.
90. Jefferson, Mont.
91. Jemez, N. M.
92. Kaibab, Ariz.
93. Kaniksu, Ida. and Wash.
94. Kansas, Kan.
95. Klamath, Cal.
96. Kootenai, Mont.
97. La Sal, Utah and Colo.
98. Las Animas, Colo, and N. M.
99. Lassen, Cal.
100. Leadville, Colo.
101. Lemhi, Ida.
102. Lewis and Clark, Mont.
103. Lincoln, N. M.
104. Lolo, Mont.
105. Madison, Mont.
106. Malheur, Ore.
107. Manti, Utah
108. Manzano, N. M.
109. Medicine Bow, Colo.
110. Minidoka, Ida. and Utah
111. Minnesota, Minn.
112. Missoula, Mont.
113. Moapa, Nev.
114. Modoc, Cal.
115. Mono, Cal. and Nev.
116. Monterey, Cal.
117. Montezuma, Colo.
118. Nebo, Utah
119. Nebraska, Neb.
120. Nevada, Nev.
121. Nezperce, Ida.
122. Olympic, Wash.
123. Oregon, Ore.
124. Ozark, Ark.
125. Payette, Ida.
126. Pecos, N. M.
127. Pend d’Oreille, Ida.
128. Pike, Colo.
129. Plumas, Cal.
130. Pocatello, Ida. and Utah
131. Powell, Utah
132. Prescott, Ariz.
133. Rainier, Wash.
134. Rio Grande, Colo.
135. Routt, Colo.
136. Salmon, Ida.
137. San Isabel, Colo.
138. San Juan, Colo.
139. San Luis, Cal.
140. Santa Barbara, Cal.
141. Sawtooth, Ida.
142. Sequoia, Cal.
143. Sevier, Utah
144. Shasta, Cal.
145. Shoshone, Wyo.
146. Sierra, Cal.
147. Sioux, Mont, and S. D.
148. Siskiyou, Ore. and Cal.
149. Sitgreaves, Ariz.
150. Siuslaw, Ore.
151. Snoqualmie, Wash.
152. Sopris, Colo.
153. Stanislaus, Cal.
154. Sundance, Wyo.
155. Superior, Minn.
156. Tahoe, Cal. and Nev.
157. Targhee, Ida. and Wyo.
158. Teton, Wyo.
159. Toiyabe, Neb.
160. Tonto, Ariz.
161. Trinity, Cal.
162. Uinta, Utah
163. Umatilla, Ore.
164. Umpqua, Ore.
165. Uncompahgre, Colo.
166. Wallowa, Ore.
167. Wasatch, Utah
168. Washington, Wash.
169. Wenaha, Ore. and Wash.
170. Wenatchee, Wash.
171. Weiser, Ida.
172. White River, Colo.
173. Whitman, Ore.
174. Wichita, Okla.
175. Wyoming, Wyo.
176. Zuñi, Ariz. and N. M.




CHAPTER I
The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West


    “Keep not standing fix’d and rooted,
    Briskly venture, briskly roam;
    Head and hand, where’er thou foot it,
    And stout heart are still at home.
    In each land the sun does visit
    We are gay, whate’er betide:
    To give room for wandering is it
    That the world was made so wide.”

The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see.
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning
to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is
a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not
only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of
life. Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of
over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying as best
they can to mix and enrich their own little ongoings with those of
Nature, and to get rid of rust and disease. Briskly venturing and
roaming, some are washing off sins and cobweb cares of the devil’s
spinning in all-day storms on mountains; sauntering in rosiny pinewoods
or in gentian meadows, brushing through chaparral, bending down and
parting sweet, flowery sprays; tracing rivers to their sources, getting
in touch with the nerves of Mother Earth; jumping from rock to rock,
feeling the life of them, learning the songs of them, panting in
whole-souled exercise, and rejoicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of
pure wildness. This is fine and natural and full of promise. So also is
the growing interest in the care and preservation of forests and wild
places in general, and in the half wild parks and gardens of towns.
Even the scenery habit in its most artificial forms, mixed with
spectacles, silliness, and kodaks; its devotees arrayed more gorgeously
than scarlet tanagers, frightening the wild game with red
umbrellas,—even this is encouraging, and may well be regarded as a
hopeful sign of the times.

All the Western mountains are still rich in wildness, and by means of
good roads are being brought nearer civilization every year. To the
sane and free it will hardly seem necessary to cross the continent in
search of wild beauty, however easy the way, for they find it in
abundance wherever they chance to be. Like Thoreau they see forests in
orchards and patches of huckleberry brush, and oceans in ponds and
drops of dew. Few in these hot, dim, strenuous times are quite sane or
free; choked with care like clocks full of dust, laboriously doing so
much good and making so much money,—or so little,—they are no longer
good for themselves.

When, like a merchant taking a list of his goods, we take stock of our
wildness, we are glad to see how much of even the most destructible
kind is still unspoiled. Looking at our continent as scenery when it
was all wild, lying between beautiful seas, the starry sky above it,
the starry rocks beneath it, to compare its sides, the East and the
West, would be like comparing the sides of a rainbow. But it is no
longer equally beautiful. The rainbows of to-day are, I suppose, as
bright as those that first spanned the sky; and some of our landscapes
are growing more beautiful from year to year, notwithstanding the
clearing, trampling work of civilization. New plants and animals are
enriching woods and gardens, and many landscapes wholly new, with
divine sculpture and architecture, are just now coming to the light of
day as the mantling folds of creative glaciers are being withdrawn, and
life in a thousand cheerful, beautiful forms is pushing into them, and
new-born rivers are beginning to sing and shine in them. The old
rivers, too, are growing longer, like healthy trees, gaining new
branches and lakes as the residual glaciers at their highest sources on
the mountains recede, while the rootlike branches in the flat deltas
are at same time spreading farther and wider into the seas and making
new lands.

Under the control of the vast mysterious forces of the interior of the
earth all the continents and islands are slowly rising or sinking. Most
of the mountains are diminishing in size under the wearing action of
the weather, though a few are increasing in height and girth,
especially the volcanic ones, as fresh floods of molten rocks are piled
on their summits and spread in successive layers, like the wood-rings
of trees, on their sides. New mountains, also, are being created from
time to time as islands in lakes and seas, or as subordinate cones on
the slopes of old ones, thus in some measure balancing the waste of old
beauty with new. Man, too, is making many far-reaching changes. This
most influential half animal, half angel is rapidly multiplying and
spreading, covering the seas and lakes with ships, the land with huts,
hotels, cathedrals, and clustered city shops and homes, so that soon,
it would seem, we may have to go farther than Nansen to find a good
sound solitude. None of Nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they
are wild; and much, we can say comfortingly, must always be in great
part wild, particularly the sea and the sky, the floods of light from
the stars, and the warm, unspoilable heart of the earth, infinitely
beautiful, though only dimly visible to the eye of imagination. The
geysers, too, spouting from the hot underworld; the steady,
long-lasting glaciers on the mountains, obedient only to the sun;
Yosemite domes and the tremendous grandeur of rocky cañons and
mountains in general,—these must always be wild, for man can change
them and mar them hardly more than can the butterflies that hover above
them. But the continent’s outer beauty is fast passing away, especially
the plant part of it, the most destructible and most universally
charming of all.

Only thirty years ago, the great Central Valley of California, five
hundred miles long and fifty miles wide, was one bed of golden and
purple flowers. Now it is ploughed and pastured out of existence, gone
forever,—scarce a memory of it left in fence corners and along the
bluffs of the streams. The gardens of the Sierra, also, and the noble
forests in both the reserved and unreserved portions are sadly hacked
and trampled, notwithstanding, the ruggedness of the topography,—all
excepting those of the parks guarded by a few soldiers. In the noblest
forests of the world, the ground, once divinely beautiful, is desolate
and repulsive, like a face ravaged by disease. This is true also of
many other Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountain valleys and forests. The
same fate, sooner or later, is awaiting them all, unless awakening
public opinion comes forward to stop it. Even the great deserts in
Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, which offer so little to attract
settlers, and which a few years ago pioneers were afraid of, as places
of desolation and death, are now taken as pastures at the rate of one
or two square miles per cow, and of course their plant treasures are
passing away,—the delicate abronias, phloxes, gilias, etc. Only a few
of the bitter, thorny, unbitable shrubs are left, and the sturdy
cactuses that defend themselves with bayonets and spears.

Most of the wild plant wealth of the East also has vanished,—gone into
dusty history. Only vestiges of its glorious prairie and woodland
wealth remain to bless humanity in boggy, rocky, unploughable places.
Fortunately, some of these are purely wild, and go far to keep Nature’s
love visible. White water-lilies, with rootstocks deep and safe in mud,
still send up every summer a Milky Way of starry, fragrant flowers
around a thousand lakes, and many a tuft of wild grass waves its
panicles on mossy rocks, beyond reach of trampling feet, in company
with saxifrages, bluebells, and ferns. Even in the midst of farmers
fields, precious sphagnum bogs, too soft for the feet of cattle, are
preserved with their charming plants unchanged,—chiogenes, Andromeda,
Kalmia, Linnæa, Arethusa, etc. Calypso borealis still hides in the
arbor vitæ swamps of Canada, and away to the southward there are a few
unspoiled swamps, big ones, where miasma, snakes, and alligators, like
guardian angels, defend their treasures and keep them as pure as
paradise. And beside a’ that and a’ that, the East is blessed with good
winters and blossoming clouds that shed white flowers over all the
land, covering every scar and making the saddest landscape divine at
least once a year.

The most extensive, least spoiled, and most unspoilable of the gardens
of the continent are the vast tundras of Alaska. In summer they extend
smooth, even, undulating, continuous beds of flowers and leaves from
about lat. 62° to the shores of the Arctic Ocean; and in winter sheets
of snowflowers make all the country shine, one mass of white radiance
like a star. Nor are these Arctic plant people the pitiful
frost-pinched unfortunates they are guessed to be by those who have
never seen them. Though lowly in stature, keeping near the frozen
ground as if loving it, they are bright and cheery, and speak Nature’s
love as plainly as their big relatives of the South. Tenderly happed
and tucked in beneath downy snow to sleep through the long, white
winter, they make haste to bloom in the spring without trying to grow
tall, though some rise high enough to ripple and wave in the wind, and
display masses of color,—yellow, purple, and blue,—so rich that they
look like beds of rainbows, and are visible miles and miles away.

As early as June one may find the showy Geum glaciale in flower, and
the dwarf willows putting forth myriads of fuzzy catkins, to be
followed quickly, especially on the dryer ground, by mertensia,
eritrichium, polemonium, oxytropis, astragalus, lathyrus, lupinus,
myosotis, dodecatheon, arnica, chrysanthemum, nardosmia, saussurea,
senecio, erigeron, matrecaria, caltha, valeriana, stellaria, Tofieldia,
polygonum, papaver, phlox, lychnis, cheiranthus, Linnæa, and a host of
drabas, saxifrages, and heathworts, with bright stars and bells in
glorious profusion, particularly Cassiope, Andromeda, ledum, pyrola,
and vaccinium,—Cassiope the most abundant and beautiful of them all.
Many grasses also grow here, and wave fine purple spikes and panicles
over the other flowers,—poa, aira, calamagrostis, alopecurus, trisetum,
elymus, festuca, glyceria, etc. Even ferns are found thus far north,
carefully and comfortably unrolling their precious fronds,—aspidium,
cystopteris, and woodsia, all growing on a sumptuous bed of mosses and
lichens; not the scaly lichens seen on rails and trees and fallen logs
to the southward, but massive, roundheaded, finely colored plants like
corals, wonderfully beautiful, worth going round the world to see. I
should like to mention all the plant friends I found in a summer’s
wanderings in this cool reserve, but I fear few would care to read
their names, although everybody, I am sure, would love them could they
see them blooming and rejoicing at home.

[Illustration: Cassiope.]

On my last visit to the region about Kotzebue Sound, near the middle of
September, 1881, the weather was so fine and mellow that it suggested
the Indian summer of the Eastern States. The winds were hushed, the
tundra glowed in creamy golden sunshine, and the colors of the ripe
foliage of the heathworts, willows, and birch—red, purple, and yellow,
in pure bright tones—were enriched with those of berries which were
scattered everywhere, as if they had been showered from the clouds like
hail. When I was back a mile or two from the shore, reveling in this
color-glory, and thinking how fine it would be could I cut a square of
the tundra sod of conventional picture size, frame it, and hang it
among the paintings on my study walls at home, saying to myself, “Such
a Nature painting taken at random from any part of the thousand-mile
bog would make the other pictures look dim and coarse,” I heard merry
shouting, and, looking round, saw a band of Eskimos—men, women, and
children, loose and hairy like wild animals—running towards me. I could
not guess at first what they were seeking, for they seldom leave the
shore; but soon they told me, as they threw themselves down, sprawling
and laughing, on the mellow bog, and began to feast on the berries. A
lively picture they made, and a pleasant one, as they frightened the
whirring ptarmigans, and surprised their oily stomachs with the
beautiful acid berries of many kinds, and filled sealskin bags with
them to carry away for festive days in winter.

Nowhere else on my travels have I seen so much warm-blooded, rejoicing
life as in this grand Arctic reservation, by so many regarded as
desolate. Not only are there whales in abundance along the shores, and
innumerable seals, walruses, and white bears, but on the tundras great
herds of fat reindeer and wild sheep, foxes, hares, mice, piping
marmots, and birds. Perhaps more birds are born here than in any other
region of equal extent on the continent. Not only do strong-winged
hawks, eagles, and water-fowl, to whom the length of the continent is
merely a pleasant excursion, come up here every summer in great
numbers, but also many short-winged warblers, thrushes, and finches,
repairing hither to rear their young in safety, reinforce the plant
bloom with their plumage, and sweeten the wilderness with song; flying
all the way, some of them, from Florida, Mexico, and Central America.
In coming north they are coming home, for they were born here, and they
go south only to spend the winter months, as New Englanders go to
Florida. Sweet-voiced troubadours, they sing in orange groves and
vine-clad magnolia woods in winter, in thickets of dwarf birch and
alder in summer, and sing and chatter more or less all the way back and
forth, keeping the whole country glad. Oftentimes, in New England, just
as the last snow-patches are melting and the sap in the maples begins
to flow, the blessed wanderers may be heard about orchards and the
edges of fields where they have stopped to glean a scanty meal, not
tarrying long, knowing they have far to go. Tracing the footsteps of
spring, they arrive in their tundra homes in June or July, and set out
on their return journey in September, or as soon as their families are
able to fly well.

This is Nature’s own reservation, and every lover of wildness will
rejoice with me that by kindly frost it is so well defended. The
discovery lately made that it is sprinkled with gold may cause some
alarm; for the strangely exciting stuff makes the timid bold enough for
anything, and the lazy destructively industrious. Thousands at least
half insane are now pushing their way into it, some by the southern
passes over the mountains, perchance the first mountains they have ever
seen,—sprawling, struggling, gasping for breath, as, laden with
awkward, merciless burdens of provisions and tools, they climb over
rough-angled boulders and cross thin miry bogs. Some are going by the
mountains and rivers to the eastward through Canada, tracing the old
romantic ways of the Hudson Bay traders; others by Bering Sea and the
Yukon, sailing all the way, getting glimpses perhaps of the famous
fur-seals, the ice-floes, and the innumerable islands and bars of the
great Alaska river. In spite of frowning hardships and the frozen
ground, the Klondike gold will increase the crusading crowds for years
to come, but comparatively little harm will be done. Holes will be
burned and dug into the hard ground here and there, and into the
quartz-ribbed mountains and hills; ragged towns like beaver and muskrat
villages will be built, and mills and locomotives will make rumbling,
screeching, disenchanting noises; but the miner’s pick will not be
followed far by the plough, at least not until Nature is ready to
unlock the frozen soil-beds with her slow-turning climate key. On the
other hand, the roads of the pioneer miners will lead many a lover of
wildness into the heart of the reserve, who without them would never
see it.

In the meantime, the wildest health and pleasure grounds accessible and
available to tourists seeking escape from care and dust and early death
are the parks and reservations of the West. There are four national
parks,[1] —the Yellowstone, Yosemite, General Grant, and Sequoia,—all
within easy reach, and thirty forest reservations, a magnificent realm
of woods, most of which, by railroads and trails and open ridges, is
also fairly accessible, not only to the determined traveler rejoicing
in difficulties, but to those (may their tribe increase) who, not
tired, not sick, just naturally take wing every summer in search of
wildness. The forty million acres of these reserves are in the main
unspoiled as yet, though sadly wasted and threatened on their more open
margins by the axe and fire of the lumberman and prospector, and by
hoofed locusts, which, like the winged ones, devour every leaf within
reach, while the shepherds and owners set fires with the intention of
making a blade of grass grow in the place of every tree, but with the
result of killing both the grass and the trees.

 [1] There are now (1909) twelve parks and one hundred and fifty forest
 reservations, besides twenty “national monuments.” See Appendix.


In the million acre Black Hills Reserve of South Dakota, the
easternmost of the great forest reserves, made for the sake of the
farmers and miners, there are delightful, reviving sauntering-grounds
in open parks of yellow pine, planted well apart, allowing plenty of
sunshine to warm the ground. This tree is one of the most variable and
most widely distributed of American pines. It grows sturdily on all
kinds of soil and rocks, and, protected by a mail of thick bark, defies
frost and fire and disease alike, daring every danger in firm, calm
beauty and strength. It occurs here mostly on the outer hills and
slopes where no other tree can grow. The ground beneath it is yellow
most of the summer with showy Wythia, arnica, applopappus, solidago,
and other sun-loving plants, which, though they form no heavy
entangling growth, yet give abundance of color and make all the woods a
garden. Beyond the yellow pine woods there lies a world of rocks of
wildest architecture, broken, splintery, and spiky, not very high, but
the strangest in form and style of grouping imaginable. Countless
towers and spires, pinnacles and slender domed columns, are crowded
together, and feathered with sharp-pointed Engelmann spruces, making
curiously mixed forests,—half trees, half rocks. Level gardens here and
there in the midst of them offer charming surprises, and so do the many
small lakes with lilies on their meadowy borders, and bluebells,
anemones, daises, castilleias, comandras, etc., together forming
landscapes delightfully novel, and made still wilder by many
interesting animals,—elk, deer, beavers, wolves, squirrels, and birds.
Not very long ago this was the richest of all the red man’s
hunting-grounds hereabout. After the season’s buffalo hunts were
over,—as described by Parkman, who, with a picturesque cavalcade of
Sioux savages, passed through these famous hills in 1846,—every winter
deficiency was here made good, and hunger was unknown until, in spite
of most determined, fighting, killing opposition, the white
gold-hunters entered the fat game reserve and spoiled it. The Indians
are dead now, and so are most of the hardly less striking free trappers
of the early romantic Rocky Mountain times. Arrows, bullets,
scalping-knives, need no longer be feared; and all the wilderness is
peacefully open.

The Rocky Mountain reserves are the Teton, Yellowstone, Lewis and
Clark, Bitter Root, Priest River and Flathead, comprehending more than
twelve million acres of mostly unclaimed, rough, forest-covered
mountains in which the great rivers of the country take their rise. The
commonest tree in most of them is the brave, indomitable, and
altogether admirable Pinus contorta, widely distributed in all kinds of
climate and soil, growing cheerily in frosty Alaska, breathing the damp
salt air of the sea as well as the dry biting blasts of the Arctic
interior, and making itself at home on the most dangerous flame-swept
slopes and bridges of the Rocky Mountains in immeasurable abundance and
variety of forms. Thousands of acres of this species are destroyed by
running fires nearly every summer, but a new growth springs quickly
from the ashes. It is generally small, and yields few sawlogs of
commercial value, but is of incalculable importance to the farmer and
miner; supplying fencing, mine timbers, and firewood, holding the
porous soil on steep slopes, preventing landslips and avalanches, and
giving kindly, nourishing shelter to animals and the widely outspread
sources of the life-giving rivers. The other trees are mostly spruce,
mountain pine, cedar, juniper, larch, and balsam fir; some of them,
especially on the western slopes of the mountains, attaining grand size
and furnishing abundance of fine timber.

Perhaps the least known of all this grand group of reserves is the
Bitter Root, of more than four million acres. It is the wildest,
shaggiest block of forest wildness in the Rocky Mountains, full of
happy, healthy, storm-loving trees, full of streams that dance and sing
in glorious array, and full of Nature’s animals,—elk, deer, wild sheep,
bears, cats, and innumerable smaller people.

In calm Indian summer, when the heavy winds are hushed, the vast
forests covering hill and dale, rising and falling over the rough
topography and vanishing in the distance, seem lifeless. No moving
thing is seen as we climb the peaks, and only the low, mellow murmur of
falling water is heard, which seems to thicken the silence.
Nevertheless, how many hearts with warm red blood in them are beating
under cover of the woods, and how many teeth and eyes are shining! A
multitude of animal people, intimately related to us, but of whose
lives we know almost nothing, are as busy about their own affairs as we
are about ours: beavers are building and mending dams and huts for
winter, and storing them with food; bears are studying winter quarters
as they stand thoughtful in open spaces, while the gentle breeze
ruffles the long hair on their backs; elk and deer, assembling on the
heights, are considering cold pastures where they will be farthest away
from the wolves; squirrels and marmots are busily laying up provisions
and lining their nests against coming frost and snow foreseen; and
countless thousands of birds are forming parties and gathering their
young about them for flight to the southlands; while butterflies and
bees, apparently with no thought of hard times to come, are hovering
above the late-blooming goldenrods, and, with countless other insect
folk, are dancing and humming right merrily in the sunbeams and shaking
all the air into music.

Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God’s wild
blessings will search you and soak you as if you were sponge, and the
big days will go by uncounted. If you are business-tangled, and so
burdened with duty that only weeks can be got out of the heavy-laden
year, then go to the Flathead Reserve; for it is easily and quickly
reached by the Great Northern Railroad. Get off the track at Belton
Station, and in a few minutes you will find yourself in the midst of
what you are sure to say is the best care-killing scenery on the
continent,—beautiful lakes derived straight from glaciers, lofty
mountains steeped in lovely nemophila-blue skies and clad with forests
and glaciers, mossy, ferny waterfalls in their hollows, nameless and
numberless, and meadowy gardens abounding in the best of everything.
When you are calm enough for discriminating observation, you will find
the king of the larches, one of the best of the Western giants,
beautiful, picturesque, and regal in port, easily the grandest of all
the larches in the world. It grows to a height of one hundred and fifty
to two hundred feet, with a diameter at the ground of five to eight
feet, throwing out its branches into the light as no other tree does.
To those who before have seen only the European larch or the Lyall
species of the eastern Rocky Mountains, or the little tamarack or
hackmatack of the Eastern States and Canada, this Western king must be
a revelation.

Associated with this grand tree in the making of the Flathead forests
is the large and beautiful mountain pine, or Western white pine (Pinus
monticola), the invincible contorta or lodge-pole pine, and spruce and
cedar. The forest floor is covered with the richest beds of Linnæa
borealis I ever saw, thick fragrant carpets, enriched with shining
mosses here and there, and with Clintonia, pyrola, moneses, and
vaccinium, weaving hundred-mile beds of bloom that would have made
blessed old Linnæus weep for joy.

Lake McDonald, full of brisk trout, is in the heart of this forest, and
Avalanche Lake is ten miles above McDonald, at the feet of a group of
glacier-laden mountains. Give a month at least to this precious
reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead
of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly
immortal. Nevermore will time seem short or long, and cares will never
again fall heavily on you, but gently and kindly as gifts from heaven.

The vast Pacific Coast reserves in Washington and Oregon—the Cascade,
Washington, Mount Rainier, Olympic, Bull Run, and Ashland, named in
order of size—include more than 12,500,000 acres of magnificent forests
of beautiful and gigantic trees. They extend over the wild, unexplored
Olympic Mountains and both flanks of the Cascade Range, the wet and the
dry. On the east side of the Cascades the woods are sunny and open, and
contain principally yellow pine, of moderate size, but of great value
as a cover for the irrigating streams that flow into the dry interior,
where agriculture on a grand scale is being carried on. Along the
moist, balmy, foggy, west flank of the mountains, facing the sea, the
woods reach their highest development, and, excepting the California
redwoods, are the heaviest on the continent. They are made up mostly of
the Douglas spruce (Pseudotsuga taxifolia), with the giant arbor vitæ,
or cedar, and several species of fir and hemlock in varying abundance,
forming a forest kingdom unlike any other, in which limb meets limb,
touching and overlapping in bright, lively, triumphant exuberance, two
hundred and fifty, three hundred, and even four hundred feet above the
shady, mossy ground. Over all the other species the Douglas spruce
reigns supreme. It is not only a large tree, the tallest in America
next to the redwood, but a very beautiful one, with bright green
drooping foliage, handsome pendent cones, and a shaft exquisitely
straight and round and regular. Forming extensive forests by itself in
many places, it lifts its spiry tops into the sky close together with
as even a growth as a well-tilled field of grain. No ground has been
better tilled for wheat than these Cascade Mountains for trees: they
were ploughed by mighty glaciers, and harrowed and mellowed and
outspread by the broad streams that flowed from the ice-ploughs as they
were withdrawn at the close of the glacial period.

In proportion to its weight when dry, Douglas spruce timber is perhaps
stronger than that of any other large conifer in the country, and being
tough, durable, and elastic, it is admirably suited for ship-building,
piles, and heavy timbers in general; but its hardness and liability to
warp when it is cut into boards render it unfit for fine work. In the
lumber markets of California it is called “Oregon pine.” When lumbering
is going on in the best Douglas woods, especially about Puget Sound,
many of the long, slender boles are saved for spars; and so superior is
their quality that they are called for in almost every shipyard in the
world, and it is interesting to follow their fortunes. Felled and
peeled and dragged to tide-water, they are raised again as yards and
masts for ships, given iron roots and canvas foliage, decorated with
flags, and sent to sea, where in glad motion they go cheerily over the
ocean prairie in every latitude and longitude, singing and bowing
responsive to the same winds that waved them when they were in the
woods. After standing in one place for centuries they thus go round the
world like tourists, meeting many a friend from the old home forest;
some traveling like themselves, some standing head downward in muddy
harbors, holding up the platforms of wharves, and others doing all
kinds of hard timber work, showy or hidden.

This wonderful tree also grows far northward in British Columbia, and
southward along the coast and middle regions of Oregon and California;
flourishing with the redwood wherever it can find an opening, and with
the sugar pine, yellow pine, and libocedrus in the Sierra. It extends
into the San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and San Jacinto Mountains of
southern California. It also grows well on the Wasatch Mountains, where
it is called “red pine,” and on many parts of the Rocky Mountains and
short interior ranges of the Great Basin. But though thus widely
distributed, only in Oregon, Washington, and some parts of British
Columbia does it reach perfect development.

To one who looks from some high standpoint over its vast breadth, the
forest on the west side of the Cascades seems all one dim, dark,
monotonous field, broken only by the white volcanic cones along the
summit of the range. Back in the untrodden wilderness a deep furred
carpet of brown and yellow mosses covers the ground like a garment,
pressing about the feet of the trees, and rising in rich bosses softly
and kindly over every rock and mouldering trunk, leaving no spot
uncared for; and dotting small prairies, and fringing the meadows and
the banks of streams not seen in general views, we find, besides the
great conifers, a considerable number of hard-wood trees,—oak, ash,
maple, alder, wild apple, cherry, arbutus, Nuttall’s flowering dogwood,
and in some places chestnuts. In a few favored spots the broad-leaved
maple grows to a height of a hundred feet in forests by itself, sending
out large limbs in magnificent interlacing arches covered with mosses
and ferns, thus forming lofty sky-gardens, and rendering the underwoods
delightfully cool. No finer forest ceiling is to be found than these
maple arches, while the floor, ornamented with tall ferns and rubus
vines, and cast into hillocks by the bulging, moss-covered roots of the
trees, matches it well.

Passing from beneath the heavy shadows of the woods, almost anywhere
one steps into lovely gardens of lilies, orchids, heathworts, and wild
roses. Along the lower slopes, especially in Oregon, where the woods
are less dense, there are miles of rhododendron, making glorious masses
of purple in the spring, while all about the streams and the lakes and
the beaver meadows there is a rich tangle of hazel, plum, cherry,
crab-apple, cornel, gaultheria, and rubus, with myriads of flowers and
abundance of other more delicate bloomers, such as erythronium,
brodiæa, fritillaria, calochortus, Clintonia, and the lovely hider of
the north, Calypso. Beside all these bloomers there are wonderful
ferneries about the many misty waterfalls, some of the fronds ten feet
high, others the most delicate of their tribe, the maidenhair fringing
the rocks within reach of the lightest dust of the spray, while the
shading trees on the cliffs above them, leaning over, look like eager
listeners anxious to catch every tone of the restless waters. In the
autumn berries of every color and flavor abound, enough for birds,
bears, and everybody, particularly about the stream-sides and meadows
where sunshine reaches the ground: huckleberries, red, blue, and black,
some growing close to the ground others on bushes ten feet high;
gaultheria berries, called “sal-al” by the Indians; salmon berries, an
inch in diameter, growing in dense prickly tangles, the flowers, like
wild roses, still more beautiful than the fruit; raspberries,
gooseberries, currants, blackberries, and strawberries. The underbrush
and meadow fringes are in great part made up of these berry bushes and
vines; but in the depths of the woods there is not much underbrush of
any kind,—only a thin growth of rubus, huckleberry, and vine-maple.

Notwithstanding the outcry against the reservations last winter in
Washington, that uncounted farms, towns, and villages were included in
them, and that all business was threatened or blocked, nearly all the
mountains in which the reserves lie are still covered with virgin
forests. Though lumbering has long been carried on with tremendous
energy along their boundaries, and home-seekers have explored the woods
for openings available for farms, however small, one may wander in the
heart of the reserves for weeks without meeting a human being, Indian
or white man, or any conspicuous trace of one. Indians used to ascend
the main streams on their way to the mountains for wild goats, whose
wool furnished them clothing. But with food in abundance on the coast
there was little to draw them into the woods, and the monuments they
have left there are scarcely more conspicuous than those of birds and
squirrels; far less so than those of the beavers, which have dammed
streams and made clearings that will endure for centuries. Nor is there
much in these woods to attract cattle-keepers. Some of the first
settlers made farms on the small bits of prairie and in the
comparatively open Cowlitz and Chehalis valleys of Washington; but
before the gold period most of the immigrants from the Eastern States
settled in the fertile and open Willamette Valley of Oregon. Even now,
when the search for tillable land is so keen, excepting the
bottom-lands of the rivers around Puget Sound, there are few cleared
spots in all western Washington. On every meadow or opening of any sort
some one will be found keeping cattle, raising hops, or cultivating
patches of grain, but these spots are few and far between. All the
larger spaces were taken long ago; therefore most of the newcomers
build their cabins where the beavers built theirs. They keep a few
cows, laboriously widen their little meadow openings by hacking,
girdling, and burning the rim of the close-pressing forest, and scratch
and plant among the huge blackened logs and stamps, girdling and
killing themselves in killing the trees.

Most of the farm lands of Washington and Oregon, excepting the valleys
of the Willamette and Rogue rivers, lie on the east side of the
mountains. The forests on the eastern slopes of the Cascades fail
altogether ere the foot of the range is reached, stayed by drought as
suddenly as on the west side they are stopped by the sea; showing
strikingly how dependent are these forest giants on the generous rains
and fogs so often complained of in the coast climate. The lower
portions of the reserves are solemnly soaked and poulticed in rain and
fog during the winter months, and there is a sad dearth of sunshine,
but with a little knowledge of woodcraft any one may enjoy an excursion
into these woods even in the rainy season. The big, gray days are
exhilarating, and the colors of leaf and branch and mossy bole are then
at their best. The mighty trees getting their food are seen to be
wide-awake, every needle thrilling in the welcome nourishing storms,
chanting and bowing low in glorious harmony, while every raindrop and
snowflake is seen as a beneficent messenger from the sky. The snow that
falls on the lower woods is mostly soft, coming through the trees in
downy tufts, loading their branches, and bending them down against the
trunks until they look like arrows, while a strange muffled silence
prevails, making everything impressively solemn. But these lowland
snowstorms and their effects quickly vanish. The snow melts in a day or
two, sometimes in a few hours, the bent branches spring up again, and
all the forest work is left to the fog and the rain. At the same time,
dry snow is falling on the upper forests and mountain tops. Day after
day, often for weeks, the big clouds give their flowers without
ceasing, as if knowing how important is the work they have to do. The
glinting, swirling swarms thicken the blast, and the trees and rocks
are covered to a depth of ten to twenty feet. Then the mountaineer,
snug in a grove with bread and fire, has nothing to do but gaze and
listen and enjoy. Ever and anon the deep, low roar of the storm is
broken by the booming of avalanches, as the snow slips from the
overladen heights and crushes down the long white slopes to fill the
fountain hollows. All the smaller streams are crushed and buried, and
the young groves of spruce and fir near the edge of the timber-line are
gently bowed to the ground and put to sleep, not again to see the light
of day or stir branch or leaf until the spring.

These grand reservations should draw thousands of admiring visitors at
least in summer, yet they are neglected as if of no account, and
spoilers are allowed to ruin them as fast as they like.[2] A few peeled
spars cut here were set up in London, Philadelphia, and Chicago, where
they excited wondering attention; but the countless hosts of living
trees rejoicing at home on the mountains are scarce considered at all.
Most travelers here are content with what they can see from car windows
or the verandas of hotels, and in going from place to place cling to
their precious trains and stages like wrecked sailors to rafts. When an
excursion into the woods is proposed, all sorts of dangers are
imagined,—snakes, bears, Indians. Yet it is far safer to wander in
God’s woods than to travel on black highways or to stay at home. The
snake danger is so slight it is hardly worth mentioning. Bears are a
peaceable people, and mind their own business, instead of going about
like the devil seeking whom they may devour. Poor fellows, they have
been poisoned, trapped, and shot at until they have lost confidence in
brother man, and it is not now easy to make their acquaintance. As to
Indians, most of them are dead or civilized into useless innocence. No
American wilderness that I know of is so dangerous as a city home “with
all the modern improvements.” One should go to the woods for safety, if
for nothing else. Lewis and Clark, in their famous trip across the
continent in 1804-1805, did not lose a single man by Indians or
animals, though all the West was then wild. Captain Clark was bitten on
the hand as he lay asleep. That was one bite among more than a hundred
men while traveling nine thousand sand miles. Loggers are far more
likely to be met than Indians or bears in the reserves or about their
boundaries, brown weather-tanned men with faces furrowed like bark,
tired-looking, moving slowly, swaying like the trees they chop. A
little of everything in the woods is fastened to their clothing, rosiny
and smeared with balsam, and rubbed into it, so that their scanty outer
garments grow thicker with use and never wear out. Many a forest giant
have these old woodmen felled, but, round-shouldered and stooping, they
too are leaning over and tottering to their fall. Others, however,
stand ready to take their places, stout young fellows, erect as
saplings; and always the foes of trees outnumber their friends. Far up
the white peaks one can hardly fail to meet the wild goat, or American
chamois,—an admirable mountaineer, familiar with woods and glaciers as
well as rocks,—and in leafy thickets deer will be found; while gliding
about unseen there are many sleek furred animals enjoying their
beautiful lives, and birds also, notwithstanding few are noticed in
hasty walks. The ousel sweetens the glens and gorges where the streams
flow fastest, and every grove has its singers, however silent it
seems,—thrushes, linnets, warblers; humming-birds glint about the
fringing bloom of the meadows and peaks, and the lakes are stirred into
lively pictures by water-fowl.

 [2] The outlook over forest affairs is now encouraging. Popular
 interest, more practical than sentimental in whatever touches the
 welfare of the country’s forests, is growing rapidly, and a hopeful
 beginning has been made by the Government in real protection for the
 reservations as well as for the parks. From July 1, 1900, there have
 been 9 superintendents, 39 supervisors, and from 330 to 445 rangers of
 reservations.


The Mount Rainier Forest Reserve should be made a national park and
guarded while yet its bloom is on;[3] for if in the making of the West
Nature had what we call parks in mind,—places for rest, inspiration,
and prayers,—this Rainier region must surely be one of them. In the
centre of it there is a lonely mountain capped with ice; from the
ice-cap glaciers radiate in every direction, and young rivers from the
glaciers; while its flanks, sweeping down in beautiful curves, are clad
with forests and gardens, and filled with birds and animals. Specimens
of the best of Nature’s treasures have been lovingly gathered here and
arranged in simple symmetrical beauty within regular bounds.

 [3] This was done shortly after the above was written. “One of the
 most important measures taken during the past year in connection with
 forest reservations was the action of Congress in withdrawing from the
 Mount Rainier Forest Reserve a portion of the region immediately
 surrounding Mount Rainier and setting it apart as a national park.”
 (_Report of Commissioner of General Land Office_, for the year ended
 June, 1899.) But the park as it now stands is far too small.


Of all the fire-mountains which, like beacons, once blazed along the
Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest in form, has the most
interesting forest cover, and, with perhaps the exception of Shasta, is
the highest and most flowery. Its massive white dome rises out of its
forests, like a world by itself, to a height of fourteen thousand to
fifteen thousand feet. The forests reach to a height of a little over
six thousand feet, and above the forests there is a zone of the
loveliest flowers, fifty miles in circuit and nearly two miles wide, so
closely planted and luxuriant that it seems as if Nature, glad to make
an open space between woods so dense and ice so deep, were economizing
the precious ground, and trying to see how many of her darlings she can
get together in one mountain wreath,—daisies, anemones, geraniums,
columbines, erythroniums, larkspurs, etc., among which we wade
knee-deep and waist-deep, the bright corollas in myriads touching petal
to petal. Picturesque detached groups of the spiry Abies lasiocarpa
stand like islands along the lower margin of the garden zone, while on
the upper margin there are extensive beds of bryanthus, Cassiope,
Kalmia, and other heathworts, and higher still saxifrages and drabas,
more and more lowly, reach up to the edge of the ice. Altogether this
is the richest subalpine garden I ever found, a perfect floral elysium.
The icy dome needs none of man’s care, but unless the reserve is
guarded the flower bloom will soon be killed, and nothing of the
forests will be left but black stump monuments.

[Illustration: Mt. Rainier and Alpine Firs (_Abies lasiocarpa_).]

The Sierra of California is the most openly beautiful and useful of all
the forest reserves, and the largest excepting the Cascade Reserve of
Oregon and the Bitter Root of Montana and Idaho. It embraces over four
million acres of the grandest scenery and grandest trees on the
continent, and its forests are planted just where they do the most
good, not only for beauty, but for farming in the great San Joaquin
Valley beneath them. It extends southward from the Yosemite National
Park to the end of the range, a distance of nearly two hundred miles.
No other coniferous forest in the world contains so many species or so
many large and beautiful trees,—Sequoia gigantea, king of conifers,
“the noblest of a noble race,” as Sir Joseph Hooker well says; the
sugar pine, king of all the world’s pines, living or extinct; the
yellow pine, next in rank, which here reaches most perfect development,
forming noble towers of verdure two hundred feet high; the mountain
pine, which braves the coldest blasts far up the mountains on grim,
rocky slopes; and five others, flourishing each in its place, making
eight species of pine in one forest, which is still further enriched by
the great Douglas spruce, libocedrus, two species of silver fir, large
trees and exquisitely beautiful, the Paton hemlock, the most graceful
of evergreens, the curious tumion, oaks of many species, maples,
alders, poplars, and flowering dogwood, all fringed with flowery
underbrush, manzanita, ceanothus, wild rose, cherry, chestnut, and
rhododendron. Wandering at random through these friendly, approachable
woods, one comes here and there to the loveliest lily gardens, some of
the lilies ten feet high, and the smoothest gentian meadows, and
Yosemite valleys known only to mountaineers. Once I spent a night by a
camp-fire on Mount Shasta with Asa Gray and Sir Joseph Hooker, and,
knowing that they were acquainted with all the great forests of the
world, I asked whether they knew any coniferous forest that rivaled
that of the Sierra. They unhesitatingly said: “No. In the beauty and
grandeur of individual trees, and in number and variety of species, the
Sierra forests surpass all others.”

This Sierra Reserve, proclaimed by the President of the United States
in September, 1893, is worth the most thoughtful care of the government
for its own sake, without considering its value as the fountain of the
rivers on which the fertility of the great San Joaquin Valley depends.
Yet it gets no care at all. In the fog of tariff, silver, and
annexation politics it is left wholly unguarded, though the management
of the adjacent national parks by a few soldiers shows how well and how
easily it can be preserved. In the meantime, lumbermen are allowed to
spoil it at their will, and sheep in uncountable ravenous hordes to
trample it and devour every green leaf within reach; while the
shepherds, like destroying angels, set innumerable fires, which burn
not only the undergrowth of seedlings on which the permanence of the
forest depends, but countless thousands of the venerable giants. If
every citizen could take one walk through this reserve, there would be
no more trouble about its care; for only in darkness does vandalism
flourish.[4] The reserves of southern California,—the San Gabriel, San
Bernardino, San Jacinto, and Trabuco,—though not large, only about two
million acres together, are perhaps the best appreciated. Their slopes
are covered with a close, almost impenetrable growth of flowery bushes,
beginning on the sides of the fertile coast valleys and the dry
interior plains. Their higher ridges, however, and mountains are open,
and fairly well forested with sugar pine, yellow pine, Douglas spruce,
libocedrus, and white fir. As timber fountains they amount to little,
but as bird and bee pastures, cover for the precious streams that
irrigate the lowlands, and quickly available retreats from dust and
heat and care, their value is incalculable. Good roads have been graded
into them, by which in a few hours lowlanders can get well up into the
sky and find refuge in hospitable camps and club-houses, where, while
breathing reviving ozone, they may absorb the beauty about them, and
look comfortably down on the busy towns and the most beautiful orange
groves ever planted since gardening began.

 [4] See footnote 2.


The Grand Cañon Reserve of Arizona, of nearly two million acres, or the
most interesting part of it, as well as the Rainier region, should be
made into a national park, on account of their supreme grandeur and
beauty. Setting out from Flagstaff, a station on the Atchison, Topeka,
and Santa Fé Railroad, on the way to the cañon you pass through
beautiful forests of yellow pine,—like those of the Black Hills, but
more extensive,—and curious dwarf forests of nut pine and juniper, the
spaces between the miniature trees planted with many interesting
species of eriogonum, yucca, and cactus. After riding or walking
seventy-five miles through these pleasure-grounds, the San Francisco
and other mountains, abounding in flowery parklike openings and smooth
shallow valleys with long vistas which in fineness of finish and
arrangement suggest the work of a consummate landscape artist, watching
you all the way, you come to the most tremendous cañon in the world. It
is abruptly countersunk in the forest plateau, so that you see nothing
of it until you are suddenly stopped on its brink, with its
immeasurable wealth of divinely colored and sculptured buildings before
you and beneath you. No matter how far you have wandered hitherto, or
how many famous gorges and valleys you have seen, this one, the Grand
Cañon of the Colorado, will seem as novel to you, as unearthly in the
color and grandeur and quantity of its architecture, as if you had
found it after death, on some other star; so incomparably lovely and
grand and supreme is it above all the other cañons in our fire-moulded,
earthquake-shaken, rain-washed, wave-washed, river and glacier
sculptured world. It is about six thousand feet deep where you first
see it, and from rim to rim ten to fifteen miles wide. Instead of being
dependent for interest upon waterfalls, depth, wall sculpture, and
beauty of parklike floor, like most other great cañons, it has not
waterfalls in sight, and no appreciable floor spaces. The big river has
just room enough to flow and roar obscurely, here and there groping its
way as best it can, like a weary, murmuring, overladen traveler trying
to escape from the tremendous, bewildering labyrinthic abyss, while its
roar serves only to deepen the silence. Instead of being filled with
air, the vast space between the walls is crowded with Nature’s grandest
buildings,—a sublime city of them, painted in every color, and adorned
with richly fretted cornice and battlement spire and tower in endless
variety of style and architecture. Every architectural invention of man
has been anticipated, and far more, in this grandest of God’s
terrestrial cities.

[Illustration: The Grand Cañon of Colorado.]




CHAPTER II
The Yellowstone National Park


Of the four national parks of the West, the Yellowstone is far the
largest. It is a big, wholesome wilderness on the broad summit of the
Rocky Mountains, favored with abundance of rain and snow,—a place of
fountains where the greatest of the American rivers take their rise.
The central portion is a densely forested and comparatively level
volcanic plateau with an average elevation of about eight thousand feet
above the sea, surrounded by an imposing host of mountains belonging to
the subordinate Gallatin, Wind River, Teton, Absaroka, and snowy
ranges. Unnumbered lakes shine in it, united by a famous band of
streams that rush up out of hot lava beds, or fall from the frosty
peaks in channels rocky and bare, mossy and bosky, to the main rivers,
singing cheerily on through every difficulty, cunningly dividing and
finding their way east and went to the two far-off seas.

Glacier meadows and beaver meadows are out-spread with charming effect
along the banks of the streams, parklike expanses in the woods, and
innumerable small gardens in rocky recesses of the mountains, some of
them containing more petals than leaves, while the whole wilderness is
enlivened with happy animals.

Beside the treasures common to most mountain regions that are wild and
blessed with a kind climate, the park is full of exciting wonders. The
wildest geysers in the world, in bright, triumphant bands, are dancing
and singing in it amid thousands of boiling springs, beautiful and
awful, their basins arrayed in gorgeous colors like gigantic flowers;
and hot paint-pots, mud springs, mud volcanoes, mush and broth caldrons
whose contents are of every color and consistency, plash and heave and
roar in bewildering abundance. In the adjacent mountains, beneath the
living trees the edges of petrified forests are exposed to view, like
specimens on the shelves of a museum, standing on ledges tier above
tier where they grew, solemnly silent in rigid crystalline beauty after
swaying in the winds thousands of centuries ago, opening marvelous
views back into the years and climates and life of the past. Here, too,
are hills of sparkling crystals, hills of sulphur, hills of glass,
hills of cinders and ashes, mountains of every style of architecture,
icy or forested, mountains covered with honey-bloom sweet as Hymettus,
mountains boiled soft like potatoes and colored like a sunset sky. A’
that and a’ that, and twice as muckle’s a’ that, Nature has on show in
the Yellowstone Park. Therefore it is called Wonderland, and thousands
of tourists and travelers stream into it every summer, and wander about
in it enchanted.

Fortunately, almost as soon as it was discovered it was dedicated and
set apart for the benefit of the people, a piece of legislation that
shines benignly amid the common dust-and-ashes history of the public
domain, for which the world must thank Professor Hayden above all
others; for he led the first scientific exploring party into it,
described it, and with admirable enthusiasm urged Congress to preserve
it. As delineated in the year 1872, the park, contained about 3344
square miles. On March 30, 1891 it was to all intents and purposes
enlarged by the Yellowstone National Park Timber Reserve, and in
December, 1897, by the Teton Forest Reserve; thus nearly doubling its
original area, and extending the southern boundary far enough to take
in the sublime Teton range and the famous pasture-lands of the big
Rocky Mountain game animals. The withdrawal of this large tract from
the public domain did not harm to any one; for its height, 6000 to over
13,000 feet above the sea, and its thick mantle of volcanic rocks,
prevent its ever being available for agriculture or mining, while on
the other hand its geographical position, reviving climate, and
wonderful scenery combine to make it a grand health, pleasure, and
study resort,—a gathering-place for travelers from all the world.

The national parks are not only withdrawn from sale and entry like the
forest reservations, but are efficiently managed and guarded by small
troops of United States cavalry, directed by the Secretary of the
Interior. Under this care the forests are flourishing, protected from
both axe and fire; and so, of course, are the shaggy beds of underbrush
and the herbaceous vegetation. The so-called curiosities, also, are
preserved, and the furred and feathered tribes, many of which, in
danger of extinction a short time ago, are now increasing in numbers,—a
refreshing thing to see amid the blind, ruthless destruction that is
going on in the adjacent regions. In pleasing contrast to the noisy,
ever changing management, or mismanagement, of blundering, plundering,
money-making vote-sellers who receive their places from boss
politicians as purchased goods, the soldiers do their duty so quietly
that the traveler is scarce aware of their presence.

This is the coolest and highest of the parks. Frosts occur every month
of the year. Nevertheless, the tenderest tourist finds it warm enough
in summer. The air is electric and full of ozone, healing, reviving,
exhilarating, kept pure by frost and fire, while the scenery is wild
enough to awaken the dead. It is a glorious place to grow in and rest
in; camping on the shores of the lakes, in the warm openings of the
woods golden with sunflowers, on the banks of the streams, by the snowy
waterfalls, beside the exciting wonders or away from them in the
scallops of the mountain walls sheltered from every wind, on smooth
silky lawns enameled with gentians, up in the fountain hollows of the
ancient glaciers between the peaks, where cool pools and brooks and
gardens of precious plants charmingly embowered are never wanting, and
good rough rocks with every variety of cliff and scaur are invitingly
near for outlooks and exercise.

From these lovely dens you may make excursions whenever you like into
the middle of the park, where the geysers and hot springs are reeking
and spouting in their beautiful basins, displaying an exuberance of
color and strange motion and energy admirably calculated to surprise
and frighten, charm and shake up the least sensitive out of apathy into
newness of life.

However orderly your excursions or aimless, again and again amid the
calmest, stillest scenery you will be brought to a standstill hushed
and awe-stricken before phenomena wholly new to you. Boiling springs
and huge deep pools of purest green and azure water, thousands of them,
are plashing and heaving in these high, cool mountains as if a fierce
furnace fire were burning beneath each one of them; and a hundred
geysers, white torrents of boiling water and steam, like inverted
waterfalls, are ever and anon rushing up out of the hot, black
underworld. Some of these ponderous geyser columns are as large as
sequoias,—five to sixty feet in diameter, one hundred and fifty to
three hundred feet high,—and are sustained at this great height with
tremendous energy for a few minutes, or perhaps nearly an hour,
standing rigid and erect, hissing, throbbing, booming, as if
thunderstorms were raging beneath their roots, their sides roughened or
fluted like the furrowed boles of trees, their tops dissolving in
feathery branches, while the irised spray, like misty bloom is at times
blown aside, revealing the massive shafts shining against a background
of pine-covered hills. Some of them lean more or less, as if
storm-bent, and instead of being round are flat or fan-shaped, issuing
from irregular slits in silex pavements with radiate structure, the
sunbeams sifting through them in ravishing splendor. Some are broad and
round-headed like oaks; others are low and bunchy, branching near the
ground like bushes; and a few are hollow in the centre like big daisies
or water-lilies. No frost cools them, snow never covers them nor lodges
in their branches; winter and summer they welcome alike; all of them,
of whatever form or size, faithfully rising and sinking in fairy
rhythmic dance night and day, in all sorts of weather, at varying
periods of minutes, hours, or weeks, growing up rapidly, uncontrollable
as fate, tossing their pearly branches in the wind, bursting into bloom
and vanishing like the frailest flowers,—plants of which Nature raises
hundreds or thousands of crops a year with no apparent exhaustion of
the fiery soil.

The so-called geyser basins, in which this rare sort of vegetation is
growing, are mostly open valleys on the central plateau that were
eroded by glaciers after the greater volcanic fires had ceased to burn.
Looking down over the forests as you approach them from the surrounding
heights, you see a multitude of white columns, broad, reeking masses,
and irregular jets and puffs of misty vapor ascending from the bottom
of the valley, or entangled like smoke among the neighboring trees,
suggesting the factories of some busy town or the camp-fires of an
army. These mark the position of each mush-pot, paint-pot, hot spring,
and geyser, or gusher, as the Icelandic words mean. And when you
saunter into the midst of them over the bright sinter pavements, and
see how pure and white and pearly gray they are in the shade of the
mountains, and how radiant in the sunshine, you are fairly enchanted.
So numerous they are and varied, Nature seems to have gathered them
from all the world as specimens of her rarest fountains, to show in one
place what she can do. Over four thousand hot springs have been counted
in the park, and a hundred geysers; how many more there are nobody
knows.

These valleys at the heads of the great rivers may be regarded as
laboratories and kitchens, in which, amid a thousand retorts and pots,
we may see Nature at work as chemist or cook, cunningly compounding an
infinite variety of mineral messes; cooking whole mountains; boiling
and steaming flinty rocks to smooth paste and mush,—yellow, brown, red,
pink, lavender, gray, and creamy white,—making the most beautiful mud
in the world; and distilling the most ethereal essences. Many of these
pots and caldrons have been boiling thousands of years. Pots of
sulphurous mush, stringy and lumpy, and pots of broth as black as ink,
are tossed and stirred with constant care, and thin transparent
essences, too pure and fine to be called water, are kept simmering
gently in beautiful sinter cups and bowls that grow ever more beautiful
the longer they are used. In some of the spring basins, the waters,
though still warm, are perfectly calm, and shine blandly in a sod of
overleaning grass and flowers, as if they were thoroughly cooked at
last, and set aside to settle and cool. Others are wildly boiling over
as if running to waste, thousands of tons of the precious liquids being
thrown into the air to fall in scalding floods on the clean coral floor
of the establishment, keeping onlookers at a distance. Instead of
holding limpid pale green or azure water, other pots and craters are
filled with scalding mud, which is tossed up from three or four feet to
thirty feet, in sticky, rank-smelling masses, with gasping, belching,
thudding sounds, plastering the branches of neighboring trees; every
flask, retort, hot spring, and geyser has something special in it, no
two being the same in temperature, color, or composition.

In these natural laboratories one needs stout faith to feel at ease.
The ground sounds hollow underfoot, and the awful subterranean thunder
shakes one’s mind as the ground is shaken, especially at night in the
pale moonlight, or when the sky is overcast with storm-clouds. In the
solemn gloom, the geysers, dimly visible, look like monstrous dancing
ghosts, and their wild songs and the earthquake thunder replying to the
storms overhead seem doubly terrible, as if divine government were at
an end. But the trembling hills keep their places. The sky clears, the
rosy dawn is reassuring, and up comes the sun like a god, pouring his
faithful beams across the mountains and forest, lighting each peak and
tree and ghastly geyser alike, and shining into the eyes of the reeking
springs, clothing them with rainbow light, and dissolving the seeming
chaos of darkness into varied forms of harmony. The ordinary work of
the world goes on. Gladly we see the flies dancing in the sun-beams,
birds feeding their young, squirrels gathering nuts, and hear the
blessed ouzel singing confidingly in the shallows of the river,—most
faithful evangel, calming every fear, reducing everything to love.

The variously tinted sinter and travertine formations, outspread like
pavements over large areas of the geyser valleys, lining the spring
basins and throats of the craters, and forming beautiful coral-like
rims and curbs about them, always excite admiring attention; so also
does the play of the waters from which they are deposited. The various
minerals in them are rich in colors, and these are greatly heightened
by a smooth, silky growth of brilliantly colored confervæ which lines
many of the pools and channels and terraces. No bed of flower-bloom is
more exquisite than these myriads of minute plants, visible only in
mass, growing in the hot waters. Most of the spring borders are low and
daintily scalloped, crenelated, and beaded with sinter pearls. Some of
the geyser craters are massive and picturesque, like ruined castles or
old burned-out sequoia stumps, and are adorned on a grand scale with
outbulging, cauliflower-like formations. From these as centres the
silex pavements slope gently away in thin, crusty, overlapping layers,
slightly interrupted in some places by low terraces. Or, as in the case
of the Mammoth Hot Springs, at the north end of the park, where the
building waters issue from the side of a steep hill, the deposits form
a succession of higher and broader terraces of white travertine tinged
with purple, like the famous Pink Terrace at Rotomahana, New Zealand,
draped in front with clustering stalactites, each terrace having a pool
of indescribably beautiful water upon it in a basin with a raised rim
that glistens with confervæ,—the whole, when viewed at a distance of a
mile or two, looking like a broad, massive cascade pouring over
shelving rocks in snowy purpled foam.

[Illustration: Minerva Terrace, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone Park.]

The stones of this divine masonry, invisible particles of lime or
silex, mined in quarries no eye has seen, go to their appointed places
in gentle, tinkling, transparent currents or through the dashing
turmoil of floods, as surely guided as the sap of plants streaming into
bole and branch, leaf and flower. And thus from century to century this
beauty-work has gone on and is going on.

Passing through many a mile of pine and spruce woods, toward the centre
of the park you come to the famous Yellowstone Lake. It is about twenty
miles long and fifteen wide, and lies at a height of nearly 8000 feet
above the level of the sea, amid dense black forests and snowy
mountains. Around its winding, wavering shores, closely forested and
picturesquely varied with promontories and bays, the distance is more
than 100 miles. It is not very deep, only from 200 to 300 feet, and
contains less water than the celebrated Lake Tahoe of the California
Sierra, which is nearly the same size, lies at a height of 6400 feet,
and is over 1600 feet deep. But no other lake in North America of equal
area lies so high as the Yellowstone, or gives birth to so noble a
river. The terraces around its shores show that at the close of the
glacial period its surface was about 160 feet higher than it is now,
and its area nearly twice as great.

It is full of trout, and a vast multitude of birds—swans, pelicans,
geese, ducks, cranes, herons, curlews, plovers, snipe—feed in it and
upon its shores; and many forest animals come out of the woods, and
wade a little way in shallow, sandy places to drink and look about
them, and cool themselves in the free flowing breezes.

In calm weather it is a magnificent mirror for the woods and mountains
and sky, now pattered with hail and rain, now roughened with sudden
storms that send waves to fringe the shores and wash its border of
gravel and sand. The Absaroka Mountains and the Wind River Plateau on
the east and south pour their gathered waters into it, and the river
issues from the north side in a broad, smooth, stately current,
silently gliding with such serene majesty that one fancies it knows the
vast journey of four thousand miles that lies before it, and the work
it has to do. For the first twenty miles its course is in a level,
sunny valley lightly fringed with trees, through which it flows in
silvery reaches stirred into spangles here and there by ducks and
leaping trout, making no sound save a low whispering among the pebbles
and the dipping willows and sedges of its banks. Then suddenly, as if
preparing for hard work; it rushes eagerly, impetuously forward
rejoicing in its strength, breaks into foam-bloom, and goes thundering
down into the Grand Cañon in two magnificent falls, one hundred and
three hundred feet high.

The cañon is so tremendously wild and impressive that even these great
falls cannot hold your attention. It is about twenty miles long and a
thousand feet deep,—a weird, unearthly-looking gorge of jagged,
fantastic architecture, and most brilliantly colored. Here the Washburn
range, forming the northern rim of the Yellowstone basin, made up
mostly of beds of rhyolite decomposed by the action of thermal waters,
has been cut through and laid open to view by the river; and a famous
section it has made. It is not the depth or the shape of the cañon nor
the waterfall, nor the green and gray river chanting its brave song as
it goes foaming on its way, that most impresses the observer, but the
colors of the decomposed volcanic rocks. With few exceptions, the
traveler in strange lands finds that, however much the scenery and
vegetation in different countries may change, Mother Earth is ever
familiar and the same. But here the very ground is changed, as if
belonging to some other world. The walls of the cañon from top to
bottom burn in a perfect glory of color, confounding and dazzling when
the sun is shining,—white, yellow, green, blue, vermilion, and various
other shades of red indefinitely blending. All the earth hereabouts
seems to be paint. Millions of tons of it lie in sight, exposed to wind
and weather as if of no account, yet marvelously fresh and bright, fast
colors not to be washed out or bleached out by either sunshine or
storms. The effect is so novel and awful, we imagine that even a river
might be afraid to enter such a place. But the rich and gentle beauty
of the vegetation is reassuring. The lovely Linnæa borealis hangs her
twin bells over the brink of the cliffs, forests and gardens extend
their treasures in smiling confidence on either side, nuts and berries
ripen well whatever may be going on below; blind fears varnish, and the
grand gorge seems a kindly, beautiful part of the general harmony, full
of peace and joy and good will.

[Illustration: Great Falls and Grand Cañon, Yellowstone Park.]

The park is easy of access. Locomotives drag you to its northern
boundary at Cinnabar, and horses and guides do the rest. From Cinnabar
you will be whirled in coaches along the foaming Gardiner River to
Mammoth Hot Springs; thence through woods and meadows, gulches and
ravines along branches of the Upper Gallatin, Madison, and Firehole
rivers to the main geyser basins; thence over the Continental Divide
and back again, up and down through dense pine, spruce, and fir woods
to the magnificent Yellowstone Lake, along its northern shore to the
outlet, down the river to the falls and Grand Cañon, and thence back
through the woods to Mammoth Hot Springs and Cinnabar; stopping here
and there at the so-called points of interest among the geysers,
springs, paint-pots, mud volcanoes, etc., where you will be allowed a
few minutes or hours to saunter over the sinter pavements, watch the
play of a few of the geysers, and peer into some of the most beautiful
and terrible of the craters and pools. These wonders you will enjoy,
and also the views of the mountains, especially the Gallatin and
Absaroka ranges, the long, willowy glacier and beaver meadows, the beds
of violets, gentians, phloxes, asters, phacelias, goldenrods,
eriogonums, and many other flowers, some species giving color to whole
meadows and hillsides. And you will enjoy your short views of the great
lake and river and cañon. No scalping Indians will you see. The
Blackfeet and Bannocks that once roamed here are gone; so are the old
beaver-catchers, the Coulters and Bridgers, with all their attractive
buckskin and romance. There are several bands of buffaloes in the park,
but you will not thus cheaply in tourist fashion see them nor many of
the other large animals hidden in the wilderness. The song-birds, too,
keep mostly out of sight of the rushing tourist, though off the roads
thrushes, warblers, orioles, grosbeaks, etc., keep the air sweet and
merry. Perhaps in passing rapids and falls you may catch glimpses of
the water-ouzel, but in the whirling noise you will not hear his song.
Fortunately, no road noise frightens the Douglas squirrel, and his
merry play and gossip will amuse you all through the woods. Here and
there a deer may be seen crossing the road, or a bear. Most likely,
however, the only bears you will see are the half tame ones that go to
the hotels every night for dinner-table scraps,—yeast-powder biscuit,
Chicago canned stuff, mixed pickles, and beefsteaks that have proved
too tough for the tourists.

Among the gains of a coach trip are the acquaintances made and the
fresh views into human nature; for the wilderness is a shrewd
touchstone, even thus lightly approached, and brings many a curious
trait to view. Setting out, the driver cracks his whip, and the four
horses go off at half gallop, half trot, in trained, showy style, until
out of sight of the hotel. The coach is crowded, old and young side by
side, blooming and fading, full of hope and fun and care. Some look at
the scenery or the horses, and all ask questions, an odd mixed lot of
them: “Where is the umbrella? What is the name of that blue flower over
there? Are you sure the little bag is aboard? Is that hollow yonder a
crater? How is your throat this morning? How high did you say the
geysers spout? How does the elevation affect your head? Is that a
geyser reeking over there in the rocks, or only a hot spring?” A long
ascent is made, the solemn mountains come to view, small cares are
quenched, and all become natural and silent, save perhaps some
unfortunate expounder who has been reading guidebook geology, and
rumbles forth foggy subsidences and upheavals until he is danger of
being heaved overboard. The driver will give you the names of the peaks
and meadows and streams as you come to them, call attention to the
glass road, tell how hard it was to build,—how the obsidian cliffs
naturally pushed the surveyor’s lines to the right, and the industrious
beavers, by flooding the valley in front of the cliff, pushed them to
the left.

Geysers, however, are the main objects, and as soon as they come in
sight other wonders are forgotten. All gather around the crater of the
one that is expected to play first. During the eruptions of the smaller
geysers, such as the Beehive and Old Faithful, though a little
frightened at first, all welcome the glorious show with enthusiasm, and
shout, “Oh, how wonderful, beautiful, splendid, majestic!” Some venture
near enough to stroke the column with a stick, as if it were a stone
pillar or a tree, so firm and substantial and permanent it seems. While
tourists wait around a large geyser, such as the Castle or the Giant,
there is a chatter of small talk in anything but solemn mood; and
during the intervals between the preliminary splashes and upheavals
some adventurer occasionally looks down the throat of the crater,
admiring the silex formations and wondering whether Hades is as
beautiful. But when, with awful uproar as if avalanches were falling
and storms thundering in the depths, the tremendous outburst begins,
all run away to a safe distance, and look on, awe-stricken and silent,
in devout, worshiping wonder.

The largest and one of the most wonderfully beautiful of the springs is
the Prismatic, which the guide will be sure to show you. With a
circumference of 300 yards, it is more like a lake than a spring. The
water is pure deep blue in the centre, fading to green on the edges,
and its basin and the slightly terraced pavement about it are
astonishingly bright and varied in color. This one of the multitude of
Yellowstone fountains is of itself object enough for a trip across the
continent. No wonder that so many fine myths have originated in
springs; that so many fountains were held sacred in the youth of the
world, and had miraculous virtues ascribed to them. Even in these cold,
doubting, questioning, scientific times many of the Yellowstone
fountains seem able to work miracles. Near the Prismatic Spring is the
great Excelsior Geyser, which is said to throw a column of boiling
water 60 to 70 feet in diameter to a height of from 50 to 300 feet, at
irregular periods. This is the greatest of all the geysers yet
discovered anywhere. The Firehole River, which sweeps past it, is, at
ordinary states, a stream about 100 yards wide and 3 feet deep; but
when the geyser is in eruption, so great is the quantity of water
discharged that the volume of the river is doubled, and it is rendered
too hot and rapid to be forded.

Geysers are found in many other volcanic regions,—in Iceland, New
Zealand, Japan, the Himalayas, the Eastern Archipelago, South America,
the Azores, and elsewhere; but only in Iceland, New Zealand, and this
Rocky Mountain park do they display their grandest forms, and of these
three famous regions the Yellowstone is easily first, both in the
number and in the size of its geysers. The greatest height of the
column of the Great Geyser of Iceland actually measured was 212 feet,
and of the Strokhr 162 feet.

In New Zealand, the Te Pueia at Lake Taupo, the Waikite at Rotorna, and
two others are said to lift their waters occasionally to a height of
100 feet, while the celebrated Te Tarata at Rotomahana sometimes lifts
a boiling column 20 feet in diameter to a height of 60 feet. But all
these are far surpassed by the Excelsior. Few tourists, however, will
see the Excelsior in action, or a thousand other interesting features
of the park that lie beyond the wagon-roads and the hotels. The regular
trips—from three to five days—are too short. Nothing can be done well
at a speed of forty miles a day. The multitude of mixed, novel
impressions rapidly piled on one another make only a dreamy,
bewildering, swirling blur, most of which is unrememberable. Far more
time should be taken. Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the
freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grass and gentians of
glacier meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of Nature’s darlings.
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will
flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their
own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will
drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment
after another is closed, but Nature’s sources never fail. Like a
generous host, she offers here brimming cups in endless variety, served
in a grand hall, the sky its ceiling, the mountains its walls,
decorated with glorious paintings and enlivened with bands of music
ever playing. The petty discomforts that beset the awkward guest, the
unskilled camper, are quickly forgotten, while all that is precious
remains. Fears vanish as soon as one is fairly free in the wilderness.

Most of the dangers that haunt the unseasoned citizen are imaginary;
the real ones are perhaps too few rather than too many for his good.
The bears that always seem to spring up thick as trees, in fighting,
devouring attitudes before the frightened tourist whenever a camping
trip is proposed, are gentle now, finding they are no longer likely to
be shot; and rattlesnakes, the other big irrational dread of
over-civilized people, are scarce here, for most of the park lies above
the snake-line. Poor creatures, loved only by their Maker, they are
timid and bashful, as mountaineers know; and though perhaps not
possessed of much of that charity that suffers long and is kind,
seldom, either by mistake or by mishap, do harm to any one. Certainly
they cause not the hundredth part of the pain and death that follow the
footsteps of the admired Rocky Mountain trapper. Nevertheless, again
and again, in season and out of season, the question comes up, “What
are rattlesnakes good for?” As if nothing that does not obviously make
for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as if our ways were
God’s ways. Long ago, an Indian to whom a French traveler put this old
question replied that their tails were good for toothache, and their
heads for fever. Anyhow, they are all, head and tail, good for
themselves, and we need not begrudge them their share of life.

Fear nothing. No town park you have been accustomed to saunter in is so
free from danger as the Yellowstone. It is a hard place to leave. Even
its names in your guidebook are attractive, and should draw you far
from wagon-roads,—all save the early ones, derived from the infernal
regions: Hell Roaring River, Hell Broth Springs, The Devil’s Caldron,
etc. Indeed, the whole region was at first called Coulter’s Hell, from
the fiery brimstone stories told by trapper Coulter, who left the Lewis
and Clark expedition and wandered through the park, in the year 1807,
with a band of Bannock Indians. The later names, many of which we owe
to Mr. Arnold Hague of the U. S. Geological Survey, are so telling and
exhilarating that they set our pulses dancing and make us begin to
enjoy the pleasures of excursions ere they are commenced. Three River
Peak, Two Ocean Pass, Continental Divide, are capital geographical
descriptions, suggesting thousands of miles of rejoicing streams and
all that belongs to them. Big Horn Pass, Bison Peak, Big Game Ridge,
bring brave mountain animals to mind. Birch Hills, Garnet Hills,
Amethyst Mountain, Storm Peak, Electric Peak, Roaring Mountain, are
bright, bracing names. Wapiti, Beaver, Tern, and Swan lakes, conjure up
fine pictures, and so also do Osprey and Ouzel falls. Antelope Creek,
Otter, Mink, and Grayling creeks, Geode, Jasper, Opal, Carnelian, and
Chalcedony creeks, are lively and sparkling names that help the streams
to shine; and Azalea, Stellaria, Arnica, Aster, and Phlox creeks, what
pictures these bring up! Violet, Morning Mist, Hygeia, Beryl,
Vermilion, and Indigo springs, and many beside, give us visions of
fountains more beautifully arrayed than Solomon in all his purple and
golden glory. All these and a host of others call you to camp. You may
be a little cold some nights, on mountain tops above the timber-line,
but you will see the stars, and by and by you can sleep enough in your
town bed, or at least in your grave. Keep awake while you may in
mountain mansions so rare.

If you are not very strong, try to climb Electric Peak when a big
bossy, well-charged thunder-cloud is on it, to breathe the ozone set
free, and get yourself kindly shaken and shocked. You are sure to be
lost in wonder and praise, and every hair of your head will stand up
and hum and sing like an enthusiastic congregation.

After this reviving experience, you should take a look into a few of
the tertiary volumes of the grand geological library of the park, and
see how God writes history. No technical knowledge is required; only a
calm day and a calm mind. Perhaps nowhere else in the Rocky Mountains
have the volcanic forces been so busy. More than ten thousand square
miles hereabouts have been covered to a depth of at least five thousand
feet with material spouted from chasms and craters during the tertiary
period, forming broad sheets of basalt, andesite, rhyolite, etc., and
marvelous masses of ashes, sand, cinders, and stones now consolidated
into conglomerates, charged with the remains of plants and animals that
lived in the calm, genial periods that separated the volcanic
outbursts.

Perhaps the most interesting and telling of these rocks to the hasty
tourist, are those that make up the mass of Amethyst Mountain. On its
north side it presents a section two thousand feet high of roughly
stratified beds of sand, ashes, and conglomerates coarse and fine,
forming the untrimmed edges of a wonderful set of volumes lying on
their sides,—books a million years old, well bound, miles in size, with
full-page illustrations. On the ledges of this one section we see
trunks and stumps of fifteen or twenty ancient forests ranged one above
another, standing where they grew, or prostrate and broken like the
pillars of ruined temples in desert sands,—a forest fifteen or twenty
stories high, the roots of each spread above the tops of the next
beneath it, telling wonderful tales of the bygone centuries, with their
winters and summers, growth and death, fire, ice, and flood.

There were giants in those days. The largest of the standing opal and
agate stumps and prostrate sections of the trunks are from two or three
to fifty feet in height or length, and from five to ten feet in
diameter; and so perfect is the petrifaction that the annual rings and
ducts are clearer and more easily counted than those of living trees,
centuries of burial having brightened the records instead of blurring
them. They show that the winters of the tertiary period gave as decided
a check to vegetable growth as do those of the present time. Some trees
favorably located grew rapidly, increasing twenty inches in diameter in
as many years, while others of the some species, on poorer soil or
overshadowed, increased only two or three inches in the same time.

Among the roots and stumps on the old forest floors we find the remains
of ferns and bushes, and the seeds and leaves of trees like those now
growing on the southern Alleghanies,—such as magnolia, sassafras,
laurel, linden, persimmon, ash, alder, dogwood. Studying the lowest of
these forests, the soil it grew on and the deposits it is buried in, we
see that it was rich in species, and flourished in a genial, sunny
climate. When its stately trees were in their glory, volcanic fires
broke forth from chasms and craters, like larger geysers, spouting
ashes, cinders, stones and mud, which fell on the doomed forest like
hail and snow; sifting, hurtling through the leaves and branches,
choking the streams, covering the ground, crushing bushes and ferns,
rapidly deepening, packing around the trees and breaking them, rising
higher until the topmost boughs of the giants were buried, leaving not
a leaf or twig in sight, so complete was the desolation. At last the
volcanic storm began to abate, the fiery soil settled; mud floods and
boulder floods passed over it, enriching it, cooling it; rains fell and
mellow sunshine, and it became fertile and ready for another crop.
Birds, and the winds, and roaming animals brought seeds from more
fortunate woods, and a new forest grew up on the top of the buried one.
Centuries of genial growing seasons passed. The seedling trees became
giants, and with strong outreaching branches spread a leafy canopy over
the gray land.

The sleeping subterranean fires again awake and shake the mountains,
and every leaf trembles. The old craters, with perhaps new ones, are
opened, and immense quantities of ashes, pumice, and cinders are again
thrown into the sky. The sun, and shorn of his beams, glows like a dull
red ball, until hidden in sulphurous clouds. Volcanic snow, hail, and
floods fall on the new forest, burying it alive, like the one beneath
its roots. Then come another noisy band of mud floods and boulder
floods, mixing, settling, enriching the new ground, more seeds,
quickening sunshine and showers; and a third noble magnolia forest is
carefully raised on the top of the second. And so on. Forest was
planted above forest and destroyed, as if Nature were ever repenting,
undoing the work she had so industriously done, and burying it.

Of course this destruction was creation, progress in the march of
beauty through death. How quickly these old monuments excite and hold
the imagination! We see the old stone stumps budding and blossoming and
waving in the wind as magnificent trees, standing shoulder to shoulder,
branches interlacing in grand varied round-headed forests; see the
sunshine of morning and evening gilding their mossy trunks, and at high
noon spangling on the thick glossy leaves of the magnolia, filtering
through translucent canopies of linden and ash, and falling in mellow
patches on the ferny floor; see the shining after rain, breathe the
exhaling fragrance, and hear the winds and birds and the murmur of
brooks and insects. We watch them from season to season; see the
swelling buds when the sap begins to flow in the spring, the opening
leaves and blossoms, the ripening of summer fruits, the colors of
autumn, and the maze of leafless branches and sprays in winter; and we
see the sudden oncome of the storms that overwhelmed them.

One calm morning at sunrise I saw the oaks and pines in Yosemite Valley
shaken by an earthquake, their tops swishing back and forth, and every
branch and needle shuddering as if in distress like the frightened
screaming birds. One may imagine the trembling, rocking, tumultuous
waving of those ancient Yellowstone woods, and the terror of their
inhabitants when the first foreboding shocks were felt, the sky grew
dark, and rock-laden floods began to roar. But though they were close
pressed and buried, cut off from sun and wind, all their happy
leaf-fluttering and waving done, other currents coursed through them,
fondling and thrilling every fibre, and beautiful wood was replaced by
beautiful stone. Now their rocky sepulchres are partly open, and show
forth the natural beauty of death.

After the forest times and fire times had passed away, and the volcanic
furnaces were banked and held in abeyance, another great change
occurred. The glacial winter came on. The sky was again darkened, not
with dust and ashes, but with snow which fell in glorious abundance,
piling deeper, deeper, slipping from the overladen heights in booming
avalanches, compacting into glaciers, that flowed over all the
landscape, wiping off forests, grinding, sculpturing, fashioning the
comparatively featureless lava beds into the beautiful rhythm of hill
and dale and ranges of mountains we behold to-day; forming basins for
lakes, channels for streams, few soils for forests, gardens, and
meadows. While this ice-work was going on, the slumbering volcanic
fires were boiling the subterranean waters, and with curious chemistry
decomposing the rocks, making beauty in the darkness; these forces,
seemingly antagonistic, working harmoniously together. How wild their
meetings on the surface were we may imagine. When the glacier period
began, geysers and hot springs were playing in grander volume, it may
be, than those of to-day. The glaciers flowed over them while they
spouted and thundered, carrying away their fine sinter and travertine
structures, and shortening their mysterious channels.

The soils made in the down-grinding required to bring the present
features of the landscape into relief are possibly no better than were
some of the old volcanic soils that were carried away, and which, as we
have seen, nourished magnificent forests, but the glacial landscapes
are incomparably more beautiful than the old volcanic ones were. The
glacial winter has passed away, like the ancient summers and fire
periods, though in the chronology of the geologist all these times are
recent. Only small residual glaciers on the cool northern slopes of the
highest mountains are left of the vast all-embracing ice-mantle, as
solfataras and geysers are all that are left of the ancient volcanoes.

Now the post-glacial agents are at work on the grand old palimpsest of
the park region, inscribing new characters; but still in its main
telling features it remains distinctly glacial. The moraine soils are
being leveled, sorted, refined, re-formed, and covered with vegetation;
the polished pavements and scoring and other superficial glacial
inscriptions on the crumbling lavas are being rapidly obliterated;
gorges are being cut in the decomposed rhyolites and loose
conglomerates, and turrets and pinnacles seem to be springing up like
growing trees; while the geysers are depositing miles of sinter and
travertine. Nevertheless, the ice-work is scarce blurred as yet. These
later effects are only spots and wrinkles on the grand glacial
countenance of the park.

Perhaps you have already said that you have seen enough for a lifetime.
But before you go away you should spend at least one day and a night on
a mountain top, for a last general, calming, settling view. Mount
Washburn is a good one for the purpose, because it stands in the middle
of the park, is unencumbered with other peaks, and is so easy of access
that the climb to its summit is only a saunter. First your eye goes
roving around the mountain rim amid the hundreds of peaks; some with
plain flowing skirts, others abruptly precipitous and defended by sheer
battlemented escarpments; flat-topped or round; heaving like sea-waves
or spired and turreted like Gothic cathedrals; streaked with snow in
the ravines, and darkened with files of adventurous trees climbing the
ridges. The nearer peaks are perchance clad in sapphire blue, others
far off in creamy white. In the broad glare of noon they seem to shrink
and crouch to less than half their real stature, and grow dull and
uncommunicative,—mere dead, draggled heaps of waste ashes and stone,
giving no hint of the multitude of animals enjoying life in their
fastnesses, or of the bright bloom-bordered streams and lakes. But when
storms blow they awake and arise, wearing robes of cloud and mist in
majestic speaking attitudes like gods. In the color glory of morning
and evening they become still more impressive; steeped in the divine
light of the alpenglow their earthiness disappears, and, blending with
the heavens, they seem neither high nor low.

[Illustration: Looking South from the Summit of Mt. Washburn,
Yellowstone Park.]

Over all the central plateau, which from here seems level, and over the
foothills and lower slopes of the mountains, the forests extends like a
black uniform bed of weeds, interrupted only by lakes and meadows and
small burned spots called parks,—all of them, except the Yellowstone
Lake, being mere dots and spangles in general views, made conspicuous
by their color and brightness. About eighty-five per cent of the entire
area of the park is covered with trees, mostly the indomitable
lodge-pole pine (_Pinus contorta_, var. _Murrayana_), with a few
patches and sprinklings of Douglas spruce, Engelmann spruce, silver fir
(_Abies lasiocarpa_), Pinus flexilis, and a few alders, aspens, and
birches. The Douglas spruce is found only on the lowest portions, the
silver fir on the highest, and the Engelmann spruce on the dampest
places, best defended from fire. Some fine specimens of the flexilis
pine are growing on the margins of openings,—wide-branching, sturdy
trees, as broad as high, with trunks five feet in diameter, leafy and
shady, laden with purple cones and rose-colored flowers. The Engelmann
spruce and sub-alpine silver fir are beautiful and notable trees, but
as the plateau became drier and fires began to run, they were driven up
the mountains, and into the wet spots and islands where we now find
them, leaving nearly all the park to the lodge-pole pine, which, though
as thin-skinned as they and as easily killed by fire, takes pains to
store up its seeds in firmly closed cones, and holds them from three to
nine years, so that, let the fire come when it may, it is ready to die
and ready to live again in a new generation. For when the killing fires
have devoured the leaves and thin resinous bark, many of the cones,
only scorched, open as soon as the smoke clears away; the hoarded store
of seeds is sown broadcast on the cleared ground, and a new growth
immediately springs up triumphant out of the ashes. Therefore, this
tree not only holds its ground, but extends its conquests farther after
every fire. Thus the evenness and closeness of its growth are accounted
for. In one part of the forest that I examined, the growth was about as
close as a cane-brake. The trees were from four to eight inches in
diameter, one hundred feet high, and one hundred and seventy-five years
old. The lower limbs die young and drop off for want of light. Life
with these close-planted trees is a race for light, more light, and so
they push straight for the sky. Mowing off ten feet from the top of the
forest would make it look like a crowded mass of telegraph-poles; for
only the sunny tops are leafy. A sapling ten years old, growing in the
sunshine, has as many leaves as a crowded tree one or two hundred years
old. As fires are multiplied and the mountains become drier, this
wonderful lodge-pole pine bids fair to obtain possession of nearly all
the forest ground in the West.

How still the woods seem from here, yet how lively a stir the hidden
animals are making; digging, gnawing, biting, eyes shining, at work and
play, getting food, rearing young, roving through the underbrush,
climbing the rocks, wading solitary marshes, tracing the banks of the
lakes and streams! Insect swarms are dancing in the sunbeams, burrowing
in the ground, diving, swimming,—a cloud of witnesses telling Nature’s
joy. The plants are as busy as the animals, every cell in a swirl of
enjoyment, humming like a hive, singing the old new song of creation. A
few columns and puffs of steam are seen rising above the treetops, some
near, but most of them far off, indicating geysers and hot springs,
gentle-looking and noiseless as noiseless as downy clouds, softly
hinting the reaction going on between the surface and the hot interior.
From here you see them better than when you are standing beside them,
frightened and confused, regarding them as lawless cataclysms. The
shocks and out-bursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, storms, the
pounding of waves, the uprush of sap in plants, each and all tell the
orderly love-beats of Nature’s heart.

Turning to the eastward, you have the Grand Cañon and reaches of the
river in full view; and yonder to the southward lies the great lake,
the largest and most important of all the high fountains of the
Missouri-Mississippi, and the last to be discovered.

In the year 1541, when De Soto, with a romantic band of adventurers,
was seeking gold and glory and the fountain of youth, he found the
Mississippi a few hundred miles above its mouth, and made his grave
beneath its floods. La Salle, in 1682, after discovering the Ohio, one
of the largest and most beautiful branches of the Mississippi, traced
the latter to the sea from the mouth of the Illinois, through
adventures and privations not easily realized now. About the same time
Joliet and Father Marquette reached the “Father of Waters” by way of
the Wisconsin, but more than a century passed ere its highest sources
in these mountains were seen. The advancing stream of civilization has
ever followed its guidance toward the west, but none of the thousand
tribes of Indians living on its banks could tell the explorer whence it
came. From those romantic De Soto and La Salle days to these times of
locomotives and tourists, how much has the great river seen and done!
Great as it now is, and still growing longer through the ground of its
delta and the basins of receding glaciers at its head, it was immensely
broader toward the close of the glacial period, when the ice-mantle of
the mountains was melting: then with its three hundred thousand miles
of branches out-spread over the plains and valleys of the continent,
laden with fertile mud, it made the biggest and most generous bed of
soil in the world.

Think of this mighty stream springing in the first place in vapor from
the sea, flying on the wind, alighting on the mountains in hail and
snow and rain, lingering in many a fountain feeding the trees and
grass; then gathering its scattered waters, gliding from its noble
lake, and going back home to the sea, singing all the way! On it
sweeps, through the gates of the mountains, across the vast prairies
and plains, through many a wild, gloomy forest, cane-brake, and sunny
savanna; from glaciers and snowbanks and pine woods to warm groves of
magnolia and palm; geysers dancing at its head keeping time with the
sea-waves at its mouth; roaring and gray in rapids, booming in broad,
bossy falls, murmuring, gleaming in long, silvery reaches, swaying now
hither, now thither, whirling, bending in huge doubling, eddying folds,
serene, majestic, ungovernable, overflowing all its metes and bounds,
frightening the dwellers upon its banks; building, wasting, uprooting,
planting; engulfing old islands and making new ones, taking away fields
and towns as if in sport, carrying canoes and ships of commerce in the
midst of its spoils and drift, fertilizing the continent as one vast
farm. Then, its work done, it gladly vanishes in its ocean home,
welcomed by the waiting waves.

Thus naturally, standing here in the midst of its fountains, we trace
the fortunes of the great river. And how much more comes to mind as we
overlook this wonderful wilderness! Fountains of the Columbia and
Colorado lie before us, interlaced with those of the Yellowstone and
Missouri, and fine it would be to go with them to the Pacific; but the
sun is already in the west, and soon our day will be done.

Yonder is Amethyst Mountain, and other mountains hardly less rich in
old forests, which now seem to spring up again in their glory; and you
see the storms that buried them,—the ashes and torrents laden with
boulders and mud, the centuries of sunshine, and the dark, lurid
nights. You see again the vast floods of lava, red-hot and white-hot,
pouring out from gigantic geysers, usurping the basins of lakes and
streams, absorbing or driving away their hissing, screaming waters,
flowing around hills and ridges, submerging every subordinate feature.
Then you see the snow and glaciers taking possession of the land,
making new landscapes. How admirable it is that, after passing through
so many vicissitudes of frost and fire and flood, the physiognomy and
even the complexion of the landscape should still be so divinely fine!

Thus reviewing the eventful past, we see Nature working with enthusiasm
like a man, blowing her volcanic forges like a blacksmith blowing his
smithy fires, shoving glaciers over the landscapes like a carpenter
shoving his planes, clearing, ploughing, harrowing, irrigating,
planting, and sowing broadcast like a farmer and gardener, doing rough
work and fine work, planting sequoias and pines, rosebushes and
daisies; working in gems, filling every crack and hollow with them;
distilling fine essences; painting plants and shells, clouds,
mountains, all the earth and heavens, like an artist,—ever working
toward beauty higher and higher. Where may the mind find more
stimulating, quickening pasturage? A thousand Yellowstone wonders are
calling, “Look up and down and round about you!” And a multitude of
still, small voices may be heard directing you to look through all this
transient, shifting show of things called “substantial” into the truly
substantial, spiritual world whose forms flesh and wood, rock and
water, air and sunshine, only veil and conceal, and to learn that here
is heaven and the dwelling-place of the angles.

The sun is setting; long, violet shadows are growing out over the woods
from the mountains along the western rim of the park; the Absaroka
range is baptized in the divine light of the alpenglow, and its rocks
and trees are transfigured. Next to the light of the dawn on high
mountain tops, the alpenglow is the most impressive of all the
terrestrial manifestations of God.

Now comes the gloaming. The alpenglow is fading into earthy, murky
gloom, but do not let your town habits draw you away to the hotel. Stay
on this good fire-mountain and spend the night among the stars. Watch
their glorious bloom until the dawn, and get one more baptism of light.
Then, with fresh heart, go down to your work, and whatever your fate,
under whatever ignorance or knowledge you may afterward chance to
suffer, you will remember these fine, wild views, and look back with
joy to your wanderings in the blessed old Yellowstone Wonderland.




CHAPTER III
The Yosemite National Park


Of all the mountain ranges I have climbed, I like the Sierra Nevada the
best. Though extremely rugged, with its main features on the grandest
scale in height and depth, it is nevertheless easy of access and
hospitable; and its marvelous beauty, displayed in striking and
alluring forms, wooes the admiring wanderer on and on, higher and
higher, charmed and enchanted. Benevolent, solemn, fateful, pervaded
with divine light, every landscape glows like a countenance hallowed in
eternal repose; and every one of its living creatures, clad in flesh
and leaves, and every crystal of its rocks, whether on the surface
shining in the sun or buries miles deep in what we call darkness, is
throbbing and pulsing with the heartbeats of God. All the world lies
warm in one heart, yet the Sierra seems to get more light than other
mountains. The weather is mostly sunshine embellished with magnificent
storms, and nearly everything shines from base to summit,—the rocks,
streams, lakes, glaciers, irised falls, and the forests of silver fir
and silver pine. And how bright is the shining after summer showers and
dewy nights, and after frosty nights in spring and autumn, when the
morning sunbeams are pouring through the crystals on the bushes and
grass, and in winter through the snow-laden trees!

[Illustration: A Thunder-Storm in the Sierras.]

The average cloudiness for the whole year is perhaps less than ten
hundredths. Scarcely a day of all the summer is dark, though there is
no lack of magnificent thundering cumuli. They rise in the warm midday
hours, mostly over the middle region, in June and July, like new
mountain ranges, higher Sierras, mightily augmenting the grandeur of
the scenery while giving rain to the forests and gardens and bringing
forth their fragrance. The wonderful weather and beauty inspire
everybody to be up and doing. Every summer day is a workday to be
confidently counted on, the short dashes of rain forming, not
interruptions, but rests. The big blessed storm days of winter, when
the whole range stands white, are not a whit less inspiring and kind.
Well may the Sierra be called the Range of Light, not the Snowy Range;
for only in winter is it white; while all the year it is bright.

Of this glorious range the Yosemite National Park is a central section,
thirty-six miles in length and forty-eight miles in breadth. The famous
Yosemite Valley lies in the heart of it, and it includes the head
waters of the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, two of the most songful
streams in the world; innumerable lakes and waterfalls and smooth silky
lawns; the noblest forests, the loftiest granite domes, the deepest
ice-sculptured cañons, the brightest crystalline pavements, and snowy
mountains soaring into the sky twelve and thirteen thousand feet,
arrayed in open ranks and spiry pinnacled groups partially separated by
tremendous cañons and amphitheatres; gardens on their sunny brows
avalanches thundering down their long white slopes, cataracts roaring
gray and foaming in the crooked rugged gorges, and glaciers in their
shadowy recesses working in silence, slowly completing their sculpture;
new-born lakes at their feet, blue and green, free or encumbered with
drifting icebergs like miniature Arctic Oceans, shining, sparkling,
calm as stars.

Nowhere will you see the majestic operations of nature more clearly
revealed beside the frailest, most gentle and peaceful things. Nearly
all the park is a profound solitude. Yet it is full of charming
company, full of God’s thoughts, a place of peace and safety amid the
most exalted grandeur and eager enthusiastic action, a new song, a
place of beginnings abounding in first lessons on life,
mountain-building, eternal, invincible, unbreakable order; with sermons
in stones, storms, trees, flowers, and animals brimful of humanity.
During the last glacial period, just past, the former features of the
range were rubbed off as a chalk sketch from a blackboard, and a new
beginning was made. Hence the wonderful clearness and freshness of the
rocky pages.

But to get all this into words is a hopeless task. The leanest sketch
of each feature would need a whole chapter. Nor would any amount of
space, however industriously scribbled, be of much avail. To defrauded
town toilers, parks in magazine articles are like pictures of bread to
the hungry. I can write only hints to incite good wanderers to come to
the feast.

While this glorious park embraces big, generous samples of the very
best of the Sierra treasure, it is, fortunately, at the same time, the
most accessible portion. It lies opposite San Francisco, at a distance
of about one hundred and forty miles. Railroads connected with all the
continent reach into the foothills, and three good carriage roads, from
Big Oak Flat, Coulterville, and Raymond, run into Yosemite Valley.
Another, called the Tioga road, runs from Crocker’s Station on the
Yosemite Big Oak Flat road near the Tuolumne Big Tree Grove, right
across the park to the summit of the range by way of Lake Tenaya, the
Big Tuolumne Meadows, and Mount Dana. These roads, with many trials
that radiate from Yosemite Valley, bring most of the park within reach
of everybody, well or half well.

The three main natural divisions of the park, the lower, middle, and
alpine regions, are fairly well defined in altitude, topographical
features, and vegetation. The lower, with an average elevation of about
five thousand feet, is the region of the great forests, made up of
sugar pine, the largest and most beautiful of all the pines in the
world; the silvery yellow pine, the next in rank; Douglas spruce,
libocedrus, the white and red silver firs, and the Sequoia gigantea, or
“big tree,” the king of conifers, the noblest of a noble race. On warm
slopes next the foothills there are a few Sabine nut pines; oaks make
beautiful groves in the cañon valleys; and poplar, alder, maple,
laurel, and Nuttall’s flowering dogwood shade the banks of the streams.
Many of the pines are more than two hundred feet high, but they are not
crowded together. The sunbeams streaming through their feathery arches
brighten the ground, and you walk beneath the radiant ceiling in devout
subdued mood, as if you were in a grand cathedral with mellow light
sifting through colored windows, while the flowery pillared aisles open
enchanting vistas in every direction. Scarcely a peak or ridge in the
whole region rises bare above the forests, though they are thinly
planted in some places where the soil is shallow. From the cool breezy
heights you look abroad over a boundless waving sea of evergreens,
covering hill and ridge and smooth-flowing slope as far as the eye can
reach, and filling every hollow and down-plunging ravine in glorious
triumphant exuberance.

Perhaps the best general view of the pine forests of the park, and one
of the best in the range, is obtained from the top of the Merced and
Tuolumne divide near Hazel Green. On the long, smooth, finely folded
slopes of the main ridge, at a height of five to six thousand feet
above the sea, they reach most perfect development and are marshaled to
view in magnificent towering ranks, their colossal spires and domes and
broad palmlike crowns, deep in the kind sky, rising above one
another,—a multitude of giants in perfect health and beauty,—sun-fed
mountaineers rejoicing in their strength, chanting with the winds, in
accord with the falling waters. The ground is mostly open and inviting
to walkers. The fragrant chamæbatia is outspread in rich carpets miles
in extent; the manzanita, in orchard-like groves, covered with pink
bell-shaped flowers in the spring, grows in openings facing the sun,
hazel and buckthorn in the dells; warm brows are purple with mint,
yellow with sunflowers and violets; and tall lilies ring their bells
around the borders of meadows and along the ferny, mossy banks of the
streams. Never was mountain forest more lavishly furnished.

Hazel Green is a good place quietly to camp and study, to get
acquainted with the trees and birds, to drink the reviving water and
weather, and to watch the changing lights of the big charmed days. The
rose light of the dawn, creeping higher among the stars, changes to
daffodil yellow; then come the level enthusiastic sunbeams pouring
across the feathery ridges, touching pine after pine, spruce and fir,
libocedrus and lordly sequoia, searching every recess, until all are
awakened and warmed. In the white noon they shine in silvery splendor,
every needle and cell in bole and branch thrilling and tingling with
ardent life; and the whole landscape glows with consciousness, like the
face of a god. The hours go by uncounted. The evening flames with
purple and gold. The breeze that has been blowing from the lowlands
dies away, and far and near the mighty host of trees baptized in the
purple flood stand hushed and thoughtful, awaiting the sun’s blessing
and farewell,—as impressive a ceremony as if it were never to rise
again. When the daylight fades, the night breeze from the snowy summits
begins to blow, and the trees, waving and rustling beneath the stars,
breathe free again.

It is hard to leave such camps and woods; nevertheless, to the large
majority of travelers the middle region of the park is still more
interesting, for it has the most striking features of all the Sierra
scenery,—the deepest sections of the famous cañons, of which the
Yosemite Valley, Hetch-Hetchy Valley, and many smaller ones are wider
portions, with level parklike floors and walls of immense height and
grandeur of sculpture. This middle region holds also the greater number
of the beautiful glacier lakes and glacier meadows, the great granite
domes, and the most brilliant and most extensive of the glacier
pavements. And though in large part it is severely rocky and bare, it
is still rich in trees. The magnificent silver fir (_Abies magnifica_),
which ranks with the giants, forms a continuous belt across the park
above the pines at an elevation of from seven to nine thousand feet,
and north and south of the park boundaries to the extremities of the
range, only slightly interrupted by the main cañons. The two-leaved or
tamarack pine makes another less regular belt along the upper margin of
the region, while between these two belts, and mingling with them, in
groves or scattered, are the mountain hemlock, the most graceful of
evergreens; the noble mountain pine; the Jeffrey form of the yellow
pine, with big cones and long needles; and the brown, burly, sturdy
Western juniper. All these, except the juniper, which grows on bald
rocks, have plenty of flowery brush about them, and gardens in open
spaces.

Here, too, lies the broad, shining heavily sculptured region of
primeval granite, which best tells the story of the glacial period on
the Pacific side of the continent. No other mountain chain on the
globe, as far as I know, is so rich as the Sierra in bold, striking,
well-preserved glacial monuments, easily understood by anybody capable
of patient observation. Every feature is more or less glacial, and this
park portion of the range is the brightest and clearest of all. Not a
peak, ridge, dome, cañon, lake basin, garden, forest, or stream but in
some way explains the past existence and modes of action of flowing,
grinding, sculpturing, soil-making, scenery-making ice. For,
notwithstanding the post-glacial agents—air, rain, frost, rivers,
earthquakes, avalanches—have been at work upon the greater part of the
range for tens of thousands of stormy years, engraving their own
characters over those of the ice, the latter are so heavily emphasized
and enduring they still rise in sublime relief, clear and legible
through every after inscription. The streams have traced only shallow
wrinkles as yet, and avalanche, wind, rain, and melting snow have made
blurs and scars, but the change effected on the face of the landscape
is not greater than is made on the face of a mountaineer by a single
year of weathering.

Of all the glacial phenomena presented here, the most striking and
attractive to travelers are the polished pavements, because they are so
beautiful, and their beauty is of so rare a kind,—unlike any part of
the loose earthy lowlands where people dwell and earn their bread. They
are simply flat or gently undulating areas of solid resisting granite,
the unchanged surface over which the ancient glaciers flowed. They are
found in the most perfect condition at an elevation of from eight to
nine thousand feet above sea level. Some are miles in extent, only
slightly blurred or scarred by spots that have at last yielded to the
weather; while the best preserved portions are brilliantly polished,
and reflect the sunbeams as calm water or glass, shining as if rubbed
and burnished every day, notwithstanding they have been exposed to
plashing, corroding rains, dew, frost, and melting sloppy snows for
thousands of years.

The attention of hunters and prospectors, who see so much in their wild
journeys, is seldom attracted by moraines, however regular and
artificial-looking; or rocks, however boldly sculptured; or cañons,
however deep and sheer-walled. But when they come to these pavements,
they go down on their knees and rub their hands admiringly on the
glistening surface, and try hard to account for its mysterious
smoothness and brightness. They may have seen the winter avalanches
come down the mountains, through the woods, sweeping away the trees and
scouring the ground; but they conclude that this cannot be the work of
avalanches, because the striæ show that the agent, whatever it was,
flowed along and around and over the top of high ridges and domes, and
also filled the deep cañons. Neither can they see how water could be
the agent, for the strange polish is found thousands of feet above the
reach of any conceivable flood. Only the winds seem capable of moving
over the face of the country in the directions indicated by the lines
and grooves.

The pavements are particularly fine around Lake Tenaya, and have
suggested the Indian name Py-we-ack, the Lake of the Shining Rocks.
Indians seldom trouble themselves with geological questions, but a Mono
Indian once came to me and asked if I could tell him what made the
rocks so smooth at Tenaya. Even dogs and horses, on their first
journeys into this region, study geology to the extent of gazing
wonderingly at the strange brightness of the ground, and pawing it and
smelling it, as if afraid of falling or sinking.

In the production of this admirable hard finish, the glaciers in many
places exerted a pressure of more than a hundred tons to the square
foot, planing down granite, slate, and quartz alike, showing their
structure, and making beautiful mosaics where large feldspar crystals
form the greater part of the rock. On such pavements the sunshine is at
times dazzling, as if the surface were of burnished silver.

Here, also, are the brightest of the Sierra landscapes in general. The
regions lying at the same elevation to the north and south were perhaps
subjected to as long and intense a glaciation; but because the rocks
are less resisting, their polished surfaces have mostly given way to
the weather, leaving here and there only small imperfect patches on the
most enduring portions of cañon walls protected from the action of rain
and snow, and on hard bosses kept comparatively dry by boulders. The
short, steeply inclined cañons of the east flank of the range are in
some places brightly polished, but they are far less magnificent than
those of the broad west flank.

One of the best general views of the middle region of the park is to be
had from the top of a majestic dome which long ago I named the Glacier
Monument. It is situated a few miles to the north of Cathedral Peak,
and rises to a height of about fifteen hundred feet above its base and
ten thousand above the sea. At first sight it seems sternly
inaccessible, but a good climber will find that it may be scaled on the
south side. Approaching it from this side you pass through a dense
bryanthus-fringed grove of mountain hemlock, catching glimpses now and
then of the colossal dome towering to an immense height above the dark
evergreens; and when at last you have made your way across woods,
wading through azalea and ledum thickets, you step abruptly out of the
tree shadows and mossy leafy softness upon a bare porphyry pavement,
and behold the dome unveiled in all its grandeur. Fancy a nicely
proportioned monument, eight or ten feet high, hewn from one stone,
standing in a pleasure ground; magnify it to a height of fifteen
hundred feet, retaining its simplicity of form and fineness, and cover
its surface with crystals; then you may gain an idea of the sublimity
and beauty of this ice-burnished dome, one of many adorning this
wonderful park.

In making the ascent, one finds that the curve of the base rapidly
steepens, until one is in danger of slipping; but feldspar crystals,
two or three inches long, that have been weathered into relief, afford
slight footholds. The summit is in part burnished, like the sides and
base, the striæ and scratches indicating that the mighty Tuolumne
Glacier, two or three thousand feet deep, overwhelmed it while it stood
firm like a boulder at the bottom of a river. The pressure it withstood
must have been enormous. Had it been less solidly built, it would have
been ground and crushed into moraine fragments, like the general mass
of the mountain flank in which at first it lay imbedded; for it is only
a hard residual knob or knot with a concentric structure of superior
strength, brought into relief by the removal of the less resisting rock
about it,—an illustration in stone of the survival of the strongest and
most favorably situated.

[Illustration: Glacier Monument (Fairview Dome).]

Hardly less wonderful, when we contemplate the storms it has
encountered since first it saw the light, is its present unwasted
condition. The whole quantity of postglacial wear and tear it has
suffered has not diminished its stature a single inch, as may be
readily shown by measuring from the level of the unchanged polished
portions of the surface. Indeed, the average postglacial denudation of
the entire region, measured in the same way, is found to be less than
two inches,—a mighty contrast to that of the ice; for the glacial
denudation here has been not less than a mile; that is, in developing
the present landscapes, an amount of rock a mile in average thickness
has been silently carried away by flowing ice during the last glacial
period.

A few erratic boulders nicely poised on the founded summit of the
monument tell an interesting story. They came from a mountain on the
crest of the range, about twelve miles to the eastward, floating like
chips on the frozen sea, and were stranded here when the top of the
monument emerged to the light of day, while the companions of these
boulders, whose positions chanced to be over the slopes where they
could not find rest, were carried farther on by the shallowing current.

The general view from the summit consists of a sublime assemblage of
iceborn mountains and rocks and long wavering ridges, lakes and streams
and meadows, moraines in wide-sweeping belts, and beds covered and
dotted with forests and groves,—hundreds of square miles of them
composed in wild harmony. The snowy mountains on the axis of the range,
mostly sharp-peaked and crested, rise in a noble array along the sky to
the eastward and northward; the gray-pillared Hoffman spur and the
Yosemite domes and a countless number of others to the westward;
Cathedral Peak with its many spires and companion peaks and domes to
the southward; and a smooth billowy multitude of rocks, from fifty feet
or less to a thousand feet high, which from their peculiar form seem to
be rolling on westward, fill most of the middle ground. Immediately
beneath you are the Big Tuolumne Meadows, with an ample swath of dark
pine woods on either side, enlivened by the young river, that is seen
sparkling and shimmering as it sways from side to side, tracing as best
it can its broad glacial channel.

The ancient Tuolumne Glacier, lavishly flooded by many a noble affluent
from the snow-laden flanks of Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Lyell, Maclure, and
others nameless as yet, poured its majestic overflowing current, four
or five miles wide, directly against the high outstanding mass of Mount
Hoffman, which divided and deflected it right and left, just as a river
is divided against an island that stands in the middle of its channel.
Two distinct glaciers were thus formed, one of which flowed through the
Big Tuolumne Cañon and Hetch-Hetchy Valley, while the other swept
upward five hundred feet in a broad current across the divide between
the basins of the Tuolumne and Merced into the Tenaya basin, and thence
down through the Tenaya Cañon and Yosemite Valley.

The maplike distinctness and freshness of this glacial landscape cannot
fail to excite the attention of every observer, no matter how little of
its scientific significance he may at first recognize. These bald,
glossy, westward-leaning rocks in the open middle ground, with their
rounded backs and shoulders toward the glacier fountains of the summit
mountains and their split angular fronts looking in the opposite
direction, every one of them displaying the form of greatest strength
with reference to physical structure and glacial action, show the
tremendous force with which through unnumbered centuries the ice flood
swept over them, and also the direction of the flow; while the
mountains, with their sharp summits and abraded sides, indicate the
height to which the glacier rose; and the moraines, curving and swaying
in beautiful lines, mark the boundaries of the main trunk and its
tributaries as they existed toward the close of the glacial winter.
None of the commercial highways of the sea or land, marked with buoys
and lamps, fences and guideboards, is so unmistakably indicated as are
these channels of the vanished Tuolumne glaciers.

The action of flowing ice, whether in the form of river-like glaciers
or broad mantling folds, is but little understood as compared with that
of other sculpturing agents. Rivers work openly where people dwell, and
so do the rain, and the sea thundering on all the shores of the world;
and the universal ocean of air, through unseen, speaks aloud in a
thousand voices and explains its modes of working and its power. But
glaciers, back in their cold solitudes, work apart from men, exerting
their tremendous energies in silence and darkness. Coming in vapor from
the sea, flying invisible on the wind, descending in snow, changing to
ice, white, spiritlike, they brood outspread over the predestined
landscapes, working on unwearied through unmeasured ages, until in the
fullness of time the mountains and valleys are brought forth, channels
furrowed for the rivers, basins made for meadows and lakes, and soil
beds spread for the forests and fields that man and beast may be fed.
Then vanishing like clouds, they melt into streams and go singing back
home to the sea.

To an observer upon this adamantine old monument in the midst of such
scenery, getting glimpses of the thoughts of God, the day seems
endless, the sun stands still. Much faithless fuss is made over the
passage in the Bible telling of the standing still of the sun for
Joshua. Here you may learn that the miracle occurs for every devout
mountaineer, for everybody doing anything worth doing, seeing anything
worth seeing. One day is as a thousand years, a thousand years as one
day, and while yet in the flesh you enjoy immortality.

From the monument you will find an easy way down through the woods and
along the Big Tuolumne Meadows to Mount Dana, the summit of which
commands a grand telling view of the alpine region. The scenery all the
way is inspiring, and you saunter on without knowing that you are
climbing. The spacious sunny meadows, through the midst of which the
bright river glides, extend with but little interruption ten miles to
the eastward, dark woods rising on either side to the limit of tree
growth, and above the woods a picturesque line of gray peaks and spires
dotted with snow banks; while, on the axis of the Sierra, Mount Dana
and his noble compeers repose in massive sublimity, their vast size and
simple flowing contours contrasting in the most striking manner with
the clustering spires and thin-pinnacled crests crisply outlined on the
horizon to the north and south of them.

Tracing the silky lawns, gradually ascending, gazing at the sublime
scenery more and more openly unfolded, noting the avalanche gaps in the
upper forests, lingering over beds of blue gentians and purple-flowered
bryanthus and cassiope, and dwarf willows an inch high in close-felted
gray carpets, brightened here and there with kalmia and soft creeping
mats of vaccinium sprinkled with pink bells that seem to have been
showered down from the sky like hail,—thus beguiled and enchanted, you
reach the base of the mountain wholly unconscious of the miles you have
walked. And so on to the summit. For all the way up the long red slate
slopes, that in the distance seemed barren, you find little garden beds
and tufts of dwarf phlox, ivesia, and blue arctic daisies that go
straight to your heart, blessed fellow mountaineers kept safe and warm
by a thousand miracles. You are now more than thirteen thousand feet
above the sea, and to the north and south you behold a sublime
wilderness of mountains in glorious array, their snowy summits towering
together in crowded, bewildering abundance, shoulder to shoulder, peak
beyond peak. To the east lies the Great Basin, barren-looking and
silent, apparently a land of pure desolation, rich only in beautiful
light. Mono Lake, fourteen miles long, is outspread below you at a
depth of nearly seven thousand feet, its shores of volcanic ashes and
sand, treeless and sunburned; a group of volcanic cones, with
well-formed, unwasted craters rises to the south of the lake; while up
from its eastern shore innumerable mountains with soft flowing outlines
extend range beyond range, gray, and pale purple, and blue,—the
farthest gradually fading on the flowing horizon. Westward you look
down and over the countless moraines, glacier meadows, and grand sea of
domes and rock waves of the upper Tuolumne basin, the Cathedral and
Hoffman mountains with their wavering lines and zones of forest, the
wonderful region to the north of the Tuolumne Cañon, and across the
dark belt of silver firs to the pale mountains of the coast.

In the icy fountains of the Mount Lyell and Ritter groups of peaks, to
the south of Dana, three of the most important of the Sierra rivers—the
Tuolumne, Merced, and San Joaquin—take their rise, their highest
tributaries being within a few miles of one another as they rush forth
on their adventurous courses from beneath snow banks and glaciers.

[Illustration: Along the Crest of the High Sierras from the Summit of
Mt. Lyell (13,090 feet).]

Of the small shrinking glaciers of the Sierra, remnants of the majestic
system that sculptured the range, I have seen sixty-five. About
twenty-five of them are in the park, and eight are in sight from Mount
Dana.

The glacier lakes are sprinkled over all the alpine and subalpine
regions, gleaming like eyes beneath heavy rock brows, tree-fringed or
bare, embosomed in the woods, or lying in open basins with green and
purple meadows around them; but the greater number are in the cool
shadowy hollows of the summit mountains not far from the glaciers, the
highest lying at an elevation of from eleven to nearly twelve thousand
feet above the sea. The whole number in the Sierra, not counting the
smallest, can hardly be less than fifteen hundred, of which about two
hundred and fifty are in the park. From one standpoint, on Red
Mountain, I counted forty-two, most of them within a radius of ten
miles. The glacier meadows, which are spread over the filled-up basins
of vanished lakes and form one of the most charming features of the
scenery, are still more numerous than the lakes.

An observer stationed here, in the glacial period, would have
overlooked a wrinkled mantle of ice as continuous as that which now
covers the continent of Greenland; and of all the vast landscape now
shining in the sun, he would have seen only the tops of the summit
peaks, rising darkly like storm-beaten islands, lifeless and hopeless,
above rock-encumbered ice waves. If among the agents that nature has
employed in making these mountains there be one that above all other
deserves the name of Destroyer, it is the glacier. But we quickly learn
that destruction is creation. During the dreary centuries through which
the Sierra lay in darkness, crushed beneath the ice folds of the
glacial winter, there was a steady invincible advance toward the warm
life and beauty of to-day; and it is just where the glaciers crushed
most destructively that the greatest amount of beauty is made manifest.
But as these landscapes have succeeded the preglacial landscapes, so
they in turn are giving place to others already planned and foreseen.
The granite domes and pavements, apparently imperishable, we take as
symbols of permanence, while these crumbling peaks, down whose frosty
gullies avalanches are ever falling, are symbols of change and decay.
Yet all alike, fast or slow, are surely vanishing away.

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and
destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest
but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one
beautiful form into another.




CHAPTER IV
The Forests of the Yosemite Park


The coniferous forests of the Yosemite Park, and of the Sierra in
general, surpass all others of their kind in America or indeed in the
world, not only in the size and beauty of the trees, but in the number
of species assembled together, and the grandeur of the mountains they
are growing on. Leaving the workaday lowlands, and wandering into the
heart of the mountains, we find a new world, and stand beside the
majestic pines and firs and sequoias silent and awe-stricken, as if in
the presence of superior beings new arrived from some other star, so
calm and bright and godlike they are.

Going to the woods is going home; for I suppose we came from the woods
originally. But in some of nature’s forests the adventurous traveler
seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying
to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and
stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle. Here
everything is hospitable and kind, as if planned for your pleasure,
ministering to every want of body and soul. Even the storms are
friendly and seem to regard you as a brother, their beauty and
tremendous fateful earnestness charming alike. But the weather is
mostly sunshine, both winter and summer and the clear sunny brightness
of the park is one of its most striking characteristics. Even the
heaviest portions of the main forest belt, where the trees are tallest
and stand closest, are not in the least gloomy. The sunshine falls in
glory through the colossal spires and crowns, each a symbol of health
and strength, the noble shafts faithfully upright like the pillars of
temples, upholding a roof of infinite leafy interlacing arches and
fretted skylights. The more open portions are like spacious parks,
carpeted with small shrubs, or only with the fallen needles sprinkled
here and there with flowers. In some places, where the ground is level
or slopes gently, the trees are assembled in groves, and the flowers
and underbrush in trim beds and thickets as in landscape gardens or the
lovingly planted grounds of homes; or they are drawn up in orderly rows
around meadows and lakes and along the brows of cañons. But in general
the forests are distributed in wide belts in accordance with climate
and the comparative strength of each kind in gaining and holding
possession of the ground, while anything like monotonous uniformity is
prevented by the grandly varied topography, and by the arrangement of
the best soilbeds in intricate patterns like embroidery; for these
soilbeds are the moraines of ancient glaciers more or less modified by
weathering and stream action, and the trees trace them over the hills
and ridges, and far up the sides of the mountains, rising with even
growth on levels, and towering above one another on the long rich
slopes prepared for them by the vanished glaciers.

Had the Sierra forests been cheaply accessible, the most valuable of
them commercially would ere this have fallen a prey to the lumberman.
Thus far the redwood of the Coast Mountains and the Douglas spruce of
Oregon and Washington have been more available for lumber than the pine
of the Sierra. It cost less to go a thousand miles up the coast for
timber, where the trees came down to the shores of navigable rivers and
bays, than fifty miles up the mountains. Nevertheless, the superior
value of the sugar pine for many purposes has tempted capitalists to
expend large sums on flumes and railroads to reach the best forests,
though perhaps none of these enterprises has paid. Fortunately, the
lately established system of parks and reservations has put a stop to
any great extension of the business hereabouts in its most destructive
forms. And as the Yosemite Park region has escaped the millmen, and the
all-devouring hordes of hoofed locusts have been banished, it is still
in the main a pure wilderness, unbroken by axe clearings except on the
lower margin, where a few settlers have opened spots beside hay meadows
for their cabins and gardens. But these are mere dots of cultivation,
in no appreciable degree disturbing the grand solitude. Twenty or
thirty years ago a good many trees were felled for their seeds; traces
of this destructive method of seed-collecting are still visible along
the trails; but these as well as the shingle-makers ruins are being
rapidly overgrown, the gardens and beds of underbrush once devastated
by sheep are blooming again in all their wild glory, and the park is a
paradise that makes even the loss of Eden seem insignificant.

On the way to Yosemite Valley, you get some grand views over the
forests of the Merced and Tuolumne basins and glimpses of some of the
finest trees by the roadside without leaving your seat in the stage.
But to learn how they live and behave in pure wildness, to see them in
their varying aspects through the seasons and weather, rejoicing in the
great storms, in the spiritual mountain light, putting forth their new
leaves and flowers when all the streams are in flood and the birds are
singing, and sending away their seeds in the thoughtful Indian summer
when all the landscape is glowing in deep calm enthusiasm,—for this you
must love them and live with them, as free from schemes and cares and
time as the trees themselves.

And surely nobody will find anything hard in this. Even the blind must
enjoy these woods, drinking their fragrance, listening to the music of
the winds in their groves, and fingering their flowers and plumes and
cones and richly furrowed boles. The kind of study required is as easy
and natural as breathing. Without any great knowledge of botany or
wood-craft, in a single season you may learn the name and something
more of nearly every kind of tree in the park.

With few exceptions all the Sierra trees are growing in the park,—nine
species of pine, two of silver fir, one each of Douglas spruce,
libocedrus, hemlock, juniper, and sequoia,—sixteen conifers in all, and
about the same number of round-headed trees, oaks, maples, poplars,
laurel, alder, dogwood, tumion, etc.

The first of the conifers you meet in going up the range from the west
is the digger nut-pine (_Pinus Sabiniana_), a remarkably open, airy,
wide-branched tree, forty to sixty feet high, with long, sparse,
grayish green foliage and large cones. At a height of fifteen to thirty
feet from the ground the trunk usually divides into several main
branches, which, after bearing away from one another, shoot straight up
and form separate heads as if the axis of the tree had been broken,
while the secondary branches divide again and again into rather slender
sprays loosely tasseled, with leaves eight to twelve inches long. The
yellow and purple flowers are about an inch long, the staminate in
showy clusters. The big, rough, burly cones, five to eight or ten
inches in length and five or six in diameter, are rich brown in color
when ripe, and full of hard-shelled nuts that are greatly prized by
Indians and squirrels. This strange-looking pine, enjoying hot sunshine
like a palm, is sparsely distributed along the driest part of the
Sierra among small oaks and chaparral, and with its gray mist of
foliage, strong trunk and branches, and big cones seen in relief on the
glowing sky, forms the most striking feature of the foothill
vegetation.

Pinus attenuata is a small, slender, arrowy tree, with pale green
leaves in threes, clustered flowers half an inch long, brownish yellow
and crimson, and cones whorled in conspicuous clusters around the
branches and also around the trunk. The cones never fall off or open
until the tree dies. They are about four inches long, exceedingly
strong and solid, and varnished with hard resin forming a waterproof
and almost worm and squirrel proof package, in which the seeds are kept
fresh and safe during the lifetime of the tree. Sometimes one of the
trunk cones is overgrown and imbedded in the heart wood like a knot,
but nearly all are pushed out and kept on the surface by the pressure
of the successive layers of wood against the base.

This admirable little tree grows on brushy, sun-beaten slopes, which
from their position and the inflammable character of the vegetation are
most frequently fire-swept. These grounds it is able to hold against
all comers, however big and strong, by saving its seeds until death,
when all it has produced are scattered over the bare cleared ground,
and a new generation quickly springs out of the ashes. Thus the curious
fact that all the trees of extensive groves and belts are of the same
age is accounted for, and their slender habit; for the lavish abundance
of seed sown at the same time makes a crowded growth, and the seedlings
with an even start rush up in a hurried race for light and life.

Only a few of the attenuata and Sabiniana pines are within the
boundaries of the park, the former on the side of the Merced Cañon, the
latter on the walls of Hetch-Hetchy Valley and in the cañon below it.

[Illustration: California Cones.]

The nut-pine (_Pinus monophylla_) is a small, hardy, contended-looking
tree, about fifteen or twenty feet high and a foot in diameter. In its
youth the close radiating and aspiring branches form a handsome
broad-based pyramid, but when fully grown it becomes round-topped,
knotty, and irregular, throwing out crooked divergent limbs like an
apple tree. The leaves are pale grayish green, about an inch and a half
long, and instead of being divided into clusters they are single,
round, sharp-pointed, and rigid like spikes, amid which in the spring
the red flowers glow brightly. The cones are only about two inches in
length and breadth, but nearly half of their bulk is made up of sweet
nuts.

This fruitful little pine grows on the dry east side of the park, along
the margin of the Mono sage plain, and is the commonest tree of the
short mountain ranges of the Great Basins. Tens of thousands of acres
are covered with it, forming bountiful orchards for the Red-man. Being
so low and accessible, the cones are easily beaten off with poles, and
the nuts procured by roasting until the scales open. To the tribes of
the desert and sage plains these seeds are the staff of life. They are
eaten either raw or parched, or in the form of mush or cakes after
being pounded into meal. The time of nut harvest in the autumn is the
Indian’s merriest time of all the year. An industrious squirrelish
family can gather fifty or sixty bushels in a single month before the
snow comes, and then their bread for the winter is sure.

The white pine (_Pinus flexilis_) is widely distributed through the
Rocky Mountains and the ranges of the Great Basin, where in many places
it grows to a good size, and is an important timber tree where none
better is to be found. In the park it is sparsely scattered along the
eastern flank of the range from Mono Pass southward, above the
nut-pine, at an elevation of from eight to ten thousand feet, dwarfing
to a tangled bush near the timber-line, but under favorable conditions
attaining a height of forty or fifty feet, with a diameter of three to
five. The long branches show a tendency to sweep out in bold curves,
like those of the mountain and sugar pines to which it is closely
related. The needles are in clusters of five, closely packed on the
ends of the branchlets. The cones are about five inches long,—the
smaller ones nearly oval, the larger cylindrical. But the most
interesting feature of the tree is its bloom, the vivid red pistillate
flowers glowing among the leaves like coals of fire.

The dwarfed pine or white-barked pine (_Pinus albicaulis_) is sure to
interest every observer on account of its curious low matted habit, and
the great height on the snowy mountains at which it bravely grows. It
forms the extreme edge of the timber-line on both flanks of the summit
mountains—if so lowly a tree can be called timber—at an elevation of
ten to twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea. Where it is
first met on the lower limit of its range it may be thirty or forty
feet high, but farther up the rocky wind-swept slopes, where the snow
lies deep and heavy for six months of the year, it makes shaggy clumps
and beds, crinkled and pressed flat, over which you can easily walk.
Nevertheless in this crushed, down-pressed, felted condition it clings
hardily to life, puts forth fresh leaves every spring on the ends of
its tasseled branchlets, blooms bravely in the lashing blasts with
abundance of gay red and purple flowers, matures its seeds in the short
summers, and often outlives the favored giants of the sun lands far
below. One of the trees that I examined was only about three feet high,
with a stem six inches in diameter at the ground, and branches that
spread out horizontally as if they had grown up against a ceiling; yet
it was four hundred and twenty-six years old, and one of its supple
branchlets, about an eighth of an inch in diameter inside the bark, was
seventy-five years old, and so tough that I tied it into knots. At the
age of this dwarf many of the sugar and yellow pines and sequoias are
seven feet in diameter and over two hundred feet high.

In detached clumps never touched by fire the fallen needles of
centuries of growth make fine elastic mattresses for the weary
mountaineer, while the tasseled branchlets spread a roof over him, and
the dead roots, half resin, usually found in abundance, make capital
camp-fires, unquenchable in thickest storms of rain or snow. Seen from
a distance the belts and patches darkening the mountain sides look like
mosses on a roof, and bring to mind Dr. Johnson’s remarks on the trees
of Scotland. His guide, anxious for the honor of Mull, was still
talking of its woods and pointing them out. “Sir,” said Johnson, “I saw
at Tobermory what they called a wood, which I unluckily took for heath.
If you show me what I shall take for furze, it will be something.”

The mountain pine (_Pinus monticola_) is far the largest of the Sierra
tree mountaineers. Climbing nearly as high as the dwarf albicaulis, it
is still a giant in size, bold and strong, standing erect on the
storm-beaten peaks and ridges, tossing its cone-laden branches in the
rough winds, living a thousand years, and reaching its greatest
size—ninety to a hundred feet in height, six to eight in diameter—just
where other trees, its companions, are dwarfed. But it is not able to
endure burial in snow so long as the albicaulis and flexilis.
Therefore, on the upper limit of its range it is found on slopes which,
from their steepness or exposure, are least snowy. Its soft graceful
beauty in youth, and its leaves, cones, and outsweeping feathery
branches constantly remind you of the sugar pine, to which it is
closely allied. An admirable tree, growing nobler in form and size the
colder and balder the mountains about it.

The giants of the main forest in the favored middle region are the
sequoia, sugar pine, yellow pine, libocedrus, Douglas spruce, and the
two silver firs. The park sequoias are restricted to two small groves,
a few miles apart, on the Tuolumne and Merced divide, about seventeen
miles from Yosemite Valley. The Big Oak Flat road to the valley runs
through the Tuolumne Grove, the Coulterville through the Merced. The
more famous and better known Mariposa Grove, belonging to the state,
lies near the southwest corner of the park, a few miles above Wawona.

The sugar pine (_Pinus Lambertiana_) is first met in the park in open,
sunny, flowery woods, at an elevation of about thirty-five hundred feet
above the sea, attains full development at a height between five and
six thousand feet, and vanishes at the level of eight thousand feet. In
many places, especially on the northern slopes of the main ridges
between the rivers, it forms the bulk of the forest, but mostly it is
intimately associated with its noble companions, above which it covers
in glorious majesty on every hill, ridge, and plateau from one
extremity of the range to the other, a distance of five hundred
miles,—the largest, noblest, and most beautiful of all the seventy or
eighty species of pine trees in the world, and of all the conifers
second only to King Sequoia.

A good many are from two hundred to two hundred and twenty feet in
height, with a diameter at four feet from the ground of six to eight
feet, and occasionally a grand patriarch, seven or eight hundred years
old, is found that is ten or even twelve feet in diameter and two
hundred and forty feet high, with a magnificent crown seventy feet
wide. David Douglas, who discovered “this most beautiful and immensely
grand tree” in the fall of 1826 in southern Oregon, says that the
largest of several that had been blown down, “at three feet from the
ground was fifty-seven feet nine inches in circumference” (or fully
eighteen feet in diameter); “at one hundred and thirty-four feet,
seventeen feet five inches; extreme length, two hundred and forty-five
feet.” Probably for _fifty-seven_ we should read _thirty-seven_ for the
base measurement, which would make it correspond with the other
dimensions; for none of this species with anything like so great a
girth has since been seen. A girth of even thirty feet is uncommon. A
fallen specimen that I measured was nine feet three inches in diameter
inside the bark at four feet from the ground, and six feet in diameter
at a hundred feet from the ground. A comparatively young tree, three
hundred and thirty years old, that had been cut down, measured seven
feet across the stump, was three feet three inches in diameter at a
height of one hundred and fifty feet, and two hundred and ten feet in
length.

The trunk is a round, delicately tapered shaft with finely furrowed
purplish-brown bark, usually free of limbs for a hundred feet or more.
The top is furnished with long and comparatively slender branches,
which sweep gracefully downward and outward, feathered with short
tasseled branchlets, and divided only at the ends, forming a palmlike
crown fifty to seventy-five feet wide, but without the monotonous
uniformity of palm crowns or of the spires of most conifers. The old
trees are as tellingly varied and picturesque as oaks. No two are
alike, and we are tempted to stop and admire every one we come to,
whether as it stands silent in the calm balsam-scented sunshine or
waving in accord with enthusiastic storms. The leaves are about three
or four inches long, in clusters of five, finely tempered, bright
lively green, and radiant. The flowers are but little larger than those
of the dwarf pine, and far less showy. The immense cylindrical cones,
fifteen to twenty or even twenty-four inches long and three in
diameter, hang singly or in clusters, like ornamental tassels, at the
ends of the long branches, green, flushed with purple on the sunward
side. Like those of almost all the pines they ripen in the autumn of
the second season from the flower, and the seeds of all that have
escaped the Indians, bears, and squirrels take wing and fly to their
places. Then the cones become still more effective as ornaments, for by
the spreading of the scales the diameter is nearly doubled, and the
color changes to a rich brown. They remain on the tree the following
winter and summer; therefore few fertile trees are ever found without
them. Nor even after they fall is the beauty work of these grand cones
done, for they make a fine show on the flowery, needle-strewn ground.
The wood is pale yellow, fine in texture, and deliciously fragrant. The
sugar, which gives name to the tree, exudes from the heart wood on
wounds made by fire or the axe, and forms irregular crisp white
candy-like masses. To the taste of most people it is as good as maple
sugar, though it cannot be eaten in large quantities.

No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first
walk in a sugar-pine forest. The majestic crowns approaching one
another make a glorious canopy, through the feathery arches of which
the sunbeams pour, silvering the needles and gilding the stately
columns and the ground into a scene of enchantment.

The yellow pine (_Pinus ponderosa_) is surpassed in size and nobleness
of port only by its kingly companion. Full-grown trees in the main
forest where it is associated with the sugar pine, are about one
hundred and seventy-five feet high, with a diameter of five to six
feet, though much larger specimens may easily be found. The largest I
ever measured was little over eight feet in diameter four feet above
the ground, and two hundred and twenty feet high. Where there is plenty
of sunshine and other conditions are favorable, it is a massive
symmetrical spire, formed of a strong straight shaft clad with
innumerable branches, which are divided again and again into stout
branchlets laden with bright shining needles and green or purple cones.
Where the growth is at all close half or more of the trunk is
branchless. The species attains its greatest size and most majestic
form in open groves on the deep, well-drained soil of lake basins at an
elevation of about four thousand feet. There nearly all the old trees
are over two hundred feet high, and the heavy, leafy, much-divided
branches sumptuously clothe the trunk almost to the ground. Such trees
are easily climbed, and in going up the winding stairs of knotty limbs
to the top you will gain a most telling and memorable idea of the
height, the richness and intricacy of the branches, and the marvelous
abundance and beauty of the long shining elastic foliage. In tranquil
weather, you will see the firm outstanding needles in calm content,
shimmering and throwing off keen minute rays of light like lances of
ice; but when heavy winds are blowing, the strong towers bend and wave
in the blast with eager wide-awake enthusiasm, and every tree in the
grove glows and flashes in one mass of white sunfire.

[Illustration: Yellow Pine (Yosemite Valley Form).]

Both the yellow and sugar pines grow rapidly on good soil where they
are not crowded. At the age of a hundred years they are about two feet
in diameter and a hundred or more high. They are then very handsome,
though very unlike: the sugar pine, lithe, feathery, closely clad with
ascending branches; the yellow, open, showing its axis from the ground
to the top, its whorled branches but little divided as yet, spreading
and turning up at the ends with magnificent tassels of long stout
bright needles, the terminal shoot with its leaves being often three or
four feet long and a foot and a half wide, the most hopeful looking and
the handsomest tree-top in the woods. But instead of increasing, like
its companion, in wildness and individuality of form with age, it
becomes more evenly and compactly spiry. The bark is usually very
thick, four to six inches at the ground, and arranged in large plates,
some of them on the lower part of the trunk four or five feet long and
twelve to eighteen inches wide, forming a strong defense against fire.
The leaves are in threes, and from three inches to a foot long. The
flowers appear in May: the staminate pink or brown, in conspicuous
clusters two or three inches wide; the pistillate crimson, a fourth of
an inch wide, and mostly hidden among the leaves on the tips of the
branchlets. The cones vary from about three to ten inches in length,
two to five in width, and grow in sessile outstanding clusters near the
ends of the upturned branchlets.

Being able to endure fire and hunger and many climates this grand tree
is widely distributed: eastward from the coast across the broad Rocky
Mountain ranges to the Black Hills of Dakota, a distance of more than a
thousand miles, and southward from British Columbia, near latitude 51°,
to Mexico, about fifteen hundred miles. South of the Columbia River it
meets the sugar pine, and accompanies it all the way down along the
Coast and Cascade mountains and the Sierra and southern ranges to the
mountains of the peninsula of Lower California, where they find their
southmost homes together. Pinus ponderosa is extremely variable, and
much bother it gives botanists who try to catch and confine the
unmanageable proteus in two or a dozen species,—Jeffreyi, deflexa,
Apacheca latifolia, etc. But in all its wanderings, in every form, it
manifests noble strength. Clad in thick bark like a warrior in mail, it
extends its bright ranks over all the high ranges of the wild side of
the continent: flourishes in the drenching fog and rain of the northern
coast at the level of the sea, in the snow-laden blasts of the
mountains, and the white glaring sunshine of the interior plateaus and
plains, on the borders of mirage-haunted deserts, volcanoes, and lava
beds, waving its bright plumes in hot winds undaunted, blooming every
year for centuries, and tossing big ripe cones among the cinders and
ashes of nature’s hearths.

The Douglas spruce grows with the great pines, especially on the cool
north sides of ridges and cañons, and is here nearly as large as the
yellow pine, but less abundant. The wood is strong and tough, the bark
thick and deeply furrowed, and on vigorous, quick-growing trees the
stout, spreading branches are covered with innumerable slender, swaying
sprays, handsomely clothed with short leaves. The flowers are about
three fourths of an inch in length, red or greenish, not so showy as
the pendulous bracted cones. But in June and July, when the young
bright yellow leaves appear, the entire tree seems to be covered with
bloom.

It is this grand tree that forms the famous forests of western Oregon,
Washington, and the adjacent coast regions of British Columbia, where
it attains its greatest size and is most abundant, making almost pure
forests over thousands of square miles, dark and close and almost
inaccessible, many of the trees towering with straight, imperceptibly
tapered shafts to a height of three hundred feet, their heads together
shutting out the light,—one of the largest, most widely distributed,
and most important of all the Western giant.

The incense cedar (_Libocedrus decurrens_), when full grown, is a
magnificent tree, one hundred and twenty to nearly two hundred feet
high, five to eight and occasionally twelve feet in diameter, with
cinnamon-colored bark and warm yellow-green foliage, and in general
appearance like an arbor vitæ. It is distributed through the main
forest from an elevation of three to six thousand feet, and in
sheltered portions of cañons on the warm sides to seven thousand five
hundred. In midwinter, when most trees are asleep, it puts forth its
flowers. The pistillate are pale green and inconspicuous; but the
staminate are yellow, about one fourth of an inch long, and are
produced in myriads, tingeing all the branches with gold, and making
the tree as it stands in the snow look like a gigantic goldenrod.
Though scattered rather sparsely amongst its companions in the open
woods, it is seldom out of sight, and its bright brown shafts and warm
masses of plumy foliage make a striking feature of the landscape. While
young and growing fast in an open situation no other tree of its size
in the park forms so exactly tapered a pyramid. The branches, outspread
in flat plumes and beautifully fronded, sweep gracefully downward and
outward, except those near the top, which aspire; the lowest droop to
the ground, overlapping one another, shedding off rain and snow, and
making fine tents for storm-bound mountaineers and birds. In old age it
becomes irregular and picturesque, mostly from accidents: running
fires, heavy wet snow breaking the branches, lightning shattering the
top, compelling it to try to make new summits out of side branches,
etc. Still it frequently lives more than a thousand years, invincibly
beautiful, and worthy its place beside the Douglas spruce and the great
pines.

This unrivaled forest is still further enriched by two majestic silver
firs, Abies magnifica and Abies concolor, bands of which come down from
the main fir belt by cool shady ridges and glens. Abies magnifica is
the noblest of its race, growing on moraines, at an elevation of seven
thousand to eight thousand five hundred feet above the sea, to a height
of two hundred or two hundred and fifty feet, and five to seven in
diameter; and with these noble dimensions there is a richness and
symmetry and perfection of finish not to be found in any other tree in
the Sierra. The branches are whorled, in fives mostly, and stand out
from the straight red purple bole in level or, on old trees, in
drooping collars, every branch regularly pinnated like fern fronds, and
clad with silvery needles, making broad plumes singularly rich and
sumptuous.

The flowers are in their prime about the middle of June: the staminate
red, growing on the underside of the branchlets in crowded profusion,
giving a rich color to nearly all the tree; the pistillate greenish
yellow tinged with pink, standing erect on the upper side of the
topmost branches; while the tufts of young leaves, about as brightly
colored as those of the Douglas spruce, push out their fragrant brown
buds a few weeks later, making another grand show.

The cones mature in a single season from the flowers. When full grown
they are about six to eight inches long, three or four in diameter,
blunt, massive, cylindrical, greenish gray in color, covered with a
fine silvery down, and beaded with transparent balsam, very rich and
precious-looking, standing erect like casks on the topmost branches. If
possible, the inside of the cone is still more beautiful. The scales
and bracts are tinged with red, and the seed wings are purple with
bright iridescence.

Abies concolor, the white silver fir, grows best about two thousand
feet lower than the magnifica. It is nearly as large, but the branches
are less regularly pinnated and whorled, the leaves are longer, and
instead of standing out around the branchlets or turning up and
clasping them they are mostly arranged in two horizontal or ascending
rows, and the cones are less than half as large. The bark of the
magnifica is reddish purple and closely furrowed, that of the concolor
is gray and widely furrowed,—a noble pair, rivaled only by the Abies
grandis, amabilis, and nobilis of the forests of Oregon, Washington,
and the Northern California Coast Range. But none of these northern
species form pure forests that in extent and beauty approach those of
the Sierra.

The seeds of the conifers are curiously formed and colored, white,
brown, purple, plain or spotted like birds eggs, and expecting the
juniper they are all handsomely and ingeniously winged with reference
to their distribution. They are a sort of cunningly devised flying
machines,—one-winged birds, birds with but one feather,—and they take
but one flight, all save those which, after flying from the cone-nest
in calm weather, chance to alight on branches where they have to wait
for a wind. And though these seed wings are intended for only a
moment’s use, they are as thoughtfully colored and fashioned as the
wings of birds, and require from one to two seasons to grow. Those of
the pine, fir, hemlock, and spruce are curved in such manner that, in
being dragged through the air by the seeds, they are made to revolve,
whirling the seeds in a close spiral, and sustaining them long enough
to allow the winds to carry them to considerable distances,—a style of
flying full of quick merry motion, strikingly contrasted to the sober
dignified sailing of seeds on tufts of feathery pappus. Surely no
merrier adventurers ever set out to seek their fortunes. Only in the
fir woods are large flocks seen; for, unlike the cones of the pine,
spruce, hemlock, etc., which let the seeds escape slowly, one or two at
a time, by spreading the scales, the fir cones when ripe fall to
pieces, and let nearly all go at once in favorable weather. All along
the Sierra for hundreds of miles, on dry breezy autumn days, the sunny
spaces in the woods among the colossal spires are in a whirl with these
shining purplewinged wanderers, notwithstanding the harvesting
squirrels have been working at the top of their speed for weeks trying
to cut off every cone before the seeds were ready to swarm and fly.
Sequoia seeds have flat wings, and glint and glance in their flight
like a boy’s kite. The dispersal of juniper seeds is effected by the
plum and cherry plan of hiring birds at the cost of their board, and
thus obtaining the use of a pair of extra good wings.

Above the great fir belt, and below the ragged beds and fringes of the
dwarf pine, stretch the broad dark forests of Pinus contorta, var.
Murrayana, usually called tamarack pine. On broad fields of moraine
material it forms nearly pure forests at an elevation of about eight or
nine thousand feet above the sea, where it is a small, well
proportioned tree, fifty or sixty feet high and one or two in diameter,
with thin gray bark, crooked much-divided straggling branches, short
needles in clusters of two, bright yellow and crimson flowers, and
small prickly cones. The very largest I ever measured was ninety feet
in height, and a little over six feet in diameter four feet above the
ground. On moist well-drained soil in sheltered hollows along
streamsides it grows tall and slender with ascending branches, making
graceful arrowy spires fifty to seventy-five feet high, with stems only
five or six inches thick.

The most extensive forest of this pine in the park lies to the north of
the Big Tuolumne Meadows,—a famous deer pasture and hunting ground of
the Mono Indians. For miles over wide moraine beds there is an even,
nearly pure growth, broken only by glacier meadows, around which the
trees stand in trim array, their sharp spires showing to fine advantage
both in green flowery summer and white winter. On account of the
closeness of its growth in many places, and the thinness and gumminess
of its bark, it is easily killed by running fires, which work
wide-spread destruction in its ranks; but a new generation rises
quickly from the ashes, for all or a part of its seeds are held in
reserve for a year or two or many years, and when the tree is killed
the cones open and the seeds are scattered over the burned ground like
those of the attenuata.

Next to the mountain hemlock and the dwarf pine this species best
endures burial in heavy snow, while in braving hunger and cold on rocky
ridgetops it is not surpassed by any. It is distributed from Alaska to
Southern California, and inland across the Rocky Mountains, taking many
forms in accordance with demands of climate, soil, rivals, and enemies;
growing patiently in bogs and on sand dunes beside the sea where it is
pelted with salt scud, on high snowy mountains and down in the throats
of extinct volcanoes; springing up with invincible vigor after every
devastating fire and extending its conquests farther.

The sturdy storm-enduring red cedar (_Juniperus occidentalis_) delights
to dwell on the tops of granite domes and ridges and glacier pavements
of the upper pine belt, at an elevation of seven to ten thousand feet,
where it can get plenty of sunshine and snow and elbow-room without
encountering quick-growing overshadowing rivals. They never make
anything like a forest, seldom come together even in groves, but stand
out separate and independent in the wind, clinging by slight joints to
the rock, living chiefly on snow and thin air, and maintaining tough
health on this diet for two thousand years or more, every feature and
gesture expressing steadfast dogged endurance. The largest are usually
about six or eight feet in diameter, and fifteen or twenty in height. A
very few are ten feet in diameter, and on isolated moraine heaps forty
to sixty feet in height. Many are mere stumps, as broad as high, broken
by avalanches and lightning, picturesquely tufted with dense gray
scalelike foliage, and giving no hint of dying. The staminate flowers
are like those of the libocedrus, but smaller; the pistillate are
inconspicuous. The wood is red, fine-grained, and fragrant; the bark
bright cinnamon and red, and in thrifty trees is strikingly braided and
reticulated, flaking off in thin lustrous ribbons, which the Indians
used to weave into matting and coarse cloth. These brown unshakable
pillars, standing solitary on polished pavements with bossy masses of
foliage in their arms, are exceedingly picturesque, and never fail to
catch the eye of the artist. They seem sole survivors of some ancient
race, wholly unacquainted with their neighbors.

I have spent a good deal of time, trying to determine their age, but on
account of dry rot which honeycombs most of the old ones, I never got a
complete count of the largest. Some are undoubtedly more than two
thousand years old; for though on good moraine soil they grow about as
fast as oaks, on bare pavements and smoothly glaciated overswept
granite ridges in the dome region they grow extremely slowly. One on
the Starr King ridge, only two feet eleven inches in diameter, was
eleven hundred and forty years old. Another on the same ridge, only one
foot seven and a half inches in diameter, had reached the age of eight
hundred and thirty-four years. The first fifteen inches from the bark
of a medium-sized tree—six feet in diameter—on the north Tenaya
pavement had eight hundred and fifty-nine layers of wood, or
fifty-seven to the inch. Beyond this the count was stopped by dry rot
and scars of old wounds. The largest I examined was thirty-three feet
in girth, or nearly ten in diameter; and though I failed to get
anything like a complete count, I learned enough from this and many
other specimens to convince me that most of the trees eight to ten feet
thick standing on pavements are more than twenty centuries of age
rather than less. Barring accidents, for all I can see, they would live
forever. When killed, they waste out of existence about as slowly as
granite. Even when overthrown by avalanches, after standing so long,
they refuse to lie at rest, leaning stubbornly on their big elbows as
if anxious to rise, and while a single root holds to the rock putting
forth fresh leaves with a grim never-say-die and never-lie-down
expression.

As the juniper is the most stubborn and unshakable of trees, the
mountain hemlock (_Tsuga Mertensiana_) is the most graceful and pliant
and sensitive, responding to the slightest touches of the wind. Until
it reaches a height of fifty or sixty feet it is sumptuously clothed
down to the ground with drooping branches, which are divided into
countless delicate waving sprays, grouped and arranged in most
indescribably beautiful ways, and profusely sprinkled with handsome
brown cones. The flowers also are peculiarly beautiful and effective;
the pistillate very dark rich purple; the staminate blue of so fine and
pure a tone that the best azure of the high sky seems to be condensed
in them.

Though apparently the most delicate and feminine of all the mountain
trees, it grows best where the snow lies deepest, at an elevation of
from nine thousand to nine thousand five hundred feet, in hollows on
the northern slopes of mountains and ridges. But under all
circumstances and conditions of weather and soil, sheltered from the
main currents of the winds or in blank exposure to them, well fed or
starved, it is always singularly graceful in habit. Even at its highest
limit in the park, ten thousand five hundred feet above the sea on
exposed ridgetops, where it crouches and huddles close together in low
thickets like those of the dwarf pine, it still contrives to put forth
its sprays and branches in forms of irrepressible beauty, while on
moist well-drained moraines it displays a perfectly tropical luxuriance
of foliage, flower, and fruit.

In the first winter storms the snow is oftentimes soft, and lodges in
the dense leafy branches, pressing them down against the trunk, and the
slender drooping axis bends lower and lower as the load increases,
until the top touches the ground and an ornamental arch is made. Then,
as storm succeeds storm and snow is heaped on snow, the whole tree is
at last buried, not again to see the light or move leaf or limb until
set free by the spring thaws in June or July. Not the young saplings
only are thus carefully covered and put to sleep in the whitest of
white beds for five or six months of the year, but trees thirty and
forty feet high. From April to May, then the snow is compacted, you may
ride over the prostrate groves without seeing a single branch or leaf
of them. In the autumn they are full of merry life, when Clark crows,
squirrels, and chipmunks are gathering the abundant crop of seeds while
the deer rest beneath the thick concealing branches. The finest grove
in the park is near Mount Conness, and the trail from the Tuolumne soda
springs to the mountain runs through it. Many of the trees in this
grove are three to four or five feet in diameter and about a hundred
feet high.

The mountain hemlock is widely distributed from near the south
extremity of the high Sierra northward along the Cascade Mountains of
Oregon and Washington and the coast ranges of British Columbia to
Alaska, where it was first discovered in 1827. Its northmost limit, so
far as I have observed, is in the icy fiords of Prince William’s Sound
in latitude 61°, where it forms pure forests at the level of the sea,
growing tall and majestic on the banks of the great glaciers, waving in
accord with the mountain winds and the thunder of the falling icebergs.
Here as in the Sierra it is ineffably beautiful, the very loveliest
evergreen in America.

Of the round-headed dicotyledonous trees in the park the most
influential are the black and goldcup oaks. They occur in some parts of
the main forest belt, scattered among the big pines like a heavier
chaparral, but form extensive groves and reach perfect development only
in the Yosemite valleys and flats of the main cañons. The California
black oak (_Quercus Californica_) is one of the largest and most
beautiful of the Western oaks, attaining under favorable conditions a
height of sixty to a hundred feet, with a trunk three to seven feet in
diameter, wide-spreading picturesque branches, and smooth lively green
foliage handsomely scalloped, purple in the spring, yellow and red in
autumn. It grows best in sunny open groves on ground covered with
ferns, chokecherry, brier rose, rubus, mints, goldenrods, etc. Few, if
any, of the famous oak groves of Europe, however extensive, surpass
these in the size and strength and bright, airy beauty of the trees,
the color and fragrance of the vegetation beneath them, the quality of
the light that fills their leafy arches, and in the grandeur of the
surrounding scenery. The finest grove in the park is in one of the
little Yosemite valleys of the Tuolumne Cañon, a few miles above
Hetch-Hetchy.

The mountain live-oak, or goldcup oak (_Quercus chrysolepis_), forms
extensive groves on earthquake and avalanche taluses and terraces in
cañons and Yosemite valleys, from about three to five thousand feet
above the sea. In tough, sturdy, unwedgeable strength this is the oak
of oaks. In general appearance it resembles the great live-oak of the
Southern states. It has pale gray dark, a short, uneven, heavily
buttressed trunk which usually divides a few feet above the ground into
strong wide-reaching limbs, forming noble arches, and ending in an
intricate maze of small branches and sprays, the outer ones frequently
drooping in long tresses to the ground like those of the weeping
willow, covered with small simple polished leaves, making a canopy
broad and bossy, on which the sunshine falls in glorious brightness.
The acorn cups are shallow, thick-walled, and covered with yellow fuzzy
dust. The flowers appear in May and June with a profusion of pollened
tresses, followed by the bronze-colored young leaves.

[Illustration: A California Life-Oak.]

No tree in the park is a better measure of altitude. In cañons, at an
elevation of four thousand, feet you may easily find a tree six or
eight feet in diameter; and at the head of a side cañon, three thousand
feet higher, up which you can climb in less than two hours, you find
the knotty giant dwarfed to a slender shrub, with leaves like those of
huckleberry bushes, still bearing acorns, and seemingly contented,
forming dense patches of chaparral, on the top of which you may make
your bed and sleep softly like a Highlander in heather. About a
thousand feet higher it is still smaller, making fringes about a foot
high around boulders and along seams in pavements and the brows of
cañons, giving hand-holds here and there on cliffs hard to climb. The
largest I have measured were from twenty-five to twenty-seven feet in
girth, fifty to sixty feet high, and the spread of the limbs was about
double the height.

The principal riverside trees are poplar, alder, willow, broad-leaved
maple, and Nuttall’s flowering dogwood. The poplar (_Populus
trichocarpa_), often called balm of Gilead from the gum on its buds, is
a tall, stately tree, towering above its companions and gracefully
embowering the banks of the main streams at an elevation of about four
thousand feet. Its abundant foliage turns bright yellow in the fall,
and the Indian-summer sunshine sifts through it in delightful tones
over the slow-gliding waters when they are at their lowest ebb.

The flowering dogwood is brighter still in these brooding days, for
every branch of its broad head is then a brilliant crimson flame. In
the spring, when the streams are in flood, it is the whitest of trees,
white as a snow bank with its magnificent flowers four to eight inches
in width, making a wonderful show, and drawing swarms of moths and
butterflies.

The broad-leaved maple is usually found in the coolest boulder-choked
cañons, where the streams are gray and white with foam, over which it
spreads its branches in beautiful arches from bank to bank, forming
leafy tunnels full of soft green light and spray,—favorite homes of the
water ousel. Around the glacier lakes, two or three thousand feet
higher, the common aspen grows in fringing lines and groves which are
brilliantly colored in autumn, reminding you of the color glory of the
Eastern woods.

Scattered here and there or in groves the botanist will find a few
other trees, mostly small,—the mountain mahogany, cherry, chestnut-oak,
laurel, and nutmeg. The California nutmeg (_Tumion Californicum_) is a
handsome evergreen, belonging to the yew family, with pale bark,
prickly leaves, fruit like a green-gage plum, and seed like a nutmeg.
One of the best groves of it in the park is at the Cascades below
Yosemite.

But the noble oaks and all these rock-shading, stream-embowering trees
are as nothing amid the vast abounding billowy forests of conifers.
During my first years in the Sierra I was ever calling on everybody
within reach to admire them, but I found no one half warm enough until
Emerson came. I had read his essays, and felt sure that of all men he
would best interpret the sayings of these noble mountains and trees.
Nor was my faith weakened when I met him in Yosemite. He seemed as
serene as a sequoia, his head in the empyrean; and forgetting his age,
plans, duties, ties of every sort, I proposed an immeasurable camping
trip back in the heart of the mountains. He seemed anxious to go, but
considerately mentioned his party. I said: “Never mind. The mountains
are calling; run away, and let plans and parties and dragging lowland
duties all ‘gang tapsal-teerie’. We’ll go up a cañon singing your own
song, ‘Good-by, proud world! I’m going home,’ in divine earnest. Up
there lies a new heaven and a new earth; let us go to the show.” But
alas, it was too late,—too near the sundown of his life. The shadows
were growing long, and he leaned on his friends. His party, full of
indoor philosophy, failed to see the natural beauty and fullness of
promise of my wild plan, and laughed at it in good-natured ignorance,
as if it were necessarily amusing to imagine that Boston people might
be led to accept Sierra manifestations of God at the price of rough
camping. Anyhow, they would have none of it, and held Mr. Emerson to
the hotels and trails.

After spending only five tourist days in Yosemite he was led away, but
I saw him two days more; for I was kindly invited to go with the party
as far as the Mariposa big trees. I told Mr. Emerson that I would
gladly go to the sequoias with him, if he would camp in the grove. He
consented heartily, and I felt sure that we would have at least one
good wild memorable night around a sequoia camp-fire. Next day we rode
through the magnificent forests of the Merced basin, and I kept calling
his attention to the sugar pines, quoting his wood-notes, “Come listen
what the pine tree saith,” etc., pointing out the noblest as kings and
high priests, the most eloquent and commanding preachers of all the
mountain forests, stretching forth their century-old arms in
benediction over the worshiping congregations crowded about them. He
gazed in devout admiration, saying but little, while his fine smile
faded away.

Early in the afternoon, when we reached Clark’s Station, I was
surprised to see the party dismount. And when I asked if we were not
going up into the grove to camp they said: “No; it would never do to
lie out in the night air. Mr. Emerson might take cold; and you know,
Mr. Muir, that would be a dreadful thing.” In vain I urged, that only
in homes and hotels were colds caught, that nobody ever was known to
take cold camping in these woods, that there was not a single cough or
sneeze in all the Sierra. Then I pictured the big climate-changing,
inspiring fire I would make, praised the beauty and fragrance of
sequoia flame, told how the great trees would stand about us
transfigured in the purple light, while the stars looked down between
the great domes; ending by urging them to come on and make an immortal
Emerson night of it. But the house habit was not to be overcome, nor
the strange dread of pure night air, though it is only cooled day air
with a little dew in it. So the carpet dust and unknowable reeks were
preferred. And to think of this being a Boston choice! Sad commentary
on culture and the glorious transcendentalism.

Accustomed to reach whatever place I started for, I was going up the
mountain alone to camp, and wait the coming of the party next day. But
since Emerson was so soon to vanish, I concluded to stop with him. He
hardly spoke a word all the evening, yet it was a great pleasure simply
to be near him, warming in the light of his face as at a fire. In the
morning we rode up the trail through a noble forest of pine and fir
into the famous Mariposa Grove, and stayed an hour or two, mostly in
ordinary tourist fashion,—looking at the biggest giants, measuring them
with a tape line, riding through prostrate fire-bored trunks, etc.,
though Mr. Emerson was alone occasionally, sauntering about as if under
a spell. As we walked through a fine group, he quoted, “There were
giants in those days,” recognizing the antiquity of the race. To
commemorate his visit, Mr. Galen Clark, the guardian of the grove,
selected the finest of the unnamed trees and requested him to give it a
name. He named it Samoset, after the New England sachem, as the best
that occurred to him.

The poor bit of measured time was soon spent, and while the saddles
were being adjusted I again urged Emerson to stay. “You are yourself a
sequoia,” I said. “Stop and get acquainted with your big brethren.” But
he was past his prime, and was now as a child in the hands of his
affectionate but sadly civilized friends, who seemed as full of
old-fashioned conformity as of bold intellectual independence. It was
the afternoon of the day and the afternoon of his life, and his course
was now westward down all the mountains into the sunset. The party
mounted and rode away in wondrous contentment, apparently, tracing the
trail through ceanothus and dogwood bushes, around the bases of the big
trees, up the slope of the sequoia basin, and over the divide. I
followed to the edge of the grove. Emerson lingered in the rear of the
train, and when he reached the top of the ridge, after all the rest of
the party were over and out of sight, he turned his horse, took off his
hat and waved me a last good-by. I felt lonely, so sure had I been that
Emerson of all men would be the quickest to see the mountains and sing
them. Gazing awhile on the spot where he vanished, I sauntered back
into the heart of the grove, made a bed of sequoia plumes and ferns by
the side of a stream, gathered a store of firewood, and then walked
about until sundown. The birds, robins, thrushes, warblers, etc., that
had kept out of sight, came about me, now that all was quiet, and made
cheer. After sundown I built a great fire, and as usual had it all to
myself. And though lonesome for the first time in these forests, I
quickly took heart again,—the trees had not gone to Boston, nor the
birds; and as I sat by the fire, Emerson was still with me in spirit,
though I never again saw him in the flesh. He sent books and wrote,
cheering me on; advised me not to stay too long in solitude. Soon he
hoped that my guardian angel would intimate that my probation was at a
close. Then I was to roll up my herbariums, sketches, and poems (though
I never knew I had any poems), and come to his house; and when I tired
of him and his humble surroundings, he would show me to better people.

But there remained many a forest to wander through, many a mountain and
glacier to cross, before I was to see his Wachusett and Monadnock,
Boston and Concord. It was seventeen years after our parting on the
Wawona ridge that I stood beside his grave under a pine tree on the
hill above Sleepy Hollow. He had gone to higher Sierras, and, as I
fancied, was again waving his hand in friendly recognition.




CHAPTER V
The Wild Gardens of the Yosemite Park


When California was wild, it was the floweriest part of the continent.
And perhaps it is so still, notwithstanding the lowland flora has in
great part vanished before the farmers’ flocks and ploughs. So
exuberant was the bloom of the main valley of the state, it would still
have been extravagantly rich had ninety-nine out of every hundred of
its crowded flowers been taken away,—far flowerier than the beautiful
prairies of Illinois and Wisconsin, or the savannas of the Southern
states. In the early spring it was a smooth, evenly planted sheet of
purple and gold, one mass of bloom more than four hundred miles long,
with scarce a green leaf in sight.

Still more interesting is the rich and wonderfully varied flora of the
mountains. Going up the Sierra across the Yosemite Park to the Summit
peaks, thirteen thousand feet high, you find as much variety in the
vegetation as in the scenery. Change succeeds change with bewildering
rapidity, for in a few days you pass through as many climates and
floras, ranged one above another, as you would in walking along the
lowlands to the Arctic Ocean.

And to the variety due to climate there is added that caused by the
topographical features of the different regions. Again, the vegetation
is profoundly varied by the peculiar distribution of the soil and
moisture. Broad and deep moraines, ancient and well weathered, are
spread over the lower regions, rough and comparatively recent and
unweathered moraines over the middle and upper regions, alternating
with bare ridges and domes and glacier-polished pavements, the highest
in the icy recesses of the peaks, raw and shifting, some of them being
still in process of formation, and of course scarcely planted as yet.

Besides these main soilbeds there are many others comparatively small,
reformation of both glacial and weather soils, sifted, sorted out, and
deposited by running water and the wind on gentle slopes and in all
sorts of hollows, potholes, valleys, lake basins, etc.,—some in dry and
breezy situations, others sheltered and kept moist by lakes, streams,
and waftings of waterfall spray, making comfortable homes for plants
widely varied. In general, glaciers give soil to high and low places
almost alike, while water currents are dispensers of special blessings,
constantly tending to make the ridges poorer and the valleys richer.
Glaciers mingle all kinds of material together, mud particles and
boulders fifty feet in diameter: water, whether in oozing currents or
passionate torrents, discriminates both in the size and shape of the
material it carries. Glacier mud is the finest meal ground for any use
in the Park, and its transportation into lakes and as foundations for
flowery garden meadows was the first work that the young rivers were
called on to do. Bogs occur only in shallow alpine basins where the
climate is cool enough for sphagnum, and where the surrounding
topographical conditions are such that they are safe, even in the most
copious rains and thaws, from the action of flood currents capable of
carrying rough gravel and sand, but where the water supply is
nevertheless constant. The mosses dying from year to year gradually
give rise to those rich spongy peat-beds in which so many of our best
alpine plants delight to dwell. The strong winds that occasionally
sweep the high Sierra play a more important part in the distribution of
special soil-beds than is at first sight recognized, carrying forward
considerable quantities of sand gravel, flakes of mica, etc., and
depositing them in fields and beds beautifully ruffled and embroidered
and adapted to the wants of some of the hardiest and handsomest of the
alpine shrubs and flowers. The more resisting of the smooth, solid,
glacier-polished domes and ridges can hardly be said to have any soil
at all, while others beginning to give way to the weather are thinly
sprinkled with coarse angular gravel. Some of them are full of
crystals, which as the surface of the rock is decomposed are set free,
covering the summits and rolling down the sides in minute avalanches,
giving rise to zones and beds of crystalline soil. In some instances
the various crystals occur only here and there, sprinkled in the gray
gravel like daisies in a sod; but in others half or more is made up of
crystals, and the glow of the imbedded or loosely strewn gems and their
colored gleams and glintings at different times of the day when the sun
is shining might well exhilarate the flowers that grow among them, and
console them for being so completely outshone.

These radiant sheets and belts and dome-encircling rings of crystals
are the most beautiful of all the Sierra soil-beds, while the huge
taluses ranged along the walls of the great cañons are the deepest and
roughest. Instead of being slowly weathered and accumulated from the
cliffs overhead like common taluses, they were all formed suddenly and
simultaneously by an earthquake that occurred at least three centuries
ago. Though thus hurled into existence at a single effort, they are the
least changeable and destructible of all the soil formations in the
range. Excepting those which were launched directly into the channels
of rivers, scarcely one of their wedged and interlocked boulders has
been moved since the day of their creation, and though mostly made up
of huge angular blocks of granite, many of them from ten to fifty feet
cube, trees and shrubs make out to live and thrive on them, and even
delicate herbaceous plants,—draperia, collomia, zauschneria,
etc.,—soothing their rugged features with gardens and groves. In
general views of the Park scarce a hint is given of its floral wealth.
Only by patiently, lovingly sauntering about in it will you discover
that it is all more or less flowery, the forests as well as the open
spaces, and the mountain tops and rugged slopes around the glaciers as
well as the sunny meadows.

[Illustration: A Yosemite Cañon Cliff (El Capitan).]

Even the majestic cañon cliffs, seemingly absolutely flawless for
thousands of feet and necessarily doomed to eternal sterility, are
cheered with happy flowers on invisible niches and ledges wherever the
slightest grip for a root can be found; as if Nature, like an
enthusiastic gardener, could not resist the temptation to plant flowers
everywhere. On high, dry rocky summits and plateaus, most of the plants
are so small they make but little show even when in bloom. But in the
opener parts of the main forests, the meadows, stream banks, and the
level floors of Yosemite valleys the vegetation is exceedingly rich in
flowers, some of the lilies and larkspurs being from eight to ten feet
high. And on the upper meadows there are miles of blue gentians and
daisies, white and blue violets; and great breadths of rosy purple
heathworts covering rocky moraines with a marvelous abundance of bloom,
enlivened by humming-birds, butterflies and a host of other insects as
beautiful as flowers. In the lower and middle regions, also, many of
the most extensive beds of bloom are in great part made by
shrubs,—adenostoma, manzanita, ceanothus, chamæbatia, cherry, rose,
rubus, spiræa, shad, laurel, azalea, honeysuckle, calycanthus, ribes,
philadelphus, and many others, the sunny spaces about them bright and
fragrant with mints, lupines, geraniums, lilies, daisies, goldenrods,
castilleias, gilias, pentstemons, etc.

Adenostoma fasciculatum is a handsome, hardy, heathlike shrub belonging
to the rose family, flourishing on dry ground below the pine belt, and
often covering areas of twenty or thirty square miles of rolling
sun-beaten hills and dales with a dense, dark green, almost
impenetrable chaparral, which in the distance looks like Scotch
heather. It is about six to eight feet high, has slender elastic
branches, red shreddy bark, needle-shaped leaves, and small white
flowers in panicles about a foot long, making glorious sheets of
fragrant bloom in the spring. To running fires it offers no resistance,
vanishing with the few other flowery shrubs and vines and liliaceous
plants that grow with it about as fast as dry grass, leaving nothing
but ashes. But with wonderful vigor it rises again and again in fresh
beauty from the root, and calls back to its hospitable mansions the
multitude of wild animals that had to flee for their lives.

As soon as you enter the pine woods you meet the charming little
Chamæbatia foliolosa, one of the handsomest of the Park shrubs, next in
fineness and beauty to the heathworts of the alpine regions. Like
adenostoma it belongs to the rose family, is from twelve to eighteen
inches high, has brown bark, slender branches, white flowers like those
of the strawberry, and thricepinnate glandular, yellow-green leaves,
finely cut and fernlike, as if unusual pains had been taken in
fashioning them. Where there is plenty of sunshine at an elevation of
three thousand to six thousand feet, it makes a close, continuous
growth, leaf touching leaf over hundreds of acres, spreading a handsome
mantle beneath the yellow and sugar pines. Here and there a lily rises
above it, an arching bunch of tall bromus, and at wide intervals a
rosebush or clump of ceanothus or manzanita, but there are no rough
weeds mixed with it,—no roughness of any sort.

Perhaps the most widely distributed of all the Park shrubs and of the
Sierra in general, certainly the most strikingly characteristic, are
the many species of manzanita (_Arctostaphylos_). Though one species,
the Uva-ursa, or bearberry,—the kinikinic of the Western
Indians,—extends around the world, the greater part of them are
California. They are mostly from four to ten feet high, round-headed,
with innumerable branches, brown or red bark, pale green leaves set on
edge, and a rich profusion of small, pink, narrow-throated, urn-shaped
flowers like those of arbutus. The branches are knotty, zigzaggy, and
about as rigid as bones, and the bark is so thin and smooth, both trunk
and branches seem to be naked, looking as if they had been peeled,
polished, and painted red. The wood also is red, hard, and heavy.

These grand bushes seldom fail to engage the attention of the traveler
and hold it, especially if he has to pass through closely planted
fields of them such as grow on moraine slopes at an elevation of about
seven thousand feet, and in cañons choked with earthquake boulders; for
they make the most uncompromisingly stubborn of all chaparral. Even
bears take pains to go around the stoutest patches of possible, and
when compelled to force a passage leave tufts of hair and broken
branches to mark their way, while less skillful mountaineers under like
circumstances sometimes lose most of their clothing and all their
temper.

The manzanitas like sunny ground. On warm ridges and sandy flats at the
foot of sun-beaten cañon cliffs, some of the tallest specimens have
well-defined trunks six inches of a foot or more thick, and stand apart
in orchard-like growths which in bloomtime are among the finest garden
sights in the Park. The largest I ever saw had a round, slightly fluted
trunk nearly four feet in diameter, which at a height of only eighteen
inches from the ground dissolved into a wilderness of branches, rising
and spreading to a height and width of about twelve feet. In spring
every bush over all the mountains is covered with rosy flowers, in
autumn with fruit. The red pleasantly acid berries, about the size of
peas, are like little apples, and the hungry mountaineer is glad to eat
them, though half their bulk is made up of hard seeds. Indians, bears,
coyotes, foxes, birds, and other mountain people live on them for
months.

Associated with manzanita there are six or seven species of ceanothus,
flowery, fragrant, and altogether delightful shrubs, growing in
glorious abundance in the forests on sunny or half-shaded ground, up to
an elevation of about nine thousand feet above the sea. In the
sugar-pine woods the most beautiful species is C. integerrimus, often
called California lilac, or deer brush. It is five or six feet high,
smooth, slender, willowy, with bright foliage and abundance of blue
flowers in close, showy panicles. Two species, prostatus and
procumbens, spread handsome blue-flowered mats and rugs on warm ridges
beneath the pines, and offer delightful beds to the tired mountaineers.
The commonest species, C. cordulatus, is mostly restricted to the
silver fir belt. It is white-flowered and thorny, and makes extensive
thickets of tangled chaparral, far too dense to wade through, and too
deep and loose to walk on, though it is pressed flat every winter by
ten or fifteen feet of snow.

Above these thorny beds, sometimes mixed with them, a very wild,
red-fruited cherry grows in magnificent tangles, fragrant and white as
snow when in bloom. The fruit is small and rather bitter, not so good
as the black, puckery chokecherry that grows in the cañons, but
thrushes, robins, chipmunks like it. Below the cherry tangles,
chinquapin and goldcup oak spread generous mantles of chaparral, and
with hazel and ribes thickets in adjacent glens help to clothe and
adorn the rocky wilderness, and produce food for the many mouths Nature
has to fill. Azalea occidentalis is the glory of cool streams and
meadows. It is from two to five feet high, has bright green leaves and
a rich profusion of large, fragrant white and yellow flowers, which are
in prime beauty in June, July, and August, according to the elevation
(from three thousand to six thousand feet.) Only the purple-flowered
rhododendron of the redwood forests rivals or surpasses it in superb
abounding bloom.

[Illustration: California Azaleas.]

Back a little way from the azalea-bordered streams, a small wild rose
makes thickets, often several acres in extent, deliciously fragrant on
dewy mornings and after showers, the fragrance mingled with the music
of birds nesting in them. And not far from these rose gardens Rubus
Nutkanus covers the ground with broad velvety leaves and pure white
flowers as large as those of its neighbor the rose, and finer in
texture; followed at the end of summer by soft red berries good for
bird and beast and man also. This is the commonest and the most
beautiful of the whole blessed flowery fruity genus.

The glory of the alpine region in bloomtime are the heathworts,
cassiope, bryanthus, kalmia, and vaccinium, enriched here and there by
the alpine honeysuckle, Lonicera conjugialis, and by the
purple-flowered Primula suffruticosa, the only primrose discovered in
California, and the only shrubby species in the genus. The lowly,
hardy, adventurous cassiope has exceedingly slender creeping branches,
scalelike leaves, and pale pink or white waxen bell flowers. Few
plants, large or small, so well endure hard weather and rough ground
over so great a range. In July it spreads a wavering, interrupted belt
of the loveliest bloom around glacier lakes and meadows and across wild
moory expanses, between roaring streams, all along the Sierra, and
northward beneath cold skies by way of the mountain chains of Oregon,
Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska, to the Arctic regions;
gradually descending, until at the north end of the continent it
reaches the level of the sea; blooming as profusely and at about the
same time on mossy frozen tundras as on the high Sierra moraines.

Bryanthus, the companion of cassiope, accompanies it as far north as
southeastern Alaska, where together they weave thick plushy beds on
rounded mountain tops above the glaciers. It grows mostly at slightly
lower elevations; the upper margin of what may be called the bryanthus
belt in the Sierra uniting with and overlapping the lower margin of the
cassiope. The wide bell-shaped flowers are bright purple, about three
fourths of an inch in diameter, hundreds to the square yard, the young
branches, mostly erect, being covered with them. No Highlander in
heather enjoys more luxurious rest than the Sierra mountaineer in a bed
of blooming bryanthus. And imagine the show on calm dewy mornings, when
there is a radiant globe in the throat of every flower, and smaller
gems on the needle-shaped leaves, the sunbeams pouring through them.

In the same wild, cold region the tiny Vaccinium myrtillus, mixed with
kalmia and dwarf willows, spreads thinner carpets, the downpressed
matted leaves profusely sprinkled with pink bells; and on higher sandy
slopes you will find several alpine species of eriogonum with gorgeous
bossy masses of yellow bloom, and the lovely Arctic daisy with many
blessed companions; charming plants, gentle mountaineers, Nature’s
darlings, which seem always the finer the higher and stormier their
homes.

Many interesting ferns are distributed over the Park from the foothills
to a little above the timber line. The greater number are rock ferns,
pellæa, cheilanthes, polypodium, adiantum, woodsia, cryptogramme, etc.,
with small tufted fronds, lining glens and gorges and fringing the
cliffs and moraines. The most important of the larger species are
woodwardia, aspidium, asplenium, and the common pteris. Woodwardia
radicans is a superb fern five to eight feet high, growing in vaselike
clumps where the ground is level, and on slopes in a regular thatch,
frond over frond, like shingles on a roof. Its range in the Park is
from the western boundary up to about five thousand feet, mostly on
benches of the north walls of cañons watered by small outspread
streams. It is far more abundant in the Coast Mountains beneath the
noble redwoods, where it attains a height of ten to twelve feet. The
aspidiums are mostly restricted to the moist parts of the lower
forests, Asplenium filix-fœmina to marshy streams. The hardy,
broad-shouldered Pteris aquilina, the commonest of ferns, grows tall
and graceful on sunny flats and hillsides, at elevations between three
thousand and six thousand feet. Those who know it only in the Eastern
states can form no fair conception of its stately beauty in the
sunshine of the Sierra. On the level sandy floors of Yosemite valleys
it often attains a height of six to eight feet in fields thirty or
forty acres in extent, the magnificent fronds outspread in a nearly
horizontal position, forming a ceiling beneath which one may walk erect
in delightful mellow shade. No other fern does so much for the color
glory of autumn, with its browns and reds and yellows changing and
interblending. Even after lying dead all winter beneath the snow it
spreads a lively brown mantle over the desolate ground, until the young
fronds with a noble display of faith and hope come rolling up into the
light through the midst of the beautiful ruins. A few weeks suffice for
their development, then, gracefully poised each in its place, they
manage themselves in every exigency of weather as if they had passed
through a long course of training. I have seen solemn old sugar pines
thrown into momentary confusion by the sudden onset of a storm, tossing
their arms excitedly as if scarce awake, and wondering what had
happened, but I never noticed surprise or embarrassment in the behavior
of this noble pteris.

Of five species of pellæa in the Park, the handsome andromedæfolia,
growing in brushy foothills with Adiantum emarginatum, is the largest.
P. Breweri, the hardiest and at the same time the most fragile of the
genus, grows in dense tufts among rocks on storm-beaten mountain sides
along the upper margin of the fern line. It is a charming little fern,
four or five inches high, has shining bronze-colored stalks which are
about as brittle as glass, and pale green pinnate fronds. Its
companions on the lower part of its range are Cryptogramme
acrostichoides and Phegopteris alpestris, the latter soft and tender,
not at all like a rock fern, though it grows on rocks where the snow
lies longest. P. Bridgesii, with blue-green, narrow, simply pinnate
fronds, is about the same size as Breweri and ranks next to it as a
mountaineer, growing in fissures and round boulders on glacier
pavements. About a thousand feet lower we find the smaller and more
abundant P. densa, on ledges and boulder-strewn fissured pavements,
watered until late in summer by oozing currents from snow-banks or thin
outspread streams from moraines, growing in close sods,—its little
bright green triangular tripinnate fronds, about an inch in length, as
innumerable as leaves of grass. P. ornithopus has twice or thrice
pinnate fronds, is dull in color, and dwells on hot rocky hillsides
among chaparral.

Three species of Cheilanthes,—Californica, gracillima, and myriophylla,
with beautiful two to four pinnate fronds, an inch to five inches long,
adorn the stupendous walls of the cañons, however dry and sheer. The
exceedingly delicate and interesting Californica is rare, the others
abundant at from three thousand to seven thousand feet elevation, and
are often accompanied by the little gold fern, Gymnogramme
triangularis, and rarely by the curious little Botrychium simplex, the
smallest of which are less than an inch high.

The finest of all the rock ferns is _Adiantum pedatum_, lover of
waterfalls and the lightest waftings of irised spray. No other Sierra
fern is so constant a companion of white spray-covered streams, or
tells so well their wild thundering music. The homes it loves best are
cave-like hollows beside the main falls, where it can float its plumes
on their dewy breath, safely sheltered from the heavy spray-laden
blasts. Many of these moss-lined chambers, so cool, so moist, and
brightly colored with rainbow light, contain thousands of these happy
ferns, clinging to the emerald walls by the slightest holds, reaching
out the most wonderfully delicate fingered fronds on dark glossy
stalks, sensitive, tremulous, all alive, in an attitude of eager
attention; throbbing in unison with every motion and tone of the
resounding waters, compliant to their faintest impulses, moving each
division of the frond separately at times as if fingering the music,
playing on invisible keys.

Considering the lilies as you go up the mountains, the first you come
to is L. Pardalinum, with large orange-yellow, purple-spotted flowers
big enough for babies bonnets. It is seldom found higher than
thirty-five hundred feet above the sea, grows in magnificent groups of
fifty to a hundred or more, in romantic waterfall dells in the pine
woods shaded by overarching maple and willow, alder and dogwood, with
bushes in front of the embowering trees for a border, and ferns and
sedges in front of the bushes; while the bed of black humus in which
the bulbs are set is carpeted with mosses and liverworts. These richly
furnished lily gardens are the pride of the falls on the lower
tributaries of the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, falls not like those of
Yosemite valleys,—coming from the sky with rock-shaking thunder
tones,—but small, with low, kind voices cheerily singing in calm leafy
bowers, self-contained, keeping their snowy skirts well about them, yet
furnishing plenty of spray for the lilies.

The Washington lily (_L. Washingtonianum_) is white, deliciously
fragrant, moderate in size, with three to ten flowered racemes. The
largest I ever measured was eight feet high, the raceme two feet long,
with fifty-two flowers, fifteen of them open; the others had faded or
were still in the bud. This famous lily is distributed over the sunny
portions of the sugar-pine woods, never in large garden companies like
pardalinum, but widely scattered, standing up to the waist in dense
ceanothus and manzanita chaparral, waving its lovely flowers above the
blooming wilderness of brush, and giving their fragrance to the breeze.
These stony, thorny jungles are about the last places in the mountains
in which one would look for lilies. But though they toil not nor spin,
like other people under adverse circumstances, they have to do the best
they can. Because their large bulbs are good to eat they are dug up by
Indians and bears; therefore, like hunted animals, they seek refuge in
the chaparral, where among the boulders and tough tangled roots they
are comparatively safe. This is the favorite Sierra lily, and it is now
growing in all the best parks and gardens of the world.

The showiest gardens in the Park lie imbedded in the silver fir forests
on the top of the main dividing ridges or hang likely gayly colored
scarfs down their sides. Their wet places are in great part taken up by
veratrum, a robust broad-leaved plant determined to be seen, and
habenaria and spiranthes; the drier parts by tall columbines,
larkspurs, castilleias, lupines, hosackias, erigerons, valerian, etc.,
standing deep in grass, with violets here and there around the borders.
But the finest feature of these forest gardens is Lilium parvum. It
varies greatly in size, the tallest being from six to nine feet high,
with splendid racemes of ten to fifty small orange-colored flowers,
which rock and wave with great dignity above the other flowers in the
infrequent winds that fall over the protecting wall of trees. Though
rather frail-looking it is strong, reaching prime vigor and beauty
eight thousand feet above the sea, and in some places venturing as high
as eleven thousand.

Calochortus, or Mariposa tulip, is a unique genus of many species
confined to the California side of the continent; charming plants,
somewhat resembling the tulips of Europe, but far finer. The richest
calochortus region lies below the western boundary of the Park; still
five or six species are included. C. Nuttallii is common on moraines in
the forests of the two-leaved pine; and C. cæruleus and nudus, very
slender, lowly species, may be found in moist garden spots near
Yosemite. C. albus, with pure white flowers, growing in shady places
among the foothill shrubs, is, I think, the very loveliest of all the
lily family,—a spotless soul, plant saint, that every one must love and
so be made better. It puts the wildest mountaineer on his good
behavior. With this plant the whole world would seem rich though none
other existed. Next after Calochortus, Brodiæa is the most interesting
genus. Nearly all the many species have beautiful showy heads of blue,
lilac, and yellow flowers, enriching the gardens of the lower pine
region. Other liliaceous plants likely to attract attention are the
blue-flowered camassia, the bulbs of which are prized as food by
Indians; fritillaria, smilacina, chloragalum, and the twining climbing
stropholirion.

The common orchidaceous plants are corallorhiza, goodyera, spiranthes,
and habenaria. Cypripedium montanum, the only moccasin flower I have
seen in the Park, is a handsome, thoughtful-looking plant living beside
cool brooks. The large oval lip is white, delicately veined with
purple; the other petals and sepals purple, strap-shaped, and elegantly
curved and twisted.

To tourists the most attractive of all the flowers of the forest is the
snow plant (_Sarcodes sanguinea_). It is a bright red, fleshy,
succulent pillar that pushes up through the dead needles in the pine
and fir woods like a gigantic asparagus shoot. The first intimation of
its coming is a loosening and upbulging of the brown stratum of
decomposed needles on the forest floor, in the cracks of which you
notice fiery gleams; presently a blunt dome-shaped head an inch or two
in diameter appears, covered with closely imbricated scales and bracts.
In a week or so it grows to a height of six to twelve inches. Then the
long fringed bracts spread and curl aside, allowing the twenty or
thirty five-lobed bell-shaped flowers to open and look straight out
from the fleshy axis. It is said to grow up through the snow; on the
contrary it always waits until the ground is warm, though with other
early flowers it is occasionally buried or half buried for a day or two
by spring storms. The entire plant—flowers, bracts, stem, scales, and
roots—is red. But notwithstanding its glowing color and beautiful
flowers, it is singularly unsympathetic and cold. Everybody admires it
as a wonderful curiosity, but nobody loves it. Without fragrance,
rooted in decaying vegetable matter, it stands beneath the pines and
firs lonely, silent, and about as rigid as a graveyard monument.

[Illustration: Mariposa Tulips and the Snow Plant.]

Down in the main cañons adjoining the azalea and rose gardens there are
fine beds of herbaceous plants,—tall mints and sunflowers, iris,
œnothera, brodiæa, and bright beds of erythræa on the ferny meadows.
Bolandera, sedum, and airy, feathery, purple-flowered heuchera adorn
mossy nooks near falls, the shading trees wreathed and festooned with
wild grapevines and clematis; while lightly shaded flats are covered
with gilia and eunanus of many species, hosackia, arnica, chænactis,
gayophytum, gnaphalium, monardella, etc.

Thousands of the most interesting gardens in the Park are never seen,
for they are small and lie far up on ledges and terraces of the sheer
cañon walls, wherever a strip of soil, however narrow and shallow, can
rest. The birds, winds, and down-washing rains have planted them with
all sorts of hardy mountain flowers, and where there is sufficient
moisture they flourish in profusion. Many of them are watered by little
streams that seem lost on the tremendous precipices, clinging to the
face of the rock in lacelike strips, and dripping from ledge to ledge,
too silent to be called falls, pathless wanderers from the upper
meadows, which for centuries have been seeking a way down to the rivers
they belong to, without having worn as yet any appreciable channel,
mostly evaporated or given to the plants they meet before reaching the
foot of the cliffs. To these unnoticed streams the finest of the cliff
gardens owe their luxuriance and freshness of beauty. In the larger
ones ferns and showy flowers flourish in wonderful
profusion,—woodwardia, columbine, collomia, castilleia, draperia,
geranium, erythræa, pink and scarlet mimulus, hosackia, saxifrage,
sunflowers and daisies, with azalea, spiræa, and calycanthus, a few
specimens of each that seem to have been culled from the large gardens
above and beneath them. Even lilies are occasionally found in these
irrigated cliff gardens, swinging their bells over the giddy
precipices, seemingly as happy as their relatives down in the waterfall
dells. Most of the cliff gardens, however, are dependent on summer
showers, and though from the shallowness of the soil beds they are
often dry, they still display a surprising number of bright
flowers,—scarlet zauschneria, purple bush penstemon, mints, gilias, and
bosses of glowing golden bahia. Nor is there any lack of commoner
plants; the homely yarrow is often found in them, and sweet clover and
honeysuckle for the bees.

In the upper cañons, where the walls are inclined at so low an angle
that they are loaded with moraine material, through which perennial
streams percolate in broad diffused currents, there are long wavering
garden beds, that seem to be descending through the forest like
cascades, their fluent lines suggesting motion, swaying from side to
side of the forested banks, surging up here and there over island-like
boulder piles, or dividing and flowing around them. In some of these
floral cascades the vegetation is chiefly sedges and grasses ruffled
with willows; in others, showy flowers like those of the lily gardens
on the main divides. Another curious and picturesque series of wall
gardens are made by thin streams that ooze slowly from moraines and
slip gently over smooth glaciated slopes. From particles of sand and
mud they carry, a pair of lobe-shaped sheets of soil an inch or two
thick are gradually formed, one of them hanging down from the brow of
the slope, the other leaning up from the foot of it like stalactite and
stalagmite, the soil being held together by the flowery,
moisture-loving plants growing in it.

Along the rocky parts of the cañon bottoms between lake basins, where
the streams flow fast over glacier-polished granite, there are rows of
pothole gardens full of ferns, daisies, golden-rods, and other common
plants of the neighborhood nicely arranged like bouquets, and standing
out in telling relief on the bare shining rock banks. And all the way
up the cañons to the Summit mountains, wherever there is soil of any
sort, there is no lack of flowers, however short the summer may be.
Within eight or ten feet of a snow bank lingering beneath a shadow, you
may see belated ferns unrolling their fronds in September, and sedges
hurrying up their brown spikes on ground that has been free from snow
only eight or ten days, and likely to be covered again within a few
weeks; the winter in the coolest of these shadow gardens being about
eleven months long, while spring, summer, and autumn are hurried and
crowded into one month. Again, under favorable conditions, alpine
gardens three or four thousand feet higher than the last are in their
prime in June. Between the Summit peaks at the head of the cañons
surprising effects are produced where the sunshine falls direct on
rocky slopes and reverberates among boulders. Toward the end of August,
in one of these natural hothouses on the north shore of a glacier lake
11,500 feet above the sea, I found a luxuriant growth of hairy lupines,
thistles, goldenrods, shrubby potentilla, spraguea, and the mountain
epilobium with thousands of purple flowers an inch wide, while the
opposite shore, at a distance of only three hundred yards, was bound in
heavy avalanche snow,—flowery summer on one side, winter on the other.
And I know a bench garden on the north wall of Yosemite in which a few
flowers are in bloom all winter; the massive rocks about it storing up
sunshine enough in summer to melt the snow about as fast as it falls.
When tired of the confinement of my cabin I used to camp out in it in
January, and never failed to find flowers, and butterflies also, except
during snowstorms and a few days after.

From Yosemite one can easily walk in a day to the top of Mount Hoffman,
a massive gray mountain that rises in the centre of the Park, with easy
slopes adorned with castellated piles and crests on the south side,
rugged precipices banked with perpetual snow on the north. Most of the
broad summit is comparatively level and smooth, and covered with
crystals of quartz, mica, hornblende, feldspar, garnet, zircon,
tourmaline, etc., weathered out and strewn loosely as if sown
broadcast; their radiance so dazzling in some places as to fairly hide
the multitude of small flowers that grow among them; myriads of keen
lance rays infinitely fine, white or colored, making an almost
continuous glow over all the ground, with here and there throbbing,
spangling lilies of light, on the larger gems. At first sight only
these crystal sunflowers are noticed, but looking closely you discover
minute gilias, ivesias, eunanus, phloxes, etc., in thousands, showing
more petals than leaves; and larger plants in hollows and on the
borders of rills,—lupines, potentillas, daisies, harebells, mountain
columbine, astragalus, fringed with heathworts. You wander about from
garden to garden enchanted, as if walking among stars, gathering the
brightest gems, each and all apparently doing their best with eager
enthusiasm, as if everything depended on faithful shining; and
considering the flowers basking in the glorious light, many of them
looking like swarms of small moths and butterflies that were resting
after long dances in the sunbeams. Now your attention is called to
colonies of woodchucks and pikas, the mounds in front of their burrows
glittering like heaps of jewelry,—romantic ground to live in or die in.
Now you look abroad over the vast round landscape bounded by the
down-curving sky, nearly all the Park in it displayed like a
map,—forests, meadows, lakes, rock waves, and snowy mountains.
Northward lies the basin of Yosemite Creek, paved with bright domes and
lakes like larger crystals; eastward, the meadowy, billowy Tuolumne
region and the Summit peaks in glorious array; southward, Yosemite; and
westward, the boundless forests. On no other mountain that I know of
are you more likely to linger. It is a magnificent camp ground. Clumps
of dwarf pine furnish rosiny roots and branches for fuel, and the rills
pure water. Around your camp fire the flowers seem to be looking
eagerly at the light, and the crystals shine unweariedly, making fine
company as you lie at rest in the very heart of the vast, serene,
majestic night.

The finest of the glacier meadow gardens lie at an elevation of about
nine thousand feet, imbedded in the upper pine forests like lakes of
light. They are smooth and level, a mile or two long, and the rich,
well-drained ground is completely covered with a soft, silky, plushy
sod enameled with flowers, not one of which is in the least weedy or
coarse. In some places the sod is so crowded with showy flowers that
the grasses are scarce noticed, in others they are rather sparingly
scattered; while every leaf and flower seems to have its winged
representative in the swarms of happy flower-like insects that enliven
the air above them.

With the winter snowstorms wings and petals are folded, and for more
than half the year the meadows are snow-buried ten or fifteen feet
deep. In June they begin to thaw out, small patches of the dead sloppy
sod appear, gradually increasing in size until they are free and warm
again, face to face with the sky; myriads of growing points push
through the steaming mould, frogs sing cheeringly, soon joined by the
birds, and the merry insects come back as if suddenly raised from the
dead. Soon the ground is green with mosses and liverworts and dotted
with small fungi, making the first crop of the season. Then the grass
leaves weave a new sod, and the exceedingly slender panicles rise above
it like a purple mist, speedily followed by potentilla, ivesia, bossy
orthocarpus, yellow and purple, and a few pentstemons. Later come the
daisies and goldenrods, asters and gentians. Of the last there are
three species, small and fine, with varying tones of blue, and in
glorious abundance, coloring extensive patches where the sod is
shallowest. Through the midst flows a stream only two or three feet
wide, silently gliding as if careful not to disturb the hushed calm of
the solitude, its banks embossed by the common sod bent down to the
water’s edge, and trimmed with mosses and violets; slender grass
panicles lean over like miniature pine trees, and here and there on the
driest places small mats of heathworts are neatly spread, enriching
without roughening the bossy down-curling sod. In spring and summer the
weather is mostly crisp, exhilarating sunshine, though magnificent
mountain ranges of cumuli are often upheaved about noon, their shady
hollows tinged with purple ineffably fine, their snowy sun-beaten
bosses glowing against the sky, casting cooling shadows for an hour or
two, then dissolving in a quick washing rain. But for days in
succession there are no clouds at all, or only faint wisps and
pencilings scarcely discernible.

Toward the end of August the sunshine grows hazy, announcing the coming
of Indian summer, the outlines of the landscapes are softened and
mellowed, and more and more plainly are the mountains clothed with
light, white tinged with pale purple, richest in the morning and
evening. The warm, brooding days are full of life and thoughts of life
to come, ripening seeds with next summer in them or a hundred summers.
The nights are unspeakably impresssive and calm; frost crystals of
wondrous beauty grow on the grass,—each carefully planned and finished
as if intended to endure forever. The sod becomes yellow and brown, but
the late asters and gentians, carefully closing their flower at night,
do not seem to feel the frost; no nipped, wilted plants of any kind are
to be seen; even the early snowstorms fail to blight them. At last the
precious seeds are ripe, all the work of the season is done, and the
sighing pines tell the coming of winter and rest.

Ascending the range you find that many of the higher meadows slope
considerably, from the amount of loose material washed into their
basins; and sedges and rushes are mixed with the grasses or take their
places, though all are still more or less flowery and bordered with
heathworts, sibbaldea, and dwarf willows. Here and there you come to
small bogs, the wettest smooth and adorned with parnassia and
butter-cups, others tussocky and ruffled like bits of Arctic tundra,
their mosses and lichens interwoven with dwarf shrubs. On boulder piles
the red iridescent oxyria abounds, and on sandy, gravelly slopes
several species of shrubby, yellow-flowered eriogonum, some of the
plants, less than a foot high, being very old, a century or more as is
shown by the rings made by the annual whorls of leaves on the big
roots. Above these flower-dotted slopes the gray, savage wilderness of
crags and peaks seems lifeless and bare. Yet all the way up to the tops
of the highest mountains, commonly supposed to be covered with eternal
snow, there are bright garden spots crowded with flowers, their warm
colors calling to mind the sparks and jets of fire on polar volcanoes
rising above a world of ice. The principal mountain-top plants are
phloxes, drabas, saxifrages, silene, cymopterus, hulsea, and
polemonium, growing in detached stripes and mats,—the highest streaks
and splashes of the summer wave as it breaks against these wintry
heights. The most beautiful are the phloxes (douglasii and cæspitosum),
and the red-flowered silene, with innumerable flowers hiding the
leaves. Though herbaceous plants, like the trees and shrubs, are
dwarfed as they ascend, two of these mountain dwellers, Hulsea algida
and Polemonium confertum, are notable exceptions. The yellow-flowered
hulsea is eight to twelve inches high, stout, erect,—the leaves, three
to six inches long, secreting a rosiny, fragrant gum, standing up
boldly on the grim lichen-stained crags, and never looking in the least
tired or discouraged. Both the ray and disk flowers are yellow; the
heads are nearly two inches wide, and are eagerly sought for by roving
bee mountaineers. The polemonium is quite as luxuriant and
tropical-looking as its companion, about the same height, glandular,
fragrant, its blue flowers closely packed in eight or ten heads, twenty
to forty in head. It is never far from hulsea, growing at elevations of
between eleven and thirteen thousand feet wherever a little hollow or
crevice favorably situated with a handful of wind-driven soil can be
found.

From these frosty Arctic sky gardens you may descend in one straight
swoop to the abronia, mentzelia, and œnothera gardens of Mono, where
the sunshine is warm enough for palms.

But the greatest of all the gardens is the belt of forest trees,
profusely covered in the spring with blue and purple, red and yellow
blossoms, each tree with a gigantic panicle of flowers fifty to a
hundred feet long. Yet strange to say they are seldom noticed. Few
travel through the woods when they are in bloom, the flowers of some of
the showiest species opening before the snow is off the ground.
Nevertheless, one would think the news of such gigantic flowers would
quickly spread, and travelers from all the world would make haste to
the show. Eager inquiries are made for the bloomtime of
rhododendron-covered mountains and for the bloom-time of Yosemite
streams, that they may be enjoyed in their prime; but the far grander
outburst of tree bloom covering a thousand mountains—who inquires about
that? That the pistillate flowers of the pines and fires should escape
the eyes of careless lookers is less to be wondered at, since they
mostly grow aloft on the topmost branches, and can hardly be seen from
the foot of the trees. Yet even these make a magnificent show from the
top of an overlooking ridge when the sunbeams are pouring through them.
But the far more numerous staminate flowers of the pines in large rosy
clusters, and those of the silver firs in countless thousands on the
under side of the branches, cannot be hid, stand where you may. The
mountain hemlock also is gloriously colored with a profusion of lovely
blue and purple flowers, a spectacle to gods and men. A single pine or
hemlock or silver fir in the prime of its beauty about the middle of
June is well worth the pains of the longest journey; how much more
broad forests of them thousands of miles long!

[Illustration: Alpine Phlox and _Polemonium confertum_.]

One of the best ways to see tree flowers is to climb one of the tallest
trees and to get into close tingling touch with them, and then look
broad. Speaking of the benefits of tree climbing, Thoreau says: “I
found my account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on
the top of a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for
it, for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never
seen before. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for
threescore years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen
them. But, above all, I discovered around me,—it was near the middle of
June,—on the ends of the topmost branches, a few minute and delicate
red conelike blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine looking
heavenward. I carried straightway to the village the topmost spire, and
showed it to stranger jurymen who walked the streets,—for it was court
week,—and to farmers and lumbermen and woodchoppers and hunters, and
not one had ever seen the like before, but they wondered as at a star
dropped down.”

The same marvelous blindness prevails here, although the blossoms are a
thousandfold more abundant and telling. Once when I was collecting
flowers of the red silver fir near a summer tourist resort on the
mountains above Lake Tahoe, I carried a handful of flowery branches to
the boarding house, where they quickly attracted a wondering, admiring
crowd of men, women, and children. “Oh, where did you get these?” they
cried. “How pretty they are—mighty handsome—just too lovely for
anything—where do they grow?” “On the commonest trees about you,” I
replied. “You are now standing beside one of them, and it is in full
bloom; look up.” And I pointed to a blossom-laden Abies magnifica,
about a hundred and twenty feet high, in front of the house, used as a
hitching post. And seeing its beauty for the first time, their wonder
could hardly have been greater or more sincere had their silver fir
hitching post blossomed for them at that moment as suddenly as Aaron’s
rod.

The mountain hemlock extends an almost continuous belt along the Sierra
and northern ranges to Prince William’s Sound, accompanied part of the
way by the pines; our two silver firs, to Mount Shasta, thence the fir
belt is continued through Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia by
four other species, Abies nobilis, grandis, amabilis, and lasiocarpa;
while the magnificent Sitka spruce, with large, bright, purple flowers,
adorns the coast region from California to Cook’s Inlet and Kodiak. All
these, interblending, form one flowery belt—one garden blooming in
June, rocking its myriad spires in the hearty weather, bowing and
swirling, enjoying clouds and the winds and filling them with balsam;
covering thousands of miles of the wildest mountains, clothing the long
slopes by the sea, crowning bluffs and headlands and innumerable
islands, and, fringing the banks of the glaciers, one wild wavering
belt of the noblest flowers in the world, worth a lifetime of love work
to know it.




CHAPTER VI
Among the Animals of the Yosemite


The Sierra bear, brown or gray, the sequoia of the animals, tramps over
all the park, though few travelers have the pleasure of seeing him. On
he fares through the majestic forests and cañons, facing all sorts of
weather, rejoicing in his strength, everywhere at home, harmonizing
with the trees and rocks and shaggy chaparral. Happy fellow! his lines
have fallen in pleasant places,—lily gardens in silver-fir forests,
miles of bushes in endless variety and exuberance of bloom over
hill-waves and valleys and along the banks of streams, cañons full of
music and waterfalls, parks fair as Eden,—places in which one might
expect to meet angels rather than bears.

In this happy land no famine comes nigh him. All the year round his
bread is sure, for some of the thousand kinds that he likes are always
in season and accessible, ranged on the shelves of the mountains like
stores in a pantry. From one to another, from climate to climate, up
and down he climbs, feasting on each in turn,—enjoying as great variety
as if he traveled to far-off countries north and south. To him almost
every thing is food except granite. Every tree helps to feed him, every
bush and herb, with fruits and flowers, leaves and bark; and all the
animals he can catch,—badgers, gophers, ground squirrels, lizards,
snakes, etc., and ants, bees, wasps, old and young, together with their
eggs and larvæ and nests. Craunched and hashed, down all go to his
marvelous stomach, and vanish as if cast into a fire. What digestion! A
sheep or a wounded deer or a pig he eats warm, about as quickly as a
boy eats a buttered muffin; or should the meat be a month old, it still
is welcomed with tremendous relish. After so gross a meal as this,
perhaps the next will be strawberries and clover, or raspberries with
mushrooms and nuts, or puckery acorns and chokecherries. And as if
fearing that anything eatable in all his dominions should escape being
eaten, he breaks into cabins to look after sugar, dried apples, bacon,
etc. Occasionally he eats the mountaineer’s bed; but when he has had a
full meal of more tempting dainties he usually leaves it undisturbed,
though he has been known to drag it up through a hole in the roof,
carry it to the foot of a tree, and lie down on it to enjoy a siesta.
Eating everything, never is he himself eaten except by man, and only
man is an enemy to be feared. “B’ar meat,” said a hunter from whom I
was seeking information, “b’ar meat is the best meat in the mountains;
their skins make the best beds, and their grease the best butter.
Biscuit shortened with b’ar grease goes as far as beans; a man will
walk all day on a couple of them biscuit.”

In my first interview with a Sierra bear we were frightened and
embarrassed, both of us, but the bear’s behavior was better than mine.
When I discovered him, he was standing in a narrow strip of meadow, and
I was concealed behind a tree on the side of it. After studying this
appearance as he stood at rest, I rushed toward him to frighten him,
that I might study his gait in running. But, contrary to all I had
heard about the shyness of bears, he did not run at all; and when I
stopped short within a few steps of him, as he held his ground in a
fighting attitude, my mistake was monstrously plain. I was then put on
my good behavior, and never afterward forgot the right manners of the
wilderness.

This happened on my first Sierra excursion in the forest to the north
of Yosemite Valley. I was eager to meet the animals, and many of them
came to me as if willing to show themselves and make my acquaintance;
but the bears kept out of my way.

An old mountaineer, in reply to my questions, told me that bears were
very shy, all save grim old grizzlies, and that I might travel the
mountains for years without seeing one, unless I gave my mind to them
and practiced the stealthy ways of hunters. Nevertheless, it was only a
few weeks after I had received this information that I met the one
mentioned above, and obtained instruction at first-hand.

I was encamped in the woods about a mile back of the rim of Yosemite,
beside a stream that falls into the valley by the way of Indian Cañon.
Nearly every day for weeks I went to the top of the North Dome to
sketch; for it commands a general view of the valley, and I was anxious
to draw every tree and rock and waterfall. Carlo, a St. Bernard dog,
was my companion,—a fine, intelligent fellow that belonged to a hunter
who was compelled to remain all summer on the hot plains, and who
loaned him to me for the season for the sake of having him in the
mountains, where he would be so much better off. Carlo knew bears
through long experience, and he it was who led me to my first
interview, though he seemed as much surprised as the bear at my
unhunter-like behavior. One morning in June, just as the sunbeams began
to stream through the trees, I set out for a day’s sketching on the
dome; and before we had gone half a mile from camp Carlo snuffed the
air and looked cautiously ahead, lowered his bushy tail, drooped his
ears, and began to step softly like a cat, turning every few yards and
looking me in the face with a telling expression, saying plainly
enough, “There is a bear a little way ahead.” I walked carefully in the
indicated direction, until I approached a small flowery meadow that I
was familiar with, then crawled to the foot of a tree on its margin,
bearing in mind what I had been told about the shyness of bears.
Looking out cautiously over the instep of the tree, I saw a big, burly
cinnamon bear about thirty yards off, half erect, his paws resting on
the trunk of a fir that had fallen into the meadow, his hips almost
buried in grass and flowers. He was listening attentively and trying to
catch the scent, showing that in some way he was aware of our approach.
I watched his gestures, and tried to make the most of my opportunity to
learn what I could about him, fearing he would not stay long. He made a
fine picture, standing alert in the sunny garden walled in by the most
beautiful firs in the world.

[Illustration: A Cinnamon Bear.]

After examining him at leisure, noting the sharp muzzle thrust
inquiringly forward, the long shaggy hair on his broad chest, the stiff
ears nearly buried in hair, and the slow, heavy way in which he moved
his head, I foolishly made a rush on him, throwing up my arms and
shouting to frighten him, to see him run. He did not mind the
demonstration much; only pushed his head farther forward, and looked at
me sharply as if asking, “What now? If you want to fight, I’m ready.”
Then I began to fear that on me would fall the work of running. But I
was afraid to run, lest he should be encouraged to pursue me; therefore
I held my ground, staring him in the face within a dozen yards or so,
putting on as bold a look as I could, and hoping the influence of the
human eye would be as great as it is said to be. Under these strained
relations the interview seemed to last a long time. Finally, the bear,
seeing how still I was, calmly withdrew his huge paws from the log,
gave me a piercing look, as if warning me not to follow him, turned,
and walked slowly up the middle of the meadow into the forest; stopping
every few steps and looking back to make sure that I was not trying to
take him at a disadvantage in a rear attack. I was glad to part with
him, and greatly enjoyed the vanishing view as he waded through the
lilies and columbines.

Thenceforth I always tried to give bears respectful notice of my
approach, and they usually kept well out of my way. Though they often
came around my camp in the night, only once afterward, as far as I
know, was I very near one of them in daylight. This time it was a
grizzly I met; and as luck would have it, I was even nearer to him than
I had been to the big cinnamon. Though not a large specimen, he seemed
formidable enough at a distance of less than a dozen yards. His shaggy
coat was well grizzled, his head almost white. When I first caught
sight of him he was eating acorns under a Kellogg oak, at a distance of
perhaps seventy-five yards, and I tried to slip past without disturbing
him. But he had either heard my steps on the gravel or caught my scent,
for he came straight toward me, stopping every rod or so to look and
listen: and as I was afraid to be seen running, I crawled on my hands
and knees a little way to one side and hid behind a libocedrus, hoping
he would pass me unnoticed. He soon came up opposite me, and stood
looking ahead, while I looked at him, peering past the bulging trunk of
the tree. At last, turning his head, he caught sight of mine, stared
sharply a minute or two, and then, with fine dignity, disappeared in a
manzanita-covered earthquake talus.

Considering how heavy and broad-footed bears are, it is wonderful how
little harm they do in the wilderness. Even in the well-watered gardens
of the middle region, where the flowers grow tallest, and where during
warm weather the bears wallow and roll, no evidence of destruction is
visible. On the contrary, under nature’s direction, the massive beasts
act as gardeners. On the forest floor, carpeted with needles and brush,
and on the tough sod of glacier meadows, bears make no mark; but around
the sandy margin of lakes their magnificent tracks form grand lines of
embroidery. Their well-worn trails extend along the main cañons on
either side, and though dusty in some places make no scar on the
landscape. They bite and break off the branches of some of the pines
and oaks to get the nuts, but this pruning is so light that few
mountaineers ever notice it; and though they interfere with the orderly
lichen-veiled decay of fallen trees, tearing them to pieces to reach
the colonies of ants that inhabit them, the scattered ruins are quickly
pressed back into harmony by snow and rain and over-leaning vegetation.

The number of bears that make the Park their home may be guessed by the
number that have been killed by the two best hunters, Duncan and old
David Brown. Duncan began to be known as a bear-killer about the year
1865. He was then roaming the woods, hunting and prospecting on the
south fork of the Merced. A friend told me that he killed his first
bear near his cabin at Wawona; that after mustering courage to fire he
fled, without waiting to learn the effect of his shot. Going back in a
few hours he found poor Bruin dead, and gained courage to try again.
Duncan confessed to me, when we made an excursion together in 1875,
that he was at first mortally afraid of bears, but after killing a half
dozen he began to keep count of his victims, and became ambitious to be
known as a great bear-hunter. In nine years he had killed forty-nine,
keeping count by notches cut on one of the timbers of his cabin on the
shore of Crescent Lake, near the south boundary of the Park. He said
the more he knew about bears, the more he respected them and the less
he feared them. But at the same time he grew more and more cautious,
and never fired until he had every advantage, no matter how long he had
to wait and how far he had to go before he got the bear just right as
to the direction of the wind, the distance, and the way of escape in
case of accident; making allowance also for the character of the
animal, old or young, cinnamon or grizzly. For old grizzlies, he said,
he had no use whatever, and he was mighty careful to avoid their
acquaintance. He wanted to kill an even hundred; then he was going to
confine himself to safer game. There was not much money in bears,
anyhow, and a round hundred was enough for glory.

I have not seen or heard of him lately, and do not know how his bloody
count stands. On my excursions, I occasionally passed his cabin. It was
full of meat and skins hung in bundles from the rafters, and the ground
about it was strewn with bones and hair,—infinitely less tidy than a
bear’s den. He went as hunter and guide with a geological survey party
for a year or two, and was very proud of the scientific knowledge, he
picked up. His admiring fellow mountaineers, he said, gave him credit
for knowing not only the botanical names of all the trees and bushes,
but also the “botanical names of the bears.”

The most famous hunter of the region was David Brown, an old pioneer,
who early in the gold period established his main camp in a little
forest glade on the north fork of the Merced, which is still called
“Brown’s Flat.” No finer solitude for a hunter and prospector could be
found; the climate is delightful all the year, and the scenery of both
earth and sky is a perpetual feast. Though he was not much of a
“scenery fellow,” his friends say that he knew a pretty place when he
saw it as well as any one, and liked mightily to get on the top of a
commanding ridge to “look off.”

When out of provisions, he would take down his old-fashioned
long-barreled rifle from its deer-horn rest over the fireplace and set
out in search of game. Seldom did he have to go far for venison,
because the deer liked the wooded slopes of Pilot Peak ridge, with its
open spots where they could rest and look about them, and enjoy the
breeze from the sea in warm weather, free from troublesome flies, while
they found hiding-places and fine aromatic food in the deer-brush
chaparral. A small, wise dog was his only companion, and well the
little mountaineer understood the object of every hunt, whether deer or
bears, or only grouse hidden in the fir-tops. In deer-hunting Sandy had
little to do, trotting behind his master as he walked noiselessly
through the fragrant woods, careful not to step heavily on dry twigs,
scanning open spots in the chaparral where the deer feed in the early
morning and toward sunset, peering over ridges and swells as new
outlooks were reached, and along alder and willow fringed flats and
streams, until he found a young buck, killed it, tied its legs
together, threw it on his shoulder, and so back to camp. But when bears
were hunted, Sandy played an important part as leader, and several
times saved his master’s life; and it was as a bear-hunter that David
Brown became famous. His method, as I had it from a friend who had
passed many an evening in his cabin listening to his long stories of
adventure, was simply to take a few pounds of flour and his rifle, and
go slowly and silently over hill and valley in the loneliest part of
the wilderness, until little Sandy came upon the fresh track of a bear,
then follow it to the death, paying no heed to time. Wherever the bear
went he went, however rough the ground, led by Sandy, who looked back
from time to time to see how his master was coming on, and regulated
his pace accordingly, never growing weary or allowing any other track
to divert him. When high ground was reached a halt was made, to scan
the openings in every direction, and perchance Bruin would be
discovered sitting upright on his haunches, eating manzanita berries;
pulling down the fruit-laden branches with his paws and pressing them
together, so as to get substantial mouthfuls, however mixed with leaves
and twigs. The time of year enabled the hunter to determine
approximately where the game would be found: in spring and early
summer, in lush grass and clover meadows and in berry tangles along the
banks of streams, or on pea-vine and lupine clad slopes; in late summer
and autumn, beneath the pines, eating the cones cut off by the
squirrels, and in oak groves at the bottom of cañons, munching acorns,
manzanita berries, and cherries; and after snow had fallen, in alluvial
bottoms, feeding on ants and yellow-jacket wasps. These food places
were always cautiously approached, so as to avoid the chance of sudden
encounters.

“Whenever,” said the hunter, “I saw a bear before he saw me, I had no
trouble in killing him. I just took lots of time to learn what he was
up to and how long he would be likely to stay, and to study the
direction of the wind and the lay of the land. Then I worked round to
leeward of him, no matter how far I had to go; crawled and dodged to
within a hundred yards, near the foot of a tree that I could climb, but
which was too small for a bear to climb. There I looked well to the
priming of my rifle, took off my boots so as to climb quickly if
necessary, and, with my rifle in rest and Sandy behind me, waited until
my bear stood right, when I made a sure, or at least a good shot back
of the fore leg. In case he showed fight, I got up the tree I had in
mind, before he could reach me. But bears are slow and awkward with
their eyes, and being to windward they could not scent me, and often I
got in a second shot before they saw the smoke. Usually, however, they
tried to get away when they were hurt, and I let them go a good safe
while before I ventured into the brush after them. Then Sandy was
pretty sure to find them dead; if not, he barked bold as a lion to draw
attention, or rushed in and nipped them behind, enabling me to get to a
safe distance and watch a chance for a finishing shot.

“Oh yes, bear-hunting is a mighty interesting business, and safe enough
if followed just right, though, like every other business, especially
the wild kind, it has its accidents, and Sandy and I have had close
calls at times. Bears are nobody’s fools, and they know enough to let
men alone as a general thing, unless they are wounded, or cornered, or
have cubs. In my opinion, a hungry old mother would catch and eat a
man, if she could; which is only fair play, anyhow, for we eat them.
But nobody, as far as I know, has been eaten up in these rich
mountains. Why they never tackle a fellow when he is lying asleep I
never could understand. They could gobble us mighty handy, but I
suppose it’s nature to respect a sleeping man.”

Sheep-owners and their shepherds have killed a great many bears, mostly
by poison and traps of various sorts. Bears are fond of mutton, and
levy heavy toll on every flock driven into the mountains. They usually
come to the corral at night, climb in, kill a sheep with a stroke of
the paw, carry it off a little distance, eat about half of it, and
return the next night for the other half; and so on all summer, or
until they are themselves killed. It is not, however, by direct
killing, but by suffocation through crowding against the corral wall in
fright, that the greatest losses are incurred. From ten to fifteen
sheep are found dead, smothered in the corral, after every attack; or
the walls are broken, and the flock is scattered far and wide. A flock
may escape the attention of these marauders for a week or two in the
spring; but after their first taste of the fine mountain-fed meat the
visits are persistently kept up, in spite of all precautions. Once I
spent a night with two Portuguese shepherds, who were greatly troubled
with bears, from two to four or five visiting them almost every night.
Their camp was near the middle of the Park, and the wicked bears, they
said, were getting worse and worse. Not waiting now until dark, they
came out of the brush in broad daylight, and boldly carried off as many
sheep as they liked. One evening, before sundown, a bear, followed by
two cubs, came for an early supper, as the flock was being slowly
driven toward the camp. Joe, the elder of the shepherds, warned by many
exciting experiences, promptly climbed a tall tamarack pine, and left
the freebooters to help themselves; while Antone, calling him a coward,
and declaring that he was not going to let bears eat up his sheep
before his face, set the dogs on them, and rushed toward them with a
great noise and a stick. The frightened cubs ran up a tree, and the
mother ran to meet the shepherd and dogs. Antone stood astonished for a
moment, eying the oncoming bear; then fled faster than Joe had, closely
pursued. He scrambled to the roof of their little cabin, the only
refuge quickly available; and fortunately, the bear, anxious about her
young, did not climb after him,—only held him in mortal terror a few
minutes, glaring and threatening, then hastened back to her cubs,
called them down, went to the frightened, huddled flock, killed a
sheep, and feasted in peace. Antone piteously entreated cautious Joe to
show him a good safe tree, up which he climbed like a sailor climbing a
mast, and held on as long as he could with legs crossed, the slim pine
recommended by Joe being nearly branchless. “So you, too, are a bear
coward as well as Joe,” I said, after hearing the story. “Oh, I tell
you,” he replied, with grand solemnity, “bear face close by look awful;
she just as soon eat me as not. She do so as eef all my sheeps b’long
every one to her own self. I run to bear no more. I take tree every
time.”

After this the shepherds corraled the flock about an hour before
sundown, chopped large quantities of dry wood and made a circle of
fires around the corral every night, and one with a gun kept watch on a
stage built in a pine by the side of the cabin, while the other slept.
But after the first night or two this fire fence did no good, for the
robbers seemed to regard the light as an advantage, after becoming used
to it.

On the night I spent at their camp the show made by the wall of fire
when it was blazing in its prime was magnificent,—the illumined trees
around about relieved against solid darkness, and the two thousand
sheep lying down in one gray mass, sprinkled with gloriously brilliant
gems, the effect of the firelight in their eyes. It was nearly midnight
when a pair of the freebooters arrived. They walked boldly through a
gap in the fire circle, killed two sheep, carried them out, and
vanished in the dark woods, leaving ten dead in a pile, trampled down
and smothered against the corral fence; while the scared watcher in the
tree did not fire a single shot, saying he was afraid he would hit some
of the sheep, as the bears got among them before he could get a good
sight.

In the morning I asked the shepherds why they did not move the flock to
a new pasture. “Oh, no use!” cried Antone. “Look my dead sheeps. We
move three four time before, all the same bear come by the track. No
use. To-morrow we go home below. Look my dead sheeps. Soon all dead.”

Thus were they driven out of the mountains more than a month before the
usual time. After Uncle Sam’s soldiers, bears are the most effective
forest police, but some of the shepherds are very successful in killing
them. Altogether, by hunters, mountaineers, Indians, and sheepmen,
probably five or six hundred have been killed within the bounds of the
Park, during the last thirty years. But they are not in danger of
extinction. Now that the Park is guarded by soldiers, not only has the
vegetation in great part come back to the desolate ground, but all the
wild animals are increasing in numbers. No guns are allowed in the Park
except under certain restrictions, and after a permit has been obtained
from the officer in charge. This has stopped the barbarous slaughter of
bears, and especially of deer, by shepherds, hunters, and hunting
tourists, who, it would seem, can find no pleasure without blood.

The Sierra deer—the blacktail—spend the winters in the brushy and
exceedingly rough region just below the main timber-belt, and are less
accessible to hunters there than when they are passing through the
comparatively open forests to and from their summer pastures near the
summits of the range. They go up the mountains early in the spring as
the snow melts, not waiting for it all to disappear; reaching the high
Sierra about the first of June, and the coolest recesses at the base of
the peaks a month or so later. I have tracked them for miles over
compacted snow from three to ten feet deep.

Deer are capital mountaineers, making their way into the heart of the
roughest mountains; seeking not only pasturage, but a cool climate, and
safe hidden places in which to bring forth their young. They are not
supreme as rock-climbing animals; they take second rank, yielding the
first to the mountain sheep, which dwell above them on the highest
crags and peaks. Still, the two meet frequently; for the deer climbs
all the peaks save the lofty summits above the glaciers, crossing piles
of angular boulders, roaring swollen streams, and sheer-walled cañons
by fords and passes that would try the nerves of the hardiest
mountaineers,—climbing with graceful ease and reserve of strength that
cannot fail to arouse admiration. Everywhere some species of deer seems
to be at home,—on rough or smooth ground, lowlands or highlands, in
swamps and barrens and the densest woods, in varying climates, hot or
cold, over all the continent; maintaining glorious health, never making
an awkward step. Standing, lying down, walking, feeding, running even
for life, it is always invincibly graceful, and adds beauty and
animation to every landscape,—a charming animal, and a great credit to
nature.

I never see one of the common blacktail deer, the only species in the
Park, without fresh admiration; and since I never carry a gun I see
them well: lying beneath a juniper or dwarf pine, among the brown
needles on the brink of some cliff or the end of a ridge commanding a
wide outlook; feeding in sunny openings among chaparral, daintily
selecting aromatic leaves and twigs; leading their fawns out of my way,
or making them lie down and hide; bounding past through the forest, or
curiously advancing and retreating again and again.

One morning when I was eating breakfast in a little garden spot on the
Kaweah, hedged around with chaparral, I noticed a deer’s head thrust
through the bushes, the big beautiful eyes gazing at me. I kept still,
and the deer ventured forward a step, then snorted and withdrew. In a
few minutes she returned, and came into the open garden, stepping with
infinite grace, followed by two others. After showing themselves for a
moment, they bounded over the hedge with sharp, timid snorts and
vanished. But curiosity brought them back with still another, and all
four came into my garden, and, satisfied that I meant them no ill,
began to feed, actually eating breakfast with me, like tame, gentle
sheep around a shepherd,—rare company, and the most graceful in
movements and attitudes. I eagerly watched them while they fed on
ceanothus and wild cherry, daintily culling single leaves here and
there from the side of the hedge, turning now and then to ship a few
leaves of mint from the midst of the garden flowers. Grass they did not
eat at all. No wonder the contents of the deer’s stomach are eaten by
the Indians.

[Illustration: Deer Feeding in the Forest.]

While exploring the upper cañon of the north fork of the San Joaquin,
one evening, the sky threatening rain, I searched for a dry bed, and
made choice of a big juniper that had been pushed down by a snow
avalanche, but was resting stubbornly on its knees high enough to let
me lie under its broad trunk. Just below my shelter there was another
juniper on the very brink of a precipice, and, examining it, I found a
deer-bed beneath it, completely protected and concealed by drooping
branches,—a fine refuge and lookout as well as resting-place. About an
hour before dark I heard the clear, sharp snorting of a deer, and
looking down on the brushy, rocky cañon bottom, discovered an anxious
doe that no doubt had her fawns concealed near by. She bounded over the
chaparral and up the farther slope of the wall, often stopping to look
back and listen,—a fine picture of vivid, eager alertness. I sat
perfectly still, and as my shirt was colored like the juniper bark I
was not easily seen. After a little she came cautiously toward me,
sniffing the air and grazing, and her movements, as she descended the
cañon side over boulder piles and brush and fallen timber, were
admirably strong and beautiful; she never strained or made apparent
efforts, although jumping high here and there. As she drew nigh she
sniffed anxiously, trying the air in different directions until she
caught my scent; then bounded off, and vanished behind a small grove of
firs. Soon she came back with the same caution and insatiable
curiosity,—coming and going five or six times. While I sat admiring
her, a Douglas squirrel, evidently excited by her noisy alarms, climbed
a boulder beneath me, and witnessed her performances as attentively as
I did, while a risky chipmunk, too restless or hungry for such shows,
busied himself about his supper in a thicket of shadbushes, the fruit
of which was then ripe, glancing about on the slender twigs lightly as
a sparrow.

Toward the end of the Indian summer, when the young are strong, the
deer begin to gather in little bands of from six to fifteen or twenty,
and on the approach of the first snowstorm they set out on their march
down the mountains to their winter quarters; lingering usually on warm
hillsides and spurs eight or ten miles below the summits, as if loath
to leave. About the end of November, a heavy, far-reaching storm drives
them down in haste along the dividing ridges between the rivers, led by
old experienced bucks whose knowledge of the topography is wonderful.

It is when the deer are coming down that the Indians set out on their
grand fall hunt. Too lazy to go into the recesses of the mountains away
from trails, they wait for the deer to come out, and then waylay them.
This plan also has the advantage of finding them in bands. Great
preparations are made. Old guns are mended, bullets moulded, and the
hunters wash themselves and fast to some extent, to insure good luck,
as they say. Men and women, old and young, set forth together. Central
camps are made on the well-known highways of the deer, which are soon
red with blood. Each hunter comes in laden, old crones as well as
maidens smiling on the luckiest. All grow fat and merry. Boys, each
armed with an antlered head, play at buck-fighting, and plague the
industrious women, who are busily preparing the meat for
transportation, by stealing up behind them and throwing fresh hides
over them. But the Indians are passing away here as everywhere, and
their red camps on the mountains are fewer every year.

There are panthers, foxes, badgers, porcupines, and coyotes in the
Park, but not in large numbers. I have seen coyotes well back in the
range at the head of the Tuolumne Meadows as early as June 1st, before
the snow was gone, feeding on marmots; but they are far more numerous
on the inhabited lowlands around ranches, where they enjoy life on
chickens, turkeys, quail eggs, ground squirrels, hares, etc., and all
kinds of fruit. Few wild sheep, I fear, are left hereabouts; for,
though safe on the high peaks, they are driven down the eastern slope
of the mountains when the deer are driven down the western, to ridges
and outlying spurs where the snow does not fall to a great depth, and
there they are within reach of the cattlemen’s rifles.

The two squirrels of the Park, the Douglas and the California gray,
keep all the woods lively. The former is far more abundant and more
widely distributed, being found all the way up from the foothills to
the dwarf pines on the Summit peaks. He is the most influential of the
Sierra animals, though small, and the brightest of all the squirrels I
know,—a squirrel of squirrels, quick mountain vigor and valor
condensed, purely wild, and as free from disease as a sunbeam. One
cannot think of such an animal ever being weary or sick. He claims all
the woods, and is inclined to drive away even men as intruders. How he
scolds, and what faces he makes! If not so comically small he would be
a dreadful fellow. The gray, Sciurus fossor, is the handsomest, I
think, of all the large American squirrels. He is something like the
Eastern gray, but is brighter and clearer in color, and more lithe and
slender. He dwells in the oak and pine woods up to a height of about
five thousand feet above the sea, is rather common in Yosemite Valley,
Hetch-Hetchy, Kings River Cañon, and indeed in all the main cañons and
Yosemites, but does not like the high fir-covered ridges. Compared with
the Douglas, the gray is more than twice as large; nevertheless, he
manages to make his way through the trees with less stir than his
small, peppery neighbor, and is much less influential in every way. In
the spring, before the pine-nuts and hazel-nuts are ripe, he examines
last year’s cones for the few seeds that may be left in them between
the half-open scales, and gleans fallen nuts and seeds on the ground
among the leaves, after making sure that no enemy is nigh. His fine
tail floats, now behind, now above him, level or gracefully curled,
light and radiant as dry thistledown. His body seems hardly more
substantial than his tail. The Douglas is a firm, emphatic bolt of
life, fiery, pungent, full of brag and show and fight, and his
movements have none of the elegant deliberation of the gray. They are
so quick and keen they almost sting the onlooker, and the acrobatic
harlequin gyrating show he makes of himself turns one giddy to see. The
gray is shy and oftentimes stealthy, as if half expecting to find an
enemy in every tree and bush and behind every log; he seems to wish to
be let alone, and manifests no desire to be seen, or admired, or
feared. He is hunted by the Indians, and this of itself is cause enough
for caution. The Douglas is less attractive for game, and probably
increasing in numbers in spite of every enemy. He goes his ways bold as
a lion, up and down and across, round and round, the happiest, merriest
of all the hairy tribe, and at the same time tremendously earnest and
solemn, sunshine incarnate, making every tree tingle with his electric
toes. If you prick him, you cannot think he will bleed. He seems above
the chance and change that beset common mortals, though in busily
gathering burs and nuts he shows that he has to work for a living, like
the rest of us. I never found a dead Douglas. He gets into the world
and out of it without being noticed; only in prime is he seen, like
some little plants that are visible only when in bloom.

The little striped Tamias quadrivittatus is one of the most amiable and
delightful of all the mountain tree-climbers. A brighter, cheerier
chipmunk does not exist. He is smarter, more arboreal and
squirrel-like, than the familiar Eastern species, and is distributed as
widely on the Sierra as the Douglas. Every forest, however dense or
open, every hilltop and cañon, however brushy or bare, is cheered and
enlivened by this happy little animal. You are likely to notice him
first on the lower edge of the coniferous belt, where the Sabine and
yellow pines meet; and thence upward, go where you may, you will find
him every day, even in winter, unless the weather is stormy. He is an
exceedingly interesting little fellow, full of odd, quaint ways,
confiding, thinking no evil; and without being a squirrel—a true
shadow-tail—he lives the life of a squirrel, and has almost all
squirrelish accomplishments without aggressive quarrelsomeness.

I never weary of watching him as he frisks about the bushes, gathering
seeds and berries; poising on slender twigs of wild cherry, shad,
chinquapin, buckthorn, bramble; skimming along prostrate trunks or over
the grassy, needle-strewn forest floor; darting from boulder to boulder
on glacial pavements and the tops of the great domes. When the seeds of
the conifers are ripe, he climbs the trees and cuts off the cones for a
winter store, working diligently, though not with the tremendous
lighting energy of the Douglas, who frequently drives him out of the
best trees. Then he lies in wait, and picks up a share of the burs cut
off by his domineering cousin, and stores them beneath logs and in
hollows. Few of the Sierra animals are so well liked as this little
airy, fluffy half squirrel, half spermophile. So gentle, confiding, and
busily cheery and happy, he takes one’s heart and keeps his place among
the best-loved of the mountain darlings. A diligent collector of seeds,
nuts, and berries, of course he is well fed, though never in the least
dumpy with fat. On the contrary, he looks like a mere fluff of fur,
weighing but little more than a field mouse, and of his frisky,
birdlike liveliness without haste there is no end. Douglas can bark
with his mouth closed, but little quad always opens his when he talks
or sings. He has a considerable variety of notes which correspond with
his movements, some of them sweet and liquid, like water dripping into
a pool with tinkling sound. His eyes are black and animated, shining
like dew. He seems dearly to like teasing a dog, venturing within a few
feet of it, then frisking away with a lively chipping and low
squirrelish churring; beating time to his music, such as it is, with
his tail, which at each chip and churr describes a half circle. Not
even Douglas is surer footed or takes greater risks. I have seen him
running about on sheer Yosemite cliffs, holding on with as little
effort as a fly and as little thought of danger, in places where, if he
had made the least slip, he would have fallen thousands of feet. How
fine it would be could mountaineers move about on precipices with the
same sure grip!

Before the pine-nuts are ripe, grass seeds and those of the many
species of ceanothus, with strawberries, raspberries, and the soft red
thimbleberries of Rubus nutkanus, form the bulk of his food, and a
neater eater is not to be found in the mountains. Bees powdered with
pollen, poking their blunt noses into the bells of flowers, are
comparatively clumsy and boorish. Frisking along some fallen pine or
fir, when the grass seeds are ripe, he looks about him, considering
which of the tufts he sees is likely to have the best, runs out to it,
selects what he thinks is sure to be a good head, cuts it off, carries
it to the top of the log, sits upright and nibbles out the grain
without getting awns in his mouth, turning the head round, holding it
and fingering it as if playing on a flute; then skips for another and
another, bringing them to the same dining-log.

The woodchuck (_Arctomys monax_) dwells on high bleak ridges and
boulder piles; and a very different sort of mountaineer is he,—bulky,
fat, aldermanic, and fairly bloated at times by hearty indulgence in
the lush pastures of his airy home. And yet he is by no means a dull
animal. In the midst of what we regard as storm-beaten desolation, high
in the frosty air, beside the glaciers he pipes and whistles right
cheerily and lives to a good old age. If you are as early a riser as he
is, you may oftentimes see him come blinking out of his burrow to meet
the first beams of the morning and take a sunbath on some favorite
flat-topped boulder. Afterward, well warmed, he goes to breakfast in
one of his garden hollows, eats heartily like a cow in clover until
comfortably swollen, then goes a-visiting, and plays and loves and
fights.

In the spring of 1875, when I was exploring the peaks and glaciers
about the head of the middle fork of the San Joaquin, I had crossed the
range from the head of Owen River, and one morning, passing around a
frozen lake where the snow was perhaps ten feet deep, I was surprised
to find the fresh track of a woodchuck plainly marked, the sun having
softened the surface. What could the animal be thinking of, coming out
so early while all the ground was snow-buried? The steady trend of his
track showed he had a definite aim, and fortunately it was toward a
mountain thirteen thousand feet high that I meant to climb. So I
followed to see if I could find out what he was up to. From the base of
the mountain the track pointed straight up, and I knew by the melting
snow that I was not far behind him. I lost the track on a crumbling
ridge, partly projecting through the snow, but soon discovered it
again. Well toward the summit of the mountain, in an open spot on the
south side, nearly inclosed by disintegrating pinnacles among which the
sun heat reverberated, making an isolated patch of warm climate, I
found a nice garden, full of rock cress, phlox, silene, draba, etc.,
and a few grasses; and in this garden I overtook the wanderer, enjoying
a fine fresh meal, perhaps the first of the season. How did he know the
way to this one garden spot, so high and far off, and what told him
that it was in bloom while yet the snow was ten feet deep over his den?
For this it would seem he would need more botanical, topographical, and
climatological knowledge than most mountaineers are possessed of.

[Illustration: A Mountain Woodchuck.]

The shy, curious mountain beaver, Haplodon, lives on the heights, not
far from the woodchuck. He digs canals and controls the flow of small
streams under the sod. And it is startling when one is camped on the
edge of a sloping meadow near the homes of these industrious
mountaineers, to be awakened in the still night by the sound of water
rushing and gurgling under one’s head in a newly formed canal. Pouched
gophers also have a way of awakening nervous campers that is quite as
exciting as the Haplodon’s paln; that is, by a series of firm upward
pushes when they are driving tunnels and shoving up the dirt. One
naturally cries out, “Who’s there?” and then discovering the cause,
“All right. Go on. Good-night.” and goes to sleep again.

The haymaking pika, bob-tailed spermophile, and wood-rat are also among
the most interesting of the Sierra animals. The last Neotoma is
scarcely at all like the common rat, is nearly twice as large, has a
delicate, soft, brownish fur, white on the belly, large ears thin and
translucent, eyes full and liquid and mild in expression, nose blunt
and squirrelish, slender claws sharp as needles, and as his limbs are
strong he can climb about as well as a squirrel; while no rat or
squirrel has so innocent a look, is so easily approached, or in general
expresses so much confidence in one’s good intentions. He seems too
fine for the thorny thickets he inhabits, and his big, rough hut is as
unlike himself as possible. No other animal in these mountains makes
nests so large and striking in appearance as his. They are built of all
kinds of sticks (broken branches, and old rotten moss-grown chunks and
green twigs, smooth or thorny, cut from the nearest bushes), mixed with
miscellaneous rubbish and curious odds and ends,—bits of cloddy earth,
stones, bones, bits of deer-horn, etc.: the whole simply piled in
conical masses on the ground in chaparral thickets. Some of these
cabins are five or six feet high, and occasionally a dozen or more are
grouped together; less, perhaps, for society’s sake than for advantages
of food and shelter.

Coming through deep, stiff chaparral in the heart of the wilderness,
heated and weary in forcing a way, the solitary explorer, happening
into one of these curious neotoma villages, is startled at the strange
sight, and may imagine he is in an Indian village, and feel anxious as
to the reception he will get in a place so wild. At first, perhaps, not
a single inhabitant will be seen, or at most only two or three seated
on the tops of their huts as at the doors, observing the stranger with
the mildest of mild eyes. The nest in the centre of the cabin is made
of grass and films of bark chewed to tow, and lined with feathers and
the down of various seeds. The thick, rough walls seem to be built for
defense against enemies—fox, coyote, etc.—as well as for shelter, and
the delicate creatures in their big, rude homes, suggest tender
flowers, like those of Salvia carduacea, defended by thorny involucres.

Sometimes the home is built in the forks of an oak, twenty or thirty
feet from the ground, and even in garrets. Among housekeepers who have
these bushmen as neighbors or guests they are regarded as thieves,
because they carry away and pile together everything transportable
(knives, forks, tin cups, spoons, spectacles, combs, nails,
kindling-wood, etc., as well as eatables of all sorts), to strengthen
their fortifications or to shine among rivals. Once, far back in the
high Sierra, they stole my snow-goggles, the lid of my teapot, and my
aneroid barometer; and one stormy night, when encamped under a
prostrate cedar, I was awakened by a gritting sound on the granite, and
by the light of my fire I discovered a handsome neotoma beside me,
dragging away my ice-hatchet, pulling with might and main by a buckskin
string on the handle. I threw bits of bark at him and made a noise to
frighten him, but he stood scolding and chattering back at me, his fine
eyes shining with an air of injured innocence.

A great variety of lizards enliven the warm portions of the Park. Some
of them are more than a foot in length, others but little larger than
grasshoppers. A few are snaky and repulsive at first sight, but most of
the species are handsome and attractive, and bear acquaintance well; we
like them better the farther we see into their charming lives. Small
fellow mortals, gentle and guileless, they are easily tamed, and have
beautiful eyes, expressing the clearest innocence, so that, in spite of
prejudices brought from cool, lizardless countries, one must soon learn
to like them. Even the horned toad of the plains and foothills, called
horrid, is mild and gentle, with charming eyes, and so are the
snakelike species found in the underbrush of the lower forests. These
glide in curves with all the ease and grace of snakes, while their
small, undeveloped limbs drag for the most part as useless appendages.
One specimen that I measured was fourteen inches long, and as far as I
saw it made no use whatever of its diminutive limbs.

Most of them glint and dart on the sunny rocks and across open spaces
from bush to bush, swift as dragonflies and humming-birds, and about as
brilliantly colored. They never make a long-sustained run, whatever
their object, but dart direct as arrows for a distance of ten or twenty
feet, then suddenly stop, and as suddenly start again. These stops are
necessary as rests, for they are short-winded, and when pursued
steadily are soon run out of breath, pant pitifully, and may easily be
caught where no retreat in bush or rock is quickly available.

If you stay with them a week or two and behave well, these gentle
saurians, descendants of an ancient race of giants, will soon know and
trust you, come to your feet, play, and watch your every motion with
cunning curiosity. You will surely learn to like them, not only the
bright one, gorgeous as the rainbow, but the little ones, gray as
lichened granite, and scarcely bigger than grasshoppers; and they will
teach you that scales may cover as fine a nature as hair or feathers or
anything tailored.

There are many snakes in the cañons and lower forests, but they are
mostly handsome and harmless. Of all the tourists and travelers who
have visited Yosemite and the adjacent mountains, not one has been
bitten by a snake of any sort, while thousands have been charmed by
them. Some of them vie with the lizards in beauty of color and dress
patterns. Only the rattlesnake is venomous, and he carefully keeps his
venom to himself as far as man is concerned, unless his life is
threatened.

Before I learned to respect rattlesnakes I killed two, the first on the
San Joaquin plain. He was coiled comfortably around a tuft of
bunch-grass, and I discovered him when he was between my feet as I was
stepping over him. He held his head down and did not attempt to strike,
although in danger of being trampled. At that time, thirty years ago, I
imagined that rattlesnakes should be killed wherever found. I had no
weapon of any sort, and on the smooth plain there was not a stick or a
stone within miles; so I crushed him by jumping on him, as the deer are
said to do. Looking me in the face he saw I meant mischief, and quickly
cast himself into a coil, ready to strike in defense. I knew he could
not strike when traveling, therefore I threw handfuls of dirt and grass
sods at him, to tease him out of coil. He held his ground a few
minutes, threatening and striking, and then started off to get rid of
me. I ran forward and jumped on him; but he drew back his head so
quickly my heel missed, and he also missed his stroke at me.
Persecuted, tormented, again and again he tried to get away, bravely
striking out to protect himself; but at last my heel came squarely
down, sorely wounding him, and a few more brutal stampings crushed him.
I felt degraded by the killing business, farther from heaven, and I
made up my mind to try to be at least as fair and charitable as the
snakes themselves, and to kill no more save in self-defense.

The second killing might also, I think, have been avoided, and I have
always felt somewhat sore and guilty about it. I had built a little
cabin in Yosemite, and for convenience in getting water, and for the
sake of music and society, I led a small stream from Yosemite Creek
into it. Running along the side of the wall it was not in the way, and
it had just fall enough to ripple and sing in low, sweet tones, making
delightful company, especially at night when I was lying awake. Then a
few frogs came in and made merry with the stream,—and one snake, I
suppose to catch the frogs.

Returning from my long walks, I usually brought home a large handful of
plants, partly for study, partly for ornament, and set them in a corner
of the cabin, with their stems in the stream to keep them fresh. One
day, when I picked up a handful that had begun to fade, I uncovered a
large coiled rattler that had been hiding behind the flowers. Thus
suddenly brought to light face to face with the rightful owner of the
place, the poor reptile was desperately embarrassed, evidently
realizing that he had no right in the cabin. It was not only fear that
he showed, but a good deal of downright bashfulness and embarrassment,
like that of a more than half honest person caught under suspicious
circumstances behind a door. Instead of striking or threatening to
strike, though coiled and ready, he slowly drew his head down as far as
he could, with awkward, confused kinks in his neck and a shamefaced
expression, as if wishing the ground would open and hide him. I have
looked into the eyes of so many wild animals that I feel sure I did not
mistake the feelings of this unfortunate snake. I did not want to kill
him, but I had many visitors, some of them children, and I oftentimes
came in late at night; so I judged he must die.

Since then I have seen perhaps a hundred or more in these mountains,
but I have never intentionally disturbed them, nor have they disturbed
me to any great extent, even by accident, though in danger of being
stepped on. Once, while I was on my knees kindling a fire, one glided
under the arch made by my arm. He was only going away from the ground I
had selected for a camp, and there was not the slightest danger,
because I kept still and allowed him to go in peace. The only time I
felt myself in serious danger was when I was coming out of the Tuolumne
Cañon by a steep side cañon toward the head of Yosemite Creek. On an
earthquake talus, a boulder in my way presented a front so high that I
could just reach the upper edge of it while standing on the next below
it. Drawing myself up, as soon as my head was above the flat top of it
I caught sight of a coiled rattler. My hands had alarmed him, and he
was ready for me; but even with this provocation, and when my head came
in sight within a foot of him, he did not strike. The last time I
sauntered through the big cañon I saw about two a day. One was not
coiled, but neatly folded in a narrow space between two cobble-stones
on the side of the river, his head below the level of them, ready to
shoot up like a Jack-in-the-box for frogs or birds. My foot spanned the
space above within an inch or two of his head, but he only held it
lower. In making my way through a particularly tedious tangle of
buckthorn, I parted the branches on the side of an open spot and threw
my bundle of bread into it; and when, with my arms free, I was pushing
through after it, I saw a small rattlesnake dragging his tail from
beneath my bundle. When he caught sight of me he eyed me angrily, and
with an air of righteous indignation seemed to be asking why I had
thrown that stuff on him. He was so small that I was inclined to slight
him, but he struck out so angrily that I drew back, and approached the
opening from the other side. But he had been listening, and when I
looked through the brush I found him confronting me, still with a
come-in-if-you-dare expression. In vain I tried to explain that I only
wanted my bread; he stoutly held the ground in front of it; so I went
back a dozen rods and kept still for half an hour, and when I returned
he had gone.

One evening, near sundown, in a very rough, boulder-choked portion of
the cañon, I searched long for a level spot for a bed, and at last was
glad to find a patch of flood-sand on the river-bank, and a lot of
driftwood close by for a campfire. But when I threw down my bundle, I
found two snakes in possession of the ground. I might have passed the
night even in this snake den without danger, for I never knew a single
instance of their coming into camp in the night; but fearing that, in
so small a space, some late comers, not aware of my presence, might get
stepped on when I was replenishing the fire, to avoid possible crowding
I encamped on one of the earthquake boulders.

There are two species of Crotalus in the Park, and when I was exploring
the basin of Yosemite Creek I thought I had discovered a new one. I saw
a snake with curious divided appendages on its head. Going nearer, I
found that the strange headgear was only the feet of a frog. Cutting a
switch, I struck the snake lightly until he disgorged the poor frog, or
rather allowed it to back out. On its return to the light from one of
the very darkest of death valleys, it blinked a moment with a sort of
dazed look, then plunged into a stream, apparently happy and well.

Frogs abound in all the bogs, marshes, pools, and lakes, however cold
and high and isolated. How did they manage to get up these high
mountains? Surely not by jumping. Long and dry excursions through weary
miles of boulders and brush would be trying to frogs. Most likely their
stringy spawn is carried on the feet of ducks, cranes, and other
waterbirds. Anyhow, they are most thoroughly distributed, and flourish
famously. What a cheery, hearty set they are, and how bravely their
krink and tronk concerts enliven the rocky wilderness!

None of the high-lying mountain lakes or branches of the rivers above
sheer falls had fish of any sort until stocked by the agency of man. In
the high Sierra, the only river in which trout exist naturally is the
middle fork of Kings River. There are no sheer falls on this stream;
some of the rapids, however, are so swift and rough, even at the lowest
stage of water, that it is surprising any fish can climb them. I found
trout in abundance in this fork up to seventy-five hundred feet. They
also run quite high on the Kern. On the Merced they get no higher than
Yosemite Valley, four thousand feet, all the forks of the river being
barred there by sheer falls, and on the main Tuolumne they are stopped
by a fall below Hetch-Hetchy, still lower than Yosemite. Though these
upper waters are inaccessible to the fish, one would suppose their eggs
might have been planted there by some means. Nature has so many ways of
doing such things. In this case she waited for the agency of man, and
now many of these hitherto fishless lakes and streams are full of fine
trout, stocked by individual enterprise, Walton clubs etc., in great
part under the auspices of the United States Fish Commission. A few
trout carried into Hetch-Hetchy in a common water-bucket have
multiplied wonderfully fast. Lake Tenaya, at an elevation of over eight
thousand feet, was stocked eight years ago by Mr. Murphy, who carried a
few trout from Yosemite. Many of the small streams of the eastern slope
have also been stocked with trout transported over the passes in tin
cans on the backs of mules. Soon, it would seem, all the streams of the
range will be enriched by these lively fish, and will become the means
of drawing thousands of visitors into the mountains. Catching trout
with a bit of bent wire is a rather trivial business, but fortunately
people fish better than they know. In most cases it is the man who is
caught. Trout-fishing regarded as bait for catching men, for the saving
of both body and soul, is important, and deserves all the expense and
care bestowed on it.

[Illustration: A Trout Stream in the Sierra Nevada (King’s River).]




CHAPTER VII
Among the Birds of the Yosemite


Travelers in the Sierra forests usually complain of the want of life.
“The trees,” they say, “are fine, but the empty stillness is deadly;
there are no animals to be seen, no birds. We have not heard a song in
all the woods.” And no wonder! They go in large parties with mules and
horses; they make a great noise; they are dressed in outlandish
unnatural colors; every animal shuns them. Even the frightened pines
would run away if they could. But Nature-lovers, devout, silent,
open-eyed, looking and listening with love, find no lack of inhabitants
in these mountain mansions, and they come to them gladly. Not to
mention the large animals or the small insect people, every waterfall
has its ouzel and every tree its squirrel or tamias or bird: tiny
nuthatch threading the furrows of the bark, sheerily whispering to
itself as it deftly pries off loose scales and examines the curled
edges of lichens; or Clarke crow or jay examining the cones; or some
singer—oriole, tanager, warbler—resting, feeding, attending to domestic
affairs. Hawks and eagles sail overhead, grouse walk in happy flocks
below, and song sparrows sing in every bed of chaparral. There is no
crowding, to be sure. Unlike the low Eastern trees, those of the Sierra
in the main forest belt average nearly two hundred feet in height, and
of course many birds are required to make much show in them, and many
voices to fill them. Nevertheless, the whole range, from foothills to
snowy summits, is shaken into song every summer; and though low and
thin in winter, the music never ceases.

The sage cock (_Centrocercus urophasianus_) is the largest of the
Sierra game-birds and the king of American grouse. It is an admirably
strong, hardy, handsome, independent bird, able with comfort to bid
defiance to heat, cold, drought, hunger, and all sorts of storms,
living on whatever seeds or insects chance to come in its way, or
simply on the leaves of sage-brush, everywhere abundant on its desert
range. In winter, when the temperature is oftentimes below zero, and
heavy snowstorms are blowing, he sits beneath a sage bush and allows
himself to be covered, poking his head now and then through the snow to
feed on the leaves of his shelter. Not even the Arctic ptarmigan is
hardier in braving frost and snow and wintry darkness. When in full
plumage he is a beautiful bird, with a long, firm, sharp-pointed tail,
which in walking is slightly raised and swings sidewise back and forth
with each step. The male is handsomely marked with black and white on
the neck, back, and wings, weighs five or six pounds, and measures
about thirty inches in length. The female is clad mostly in plain
brown, and is not so large. They occasionally wander from the sage
plains into the open nut-pine and juniper woods, but never enter the
main coniferous forest. It is only in the broad, dry, half-desert sage
plains that they are quite at home, where the weather is blazing hot in
summer, cold in winter. If any one passes through a flock, all squat on
the gray ground and hold their heads low, hoping to escape observation;
but when approached within a rod or so, they rise with a magnificent
burst of wing-beats, looking about as big as turkeys and making a noise
like a whirlwind.

On the 28th of June, at the head of Owen’s Valley, I caught one of the
young that was then just able to fly. It was seven inches long, of a
uniform gray color, blunt-billed, and when captured cried lustily in a
shrill piping voice, clear in tone as a boy’s small willow whistle. I
have seen flocks of from ten to thirty or forty on the east margin of
the Park, where the Mono Desert meets the gray foothills of the Sierra;
but since cattle have been pastured there they are becoming rarer every
year.

Another magnificent bird, the blue or dusky grouse, next in size to the
sage cock, is found all through the main forest belt, though not in
great numbers. They like best the heaviest silver-fir woods near garden
and meadow openings, where there is but little underbrush to cover the
approach of enemies. When a flock of these brave birds, sauntering and
feeding on the sunny, flowery levels of some hidden meadow or Yosemite
valley far back in the heart of the mountains, see a man for the first
time in their lives, they rise with hurried notes of surprise and
excitement and alight on the lowest branches of the trees, wondering
what the wanderer may be, and showing great eagerness to get a good
view of the strange vertical animal. Knowing nothing of guns, they
allow you to approach within a half dozen paces, then quietly hop a few
branches higher or fly to the next tree without a thought of
concealment, so that you may observe them as long as you like, near
enough to see the fine shading of their plumage, the feathers on their
toes, and the innocent wonderment in their beautiful wild eyes. But in
the neighborhood of roads and trails they soon become shy, and when
disturbed fly into the highest, leafiest trees, and suddenly become
invisible, so well do they know how to hide and keep still and make use
of their protective coloring. Nor can they be easily dislodged ere they
are ready to go. In vain the hunter goes round and round some tall pine
or fir into which he has perhaps seen a dozen enter, gazing up through
the branches, straining his eyes while his gun is held ready; not a
feather can he see unless his eyes have been sharpened by long
experience and knowledge of the blue grouse’s habits. Then, perhaps,
when he is thinking that the tree must be hollow and that the birds
have all gone inside, they burst forth with a startling whir of
wing-beats, and after gaining full speed go skating swiftly away
through the forest arches in a long, silent, wavering slide, with wings
held steady.

[Illustration: Mono Desert from Mono Pass.]

During the summer they are most of the time on the ground, feeding on
insects, seeds, berries, etc., around the margins of open spots and
rocky moraines, playing and sauntering, taking sun baths and sand
baths, and drinking at little pools and rills during the heat of the
day. In winter they live mostly in the trees, depending on buds for
food, sheltering beneath dense overlapping branches at night and during
storms on the leeside of the trunk, sunning themselves on the southside
limbs in fine weather, and sometimes diving into the mealy snow to
flutter and wallow, apparently for exercise and fun.

I have seen young broods running beneath the firs in June at a height
of eight thousand feet above the sea. On the approach of danger, the
mother with a peculiar cry warns the helpless midgets to scatter and
hide beneath leaves and twigs, and even in plain open places it is
almost impossible to discover them. In the meantime the mother feigns
lameness, throws herself at your feet, kicks and gasps and flutters, to
draw your attention from the chicks. The young are generally able to
fly about the middle of July; but even after they can fly well they are
usually advised to run and hide and lie still, no matter how closely
approached, while the mother goes on with her loving, lying acting,
apparently as desperately concerned for their safety as when they were
featherless infants. Sometimes, however, after carefully studying the
circumstances, she tells them to take wing; and up and away in a blurry
birr and whir they scatter to all points of the compass, as if blown up
with gunpowder, dropping cunningly out of sight three or four hundred
yards off, and keeping quiet until called, after the danger is supposed
to be past. If you walk on a little way without manifesting any
inclination to hunt them, you may sit down at the foot of a tree near
enough to see and hear the happy reunion. One touch of nature makes the
whole world kin; and it is truly wonderful how love-telling the small
voices of these birds are, and how far they reach through the woods
into one another’s hearts and into ours. The tones are so perfectly
human and so full of anxious affection, few mountaineers can fail to be
touched by them.

They are cared for until full grown. On the 20th of August, as I was
passing along the margin of a garden spot on the head-waters of the San
Joaquin, a grouse rose from the ruins of an old juniper that had been
uprooted and brought down by an avalanche from a cliff overhead. She
threw herself at my feet, limped and fluttered and gasped, showing, as
I thought, that she had a nest and was raising a second brood. Looking
for the eggs, I was surprised to see a strong-winged flock nearly as
large as the mother fly up around me.

Instead of seeking a warmer climate when the winter storms set in,
these hardy birds stay all the year in the high Sierra forests, and I
have never known them to suffer in any sort of weather. Able to live on
the buds of pine, spruce, and fir, they are forever independent in the
matter of food supply, which gives so many of us trouble, dragging us
here and there away from our best work. How gladly I would live on pine
buds, however pitchy, for the sake of this grand independence! With all
his superior resources, man makes more distracting difficulty
concerning food than any other of the family.

The mountain quail, or plumed partridge (_Oreortyx pictus plumiferus_)
is common in all the upper portions of the Park, though nowhere in
numbers. He ranges considerably higher than the grouse in summer, but
is unable to endure the heavy storms of winter. When his food is
buried, he descends the range to the brushy foothills, at a height of
from two to three thousand feet above sea; but like every true
mountaineer, he is quick to follow the spring back into the highest
mountains. I think he is the very handsomest and most interesting of
all the American partridges, larger and handsomer than the famous Bob
White, or even the fine California valley quail, or the Massena
partridge of Arizona and Mexico. That he is not so regarded, is because
as a lonely mountaineer he is not half known.

His plumage is delicately shaded, brown above, white and rich chestnut
below and on the sides, with many dainty markings of black and white
and gray here and there, while his beautiful head plume, three or four
inches long, nearly straight, composed of two feathers closely folded
so as to appear as one, is worn jauntily slanted backward like a single
feather in a boy’s cap, giving him a very marked appearance. They
wander over the lonely mountains in family flocks of from six to
fifteen, beneath ceanothus, manzanita, and wild cherry thickets, and
over dry sandy flats, glacier meadows, rocky ridges, and beds of
Bryanthus around glacier lakes, especially in autumn, when the berries
of the upper gardens are ripe, uttering low clucking notes to enable
them to keep together. When they are so suddenly disturbed that they
are afraid they cannot escape the danger by running into thickets, they
rise with a fine hearty whir and scatter in the brush over an area of
half a square mile or so, a few of them diving into leafy trees. But as
soon as the danger is past, the parents with a clear piping note call
them together again. By the end of July the young are two thirds grown
and fly well, though only dire necessity can compel them to try their
wings. In gait, gestures, habits, and general behavior they are like
domestic chickens, but infinitely finer, searching for insects and
seeds, looking to this side and that, scratching among fallen leaves,
jumping up to pull down grass heads, and clucking and muttering in low
tones.

Once when I was seated at the foot of a tree on the head-waters of the
Merced, sketching, I heard a flock up the valley behind me, and by
their voices gradually sounding nearer I knew that they were feeding
toward me. I kept still, hoping to see them. Soon one came within three
or four feet of me, without noticing me any more than if I were a stump
or a bulging part of the trunk against which I was leaning, my clothing
being brown, nearly like the bark. Presently along came another and
another, and it was delightful to get so near a view of these handsome
chickens perfectly undisturbed, observe their manners, and hear their
low peaceful notes. At last one of them caught my eye, gazed in silent
wonder for a moment, then uttered a peculiar cry, which was followed by
a lot of hurried muttered notes that sounded like speech. The others,
of course, saw me as soon as the alarm was sounded, and joined the
wonder talk, gazing and chattering, astonished but not frightened. Then
all with one accord ran back with the news to the rest of the flock.
“What is it? what is it? Oh, you never saw the like,” they seemed to be
saying. “Not a deer, or a wolf, or a bear; come see, come see.” “Where?
where?” “Down there by that tree.” Then they approached cautiously,
past the tree, stretching their necks, and looking up in turn as if
knowing from the story told them just where I was. For fifteen or
twenty minutes they kept coming and going, venturing within a few feet
of me, and discussing the wonder in charming chatter. Their curiosity
at last satisfied, they began to scatter and feed again, going back in
the direction they had come from; while I, loath to part with them,
followed noiselessly, crawling beneath the bushes, keeping them in
sight for an hour or two, learning their habits, and finding out what
seeds and berries they like best.

The valley quail is not a mountaineer, and seldom enters the Park
except at a few of the lowest places on the western boundary. It
belongs to the brushy foothills and plains, orchards and wheatfields,
and is a hundred times more numerous than the mountain quail. It is a
beautiful bird, about the size of the Bob White, and has a handsome
crest of four or five feathers an inch long, recurved, standing nearly
erect at times or drooping forward. The loud calls of these quails in
the spring—Pe-check-ah, Pe-check-a, Hoy, Hoy—are heard far and near
over all the lowlands. They have vastly increased in numbers since the
settlement of the country, notwithstanding the immense numbers killed
every season by boys and pot-hunters as well as the regular leggined
sportsmen from the towns; for man’s destructive action is more than
counterbalanced by increased supply of food from cultivation, and by
the destruction of their enemies—coyotes, skunks, foxes, hawks, owls,
etc.—which not only kill the old birds, but plunder their nests. Where
coyotes and skunks abound, scarce one pair in a hundred is successful
in raising a brood. So well aware are these birds of the protection
afforded by man, even now that the number of their wild enemies has
been greatly diminished, that they prefer to nest near houses,
notwithstanding they are so shy. Four or five pairs rear their young
around our cottage every spring. One year a pair nested in a straw pile
within four or five feet of the stable door, and did not leave the eggs
when the men led the horses back and forth within a foot or two. For
many seasons a pair nested in a tuft of pampas grass in the garden;
another pair in an ivy vine on the cottage roof, and when the young
were hatched, it was interesting to see the parents getting the fluffy
dots down. They were greatly excited, and their anxious calls and
directions to their many babes attracted our attention. They had no
great difficulty in persuading the young birds to pitch themselves from
the main roof to the porch roof among the ivy, but to get them safely
down from the latter to the ground, a distance of ten feet, was most
distressing. It seemed impossible the frail soft things could avoid
being killed. The anxious parents led them to a point above a spiræa
bush, that reached nearly to the eaves, which they seemed to know would
break the fall. Anyhow they led their chicks to this point, and with
infinite coaxing and encouragement got them to tumble themselves off.
Down they rolled and sifted through the soft leaves and panicles to the
pavement, and, strange to say, all got away unhurt except one that lay
as if dead for a few minutes. When it revived, the joyful parents, with
their brood fairly launched on the journey of life, proudly led them
down the cottage hill, through the garden, and along an osage orange
hedge into the cherry orchard. These charming birds even enter towns
and villages, where the gardens are of good size and guns are
forbidden, sometimes going several miles to feed, and returning every
evening to their roosts in ivy or brushy trees and shrubs.

Geese occasionally visit the Park, but never stay long. Sometimes on
their way across the range, a flock wanders into Hetch-Hetchy or
Yosemite to rest or get something to eat, and if shot at, are often
sorely bewildered in seeking a way out. I have seen them rise from the
meadow or river, wheel round in a spiral until a height of four or five
hundred feet was reached, then form ranks and try to fly over the wall.
But Yosemite magnitudes seem to be as deceptive to geese as to men, for
they would suddenly find themselves against the cliffs not a fourth of
the way to the top. Then turning in confusion, and screaming at the
strange heights, they would try the opposite side, and so until
exhausted they were compelled to rest, and only after discovering the
river cañon could they make their escape. Large, harrow-shaped flocks
may often be seen crossing the range in the spring, at a height of at
least fourteen thousand feet. Think of the strength of wing required to
sustain so heavy a bird in air so thin. At this elevation it is but
little over half as dense as at the sea level. Yet they hold bravely on
in beautifully dressed ranks, and have breath enough to spare for loud
honking. After the crest of the Sierra is passed it is only a smooth
slide down the sky to the waters of Mono, where they may rest as long
as they like.

Ducks of five or six species, among which are the mallard and wood
duck, go far up into the heart of the mountains in the spring, and of
course come down in the fall with the families they have reared. A few,
as if loath to leave the mountains, pass the winter in the lower
valleys of the Park at a height of three thousand to four thousand
feet, where the main streams are never wholly frozen over, and snow
never falls to a great depth or lies long. In summer they are found up
to a height of eleven thousand feet on all the lakes and branches of
the rivers except the smallest, and those beside the glaciers
incumbered with drifting ice and snow. I found mallards and wood ducks
at Lake Tenaya, June 1, before the ice-covering was half melted, and a
flock of young ones in Bloody Cañon Lake, June 20. They are usually met
in pairs, never in large flocks. No place is too wild or rocky or
solitary for these brave swimmers, no stream too rapid. In the roaring,
resounding cañon torrents, they seem as much at home as in the tranquil
reaches and lakes of the broad glacial valleys. Abandoning themselves
to the wild play of the waters, they go drifting confidingly through
blinding, thrashing spray, dancing on boulder-dashed waves, tossing in
beautiful security on rougher water than is usually encountered by sea
birds when storms are blowing.

A mother duck with her family of ten little ones, waltzing round and
round in a pot-hole ornamented with foam bells, huge rocks leaning over
them, cascades above and below and beside them, made one of the most
interesting bird pictures I ever saw.

I have never found the great northern diver in the Park lakes. Most of
them are inaccessible to him. He might plump down into them, but would
hardly be able to get out of them, since, with his small wings and
heavy body, a wide expanse of elbow room is required in rising. Now and
then one may be seen in the lower Sierra lakes to the northward about
Lassens Butte and Shasta, at a height of four thousand to five thousand
feet, making the loneliest places lonelier with the wildest of wild
cries.

Plovers are found along the sandy shores of nearly all the mountain
lakes, tripping daintily on the water’s edge, picking up insects; and
it is interesting to learn how few of these familiar birds are required
to make a solitude cheerful.

Sandhill cranes are sometimes found in comparatively small marshes,
mere dots in the mighty forest. In such spots, at an elevation of from
six thousand to eight thousand feet above the sea, they are
occasionally met in pairs as early as the end of May, while the snow is
still deep in the surrounding fir and sugar-pine woods. And on sunny
days in autumn, large flocks may be seen sailing at a great height
above the forests, shaking the crisp air into rolling waves with their
hearty koor-r-r, koor-r-r, uck-uck, soaring in circles for hours
together on their majestic wings, seeming to float without effort like
clouds, eying the wrinkled landscape outspread like a map mottled with
lakes and glaciers and meadows and streaked with shadowy cañons and
streams, and surveying every frog marsh and sandy flat within a hundred
miles.

Eagles and hawks are oftentimes seen above the ridges and domes. The
greatest height at which I have observed them was about twelve thousand
feet, over the summits of Mount Hoffman, in the middle region of the
Park. A few pairs had their nests on the cliffs of this mountain, and
could be seen every day in summer, hunting marmots, mountain beavers,
pikas, etc. A pair of golden eagles have made their home in Yosemite
ever since I went there thirty years ago. Their nest is on the Nevada
Fall Cliff, opposite the Liberty Cap. Their screams are rather pleasant
to hear in the vast gulfs between the granite cliffs, and they help the
owls in keeping the echoes busy.

[Illustration: Liberty Cap and Nevada Falls, Yosemite Valley.]

But of all the birds of the high Sierra, the strangest, noisiest, and
most notable is the Clarke crow (_Nucifraga columbiana_). He is a foot
long and nearly two feet in extent of wing, ashy gray in general color,
with black wings, white tail, and a strong, sharp bill, with which he
digs into the pine cones for the seeds on which he mainly subsists. He
is quick, boisterous, jerky, and irregular in his movements and speech,
and makes a tremendously loud and showy advertisement of
himself,—swooping and diving in deep curves across gorges and valleys
from ridge to ridge, alighting on dead spars, looking warily about him,
and leaving his dry springy perches, trembling from the vigor of his
kick as he launches himself for a new flight, screaming from time to
time loud enough to be heard more than a mile in still weather. He
dwells far back on the high stormbeaten margin of the forest, where the
mountain pine, juniper, and hemlock grow wide apart on glacier
pavements and domes and rough crumbling ridges, and the dwarf pine
makes a low crinkled growth along the flanks of the Summit peaks. In so
open a region, of course, he is well seen. Everybody notices him, and
nobody at first knows what to make of him. One guesses he must be a
woodpecker; another a crow or some sort of jay, another a magpie. He
seems to be a pretty thoroughly mixed and fermented compound of all
these birds, has all their strength, cunning, shyness, thievishness,
and wary, suspicious curiosity combined and condensed. He flies like a
woodpecker, hammers dead limbs for insects, digs big holes in pine
cones to get at the seeds, cracks nuts held between his toes, cries
like a crow or Stellar jay,—but in a far louder, harsher, and more
forbidding tone of voice,—and besides his crow caws and screams, has a
great variety of small chatter talk, mostly uttered in a fault-finding
tone. Like the magpie, he steals articles that can be of no use to him.
Once when I made my camp in a grove at Cathedral Lake, I chanced to
leave a cake of soap on the shore where I had been washing, and a few
minutes afterward I saw my soap flying past me through the grove,
pushed by a Clarke crow.

In winter, when the snow is deep, the cones of the mountain pines are
empty, and the juniper, hemlock, and dwarf pine orchard buried, he
comes down to glean seeds in the yellow pine forests, startling the
grouse with his loud screams. But even in winter, in calm weather, he
stays in his high mountain home, defying the bitter frost. Once I lay
snowbound through a three days’ storm at the timber-line on Mount
Shasta; and while the roaring snow-laden blast swept by, one of these
brave birds came to my camp, and began hammering at the cones on the
topmost branches of half-buried pines, without showing the slightest
distress. I have seen Clarke crows feeding their young as early as June
19, at a height of more than ten thousand feet, when nearly the whole
landscape was snow-covered.

They are excessively shy, and keep away from the traveler as long as
they think they are observed; but when one goes on without seeming to
notice them, or sits down and keeps still, their curiosity speedily
gets the better of their caution, and they come flying from tree to
tree, nearer and nearer, and watch every motion. Few, I am afraid, will
ever learn to like this bird, he is so suspicious and self-reliant, and
his voice is so harsh that to most ears the scream of the eagle will
seem melodious compared with it. Yet the mountaineer who has battled
and suffered and struggled must admire his strength and endurance,—the
way he faces the mountain weather, cleaves the icy blasts, cares for
his young, and digs a living from the stern wilderness.

Higher yet than Nucifraga dwells the little dun-headed sparrow
(_Leucosticte tephrocotis_). From early spring to late autumn he is to
be found only on the snowy, icy peaks at the head of the glacier
cirques and cañons. His feeding grounds in spring are the snow sheets
between the peaks, and in midsummer and autumn the glaciers. Many bold
insects go mountaineering almost as soon as they are born, ascending
the highest summits on the mild breezes that blow in from the sea every
day during steady weather; but comparatively few of these adventurers
find their way down or see a flower bed again. Getting tired and
chilly, they alight on the snow fields and glaciers, attracted perhaps
by the glare, take cold, and die. There they lie as if on a white cloth
purposely outspread for them, and the dun sparrows find them a rich and
varied repast requiring no pursuit,—bees and butterflies on ice, and
many spicy beetles, a perpetual feast, on tables big for guests so
small, and in vast banqueting halls ventilated by cool breezes that
ruffle the feathers of the fairy brownies. Happy fellows, no rivals
come to dispute possession with them. No other birds, not even hawks,
as far as I have noticed, live so high. They see people so seldom, they
flutter around the explorer with the liveliest curiosity, and come down
a little way, sometimes nearly a mile, to meet him and conduct him into
their icy homes.

When I was exploring the Merced group, climbing up the grand cañon
between the Merced and Red mountains into the fountain amphitheatre of
an ancient glacier, just as I was approaching the small active glacier
that leans back in the shadow of Merced Mountain, a flock of twenty or
thirty of these little birds, the first I had seen, came down the cañon
to meet me, flying low, straight toward me as if they meant to fly in
my face. Instead of attacking me or passing by, they circled round my
head, chirping and fluttering for a minute or two, then turned and
escorted me up the cañon, alighting on the nearest rocks on either
hand, and flying ahead a few yards at a time to keep even with me.

I have not discovered their winter quarters. Probably they are in the
desert ranges to the eastward, for I never saw any of them in Yosemite,
the winter refuge of so many of the mountain birds.

Humming-birds are among the best and most conspicuous of the
mountaineers, flashing their ruby throats in countless wild gardens far
up the higher slopes, where they would be least expected. All one has
to do to enjoy the company of these mountain-loving midgets is to
display a showy blanket or handkerchief.

The arctic bluebird is another delightful mountaineer, singing a wild,
cheery song and “carrying the sky on his back” over all the gray ridges
and domes of the subalpine region.

A fine, hearty, good-natured lot of woodpeckers dwell in the Park, and
keep it lively all the year round. Among the most notable of these are
the magnificent log cock (_Ceophlœus pileatus_), the prince of Sierra
woodpeckers, and only second in rank, as far as I know, of all the
woodpeckers of the world; the Lewis woodpecker, large, black, glossy,
that flaps and flies like a crow, does but little hammering, and feeds
in great part on wild cherries and berries; and the carpenter, who
stores up great quantities of acorns in the bark of trees for winter
use. The last-named species is a beautiful bird, and far more common
than the others. In the woods of the West he represents the Eastern
red-head. Bright, cheerful, industrious, not in the least shy, the
carpenters give delightful animation to the open Sierra forests at a
height of from three thousand to fifty-five hundred feet, especially in
autumn, when the acorns are ripe. Then no squirrel works harder at his
pine-nut harvest than these woodpeckers at their acorn harvest,
drilling holes in the thick, corky bark of the yellow pine and incense
cedar, in which to store the crop for winter use,—a hole for each
acorn, so nicely adjusted as to size that when the acorn, point
foremost, is driven in, it fits so well that it cannot be drawn out
without digging around it. Each acorn is thus carefully stored in a dry
bin, perfectly protected from the weather,—a most laborious method of
stowing away a crop, a granary for each kernel. Yet the birds seem
never to weary at the work, but go on so diligently that they seem
determined to save every acorn in the grove. They are never seen eating
acorns at the time they are storing them, and it is commonly believed
that they never eat them or intend to eat them, but that the wise birds
store them and protect them from the depredations of squirrels and
jays, solely for the sake of the worms they are supposed to contain.
And because these worms are too small for use at the time the acorns
drop, they are shut up like lean calves and steers, each in a separate
stall with abundance of food, to grow big and fat by the time they will
be most wanted, that is, in winter, when insects are scarce and
stall-fed worms most valuable. So these woodpeckers are supposed to be
a sort of cattle-raisers, each with a drove of thousands, rivaling the
ants that raise grain and keep herds of plant lice for milk cows.
Needless to say the story is not true, though some naturalists, even,
believe it. When Emerson was in the Park, having heard the worm story
and seen the great pines plugged full of acorns, he asked (just to pump
me, I suppose), “Why do the woodpeckers take the trouble to put acorns
into the bark of the trees?” “For the same reason,” I replied, “that
bees store honey and squirrels nuts.” “But they tell me, Mr. Muir, that
woodpeckers don’t eat acorns.” “Yes, they do,” I said, “I have seen
them eating them. During snowstorms they seem to eat little besides
acorns. I have repeatedly interrupted them at their meals, and seen the
perfectly sound, half-eaten acorns. They eat them in the shell as some
people eat eggs.” “But what about the worms?” “I suppose,” I said,
“that when they come to a wormy one they eat both worm and acorn.
Anyhow, they eat the sound ones when they can’t find anything they like
better, and from the time they store them until they are used they
guard them, and woe to the squirrel or jay caught stealing.” Indians,
in times of scarcity, frequently resort to these stores and chop them
out with hatchets; a bushel or more may be gathered from a single cedar
or pine.

The common robin, with all his familiar notes and gestures, is found
nearly everywhere throughout the Park,—in shady dells beneath dogwoods
and maples, along the flowery banks of the streams, tripping daintily
about the margins of meadows in the fir and pine woods, and far beyond
on the shores of glacier lakes and the slopes of the peaks. How
admirable the constitution and temper of this cheery, graceful bird,
keeping glad health over so vast and varied a range. In all America he
is at home, flying from plains to mountains, up and down, north and
south, away and back, with the seasons and supply of food. Oftentimes
in the High Sierra, as you wander through the solemn woods, awestricken
and silent, you will hear the reassuring voice of this fellow wanderer
ringing out sweet and clear as if saying, “Fear not, fear not. Only
love is here.” In the severest solitudes he seems as happy as in
gardens and apple orchards.

The robins enter the Park as soon as the snow melts, and go on up the
mountains, gradually higher, with the opening flowers, until the
topmost glacier meadows are reached in June and July. After the short
summer is done, they descend like most other summer visitors in concord
with the weather, keeping out of the first heavy snows as much as
possible, while lingering among the frost-nipped wild cherries on the
slopes just below the glacier meadows. Thence they go to the lower
slopes of the forest region, compelled to make haste at times by heavy
all-day storms, picking up seeds or benumbed insects by the way; and at
last all, save a few that winter in Yosemite valleys, arrive in the
vineyards and orchards and stubble-fields of the lowlands in November,
picking up fallen fruit and grain, and awakening old-time memories
among the white-headed pioneers, who cannot fail to recognize the
influence of so homelike a bird. They are then in flocks of hundreds,
and make their way into the gardens of towns as well as into the parks
and fields and orchards about the bay of San Francisco, where many of
the wanderers are shot for sport and the morsel of meat on their
breasts. Man then seems a beast of prey. Not even genuine piety can
make the robin-killer quite respectable. Saturday is the great
slaughter day in the bay region. Then the city pot-hunters, with a
rag-tag of boys, go forth to kill, kept in countenance by a sprinkling
of regular sportsmen arrayed in self-conscious majesty and leggins,
leading dogs and carrying hammerless, breech-loading guns of famous
makers. Over the fine landscapes the killing goes forward with shameful
enthusiasm. After escaping countless dangers, thousands fall, big
bagfuls are gathered, many are left wounded to die slowly, no Red Cross
Society to help them. Next day, Sunday, the blood and leggins vanish
from the most devout of the bird-butchers, who go to church, carrying
gold-headed canes instead of guns. After hymns, prayers, and sermon
they go home to feast, to put God’s song birds to use, put them in
their dinners instead of in their hearts, eat them, and suck the
pitiful little drumsticks. It is only race living on race, to be sure,
but Christians singing Divine Love need not be driven to such straits
while wheat and apples grow and the shops are full of dead cattle. Song
birds for food! Compared with this, making kindlings of pianos and
violins would be pious economy.

The larks come in large flocks from the hills and mountains in the
fall, and are slaughtered as ruthlessly as the robins. Fortunately,
most of our song birds keep back in leafy hidings, and are
comparatively inaccessible.

The water ouzel, in his rocky home amid foaming waters, seldom sees a
gun, and of all the singers I like him the best. He is a plainly
dressed little bird, about the size of a robin, with short, crisp, but
rather broad wings, and a tail of moderate length, slanted up, giving
him, with his nodding, bobbing manners, a wrennish look. He is usually
seen fluttering about in the spray of falls and the rapid cascading
portions of the main branches of the rivers. These are his favorite
haunts; but he is often seen also on comparatively level reaches and
occasionally on the shores of mountain lakes, especially at the
beginning of winter, when heavy snowfalls have blurred the streams with
sludge. Though not a water-bird in structure, he gets his living in the
water, and is never seen away from the immediate margin of streams. He
dives fearlessly into rough, boiling eddies and rapids to feed at the
bottom, flying under water seemingly as easily as in the air. Sometimes
he wades in shallow places, thrusting his head under from time to time
in a nodding, frisky way that is sure to attract attention. His flight
is a solid whir of wing-beats like that of a partridge, and in going
from place to place along his favorite string of rapids he follows the
windings of the stream, and usually alights on some rock or snag on the
bank or out in the current, or rarely on the dry limb of an overhanging
tree, perching like a tree bird when it suits his convenience. He has
the oddest, neatest manners imaginable, and all his gestures as he
flits about in the wild, dashing waters bespeak the utmost cheerfulness
and confidence. He sings both winter and summer, in all sorts of
weather,—a sweet, fluty melody, rather low, and much less keen and
accentuated than from the brisk vigor of his movements one would be led
to expect.

[Illustration: Water Ouzels in a Mountain Stream.]

How romantic and beautiful is the life of this brave little singer on
the wild mountain streams, building his round bossy nest of moss by the
side of a rapid or fall, where it is sprinkled and kept fresh and green
by the spray! No wonder he sings well, since all the air about him is
music; every breath he draws is part of a song, and he gets his first
music lessons before he is born; for the eggs vibrate in time with the
tones of the waterfalls. Bird and stream are inseparable, songful and
wild, gentle and strong,—the bird ever in danger in the midst of the
stream’s mad whirlpools, yet seemingly immortal. And so I might go on,
writing words, words, words; but to what purpose? Go see him and love
him, and through him as through a window look into Nature’s warm heart.




CHAPTER VIII
The Fountains and Streams of the Yosemite National Park


“Come let’s to the fields, the meads, and the mountains,
The forests invite us, the streams and the fountains.”

Carlyle, _Translations_, vol. iii.

The joyful, songful streams of the Sierra are among the most famous and
interesting in the world, and draw the admiring traveler on and on
through their wonderful cañons, year after year, unwearied. After long
wanderings with them, tracing them to their fountains, learning their
history and the forms they take in their wild works and ways throughout
the different seasons of the year, we may then view them together in
one magnificent show, outspread over all the range like embroidery,
their silvery branches interlacing on a thousand mountains, singing
their way home to the sea: the small rills, with hard roads to travel,
dropping from ledge to ledge, pool to pool, like chains of sweet-toned
bells, slipping gently over beds of pebbles and sand, resting in lakes,
shining, spangling, shimmering, lapping the shores with whispering
ripples, and shaking over-leaning bushes and grass; the larger streams
and rivers in the cañons displaying noble purity and beauty with
ungovernable energy, rushing down smooth inclines in wide foamy sheets
fold over fold, springing up here and there in magnificent whirls,
scattering crisp clashing spray for the sunbeams to iris, bursting with
hoarse reverberating roar through rugged gorges and boulder dams,
booming in falls, gliding, glancing with cool soothing murmuring,
through long forested reaches richly embowered,—filling the grand
cañons with glorious song, and giving life to all the landscape.

The present rivers of the Sierra are still young, and have made but
little mark as yet on the grand cañons prepared for them by the ancient
glaciers. Only a very short geological time ago they all lay buried
beneath the glaciers they drained, singing in low smothered or silvery
ringing tones in crystal channels, while the summer weather melted the
ice and snow of the surface or gave showers. At first only in warm
weather was any part of these buried rivers displayed in the light of
day; for as soon as frost prevailed the surface rills vanished, though
the streams beneath the ice and in the body of it flowed on all the
year.

When, toward the close of the glacial period, the ice mantle began to
shrink and recede from the lowlands, the lower portions of the rivers
were developed, issuing from cavelike openings on the melting margin
and growing longer as the ice withdrew; while for many a century the
tributaries and upper portions of the trunks remained covered. In the
fullness of time these also were set free in the sunshine, to take
their places in the newborn landscapes; each tributary with its smaller
branches being gradually developed like the main trunks, as the
climatic changes went on. At first all of them were muddy with glacial
detritus, and they became clear only after the glaciers they drained
had receded beyond lake basins in which the sediments were dropped.

This early history is clearly explained by the present rivers of
southeastern Alaska. Of those draining glaciers that discharge into
arms of the sea, only the rills on the surface of the ice, and
upboiling, eddying, turbid currents in the tide water in front of the
terminal ice wall, are visible. Where glaciers, in the first stage of
decadence, have receded from the shore, short sections of the trunks of
the rivers that are to take their places may be seen rushing out from
caverns and tunnels in the melting front,—rough, roaring,
detritus-laden torrents, foaming and tumbling over outspread terminal
moraines to the sea, perhaps without a single bush or flower to
brighten their raw, shifting banks. Again, in some of the warmer cañons
and valleys from which the trunk glaciers have been melted, the main
trunks of the rivers are well developed, and their banks planted with
fine forests, while their upper branches, lying high on the snowy
mountains, are still buried beneath shrinking residual glaciers;
illustrating every state of development, from icy darkness to light,
and from muddiness to crystal clearness.

Now that the hard grinding sculpture work of the glacial period is
done, the whole bright band of Sierra rivers run clear all the year,
except when the snow is melting fast in the warm spring weather, and
during extraordinary winter floods and the heavy thunderstorms of
summer called cloud-bursts. Even then they are not muddy above the
foothill mining region, unless the moraines have been loosened and the
vegetation destroyed by sheep; for the rocks of the upper basins are
clean, and the most able streams find but little to carry save the
spoils of the forests,—trees, branches, flakes of bark, cones, leaves,
pollen dust, etc.,—with scales of mica, sand grains, and boulders,
which are rolled along the bottom of the steep parts of the main
channels. Short sections of a few of the highest tributaries heading in
glaciers are of course turbid with finely ground rock mud, but this is
dropped in the first lakes they enter.

On the northern part of the range, mantled with porous fissured
volcanic rocks, the fountain waters sink and flow below the surface for
considerable distances, groping their way in the dark like the draining
streams of glaciers, and at last bursting forth in big generous
springs, filtered and cool and exquisitely clear. Some of the largest
look like lakes, their waters welling straight up from the bottom of
deep rock basins in quiet massive volume giving rise to young rivers.
Others issue from horizontal clefts in sheer bluffs, with loud
tumultuous roaring that may be heard half a mile or more. Magnificent
examples of these great northern spring fountains, twenty or thirty
feet deep and ten to nearly a hundred yards wide, abound on the main
branches of the Feather, Pitt, McCloud, and Fall rivers.

The springs of the Yosemite Park, and the high Sierra in general,
though many times more numerous, are comparatively small, oozing from
moraines and snowbanks in thin, flat irregular currents which remain on
the surface or near it, the rocks of the south half of the range being
mostly flawless impervious granite; and since granite is but slightly
soluble, the streams are particularly pure. Nevertheless, though they
are all clear, and in the upper and main central forest regions
delightfully lively and cool, they vary somewhat in color and taste as
well as temperature, on account of differences, however slight, in
exposure, and in the rocks and vegetation with which they come in
contact. Some are more exposed than others to winds and sunshine in
their falls and thin plumelike cascades; the amount of dashing, mixing,
and airing the waters of each receive varies considerably; and there is
always more or less variety in the kind and quantity of the vegetation
they flow through, and in the time they lie in shady or sunny lakes and
bogs.

[Illustration: “Fountain Snow” on the High Sierras (Mt. Lyell Group).]

The water of one of the branches of the north fork of Owens River, near
the southeastern boundary of the Park, at an elevation of ninety-five
hundred feet above the sea, is the best I ever found. It is not only
delightfully cool and bright, but brisk, sparkling, exhilarating, and
so positively delicious to the taste that a party of friends I led to
it twenty-five years ago still praise it, and refer to it as “that
wonderful champagne water;” though, comparatively, the finest wine is a
coarse and vulgar drink. The party camped about a week in a pine grove
on the edge of a little round sedgy meadow through which the stream ran
bank full, and drank its icy water on frosty mornings, before
breakfast, and at night about as eagerly as in the heat of the day;
lying down and taking massy draughts direct from the brimming flood,
lest the touch of a cup might disturb its celestial flavor. On one of
my excursions I took pains to trace this stream to its head springs. It
is mostly derived from snow that lies in heavy drifts and avalanche
heaps on or near the axis of the range. It flows first in flat sheets
over coarse sand or shingle derived from a granite ridge and the
metamorphic slates of Red Mountain. Then, gathering its many small
branches, it runs through beds of moraine material, and a series of
lakelets and meadows and frosty juicy bogs bordered with heathworts and
linked together by short bouldery reaches. Below these, growing strong
with tribute drawn from many a snowy fountain on either side, the glad
stream goes dashing and swirling through clumps of the white-barked
pine, and tangled willow and alder thickets enriched by the fragrant
herbaceous vegetation usually found about them. And just above the
level camp meadow it is chafed and churned and beaten white over and
over again in crossing a talus of big earthquake boulders, giving it a
very thorough airing. But to what the peculiar indefinable excellence
of this water is due I don’t know; for other streams in adjacent cañons
are aired in about the same way, and draw traces of minerals and plant
essences from similar sources. The best mineral water yet discovered in
the Park flows from the Tuolumne soda springs, on the north side of the
Big Meadow. Mountaineers like it and ascribe every healing virtue to
it, but in no way can any of these waters be compared with the Owens
River champagne.

It is a curious fact that the waters of some of the Sierra lakes and
streams are invisible, or nearly so, under certain weather conditions.
This is noticed by mountaineers, hunters, and prospectors, wide-awake,
sharp-eyed observers, little likely to be fooled by fine whims. One of
these mountain men, whom I had nursed while a broken leg was mending,
always gratefully reported the wonders he found. One, returning from a
trip on the head waters of the Tuolumne, he came running eagerly,
crying: “Muir, I’ve found the queerest lake in the mountains! It’s high
up where nothing grows; and when it isn’t shiny you can’t see it, and
you walk right into it as if there was nothing there. The first you
know of that lake you are in it, and get tripped up by the water, and
hear the splash.” The waters of Illilouette Creek are nearly invisible
in the autumn; so that, in following the channel, jumping from boulder
to boulder after a shower, you will frequently drag your feet in the
apparently surfaceless pools.

Excepting a few low, warm slopes, fountain snow usually covers all the
Yosemite Park from November or December to May, most of it until June
or July, while on the coolest parts of the north slopes of the
mountains, at a height of eleven to thirteen thousand feet, it is
perpetual. It seldom lies at a greater depth than two or three feet on
the lower margin, ten feet over the middle forested region, or fifteen
to twenty feet in the shadowy cañons and cirques among the peaks of the
Summit, except where it is drifted, or piled in avalanche heaps at the
foot of long converging slopes to form perennial fountains.

The first crop of snow crystals that whitens the mountains and
refreshes the streams usually falls in September or October, in the
midst of charming Indian summer weather, often while the goldenrods and
gentians are in their prime; but these Indian summer snows, like some
of the late ones that bury the June gardens, vanish in a day or two,
and garden work goes on with accelerated speed. The grand winter storms
that load the mountains with enduring fountain snow seldom set in
before the end of November. The fertile clouds, descending, glide about
and hover in brooding silence, as if thoughtfully examining the forests
and streams with reference to the work before them; then small flakes
or single crystals appear, glinting and swirling in zigzags and
spirals; and soon the thronging feathery masses fill the sky and make
darkness like night, hurrying wandering mountaineers to their winter
quarters. The first fall is usually about two to four feet deep. Then,
with intervals of bright weather, not very cold, storm succeeds storm,
heaping snow on snow, until from thirty to fifty or sixty feet has
fallen; but on account of heavy settling and compacting, and the waste
from evaporation and melting, the depth in the middle region, as stated
above, rarely exceeds ten feet. Evaporation never wholly ceases, even
in the coldest weather, and the sunshine between storms melts the
surface more or less. Waste from melting also goes on at the bottom
from summer heat stored in the rocks, as is shown by the rise of the
streams after the first general storm, and their steady sustained flow
all winter.

In the deep sugar-pine and silver-fir woods, up to a height of eight
thousand feet, most of the snow lies where it falls, in one smooth
universal fountain, until set free in the streams. But in the lighter
forests of the two-leaved pine, and on the bleak slopes above the
timber line, there is much wild drifting during storms accompanied by
high winds, and for a day or two after they have fallen, when the
temperature is low, and the snow dry and dusty. Then the trees, bending
in the darkening blast, roar like feeding lions; the frozen lakes are
buried; so also are the streams, which now flow in dark tunnels, as if
another glacial period had come. On high ridges, where the winds have a
free sweep, magnificent overcurling cornices are formed, which, with
the avalanche piles, last as fountains almost all summer; and when an
exceptionally high wind is blowing from the north, the snow, rolled,
drifted, and ground to dust, is driven up the converging northern
slopes of the peaks and sent flying for miles in the form of bright
wavering banners, displayed in wonderful clearness and beauty against
the sky.

The greatest storms, however, are usually followed by a deep, peculiar
silence, especially profound and solemn in the forests; and the noble
trees stand hushed and motionless, as if under a spell, until the
morning sunbeams begin to sift through their laden spires. Then the
snow, shifting and falling from the top branches, strikes the lower
ones in succession, and dislodges bossy masses all the way down. Thus
each tree is enveloped in a hollow conical avalanche of fairy fineness,
silvery white, irised on the outside; while the relieved branches
spring up and wave with startling effect in the general stillness, as
if moving of their own volition. These beautiful tree avalanches,
hundreds of which may be seen falling at once on fine mornings after
storms, pile their snow in raised rings around corresponding hollows
beneath the trees, making the forest mantle somewhat irregular, but
without greatly influencing its duration and the flow of the streams.

The large storm avalanches are most abundant on the Summit peaks of the
range. They descend the broad, steep slopes, as well as narrow gorges
and couloirs, with grand roaring and booming, and glide in graceful
curves out on the glaciers they so bountifully feed.

Down in the main cañons of the middle region broad masses are launched
over the brows of cliffs three or four thousand feet high, which, worn
to dust by friction in falling so far through the air, oftentimes hang
for a minute or two in front of the tremendous precipices like gauzy
half-transparent veils, gloriously beautiful when the sun is shining
through them. Most of the cañon avalanches, however, flow in regular
channels, like the cascades of tributary streams. When the snow first
gives way on the upper slopes of their basins a dull muffled rush and
rumble is heard, which, increasing with heavy deliberation, seems to
draw rapidly nearer with appalling intensity of tone. Presently the
wild floods comes in sight, bounding out over bosses and sheer places,
leaping from bench to bench, spreading and narrowing and throwing off
clouds of whirling diamond dust like a majestic foamy cataract.
Compared with cascades and falls, avalanches are short-lived, and the
sharp clashing sounds so common in dashing water are usually wanting;
but in their deep thunder tones and pearly purple-tinged whiteness, and
in dress, gait, gestures, and general behavior, they are much alike.

Besides these common storm avalanches there are two other kinds, the
annual and the century, which still further enrich the scenery, though
their influence on fountains is comparatively small. Annual avalanches
are composed of heavy compacted snow which has been subjected to
frequent alternations of frost and thaw. They are developed on cañon
and mountain sides, the greater number of them, at elevations of from
nine to ten thousand feet, where the slopes are so inclined that the
dry snows of winter accumulate and hold fast until the spring thaws sap
their foundations and make them slippery. Then away in grand style go
the ponderous icy masses, adorned with crystalline spray without any
cloudy snow dust; some of the largest descending more than a mile with
even, sustained energy and directness like thunderbolts. The grand
century avalanches, that mow wide swaths through the upper forests,
occur on shady mountain sides about ten to twelve thousand feet high,
where, under ordinary conditions, the snow accumulated from winter to
winter lies at rest for many years, allowing trees fifty to a hundred
feet high to grow undisturbed on the slopes below them. On their way
through the forests they usually make a clean sweep, stripping off the
soil as well as the trees, clearing paths two or three hundred yards
wide from the timber line to the glacier meadows, and piling the
uprooted trees, head downward, in windrows along the sides like lateral
moraines. Sears and broken branches on the standing trees bordering the
gaps record the side depth of the overwhelming flood; and when we come
to count the annual wood rings of the uprooted trees, we learn that
some of these colossal avalanches occur only once in about a century,
or even at still wider intervals.

Few mountaineers go far enough, during the snowy months, to see many
avalanches, and fewer still know the thrilling exhilaration of riding
on them. In all my wild mountaineering I have enjoyed only one
avalanche ride; and the start was so sudden, and the end came so soon,
I thought but little of the danger that goes with this sort of travel,
though one thinks fast at such times. One calm, bright morning in
Yosemite, after a hearty storm had given three or four feet of fresh
snow to the mountains, being eager to see as many avalanches as
possible, and gain wide views of the peaks and forests arrayed in their
new robes, before the sunshine had time to change or rearrange them, I
set out early to climb by a side cañon to the top of a commanding ridge
a little over three thousand feet above the valley. On account of the
looseness of the snow that blocked the cañon I knew the climb would be
trying, and estimated it might require three or four hours. But it
proved far more difficult than I had foreseen. Most of the way I sank
waist-deep, in some places almost out of sight; and after spending the
day to within half an hour of sundown in this loose, baffling snow
work, I was still several hundred feet below the summit. Then my hopes
were reduced to getting up in time for the sunset, and a quick,
sparkling home-going beneath the stars. But I was not to get top views
of any sort that day; for deep trampling near the cañon head; where the
snow was strained, started an avalanche, and I was swished back down to
the foot of the cañon as if by enchantment. The plodding, wallowing
ascent of about a mile had taken all day, the undoing descent perhaps a
minute.

When the snow suddenly gave way, I instinctively threw myself on my
back and spread my arms, to try to keep from sinking. Fortunately,
though the grade of the cañon was steep, it was not interrupted by step
levels or precipices big enough to cause outbounding or free plunging.
On no part of the rush was I buried. I was only moderately imbedded on
the surface or a little below it, and covered with a hissing
back-streaming veil of dusty snow particles; and as the whole mass
beneath or about me joined in the flight I felt no friction, though
tossed here and there, and lurched from side to side. And when the
torrent swedged and came to rest, I found myself on the top of the
crumpled pile, without a single bruise or scar. Hawthorne says that
steam has spiritualized travel, notwithstanding the smoke, friction,
smells, and clatter of boat and rail riding. This flight in a milky way
of snow flowers was the most spiritual of all my travels; and, after
many years, the mere thought of it is still an exhilaration.

In the spring, after all the avalanches are down and the snow is
melting fast, it is glorious to hear the streams sing out on the
mountains. Every fountain swelling, countless rills hurry together to
the rivers at the call of the sun,—beginning to run and sing soon after
sunrise, increasing until toward sundown, then gradually failing
through the cold frosty hours of the night. Thus the volume of the
upper rivers, even in flood time, is nearly doubled during the day,
rising and falling as regularly as the tides of the sea. At the height
of flood, in the warmest June weather, they seem fairly to shout for
joy, and clash their upleaping waters together like clapping of hands;
racing down the cañons with white manes flying in glorious exuberance
of strength, compelling huge sleeping boulders to wake up and join in
the dance and song to swell their chorus.

Then the plants also are in flood; the hidden sap singing into leaf and
flower, responding as faithfully to the call of the sun as the streams
from the snow, gathering along the outspread roots like rills in their
channels on the mountains, rushing up the stems of herb and tree,
swirling in their myriad cells like streams in potholes, spreading
along the branches and breaking into foamy bloom, while fragrance, like
a finer music, rises and flows with the winds.

[Illustration: A Mountain Stream in June (Merced Creek and Vernal
Falls, Yosemite).]

About the same may be said of the spring gladness of blood when the red
streams surge and sing in accord with the swelling plants and rivers,
inclining animals and everybody to travel in hurrahing crowds like
floods, while exhilarating melody in color and fragrance, form and
motion, flows to the heart through all the quickening senses.

In early summer the streams are in bright prime, running crystal clear,
deep and full, but not overflowing their banks,—about as deep through
the night as the day, the variation so marked in spring being now too
slight to be noticed. Nearly all the weather is cloudless sunshine, and
everything is at its brightest,—lake, river, garden, and forest, with
all their warm, throbbing life. Most of the plants are in full leaf and
flower; the blessed ousels have built their mossy huts, and are now
singing their sweetest song on spray-sprinkled ledges beside the
waterfalls.

In tranquil, mellow autumn, when the year’s work is about done, when
the fruits are ripe, birds and seeds out of their nests, and all the
landscape is glowing like a benevolent countenance at rest, then the
streams are at their lowest ebb,—their wild rejoicing soothed to
thoughtful calm. All the smaller tributaries whose branches do not
reach back to the perennial fountains of the Summit peaks shrink to
whispering, tinkling currents. The snow of their basins gone, they are
now fed only by small moraine springs, whose waters are mostly
evaporated in passing over warm pavements, and in feeling their way
from pool to pool through the midst of boulders and sand. Even the main
streams are so low they may be easily forded, and their grand falls and
cascades, now gentle and approachable, have waned to sheets and webs of
embroidery, falling fold over fold in new and ever changing beauty.

Two of the most songful of the rivers, the Tuolumne and Merced, water
nearly all the Park, spreading their branches far and wide, like
broad-headed oaks; and the highest branches of each draw their sources
from one and the same foundation on Mount Lyell, at an elevation of
about thirteen thousand feet above the sea. The crest of the mountain,
against which the head of the glacier rests, is worn to a thin blade
full of joints, through which a part of the glacial water flows
southward, giving rise to the highest trickling affluents of the
Merced; while the main drainage, flowing northward, gives rise to those
of the Tuolumne. After diverging for a distance of ten or twelve miles,
these twin rivers flow in a general westerly direction, descending
rapidly for the first thirty miles, and rushing in glorious apron
cascades and falls from one Yosemite valley to another. Below the
Yosemites they descend in gray rapids and swirling, swaying reaches,
through the chaparral-clad cañons of the foothills and across the
golden California plain, to their confluence with the San Joaquin,
where, after all their long wanderings, they are only about ten miles
apart.

The main cañons are from fifty to seventy miles long, and from two to
four thousand feet deep, carved in the solid flank of the range. Though
rough in some places and hard to travel, they are the most delightful
of roads, leading through the grandest scenery, full of life and
motion, and offering most telling lessons in earth sculpture. The
walls, far from being unbroken, featureless cliffs, seem like ranges of
separate mountains, so deep and varied is their sculpture; rising in
lordly domes, towers, round-browed outstanding headlands, and
clustering spires, with dark, shadowy side cañons between. But, however
wonderful in height and mass and fineness of finish, no anomalous
curiosities are presented, no “freaks of nature.” All stand related in
delicate rhythm, a grand glacial rock song.

Among the interesting and influential of the secondary features of
cañon scenery are the great avalanche taluses, that lean against the
walls at intervals of a mile or two. In the middle Yosemite region they
are usually from three to five hundred feet high, and are made up of
huge, angular, well-preserved, unshifting boulders, overgrown with gray
lichens, trees shrubs, and delicate flowering plants. Some of the
largest of the boulders are forty or fifty feet cube, weighing from
five to ten thousand tons; and where the cleavage joints of the granite
are exceptionally wide apart a few blocks may be found nearly a hundred
feet in diameter. These wonderful boulder piles are distributed
throughout all the cañons of the range, completely choking them in some
of the narrower portions, and no mountaineer will be likely to forget
the savage roughness of the roads they make. Even the swift,
overbearing rivers, accustomed to sweep everything out of their way,
are in some places bridled and held in check by them. Foaming, roaring,
in glorious majesty of flood, rushing off long rumbling trains of
ponderous blocks without apparent effort, they are not able to move the
largest, which, withstanding all assaults for centuries, are left at
rest in the channels like islands, with gardens on their tops, fringed
with foam below, with flowers above.

[Illustration: A Sierra Cañon (King’s River Cañon from Lookout Peak).]

On some points concerning the origin of these taluses I was long in
doubt. Plainly enough they were derived from the cliffs above them, the
size of each talus being approximately measured by a scar on the wall,
the rough angular surface of which contrasts with the rounded,
glaciated, unfractured parts. I saw also that, instead of being slowly
accumulated material, weathered off, boulder by boulder, in the
ordinary way, almost every talus had been formed suddenly, in a single
avalanche, and had not been increased in size during the last three or
four centuries; for trees three or four hundred years old were growing
on them, some standing at the top close to the wall, without a bruise
or broken branch, showing that scarcely a single boulder had fallen
among them since they were planted. Furthermore, all the taluses
throughout the range seemed, by the trees and lichens growing on them,
to be of the same age. All the phenomena pointed straight to a grand
ancient earthquake. But I left the question open for years, and went on
from cañon to cañon, observing again and again; measuring the heights
of taluses throughout the range on both flanks, and the variations in
the angles of their surface slopes; studying the way their boulders
were assorted and related and brought to rest, and the cleavage joints
of the cliffs from whence they were derived, cautious about making up
my mind. Only after I had seen one made did all doubt as to their
formation vanish.

In Yosemite Valley, one morning about two o’clock, I was aroused by an
earthquake; and though I had never before enjoyed a storm of this sort,
the strange, wild thrilling motion and rumbling could not be mistaken,
and I ran out of my cabin, near the Sentinel Rock, both glad and
frightened, shouting, “A noble earthquake!” feeling sure I was going to
learn something. The shocks were so violent and varied, and succeeded
one another so closely, one had to balance in walking as if on the deck
of a ship among the waves, and it seemed impossible the high cliffs
should escape being shattered. In particular, I feared that the
sheer-fronted Sentinel Rock, which rises to a height of three thousand
feet, would be shaken down, and I took shelter back of a big pine,
hoping I might be protected from outbounding boulders, should any come
so far. I was now convinced that an earthquake had been the maker of
the taluses, and positive proof soon came. It was a calm moonlight
night, and no sound was heard for the first minute or two save a low
muffled underground rumbling and a slight rustling of the agitated
trees, as if, in wrestling with the mountains, Nature were holding her
breath. Then, suddenly, out of the strange silence and strange motion
there came a tremendous roar. The Eagle Rock, a short distance up the
valley, had given way, and I saw it falling in thousands of the great
boulders I had been studying so long, pouring to the valley floor in a
free curve luminous from friction, making a terribly sublime and
beautiful spectacle,—an arc of the fifteen hundred feet span, as true
in form and as steady as a rainbow, in the midst of the stupendous
roaring rock storm. The sound was inconceivably deep and broad and
earnest, as if the whole earth, like a living creature, had at last
found a voice and were calling to her sister planets. It seemed to me
that if all the thunder I ever heard were condensed into one roar it
would not equal this rock roar at the birth of a mountain talus. Think,
then, of the roar that arose to heaven when all the thousands of
ancient cañon taluses throughout the length and breadth of the range
were simultaneously given birth.

The main storm was soon over, and, eager to see the new-born talus, I
ran up the valley in the moonlight and climbed it before the huge
blocks, after their wild fiery flight, had come to complete rest. They
were slowly settling into their places, chafing, grating against one
another, groaning, and whispering; but no motion was visible except in
a stream of small fragments pattering down the face of the cliff at the
head of the talus. A cloud of dust particles, the smallest of the
boulders, floated out across the whole breadth of the valley and formed
a ceiling that lasted until after sunrise; and the air was loaded with
the odor of crushed Douglas spruces, from a grove that had been mowed
down and mashed like weeds.

Sauntering about to see what other changes had been made, I found the
Indians in the middle of the valley, terribly frightened, of course,
fearing the angry spirits of the rocks were trying to kill them, The
few whites wintering in the valley were assembled in front of the old
Hutchings Hotel, comparing notes and meditating flight to steadier
ground, seemingly as sorely frightened as the Indians. It is always
interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever cause, and
earthquakes make everybody earnest. Shortly after sunrise, a low blunt
muffled rumbling, like distant thunder, was followed by another series
of shocks, which, though not nearly so severe as the first, made the
cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and the big pines and oaks thrill
and swish and wave their branches with startling effect. Then the
groups of talkers were suddenly hushed, and the solemnity on their
faces was sublime. One in particular of these winter neighbors, a
rather thoughtful, speculative man, with whom I had often conversed,
was a firm believer in the cataclysmic origin of the valley; and I now
jokingly remarked that his wild tumble-down-and-engulfment hypothesis
might soon be proved, since these underground rumblings and shakings
might be the forerunners of another Yosemite-making cataclysm, which
would perhaps double the depth of the valley by swallowing the floor,
leaving the ends of the wagon roads and trails three or four thousand
feet in the air. Just then came the second series of shocks, and it was
fine to see how awfully silent and solemn he became. His belief in the
existence of a mysterious abyss, into which the suspended floor of the
valley and all the domes and battlements of the walls might at any
moment go roaring down, mightily troubled him. To cheer and tease him
into another view of the case, I said: “Come, cheer up; smile a little
and clap your hands, now that kind Mother Earth is trotting us on her
knee to amuse us and make us good.” But the well-meant joke seemed
irreverent and utterly failed, as if only prayerful terror could
rightly belong to the wild beauty-making business. Even after all the
heavier shocks were over, I could do nothing to reassure him. On the
contrary, he handed me the keys of his little store, and, with a
companion of like mind, fled to the lowlands. In about a month he
returned; but a sharp shock occurred that very day, which sent him
flying again.

The rocks trembled more or less every day for over two months, and I
kept a bucket of water on my table to learn what I could of the
movements. The blunt thunder-tones in the depths of the mountains were
usually followed by sudden jarring, horizontal thrusts from the
northward, often succeeded by twisting, upjolting movements. Judging by
its effects, this Yosemite, or Inyo earthquake, as it is sometimes
called, was gentle as compared with the one that gave rise to the grand
talus system of the range and did so much for the cañon scenery.
Nature, usually so deliberate in her operations, then created, as we
have seen, a new set of features, simply by giving the mountains a
shake,—changing not only the high peaks and cliffs, but the streams. As
soon as these rock avalanches fell every stream began to sing new
songs; for in many places thousands of boulders were hurled into their
channels, roughening and half damming them, compelling the waters to
surge and roar in rapids where before they were gliding smoothly. Some
of the streams were completely dammed, driftwood, leaves, etc., filling
the interstices between the boulders, thus giving rise to lakes and
level reaches; and these, again, after being gradually filled in, to
smooth meadows, through which the streams now silently meander; while
at the same time some of the taluses took the places of old meadows and
groves. Thus rough places were made smooth, and smooth places rough.
But on the whole, by what at first sight seemed pure confusion and
ruin, the landscapes were enriched; for gradually every talus, however
big the boulders composing it, was covered with groves and gardens, and
made a finely proportioned and ornamental base for the sheer cliffs. In
this beauty work, every boulder is prepared and measured and put in its
place more thoughtfully than are the stones of temples. If for a moment
you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled, chaotic
dumps, climb to the top of one of them, tie your mountain shoes firmly
over the instep, and with braced nerves run down without any haggling,
puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with even
speed. You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly
discover the music and poetry of rock piles,—a fine lesson; and all
nature’s wildness tells the same story. Storms of every sort, torrents,
earthquakes, cataclysms, “convulsions of nature,” etc., however
mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only
harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God’s
love.




CHAPTER IX
The Sequoia and General Grant National Parks


The Big Tree (_Sequoia gigantea_) is Nature’s forest masterpiece, and,
so far as I know, the greatest of living things. It belongs to an
ancient stock, as its remains in old rocks show, and has a strange air
of other days about it, a thoroughbred look inherited from the long
ago—the auld lang syne of trees. Once the genus was common, and with
many species flourished in the now desolate Arctic regions, in the
interior of North America, and in Europe, but in long, eventful
wanderings from climate to climate only two species have survived the
hardships they had to encounter, the gigantea and sempervirens, the
former now restricted to the western slopes of the Sierra, the other to
the Coast Mountains, and both to California, excepting a few groves of
Redwood which extend into Oregon. The Pacific Coast in general is the
paradise of conifers. Here nearly all of them are giants, and display a
beauty and magnificence unknown elsewhere. The climate is mild, the
ground never freezes, and moisture and sunshine abound all the year.
Nevertheless it is not easy to account for the colossal size of the
Sequoias. The largest are about three hundred feet high and thirty feet
in diameter. Who of all the dwellers of the plains and prairies and
fertile home forests of round-headed oak and maple, hickory and elm,
ever dreamed that earth could bear such growths,—trees that the
familiar pines and firs seem to know nothing about, lonely, silent,
serene, with a physiognomy almost godlike; and so old, thousands of
them still living had already counted their years by tens of centuries
when Columbus set sail from Spain and were in the vigor of youth or
middle age when the star led the Chaldean sages to the infant Saviour’s
cradle! As far as man is concerned they are the same yesterday, to-day,
and forever, emblems of permanence.

No description can give any adequate idea of their singular majesty,
much less their beauty. Excepting the sugar-pine, most of their
neighbors with pointed tops seem to be forever shouting Excelsior,
while the Big Tree, though soaring above them all, seems satisfied, its
rounded head, poised lightly as a cloud, giving no impression of trying
to go higher. Only in youth does it show like other conifers a
heavenward yearning, keenly aspiring with a long quick-growing top.
Indeed the whole tree for the first century or two, or until a hundred
to a hundred and fifty feet high, is arrowhead in form, and, compared
with the solemn rigidity of age, is as sensitive to the wind as a
squirrel tail. The lower branches are gradually dropped as it grows
older, and the upper ones thinned out until comparatively few are left.
These, however, are developed to great size, divide again and again,
and terminate in bossy rounded masses of leafy branchlets, while the
head becomes dome-shaped. Then poised in fullness of strength and
beauty, stern and solemn in mien, it glows with eager, enthusiastic
life, quivering to the tip of every leaf and branch and far-reaching
root, calm as a granite dome, the first to feel the touch of the rosy
beams of the morning, the last to bid the sun good-night.

[Illustration: A Giant Sequoia.]

Perfect specimens, unhurt by running fires or lightning, are singularly
regular and symmetrical in general form, though not at all
conventional, showing infinite variety in sure unity and harmony of
plan. The immensely strong, stately shafts, with rich purplish brown
bark, are free of limbs for a hundred and fifty feet or so, though
dense tufts of sprays occur here and there, producing an ornamental
effect, while long parallel furrows give a fluted columnar appearance.
It shoots forth its limbs with equal boldness in every direction,
showing no weather side. On the old trees the main branches are crooked
and rugged, and strike rigidly outward mostly at right angles from the
trunk, but there is always a certain measured restraint in their reach
which keeps them within bounds. No other Sierra tree has foliage so
densely massed or outline so finely, firmly drawn and so obediently
subordinate to an ideal type. A particularly knotty, angular,
ungovernable-looking branch, five to eight feet in diameter and perhaps
a thousand years old, may occasionally be seen pushing out from the
trunk as if determined to break across the bounds of the regular curve,
but like all the others, as soon as the general outline is approached
the huge limb dissolves into massy bosses of branchlets and sprays, as
if the tree were growing beneath an invisible bell glass against the
sides of which the branches were moulded, while many small, varied
departures from the ideal form give the impression of freedom to grow
as they like.

Except in picturesque old age, after being struck by lightning and
broken by a thousand snowstorms, this regularity of form is one of the
Big Tree’s most distinguishing characteristics. Another is the simple
sculptural beauty of the trunk and its great thickness as compared with
its height and the width of the branches, many of them being from eight
to ten feet in diameter at a height of two hundred feet from the
ground, and seeming more like finely modeled and sculptured
architectural columns than the stems of trees, while the great strong
limbs are like rafters supporting the magnificent dome head.

The root system corresponds in magnitude with the other dimensions of
the tree, forming a flat far-reaching spongy network two hundred feet
or more in width without any taproot, and the instep is so grand and
fine, so suggestive of endless strength, it is long ere the eye is
released to look above it. The natural swell of the roots, though at
first sight excessive, gives rise to buttresses no greater than are
required for beauty as well as strength, as at once appears when you
stand back far enough to see the whole tree in its true proportions.
The fineness of the taper of the trunk is shown by its thickness at
great heights—a diameter of ten feet at a height of two hundred being,
as we have seen, not uncommon. Indeed the boles of but few trees hold
their thickness as well as Sequoia. Resolute, consummate, determined in
form, always beheld with wondering admiration, the Big Tree always
seems unfamiliar, standing alone, unrelated, with peculiar physiognomy,
awfully solemn and earnest. Nevertheless, there is nothing alien in its
looks. The Madrona, clad in thin, smooth, red and yellow bark and big
glossy leaves, seems, in the dark coniferous forests of Washington and
Vancouver Island, like some lost wanderer from the magnolia groves of
the South, while the Sequoia, with all its strangeness, seems more at
home than any of its neighbors, holding the best right to the ground as
the oldest, strongest inhabitant. One soon becomes acquainted with new
species of pine and fir spruce as with friendly people, shaking their
outstretched branches like shaking hands, and fondling their beautiful
little ones; while the venerable aboriginal Sequoia, ancient of other
days, keeps you at a distance, taking no notice of you, speaking only
to the winds, thinking only of the sky, looking as strange in aspect
and behavior among the neighboring trees as would the mastodon or hairy
elephant among the homely bears and deer. Only the Sierra Juniper is at
all like it, standing rigid and unconquerable on glacial pavements for
thousands of years, grim, rusty, silent, uncommunicative, with an air
of antiquity about as pronounced as that so characteristic of Sequoia.

The bark of full grown trees is from one to two feet thick, rich
cinnamon brown, purplish on young trees and shady parts of the old,
forming magnificent masses of color with the underbrush and beds of
flowers. Toward the end of winter the trees themselves bloom while the
snow is still eight or ten feet deep. The pistillate flowers are about
three eighths of an inch long, pale green, and grow in countless
thousands on the ends of the sprays. The staminate are still more
abundant, pale yellow, a fourth of an inch long; and when the golden
pollen is ripe they color the whole tree and dust the air and the
ground far and near.

The cones are bright grass-green in color, about two and a half inches
long, one and a half wide, and are made up of thirty or forty strong,
closely packed, rhomboidal scales with four to eight seeds at the base
of each. The seeds are extremely small and light, being only from an
eighth to a fourth of an inch long and wide, including a filmy
surrounding wing, which causes them to glint and waver in falling and
enables the wind to carry them considerable distances from the tree.

The faint lisp of snowflakes as they alight is one of the smallest
sounds mortal can hear. The sound of falling Sequoia seeds, even when
they happen to strike on flat leaves or flakes of bark, is about as
faint. Very different is the bumping and thudding of the falling cones.
Most of them are cut off by the Douglas squirrel and stored for the
sake of the seeds, small as they are. In the calm Indian summer these
busy harvesters with ivory sickles go to work early in the morning, as
soon as breakfast is over, and nearly all day the ripe cones fall in a
steady pattering, bumping shower. Unless harvested in this way they
discharge their seeds and remain on the trees for many years. In
fruitful seasons the trees are fairly laden. On two small specimen
branches one and a half and two inches in diameter I counted four
hundred and eighty cones. No other California conifer produces nearly
so many seeds, excepting perhaps its relative, the Redwood of the Coast
Mountains. Millions are ripened annually by a single tree, and the
product of one of the main groves in a fruitful year would suffice to
plant all the mountain ranges of the world.

The dense tufted sprays make snug nesting places for birds, and in some
of the loftiest, leafiest towers of verdure thousands of generations
have been reared, the great solemn trees shedding off flocks of merry
singers every year from nests, like the flocks of winged seeds from the
cones.

The Big Trees keeps its youth far longer than any of its neighbors.
Most silver firs are old in their second or third century, pines in
their fourth or fifth, while the Big Tree growing beside them is still
in the bloom of its youth, juvenile in every feature at the age of old
pines, and cannot be said to attain anything like prime size and beauty
before its fifteen hundredth year, or under favorable circumstances
become old before its three thousandth. Many, no doubt, are much older
than this. On one of the Kings River giants, thirty-five feet and eight
inches in diameter exclusive of bark, I counted upwards of four
thousand annual wood-rings, in which there was no trace of decay after
all these centuries of mountain weather. There is no absolute limit to
the existence of any tree. Their death is due to accidents, not, as of
animals, to the wearing out of organs. Only the leaves die of old age,
their fall is foretold in their structure; but the leaves are renewed
every year and so also are the other essential organs—wood, roots,
bark, buds. Most of the Sierra trees die of disease. Thus the
magnificent silver firs are devoured by fungi, and comparatively few of
them live to see their three hundredth birth year. But nothing hurts
the Big Tree. I never saw one that was sick or showed the slightest
sign of decay. It lives on through indefinite thousands of years until
burned, blown down, undermined, or shattered by some tremendous
lightning stroke. No ordinary bolt ever seriously hurts Sequoia. In all
my walks I have seen only one that was thus killed outright. Lightning,
though rare in the California lowlands, is common on the Sierra. Almost
every day in June and July small thunderstorms refresh the main forest
belt. Clouds like snowy mountains of marvelous beauty grow rapidly in
the calm sky about midday and cast cooling shadows and showers that
seldom last more than an hour. Nevertheless these brief, kind storms
wound or kill a good many trees. I have seen silver firs two hundred
feet high split into long peeled rails and slivers down to the roots,
leaving not even a stump, the rails radiating like the spokes of a
wheel from a hole in the ground where the tree stood. But the Sequoia,
instead of being split and slivered, usually has forty or fifty feet of
its brash knotty top smashed off in short chunks about the size of
cord-wood, the beautiful rosy red ruins covering the ground in a circle
a hundred feet wide or more. I never saw any that had been cut down to
the ground or even to below the branches except one in the Stanislaus
Grove, about twelve feet in diameter, the greater part of which was
smashed to fragments, leaving only a leafless stump about seventy-five
feet high. It is a curious fact that all the very old Sequoias have
lost their heads by lightning. “All things come to him who waits.” But
of all living things Sequoia is perhaps the only one able to wait long
enough to make sure of being struck by lightning. Thousands of years it
stands ready and waiting, offering its head to every passing cloud as
if inviting its fate, praying for heaven’s fire as a blessing; and when
at last the old head is off, another of the same shape immediately
begins to grow on. Every bud and branch seems excited, like bees that
have lost their queen, and tries hard to repair the damage. Branches
that for many centuries have been growing out horizontally at once turn
upward and all their branchlets arrange themselves with reference to a
new top of the same peculiar curve as the old one. Even the small
subordinate branches halfway down the trunk do their best to push up to
the top and help in this curious head-making.

The great age of these noble trees is even more wonderful than their
huge size, standing bravely up, millennium in, millennium out, to all
that fortune may bring them, triumphant over tempest and fire and time,
fruitful and beautiful, giving food and shelter to multitudes of small
fleeting creatures dependent on their bounty. Other trees may claim to
be about as large or as old: Australian Gums, Senegal Baobabs, Mexican
Taxodiums, English Yews, and venerable Lebanon Cedars, trees of renown,
some of which are from ten to thirty feet in diameter. We read of oaks
that are supposed to have existed ever since the creation, but strange
to say I can find no definite accounts of the age of any of these
trees, but only estimates based on tradition and assumed average rates
of growth. No other known tree approaches the Sequoia in grandeur,
height and thickness being considered, and none as far as I know has
looked down on so many centuries or opens such impressive and
suggestive views into history. The majestic monument of the Kings River
Forest is, as we have seen, fully four thousand years old, and
measuring the rings of annual growth we find it was no less than
twenty-seven feet in diameter at the beginning of the Christian era,
while many observations lead me to expect the discovery of others ten
or twenty centuries older. As to those of moderate age, there are
thousands, mere youth as yet, that—

“Saw the light that shone

    On Mahomet’s uplifted crescent,

On many a royal gilded throne

    And deed forgotten in the present,

        . . . saw the age of sacred trees

    And Druid groves and mystic larches,

And saw from forest domes like these

    The builder bring his Gothic arches.”


Great trees and groves used to be venerated as sacred monuments and
halls of council and worship. But soon after the discovery of the
Calaveras Grove one of the grandest trees was cut down for the sake of
a stump! The laborious vandals had seen “the biggest tree in the
world,” then, forsooth, they must try to see the biggest stump and
dance on it.

The growth in height for the first two centuries is usually at the rate
of eight to ten inches a year. Of course all very large trees are old,
but those equal in size may vary greatly in age on account of
variations in soil, closeness or openness of growth, etc. Thus a tree
about ten feet in diameter that grew on the side of a meadow was,
according to my own count of the wood-rings, only two hundred and
fifty-nine years old at the time it was felled, while another in the
same grove, of almost exactly the same size but less favorably
situated, was fourteen hundred and forty years old. The Calaveras tree
cut for a dance floor was twenty-four feet in diameter and only
thirteen hundred years old, another about the same size was a thousand
years older.

The following Sequoia notes and measurements are copied from my
notebooks:—

Diameter. Diameter. Height in   Age.
Feet.     Inches.   Feet.       Years.

0     1 3-4   10       7
0     5       24       20
0     5       25       41
0     6       25       66
0     6       28 1-2   39
0     8       25       29
0     11      45       71
1     0       60       71
3     2       156     260
6     0       192     240
7     3       195     339
7     3       255     506
7     6       240     493
7     7       207     424
9     0       243     259
9     3       222     280
10     6             1440
12                 1825[1]
15                 2150[2]
24                   1300
25                   2300
35     8 inside bark   over 4000

 [1] 6 feet in diameter at height of 200 feet.


 [2] 7 feet in diameter at height of 200 feet.


Little, however, is to be learned in confused, hurried tourist trips,
spending only a poor noisy hour in a branded grove with a guide. You
should go looking and listening alone on long walks through the wild
forests and groves in all the seasons of the year. In the spring the
winds are balmy and sweet, blowing up and down over great beds of
chaparral and through the woods now rich in softening balsam and rosin
and the scent of steaming earth. The sky is mostly sunshine, oftentimes
tempered by magnificent clouds, the breath of the sea built up into new
mountain ranges, warm during the day, cool at night, good
flower-opening weather. The young cones of the Big Trees are showing in
clusters, their flower time already past, and here and there you may
see the sprouting of their tiny seeds of the previous autumn, taking
their first feeble hold of the ground and unpacking their tender whorls
of cotyledon leaves. Then you will naturally be led on to consider
their wonderful growth up and up through the mountain weather, now
buried in snow bent and crinkled, now straightening in summer sunshine
like uncoiling ferns, shooting eagerly aloft in youth’s joyful prime,
and towering serene and satisfied through countless years of calm and
storm, the greatest of plants and all but immortal.

Under the huge trees up come the small plant people, putting forth
fresh leaves and blossoming in such profusion that the hills and
valleys would still seem gloriously rich and glad were all the grand
trees away. By the side of melting snowbanks rise the crimson sarcodes,
round-topped and massive as the Sequoias themselves, and beds of blue
violets and larger yellow one with leaves curiously lobed; azalea and
saxifrage, daisies and lilies on the mossy banks of the streams; and a
little way back of them, beneath the trees and on sunny spots on the
hills around the groves, wild rose and rubus, spiræa and ribes,
mitella, tiarella, campanula, monardella, forget-me-not, etc., many of
them as worthy of lore immortality as the famous Scotch daisy, wanting
only a Burns to sing them home to all hearts.

In the midst of this glad plant work the birds are busy nesting, some
singing at their work, some silent, others, especially the big pileated
woodpeckers, about as noisy as backwoodsmen building their cabins. Then
every bower in the groves is a bridal bower, the winds murmur softly
overhead, the streams sing with the birds, while from far-off
waterfalls and thunder-clouds come deep rolling organ notes.

In summer the days go by in almost constant brightness, cloudless
sunshine pouring over the forest roof, while in the shady depths there
is the subdued light of perpetual morning. The new leaves and cones are
growing fast and make a grand show, seeds are ripening, young birds
learning to fly, and with myriads of insects glad as birds keep the air
whirling, joy in every wingbeat, their humming and singing blending
with the gentle ah-ing of the winds; while at evening every thicket and
grove is enchanted by the tranquil chirping of the blessed hylas, the
sweetest and most peaceful of sounds, telling the very heart-joy of
earth as it rolls through the heavens.

[Illustration: Midsummer in the Sequoia Forest.]

In the autumn the sighing of the winds is softer than ever, the gentle
ah-ah-ing filling the sky with a fine universal mist of music, the
birds have little to say, and there is no appreciable stir or rustling
among the trees save that caused by the harvesting squirrels. Most of
the seeds are ripe and away, those of the trees mottling the sunny air,
glinting, glancing through the midst of the merry insect people, rocks
and trees, everything alike drenched in gold light, heaven’s colors
coming down to the meadows and groves, making every leaf a romance,
air, earth, and water in peace beyond thought, the great brooding days
opening and closing in divine psalms of color.

Winter comes suddenly, arrayed in storms, though to mountaineers silky
streamers on the peaks and the tones of the wind give sufficient
warning. You hear strange whisperings among the tree-tops, as if the
giants were taking counsel together. One after another, nodding and
swaying, calling and replying, spreads the news, until at with one
accord break forth into glorious song, welcoming the first grand
snowstorm of the year, and looming up in the dim clouds and snowdrifts
like lighthouse towers in flying scud and spray. Studying the behavior
of the giants from some friendly shelter, you will see that even in the
glow of their wildest enthusiasm, when the storm roars loudest, they
never lose their god-like composure, never toss their arms or bow or
wave like the pines, but only slowly, solemnly nod and sway, standing
erect, making no sign of strife, none of rest, neither in alliance nor
at war with the winds, too calmly, unconsciously noble and strong to
strive with or bid defiance to anything. Owing to the density of the
leafy branchlets and great breadth of head the Big Tree carries a much
heavier load of snow than any of its neighbors, and after a storm, when
the sky clears, the laden trees are a glorious spectacle, worth any
amount of cold camping to see. Every bossy limb and crown is solid
white, and the immense height of the giants becomes visible as the eye
travels the white steps of the colossal tower, each relieved by a mass
of blue shadow.

In midwinter the forest depths are as fresh and pure as the crevasses
and caves of glaciers. Grouse, nuthatches, a few woodpeckers, and other
hardy birds dwell in the groves all winter, and the squirrels may be
seen every clear day frisking about, lively as ever, tunneling to their
stores, never coming up empty-mouthed, dividing in the loose snow about
as quickly as ducks in water, while storms and sunshine sing to each
other.

One of the noblest and most beautiful of the late winter sights is the
blossoming of the Big Tree like gigantic goldenrods and the sowing of
their pollen over all the forest and the snow-covered ground—a most
glorious view of Nature’s immortal virility and flower-love.

One of my own best excursions among the Sequoias was made in the autumn
of 1875, when I explored the then unknown or little known Sequoia
region south of the Mariposa Grove for comprehensive views of the belt,
and to learn what I could of the peculiar distribution of the species
and its history in general. In particular I was anxious to try to find
out whether it had ever been more widely distributed since the glacial
period; what conditions favorable or otherwise were affecting it; what
were its relations to climate, topography, soil, and the other trees
growing with it, etc.; and whether, as was generally supposed, the
species was nearing extinction. I was already acquainted in a general
way with the northern groves, but excepting some passing glimpses
gained on excursions into the high Sierra about the head-waters of
Kings and Kern rivers I had seen nothing of the south end of the belt.

Nearly all my mountaineering has been done on foot, carrying as little
as possible, depending on camp-fires for warmth, that so I might be
light and free to go wherever my studies might lead. On this Sequoia
trip, which promised to be long, I was persuaded to take a small wild
mule with me to carry provisions and a pair of blankets. The friendly
owner of the animal, having noticed that I sometimes looked tired when
I came down from the peaks to replenish my bread sack, assured me that
his “little Brownie mule” was just what I wanted, tough as a knot,
perfectly untirable, low and narrow, just right for squeezing through
brush, able to climb like a chipmunk, jump from boulder to boulder like
a wild sheep, and go anywhere a man could go. But tough as he was and
accomplished as a climber, many a time in the course of our journey
when he was jaded and hungry, wedged fast in rocks or struggling in
chaparral like a fly in a spiderweb, his troubles were sad to see, and
I wished he would leave me and find his way home alone.

We set out from Yosemite about the end of August, and our first camp
was made in the well-known Mariposa Grove. Here and in the adjacent
pine woods I spent nearly a week, carefully examining the boundaries of
the grove for traces of its greater extension without finding any. Then
I struck out into the majestic trackless forest to the southeastward,
hoping to find new groves or traces of old ones in the dense silver fir
and pine woods about the head of Big Creek, where soil and climate
seemed most favorable to their growth, but not a single tree or old
monument of any sort came to light until I climbed the high rock called
Wamellow by the Indians. Here I obtained telling views of the fertile
forest-filled basin of the upper Fresno. Innumerable spires of the
noble yellow pine were displayed rising above one another on the
braided slopes, and yet nobler sugar pines with superb arms
outstretched in the rich autumn light, while away toward the southwest,
on the verge of the glowing horizon, I discovered the majestic
dome-like crowns of Big Trees towering high over all, singly and in
close grove congregations. There is something wonderfully attractive in
this king tree, even when beheld from afar, that draws us to it with
indescribable enthusiasm; its superior height and massive smoothly
rounded outlines proclaiming its character in any company; and when one
of the oldest attains full stature on some commanding ridge it seems
the very god of the woods. I ran back to camp, packed Brownie, steered
over the divide and down into the heart of the Fresno Grove. Then
choosing a camp on the side of a brook where the grass was good, I made
a cup of tea, and set off free among the brown giants, glorying in the
abundance of new work about me. One of the first special things that
caught my attention was an extensive landslip. The ground on the side
of a stream had given way to a depth of about fifty feet and with all
its trees had been launched into the bottom of the stream ravine. Most
of the trees—pines, firs, incense cedar, and Sequoia—were still
standing erect and uninjured, as if unconscious that anything out of
the common had happened. Tracing the ravine alongside the avalanche, I
saw many trees whose roots had been laid bare, and in one instance
discovered a Sequoia about fifteen feet in diameter growing above an
old prostrate trunk that seemed to belong to a former generation. This
slip had occurred seven or eight years ago, and I was glad to find that
not only were most of the Big Trees uninjured, but that many companies
of hopeful seedlings and saplings were growing confidently on the fresh
soil along the broken front of the avalanche. These young trees were
already eight or ten feet high, and were shooting up vigorously, as if
sure of eternal life, though young pines, firs, and libocedrus were
runing a race with them for the sunshine with an even start. Farther
down the ravine I counted five hundred and thirty-six promising young
Sequoias on a bed of rough bouldery soil not exceeding two acres in
extent.

The Fresno Big Trees covered an area of about four square miles, and
while wandering about surveying the boundaries of the grove, anxious to
see every tree, I came suddenly on a handsome log cabin, richly
embowered and so fresh and unweathered it was still redolent of gum and
balsam like a newly felled tree. Strolling forward, wondering who could
have built it, I found an old, weary-eyed, speculative, gray-haired man
on a bark stool by the door, reading a book. The discovery of his
hermitage by a stranger seemed to surprise him, but when I explained
that I was only a tree-lover sauntering along the mountains to study
Sequoia, he bade me welcome, made me bring my mule down to a little
slanting meadow before his door and camp with him, promising to show me
his pet trees and many curious things bearing on my studies.

After supper, as the evening shadows were falling, the good hermit
sketched his life in the mines, which in the main was like that of most
other pioneer gold-hunters—a succession of intense experiences full of
big ups and downs like the mountain topography. Since “’49” he had
wandered over most of the Sierra, sinking innumerable prospect holes
like a sailor making soundings, digging new channels for streams,
sifting gold-sprinkled boulder and gravel beds with unquenchable
energy, life’s noon the meanwhile passing unnoticed into late afternoon
shadows. Then, health and gold gone, the game played and lost, like a
wounded deer creeping into this forest solitude, he awaits the sundown
call. How sad the undertones of many a life here, now the noise of the
first big gold battles has died away! How many interesting wrecks lie
drifted and stranded in hidden nooks of the gold region! Perhaps no
other range contains the remains of so many rare and interesting men.
The name of my hermit friend is John A. Nelder, a fine kind man, who in
going into the woods has at last gone home; for he loves nature truly,
and realizes that these last shadowy days with scarce a glint of gold
in them are the best of all. Birds, squirrels, plants get loving,
natural recognition, and delightful it was to see how sensitively he
responds to the silent influences of the woods. His eyes brightened as
he gazed on the trees that stand guard around his little home;
squirrels and mountain quail came to his call to be fed, and he
tenderly stroked the little snowbent sapling Sequoias, hoping they yet
might grow straight to the sky and rule the grove. One of the greatest
of his trees stands a little way back of his cabin, and he proudly led
me to it, bidding me admire its colossal proportions and measure it to
see if in all the forest there could be another so grand. It proved to
be only twenty-six feet in diameter, and he seemed distressed to learn
that the Mariposa Grizzly Giant was larger. I tried to comfort him by
observing that his was the taller, finer formed, and perhaps the more
favorably situated. Then he led me to some noble ruins, remnants of
gigantic trunks of trees that he supposed must have been larger than
any now standing, and though they had lain on the damp ground exposed
to fire and the weather for centuries, the wood was perfectly sound.
Sequoia timber is not only beautiful in color, rose red when fresh, and
as easily worked as pine, but it is almost absolutely unperishable.
Build a house of Big Tree logs on granite and that house will last
about as long as its foundation. Indeed fire seems to be the only agent
that has any appreciable effect on it. From one of these ancient trunk
remnants I cut a specimen of the wood, which neither in color,
strength, nor soundness could be distinguished from specimens cut from
living trees, although it had certainly lain on the damp forest floor
for more than three hundred and eighty years, probably more than thrice
as long. The time in this instance was determined as follows: When the
tree from which the specimen was derived fell it sunk itself into the
ground, making a ditch about two hundred feet long and five or six feet
deep; and in the middle of this ditch, where a part of the fallen trunk
had been burned, a silver fir four feet in diameter and three hundred
and eighty years old was growing, showing that the Sequoia trunk had
lain on the ground three hundred and eighty years plus the unknown time
that it lay before the part whose place had been taken by the fir was
burned out of the way, and that which had elapsed ere the seed from
which the monumental fir sprang fell into the prepared soil and took
root. Now because Sequoia trunks are never wholly consumed in one
forest fire and these fires recur only at considerable intervals, and
because Sequoia ditches, after being cleared, are often left unplanted
for centuries, it becomes evident that the trunk remnant in question
may have been on the ground a thousand years or more. Similar vestiges
are common, and together with the root-bowls and long straight ditches
of the fallen monarchs, throw a sure light back on the post-glacial
history of the species, bearing on its distribution. One of the most
interesting features of this grove is the apparent ease and strength
and comfortable independence in which the trees occupy their place in
the general forest. Seedlings, saplings, young and middle-aged trees
are grouped promisingly around the old patriarchs, betraying no sign of
approach to extinction. On the contrary, all seem to be saying,
“Everything is to our mind and we mean to live forever.” But, sad to
tell, a lumber company was building a large mill and flume near by,
assuring widespread destruction.

In the cones and sometimes in the lower portion of the trunk and roots
there is a dark gritty substance which dissolves readily in water and
yields a magnificent purple color. It is a strong astringent, and is
said to be used by the Indians as a big medicine. Mr. Nelder showed me
specimens of ink he had made from it, which I tried and found good,
flowing freely and holding its color well. Indeed everything about the
tree seems constant. With these interesting trees, forming the largest
of the northern groves, I stopped only a week, for I had far to go
before the fall of the snow. The hermit seemed to cling to me and tried
to make me promise to winter with him after the season’s work was done.
Brownie had to be got home, however, and other work awaited me,
therefore I could only promise to stop a day or two on my way back to
Yosemite and give him the forest news.

The next two weeks were spent in the wide basin of the San Joaquin,
climbing, innumerable ridges and surveying the far-extending sea of
pines and firs. But not a single Sequoia crown appeared among them all,
nor any trace of a fallen trunk, until I had crossed the south divide
of the basin, opposite Dinky Creek, one of the northmost tributaries of
Kings River. On this stream there is a small grove, said to have been
discovered a few years before my visit by two hunters in pursuit of a
wounded bear. Just as I was fording one of the branches of Dinky Creek
I met a shepherd, and when I asked him whether he knew anything about
the Big Trees of the neighborhood he replied, “I know all about them,
for I visited them only a few days ago and pastured my sheep in the
grove.” He was fresh from the East, and as this was his first summer in
the Sierra I was curious to learn what impression the Sequoias had made
on him. When I asked whether it was true that the Big Trees were really
so big as people say, he warmly replied, “Oh, yes sir, you bet. They’re
whales. I never used to believe half I heard about the awful size of
California trees, but they’re monsters and no mistake. One of them over
here, they tell me, is the biggest tree in the whole world, and I guess
it is, for it’s forty foot through and as many good long paces around.”
He was very earnest, and in fullness of faith offered to guide me to
the grove that I might not miss seeing this biggest tree. A fair
measurement four feet from the ground, above the main swell of the
roots, showed a diameter of only thirty-two feet, much to the young
man’s disgust. “Only thirty-two feet,” he lamented, “only thirty-two,
and I always thought it was forty!” Then with a sigh of relief, “No
matter, that’s a big tree, anyway; no fool of a tree, sir, that you can
cut a plank out of thirty feet broad, straight-edged, no bark, all good
wood, sound and solid. It would make the brag white pine planks from
old Maine look like laths.” A good many other fine specimens are
distributed along three small branches of the creek, and I noticed
several thrifty moderate-sized Sequoias growing on a granite ledge,
apparently as independent of deep soil as the pines and firs, clinging
to seams and fissures and sending their roots far abroad in search of
moisture.

The creek is very clear and beautiful, gliding through tangles of
shrubs and flower beds, gay bee and butterfly pastures, the grove’s own
stream, pure Sequoia water, flowing all the year, every drop filtered
through moss and leaves and the myriad spongy rootlets of the giant
trees. One of the most interesting features of the grove is a small
waterfall with a flowery, ferny, clear brimming pool at the foot of it.
How cheerily it sings the songs of the wilderness, and how sweet its
tones! You seem to taste as well as hear them, while only the subdued
roar of the river in the deep cañon reaches up into the grove, sounding
like the sea and the winds. So charming a fall and pool in the heart of
so glorious a forest food pagans would have consecrated to some lovely
nymph.

Hence down into the main Kings River cañon, a mile deep, I led and
dragged and shoved my patient, much-enduring mule through miles and
miles and gardens and brush, fording innumerable streams, crossing
savage rock slopes and taluses, scrambling, sliding through gulches and
gorges, then up into the grand Sequoia forests of the south side,
cheered by the royal crowns displayed on the narrow horizon. In a day
and a half we reached the Sequoia woods in the neighborhood of the old
Thomas Mill Flat. Thence striking off northeastward I found a
magnificent forest nearly six miles long by two in width, composed
mostly of Big Trees, with outlying groves as far east as Boulder Creek.
Here five or six days were spent, and it was delightful to learn from
countless trees, old and young, how comfortably they were settled down
in concordance with climate and soil and their noble neighbors.

Imbedded in these majestic woods there are numerous meadows, around the
sides of which the Big Trees press close together in beautiful lines,
showing their grandeur openly from the ground to their domed heads in
the sky. The young trees are still more numerous and exuberant than in
the Fresno and Dinky groves, standing apart in beautiful family groups,
or crowding around the old giants. For every venerable
lightning-stricken tree, there is one or more in all the glory of
prime, and for each of these, many young trees and crowds of saplings.
The young trees express the grandeur of their race in a way indefinable
by any words at my command. When they are five or six feet in diameter
and a hundred and fifty feet high, they seem like mere baby saplings as
many inches in diameter, their juvenile habit and gestures completely
veiling their real size, even to those who, from long experience, are
able to make fair approximation in their measurements of common trees.
One morning I noticed three airy, spiry, quick-growing babies on the
side of a meadow, the largest of which I took to be about eight inches
in diameter. On measuring it, I found to any astonishment it was five
feet six inches in diameter, and about a hundred and forty feet high.

On a bed of sandy ground fifteen yards square, which had been occupied
by four sugar pines, I counted ninety-four promising seedlings, an
instance of Sequoia gaining ground from its neighbors. Here also I
noted eighty-six young Sequoias from one to fifty feet high on less
than half an acre of ground that had been cleared and prepared for
their reception by fire. This was a small bay burned into dense
chaparral, showing that fire, the great destroyer of tree life, is
sometimes followed by conditions favorable for new growths. Sufficient
fresh soil, however, is furnished for the constant renewal of the
forest by the fall of old trees without the help of any other
agent,—burrowing animals, fire, flood, landslip, etc.,—for the ground
is thus turned and stirred as well as cleared, and in every roomy,
shady hollow beside the walls of upturned roots many hopeful seedlings
spring up.

The largest, and as far as I know the oldest, of all the Kings River
trees that I saw is the majestic stump, already referred to, about a
hundred and forty feet high, which above then swell of the roots is
thirty-five feet and eight inches inside the bark, and over four
thousand years old. It was burned nearly half through at the base, and
I spent a day in chopping off the charred surface, cutting into the
heart, and counting the wood-rings with the aid of a lens. I made out a
little over four thousand without difficulty or doubt, but I was unable
to get a complete count, owing to confusion in the rings where wounds
had been healed over. Judging by what is left of it, this was a fine,
tall, symmetrical tree nearly forty feet in diameter before it lost its
bark. In the last sixteen hundred and seventy-two years the increase in
diameter was ten feet. A short distance south of this forest lies a
beautiful grove, now mostly included in the General Grant National
Park. I found many shake-makers at work in it, access to these
magnificent woods having been made easy by the old mill wagon road. The
Park is only two miles square, and the largest of its many fine trees
is the General Grant, so named before the date of my first visit,
twenty-eight years ago, and said to be the largest tree in the world,
though above the craggy bulging base the diameter is less than thirty
feet. The Sanger Lumber Company owns nearly all the Kings River groves
outside the Park, and for many years the mills have been spreading
desolation without any advantage.

One of the shake-makers directed me to an “old snag biggeren Grant.” It
proved to be a huge black charred stump thirty-two feet in diameter,
the next in size to the grand monument mentioned above.

[Illustration: “General Grant” Sequoia in General Grant National Park.]

I found a scattered growth of Big Trees extending across the main
divide to within a short distance of Hyde’s Mill, on a tributary of Dry
Creek. The mountain ridge on the south side of the stream was covered
from base to summit with a most superb growth of Big Trees. What a
picture it made! In all my wide forest wanderings I had seen none so
sublime. Every tree of all the mighty host seemed perfect in beauty and
strength, and their majestic domed heads, rising above one another on
the mountain slope, were most imposingly displayed, like a range of
bossy upswelling cumulus clouds on a calm sky.

In this glorious forest the mill was busy, forming a sore, sad centre
of destruction, though small as yet, so immensely heavy was the growth.
Only the smaller and most accessible of the trees were being cut. The
logs, from three to ten or twelve feet in diameter, were dragged or
rolled with long strings of oxen into a chute and sent flying down the
steep mountain side to the mill flat, where the largest of them were
blasted into manageable dimensions for the saws. And as the timber is
very brash, by this blasting and careless felling on uneven ground,
half or three fourths of the timber was wasted.

I spent several days exploring the ridge and counting the annual wood
rings on a large number of stumps in the clearings, then replenished my
bread sack and pushed on southward. All the way across the broad rough
basins of the Kaweah and Tule rivers Sequoia ruled supreme, forming an
almost continuous belt for sixty or seventy miles, waving up and down
in huge massy mountain billows in compliance with the grand
glacier-ploughed topography.

Day after day, from grove to grove, cañon to cañon, I made a long,
wavering way, terribly rough in some places for Brownie, but cheery for
me, for Big Trees were seldom out of sight. We crossed the rugged,
picturesque basins of Redwood Creek, the North Fork of the Kaweah, and
Marble Fork gloriously forested, and full of beautiful cascades and
falls, sheer and slanting, infinitely varied with broad curly foam
fleeces and strips of embroidery in which the sunbeams revel. Thence we
climbed into the noble forest on the Marble and Middle Fork Divide.
After a general exploration of the Kaweah basin, this part of the
Sequoia belt seemed to me the finest, and I then named it “the Giant
Forest.” It extends, a magnificent growth of giants grouped in pure
temple groves, ranged in colonnades along the sides of meadows, or
scattered among the other trees, from the granite headlands overlooking
the hot foothills and plains of the San Joaquin back to within a few
miles of the old glacier fountains at an elevation of 5000 to 8400 feet
above the sea.

When I entered this sublime wilderness the day was nearly done, the
trees with rosy, glowing countenances seemed to be hushed and
thoughtful, as if waiting in conscious religious dependence on the sun,
and one naturally walked softly and awe-stricken among them. I wandered
on, meeting nobler trees where all are noble, subdued in the general
calm, as if in some vast hall pervaded by the deepest sanctities and
solemnities that sway human souls. At sundown the trees seemed to cease
their worship and breathe free. I heard the birds going home. I too
sought a home for the night on the edge of a level meadow where there
is a long, open view between the evenly ranked trees standing guard
along its sides. Then after a good place was found for poor Brownie,
who had had a hard, weary day sliding and scrambling across the Marble
Cañon, I made my bed and supper and lay on my back looking up to the
stars through pillared arches finer far than the pious heart of man,
telling its love, ever reared. Then I took a walk up the meadow to see
the trees in the pale light. They seemed still more marvelously massive
and tall than by day, heaving their colossal heads into the depths of
the sky, among the stars, some of which appeared to be sparkling on
their branches like flowers. I built a big fire that vividly illumined
the huge brown boles of the nearest trees and the little plants and
cones and fallen leaves at their feet, keeping up the show until I fell
asleep to dream of boundless forests and trail-building for Brownie.

Joyous birds welcomed the dawn; and the squirrels, now their food cones
were ripe and had to be quickly gathered and stored for winter, began
their work before sunrise. My tea-and-bread-crumb breakfast was soon
done, and leaving jaded Brownie to feed and rest I sauntered forth to
my studies. In every direction Sequoia ruled the woods. Most of the
other big conifers were present here and there, but not as rivals or
companions. They only served to thicken and enrich the general
wilderness. Trees of every age cover craggy ridges as well as the deep
moraine-soiled slopes, and plant their magnificent shafts along every
brookside and meadow. Bogs and meadows are rare or entirely wanting in
the isolated groves north of Kings River; here there is a beautiful
series of them lying on the broad top of the main dividing ridge,
imbedded in the very heart of the mammoth woods as if for ornament,
their smooth, plushy bosoms kept bright and fertile by streams and
sunshine.

Resting awhile on one of the most beautiful of them when the sun was
high, it seemed impossible that any other forest picture in the world
could rival it. There lay the grassy, flowery lawn, three fourths of a
mile long, smoothly outspread, basking in mellow autumn light, colored
brown and yellow and purple, streaked with lines of green along the
streams, and ruffled here and there with patches of ledum and scarlet
vaccinium. Around the margin there is first a fringe of azalea and
willow bushes, colored orange yellow, enlivened with vivid dashes of
red cornel, as if painted. Then up spring the mighty walls of verdure
three hundred feet high, the brown fluted pillars so thick and tall and
strong they seem fit to uphold the sky; the dense foliage, swelling
forward in rounded bosses on the upper half, variously shaded and
tinted, that of the young trees dark green, of the old yellowish. An
aged lightning-smitten patriarch standing a little forward beyond the
general line with knotty arms outspread was covered with gray and
yellow lichens and surrounded by a group of saplings whose slender
spires seemed to lack not a single leaf or spray in their wondrous
perfection. Such was the Kaweah meadow picture that golden afternoon,
and as I gazed every color seemed to deepen and glow as if the progress
of the fresh sun-work were visible from hour to hour, while every tree
seemed religious and conscious of the presence of God. A free man
revels in a scene like this and time goes by unmeasured. I stood fixed
in silent wonder or sauntered about shifting my points of view,
studying the physiognomy of separate trees, and going out to the
different color patches to see how they were put on and what they were
made of, giving free expression to my joy, exulting in Nature’s wild
immortal vigor and beauty, never dreaming any other human being was
near. Suddenly the spell was broken by dull bumping, thudding sounds,
and a man and horse came in sight at the farther end of the meadow,
where they seemed sadly out of place. A good big bear or mastodon or
megatherium would have been more in keeping with the old mammoth
forest. Nevertheless, it is always pleasant to meet one of our own
species after solitary rambles, and I stepped out where I could be seen
and shouted, when the rider reined in his galloping mustang and waited
my approach. He seemed too much surprised to speak until, laughing in
his puzzled face, I said I was glad to meet a fellow mountaineer in so
lonely a place. Then he abruptly asked, “What are you doing? How did
you get here?” I explained that I came across the cañons from Yosemite
and was only looking at the trees. “Oh then, I know,” he said, greatly
to my surprise, “you must be John Muir.” He was herding a band of
horses that had been driven up a rough trail from the lowlands to feed
on these forest meadows. A few handfuls of crumb detritus was all that
was left in my bread sack, so I told him that I was nearly out of
provision and asked whether he could spare me a little flour. “Oh yes,
of course you can have anything I’ve got,” he said. “Just take my track
and it will lead you to my camp in a big hollow log on the side of a
meadow two or three miles from here. I must ride after some strayed
horses, but I’ll be back before night; in the mean time make yourself
at home.” He galloped away to the northward, I returned to my own camp,
saddled Brownie, and by the middle of the afternoon discovered his
noble den in a fallen Sequoia hollowed by fire—a spacious loghouse of
one log, carbon-lined, centuries old yet sweet and fresh, weather
proof, earthquake proof, likely to outlast the most durable stone
castle, and commanding views of garden and grove grander far than the
richest king ever enjoyed. Brownie found plenty of grass and I found
bread, which I ate with views from the big round, ever-open door. Soon
the good Samaritan mountaineer came in, and I enjoyed a famous rest
listening to his observations on trees, animals, adventures, etc.,
while he was busily preparing supper. In answer to inquiries concerning
the distribution of the Big Trees he gave a good deal of particular
information of the forest we were in, and he had heard that the species
extended a long way south, he knew not now far. I wandered about for
several days within a radius of six or seven miles of the camp,
surveying boundaries, measuring trees, and climbing the highest points
for general views. From the south side of the divide I saw telling
ranks of Sequoia-crowned headlands stretching far into the hazy
distance, and plunging vaguely down into profound cañon depths
foreshadowing weeks of good work. I had now been out on the trip more
than a month, and I began to fear my studies would be interrupted by
snow, for winter was drawing nigh. “Where there isn’t a way make a
way,” is easily said when no way at the time is needed, but to the
Sierra explorer with a mule traveling across the cañon lines of
drainage the brave old phrase becomes heavy with meaning. There are
ways across the Sierra graded by glaciers, well marked, and followed by
men and beasts and birds, and one of them even by locomotives; but none
natural or artificial along the range, and the explorer who would thus
travel at right angles to the glacial ways must traverse cañons and
ridges extending side by side in endless succession, roughened by side
gorges and gulches and stubborn chaparral, and defended by innumerable
sheer-fronted precipices. My own ways are easily made in any direction,
but Brownie, though one of the toughest and most skillful of his race,
was oftentimes discouraged for want of hands, and caused endless work.
Wild at first, he was tame enough now; and when turned loose he not
only refused to run away, but as his troubles increased came to depend
on me in such a pitiful, touching way, I became attached to him and
helped him as if he were a good-natured boy in distress, and then the
labor grew lighter. Bidding good-by to the kind Sequoia cave-dweller,
we vanished again in the wilderness, drifting slowly southward,
Sequoias on every ridge-top beckoning and pointing the way.

In the forest between the Middle and East forks of the Kaweah, I met a
great fire, and as fire is the master scourge and controller of the
distribution of trees, I stopped to watch it and learn what I could of
its works and ways with the giants. It came racing up the steep
chaparral-covered slopes of the East Fork cañon with passionate
enthusiasm in a broad cataract of flames, now bending down low to feed
on the green bushes, devouring acres of them at a breath, now towering
high in the air as if looking abroad to choose a way, then stooping to
feed again, the lurid flapping surges and the smoke and terrible
rushing and roaring hiding all that is gentle and orderly in the work.
But as soon as the deep forest was reached the ungovernable flood
became calm like a torrent entering a lake, creeping and spreading
beneath the trees where the ground was level or sloped gently, slowly
nibbling the cake of compressed needles and scales with flames an inch
high, rising here and there to a foot or two on dry twigs and clumps of
small bushes and brome grass. Only at considerable intervals were
fierce bonfires lighted, where heavy branches broken off by snow had
accumulated, or around some venerable giant whose head had been
stricken off by lightning.

I tethered Brownie on the edge of a little meadow beside a stream a
good safe way off, and then cautiously chose a camp for myself in a big
stout hollow trunk not likely to be crushed by the fall of burning
trees, and made a bed of ferns and boughs in it. The night, however,
and the strange wild fireworks were too beautiful and exciting to allow
much sleep. There was no danger of being chased and hemmed in, for in
the main forest belt of the Sierra, even when swift winds are blowing,
fires seldom or never sweep over the trees in broad all-embracing
sheets as they do in the dense Rocky Mountain woods and in those of the
Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington. Here they creep from tree
to tree with tranquil deliberation, allowing close observation, though
caution is required in venturing around the burning giants to avoid
falling limbs and knots and fragments from dead shattered tops. Though
the day was best for study, I sauntered about night after night,
learning what I could and admiring the wonderful show vividly displayed
in the lonely darkness, the ground-fire advancing in long crooked lines
gently grazing and smoking on the close-pressed leaves, springing up in
thousands of little jets of pure flame on dry tassels and twigs, and
tall spires and flat sheets with jagged flapping edges dancing here and
there on grass tufts and bushes, big bonfires blazing in perfect storms
of energy where heavy branches mixed with small ones lay smashed
together in hundred cord piles, big red arches between spreading
root-swells and trees growing close together, huge fire-mantled trunks
on the hill slopes glowing like bars of hot iron, violet-colored fire
running up the tall trees, tracing the furrows of the bark in quick
quivering rills, and lighting magnificent torches on dry shattered
tops, and ever and anon, with a tremendous roar and burst of light,
young trees clad in low-descending feathery branches vanishing in one
flame two or three hundred feet high.

One of the most impressive and beautiful sights was made by the great
fallen trunks lying on the hillsides all red and glowing like colossal
iron bars fresh from a furnace, two hundred feet long some of them, and
ten to twenty feet thick. After repeated burnings have consumed the
bark and sapwood, the sound charred surface, being full of cracks and
sprinkled with leaves, is quickly overspread with a pure, rich, furred,
ruby glow almost flameless and smokeless, producing a marvelous effect
in the night. Another grand and interesting sight are the fires on the
tops of the largest living trees flaming above the green branches at a
height of perhaps two hundred feet, entirely cut off from the
ground-fires, and looking like signal beacons on watch towers. From one
standpoint I sometimes saw a dozen or more, those in the distance
looking like great stars above the forest roof. At first I could not
imagine how these Sequoia lamps were lighted, but the very first night,
strolling about waiting and watching, I saw the thing done again and
again. The thick, fibrous bark of old trees is divided by deep, nearly
continuous furrows, the sides of which are bearded with the bristling
ends of fibres broken by the growth swelling of the trunk, and when the
fire comes creeping around the feet of the trees, it runs up these
bristly furrows in lovely pale blue quivering, bickering rills of flame
with a low, earnest whispering sound to the lightning-shattered top of
the trunk, which, in the dry Indian summer, with perhaps leaves and
twigs and squirrel-gnawed cone-scales and seed-wings lodged in it, is
readily ignited. These lamp-lighting rills, the most beautiful fire
streams I ever saw, last only a minute or two, but the big lamps burn
with varying brightness for days and weeks, throwing off sparks like
the spray of a fountain, while ever and anon a shower of red coals
comes sifting down through the branches, followed at times with
startling effect by a big burned-off chunk weighing perhaps half a ton.

The immense bonfires where fifty or a hundred cords of peeled, split,
smashed wood has been piled around some old giant by a single stroke of
lightning is another grand sight in the night. The light is so great I
found I could read common print three hundred yards from them, and the
illumination of the circle of onlooking trees is indescribably
impressive. Other big fires, roaring and booming like waterfalls, were
blazing on the upper sides of trees on hillslopes, against which limbs
broken off by heavy snow had rolled, while branches high overhead,
tossed and shaken by the ascending air current, seemed to be writhing
in pain. Perhaps the most starting phenomenon of all was the quick
death of childlike Sequoias only a century or two of age. In the midst
of the other comparatively slow and steady fire work one of these tall,
beautiful saplings, leafy and branchy, would be seen blazing up
suddenly, all in one heaving, booming, passionate flame reaching from
the ground to the top of the tree and fifty to a hundred feet or more
above it, with a smoke column bending forward and streaming away on the
upper, free-flowing wind. To burn these green trees a strong fire of
dry wood beneath them is required, to send up a current of air hot
enough to distill inflammable gases from the leaves and sprays; then
instead of the lower limbs gradually catching fire and igniting the
next and next in succession, the whole tree seems to explode almost
simultaneously, and with awful roaring and throbbing a round, tapering
flame shoots up two or three hundred feet, and in a second or two is
quenched, leaving the green spire a black, dead mast, bristled and
roughened with down-curling boughs. Nearly all the trees that have been
burned down are lying with their heads uphill, because they are burned
far more deeply on the upper side, on account of broken limbs rolling
down against them to make hot fires, while only leaves and twigs
accumulate on the lower side and are quickly consumed without injury to
the tree. But green, resinless Sequoia wood burns very slowly, and many
successive fires are required to burn down a large tree. Fires can run
only at intervals of several years, and when the ordinary amount of
firewood that has rolled against the gigantic trunk is consumed, only a
shallow scar is made, which is slowly deepened by recurring fires until
far beyond the centre of gravity, and when at last the tree falls, it
of course falls uphill. The healing folds of wood layers on some of the
deeply burned trees show that centuries have elapsed since the last
wounds were made.

When a great Sequoia falls, its head is smashed into fragments about as
small as those made by lightning, which are mostly devoured by the
first running, hunting fire that finds them, while the trunk is slowly
wasted away by centuries of fire and weather. One of the most
interesting fire actions on the trunk is the boring of those great
tunnel-like hollows through which horsemen may gallop. All of these
famous hollows are burned out of the solid wood, for no Sequoia is ever
hollowed by decay. When the tree falls the brash trunk is often broken
straight across into sections as if sawed; into these joints the fire
creeps, and, on account of the great size of the broken ends, burns for
weeks or even months without being much influenced by the weather.
After the great glowing ends fronting each other have burned so far
apart that their rims cease to burn, the fire continues to work on in
the centres, and the ends become deeply concave. Then heat being
radiated from side to side, the burning goes on in each section of the
trunk independent of the other, until the diameter of the bore is so
great that the heat radiated across from side to side is not sufficient
to keep them burning. It appears, therefore, that only very large trees
can receive the fire-auger and have any shell rim left.

Fire attacks the large trees only at the ground, consuming the fallen
leaves and humus at their feet, doing them but little harm unless
considerable quantities of fallen limbs happen to be piled about them,
their thick mail of spongy, unpitchy, almost unburnable bark affording
strong protection. Therefore the oldest and most perfect unscarred
trees are found on ground that is nearly level, while those growing on
hillsides, against which falling branches roll, are always deeply
scarred on the upper side, and as we have seen are sometimes burned
down. The saddest thing of all was to see the hopeful seedlings, many
of them crinkled and bent with the pressure of winter snow, yet bravely
aspiring at the top, helplessly perishing, and young trees, perfect
spires of verdure and naturally immortal, suddenly changed to dead
masts. Yet the sun looked cheerily down the openings in the forest
roof, turning the black smoke to a beautiful brown, as if all was for
the best.

Beneath the smoke-clouds of the suffering forest we again pushed
southward, descending a side-george of the East Fork cañon and climbing
another into new forests and groves not a whit less noble. Brownie, the
meanwhile, had been resting, while I was weary and sleepy with almost
ceaseless wanderings, giving only an hour or two each night or day to
sleep in my log home. Way-making here seemed to become more and more
difficult, “impossible,” in common phrase, for four-legged travelers.
Two or three miles was all the day’s work as far as distance was
concerned. Nevertheless, just before sundown we found a charming camp
ground with plenty of grass, and a forest to study that had felt no
fire for many a year. The camp hollow was evidently a favorite home of
bears. On many of the trees, at a height of six or eight feet, their
autographs were inscribed in strong, free, flowing strokes on the soft
bark where they had stood up like cats to stretch their limbs. Using
both hands, every claw a pen, the handsome curved lines of their
writing take the form of remarkably regular interlacing pointed arches,
producing a truly ornamental effect. I looked and listened, half
expecting to see some of the writers alarmed and withdrawing from the
unwonted disturbance. Brownie also looked and listened, for mules fear
bears instinctively and have a very keen nose for them. When I turned
him loose, instead of going to the best grass, he kept cautiously near
the camp-fire for protection, but was careful not to step on me. The
great starry night passed away in deep peace and the rosy morning
sunbeams were searching the grove ere I woke from a long, blessed
sleep.

The breadth of the Sequoia belt here is about the same as on the north
side of the river, extending, rather thin and scattered in some places,
among the noble pines from near the mains forest belt of the range well
back towards the frosty peaks, where most of the trees are growing on
moraines but little changed as yet.

Two days’ scramble above Bear Hollow I enjoyed an interesting interview
with deer. Soon after sunrise a little company of four came to my camp
in a wild garden imbedded in chaparral, and after much cautious
observation quietly began to eat breakfast with me. Keeping perfectly
still I soon had their confidence, and they came so near I found no
difficulty, while admiring their graceful manners and gestures, in
determining what plants they were eating, thus gaining a far finer
knowledge and sympathy than comes by killing and hunting.

Indian summer gold with scarce a whisper of winter in it was painting
the glad wilderness in richer and yet richer colors as we scrambled
across the South cañon into the basin of the Tule. Here the Big Tree
forests are still more extensive, and furnished abundance of work in
tracing boundaries and gloriously crowned ridges up and down, back and
forth, exploring, studying, admiring, while the great measureless days
passed on and away uncounted. But in the calm of the camp-fire the end
of the season seemed near. Brownie too often brought snow-storms to
mind. He became doubly jaded, though I never rode him, and always left
him in camp to feed and rest while I explored. The invincible bread
business also troubled me again; the last mealy crumbs were consumed,
and grass was becoming scarce even in the roughest rock-piles naturally
inaccessible to sheep. One afternoon, as I gazed over the rolling bossy
Sequoia billows stretching interminably southward, seeking a way and
counting how far I might go without food, a rifle shot rang out sharp
and clear. Marking the direction I pushed gladly on, hoping to find
some hunter who could spare a little food. Within a few hundred rods I
struck the track of a shod horse, Which led to the camp of two Indian
shepherds. One of them was cooking supper when I arrived. Glancing
curiously at me he saw that I was hungry, and gave me some mutton and
bread, and said encouragingly as he pointed to the west, “Putty soon
Indian come, heap speak English.” Toward sundown two thousand sheep
beneath a cloud of dust came streaming through the grand Sequoias to a
meadow below the camp, and presently the English-speaking shepherd came
in, to whom I explained my wants and what I was doing. Like most white
men, he could not conceive how anything other than gold could be the
object of such rambles as mine, and asked repeatedly whether I had
discovered any mines. I tried to make him talk about trees and the wild
animals, but unfortunately he proved to be a tame Indian from the Tule
Reservation, had been to school, claimed to be civilized, and spoke
contemptuously of “wild Indians,” and so of course his inherited
instincts were blurred or lost. The Big Trees, he said, grew far south,
for he had see them in crossing the mountains from Porterville to Lone
Pine. In the morning he kindly gave me a few pounds of flour, and
assured me that I would get plenty more at a sawmill on the South Fork
if I reached it before it was shut down for the season.

Of all the Tule basin forest the section on the North Fork seemed the
finest, surpassing, I think, even the Giant Forest of the Kaweah.
Southward from here, though the width and general continuity of the
belt is well sustained, I thought I could detect a slight falling off
in the height of the trees and in closeness of growth. All the basin
was swept by swarms of hoofed locusts, the southern part over and over
again, until not a leaf within the reach was left on the wettest bogs,
the outer edges of the thorniest chaparral beds, or even on the young
conifers, which unless under the stress of dire famine, sheep never
touch. Of course Brownie suffered, though I made diligent search for
grassy sheep-proof spots. Turning him loose one evening on the side of
a carex bog, he dolefully prospected the desolate neighborhood without
finding anything that even a starving mule could eat. Then, utterly
discouraged, he stole up behind me while I was bent over on my knees
making a fire for tea, and in a pitiful mixture of bray and neigh,
begged for help. It was a mighty touching prayer, and I answered it as
well as I could with half of what was left of a cake made from the last
of the flour given me by the Indians, hastily passing it over my
shoulder, and saying, “Yes, poor fellow, I know, but soon you’ll have
plenty. To-morrow down we go to alfalfa and barley,” speaking to him as
if he were human, as through stress of trouble plainly he was. After
eating his portion of bread he seemed content, for he said no more, but
patiently turned away to gnaw leafless ceanothus stubs. Such clinging,
confiding dependence after all our scrambles and adventures together
was very touching, and I felt conscience-stricken for having led him so
far in so rough and desolate a country. “Man,” says Lord Bacon, “is the
god of the dog.” So, also, he is of the mule and many other dependent
fellow mortals.

Next morning I turned westward, determined to force a way straight to
pasture, letting Sequoia wait. Fortunately ere we had struggled down
through half a mile of chaparral we heard a mill whistle, for which we
gladly made a bee line. At the sawmill we both got a good meal, then
taking the dusty lumber road pursued our way to the lowlands. The
nearest good pasture I counted might be thirty or forty miles away. But
scarcely had we gone ten when I noticed a little log cabin a hundred
yards or so back from the road, and a tall man straight as a pine
standing in front of it observing us as we came plodding down through
the dust. Seeing no sign of grass or hay, I was going past without
stopping, when he shouted, “Travelin’?” Then drawing nearer, “Where
have you come from? I didn’t notice you go up.” I replied I had come
through the woods from the north, looking at the trees. “Oh, then, you
must be John Muir. Halt, you’re tired; come and rest and I’ll cook for
you.” Then I explained that I was tracing the Sequoia belt, that on
account of sheep my mule was starving, and therefore must push on to
the lowlands. “No, no,” he said, “that corral over there is full of hay
and grain. Turn your mule into it. I don’t own it, but the fellow who
does is hauling lumber, and it will be all right. He’s a white man.
Come and rest. How tired you must be! The Big Trees don’t go much
farther south, nohow. I know the country up there, have hunted all over
it. Come and rest, and let your little doggone rat of a mule rest. How
in heavens did you get him across the cañons—roll him? or carry him?
He’s poor, but he’ll get fat, and I’ll give you a horse and go with you
up the mountains, and while you’re looking at the trees I’ll go
hunting. It will be a short job, for the end of the Big Trees is not
far.” Of course I stopped. No true invitation is ever declined. He had
been hungry and tired himself many a time in the Rocky Mountains as
well as in the Sierra. Now he owned a band of cattle and lived alone.
His cabin was about eight by ten feet, the door at one end, a fireplace
at the other, and a bed on one side fastened to the logs. Leading me in
without a word of mean apology, he made me lie down on the bed, then
reached under it, brought forth a sack of apples and advised me to keep
“chawing” at them until he got supper ready. Finer, braver hospitality
I never found in all this good world so often called selfish.

Next day with hearty, easy alacrity the mountaineer procured horses,
prepared and packed provisions, and got everything ready for an early
start the following morning. Well mounted, we pushed rapidly upon the
South Fork of the river and soon after noon were among the giants once
more. On the divide between the Tule and Deer Creek a central camp was
made, and the mountaineer spent his time in deer-hunting, while with
provisions for two or three days I explored the woods, and in
accordance with what I had been told soon reached the southern
extremity of the belt on the South Fork of Deer Creek. To make sure, I
searched the woods a considerable distance south of the last Deer Creek
grove, passed over into the basin of the Kern, and climbed several high
points commanding extensive views over the sugar-pine woods, without
seeing a single Sequoia crown in all the wide expanse to the southward.
On the way back to camp, however, I was greatly interested in a grove I
discovered on the east side of the Kern River divide, opposite the
North Fork of Deer Creek. The height of the pass where the species
crossed over is about 7000 feet, and I heard of still another grove
whose waters drain into the upper Kern opposite the Middle Fork of the
Tule.

It appears, therefore, that though the Sequoia belt is two hundred and
sixty miles long, most of the trees are on a section to the south of
Kings River only about seventy miles in length. But though the area
occupied by the species increases so much to the southward, there is
but little difference in the size of the trees. A diameter of twenty
feet and height of two hundred and seventy-five is perhaps about the
average for anything like mature and favorably situated trees.
Specimens twenty-five feet in diameter are not rare, and a good many
approach a height of three hundred feet. Occasionally one meets a
specimen thirty feet in diameter, and rarely one that is larger. The
majestic stump on Kings River is the largest I saw and measured on the
entire trip. Careful search around the boundaries of the forests and
groves and in the gaps of the belt failed to discover any trace of the
former existence of the species beyond its present limits. On the
contrary, it seems to be slightly extending its boundaries; for the
outstanding stragglers, occasionally met a mile or two from the main
bodies, are young instead of old monumental trees. Ancient ruins and
the ditches and root-bowls the big trunks make in falling were found in
all the groves, but none outside of them. We may therefore conclude
that the area covered by the species has not been diminished during the
last eight or ten thousand years, and probably not at all in
post-glacial times. For admitting that upon those areas supposed to
have been once covered by Sequoia every tree may have fallen, and that
fire and the weather had left not a vestige of them, many of the
ditches made by the fall of the ponderous trunks, weighing five hundred
to nearly a thousand tons, and the bowls made by their up-turned roots
would remain visible for thousands of years after the last remnants of
the trees had vanished. Some of these records would doubtless be
effaced in a comparatively short time by the inwashing of sediments,
but no inconsiderable part of them would remain enduringly engraved on
flat ridge tops, almost wholly free from such action.

In the northern groves, the only ones that at first came under the
observation of students, there are but few seedlings and young trees to
take the places of the old ones. Therefore the species was regarded as
doomed to speedy extinction, as being only an expiring remnant
vanquished in the so-called struggle for life, and shoved into its last
strongholds in moist glens where conditions are exceptionally
favorable. But the majestic continuous forests of the south end of the
belt create a very different impression. Here, as we have seen, no tree
in the forest is more enduringly established. Nevertheless it is
oftentimes vaguely said that the Sierra climate is drying out, and that
this oncoming, constantly increasing drought will of itself surely
extinguish King Sequoia, though sections of wood-rings show that there
has been no appreciable change of climate during the last forty
centuries. Furthermore, that Sequoia can grow and is growing on as dry
ground as any of its neighbors or rivals, we have seen proved over and
over again. “Why, then,” it will be asked, “are the Big Tree groves
always found on well-watered spots?” Simply because Big Trees give rise
to streams. It is a mistake to suppose that the water is the cause of
the groves being there. On the contrary, the groves are the cause of
the water being there. The roots of this immense tree fill the ground,
forming a sponge which hoards the bounty of the clouds and sends it
forth in clear perennial streams instead of allowing it to rush
headlong in short-lived destructive floods. Evaporation is also
checked, and the air kept still in the shady Sequoia depths, while
thirsty robber winds are shut out.

Since, then, it appears that Sequoia can and does grow on as dry ground
as its neighbors and that the greater moisture found with it is an
effect rather than a cause of its presence, the notions as to the
former greater extension of the species and its near approach to
extinction, based on its supposed dependence on greater moisture, are
seen to be erroneous. Indeed, all my observations go to show that in
case of prolonged drought the sugar pines and firs would die before
Sequoia. Again, if the restricted and irregular distribution of the
species be interpreted as the result of the desiccation of the range,
then, instead of increasing in individuals toward the south, where the
rainfall is less, it should diminish.

If, then, its peculiar distribution has not been governed by superior
conditions of soil and moisture, by what has it been governed? Several
years before I made this trip, I noticed that the northern groves were
located on those parts of the Sierra soil-belt that were first laid
bare and opened to preëmption when the ice-sheet began to break up into
individual glaciers. And when I was examining the basin of the San
Joaquin and trying to account for the absence of Sequoia, when every
condition seemed favorable for its growth, it occurred to me that this
remarkable gap in the belt is located in the channel of the great
ancient glacier of the San Joaquin and Kings River basins, which poured
its frozen floods to the plain, fed by the snows that fell on more than
fifty miles of the Summit peaks of the range. Constantly brooding on
the question, I next perceived that the great gap in the belt to the
northward, forty miles wide, between the Stanislaus and Tuolumne
groves, occurs in the channel of the great Stanislaus and Tuolumne
glacier, and that the smaller gap between the Merced and Mariposa
groves occurs in the channel of the smaller Merced glacier. The wider
the ancient glacier, the wider the gap in the Sequoia belt, while the
groves and forests attain their greatest development in the Kaweah and
Tule River basins, just where, owing to topographical conditions, the
region was first cleared and warmed, while protected from the main
ice-rivers, that flowed past to right and left down the Kings and Kern
valleys. In general, where the ground on the belt was first cleared of
ice, there the Sequoia now is, and where at the same elevation and time
the ancient glaciers lingered, there the Sequoia is not. What the other
conditions may have been which enabled the Sequoia to establish itself
upon these oldest and warmest parts of the main soil-belt I cannot say.
I might venture to state, however, that since the Sequoia forests
present a more and more ancient and long established aspect to the
southward, the species was probably distributed from the south toward
the close of the glacial period, before the arrival of other trees.
About this branch of the question, however, there is at present much
fog, but the general relationship we have pointed out between the
distribution of the Big Tree and the ancient glacial system is clear.
And when we bear in mind that all the existing forests of the Sierra
are growing on comparatively fresh moraine soil, and that the range
itself has been recently sculptured and brought to light from beneath
the ice-mantle of the glacial winter, then many lawless mysteries
vanish, and harmonies take their places.

But notwithstanding all the observed phenomena bearing on the
post-glacial history of this colossal tree, point to the conclusion
that it never was more widely distributed on the Sierra since the close
of the glacial epoch; that its present forests are scarcely past prime;
if, indeed, they have reached prime; that the post-glacial day of the
species is probably not half done; yet, when from a wider outlook the
vast antiquity of the genus is considered, and its ancient richness in
species and individuals, comparing our Sierra giant and Sequoia
sempervirens of the coast, the only other living species, with the many
fossil species already discovered, and described by Heer and
Lesquereux, some of which flourished over large areas around the Arctic
Circle, and in Europe and our own territories, during tertiary and
cretaceous times,—then, indeed, it becomes plain that our two surviving
species, restricted to narrow belts within the limits of California,
are mere remnants of the genus both as to species and individuals, and
that they probably are verging to extinction. But the verge of a period
beginning in cretaceous times may have a breadth of tens of thousands
of years, not to mention the possible existence of conditions
calculated to multiply and reëxtend both species and individuals. No
unfavorable change of climate, so far as I can see, no disease, but
only fire and the axe and the ravages of flocks and herds threaten the
existence of these noblest of God’s trees. In Nature’s keeping they are
safe, but through man’s agency destruction is making rapid progress,
while in the work of protection only a beginning has been made. The
Mariposa Grove belongs to and is guarded by the State; the General
Grant and Sequoia National Parks, established ten years ago, are
efficiently guarded by a troop of cavalry under the direction of the
Secretary of the Interior; so also are the small Tuolumne and Merced
groves, which are included in the Yosemite National Park, while a few
scattered patches and fringes, scarce at all protected, though
belonging to the national government, are in the Sierra Forest
Reservation.

Perhaps more than half of all the Big Trees have been sold, and are now
in the hands of speculators and mill men. Even the beautiful little
Calaveras Grove of ninety trees, so historically interesting from its
being the first discovered, is now owned, together with the much larger
South or Stanislaus Grove, by a lumber company.

Far the largest and most important section of protected Big Trees is in
the grand Sequoia National Park, now easily accessible by stage from
Visalia. It contains seven townships and extends across the whole
breadth of the magnificent Kaweah basin. But large as it is, it should
be made much larger. Its natural eastern boundary is the high Sierra,
and the northern and southern boundaries, and the Kings and Kern
rivers, and thus including the sublime scenery on the headwaters of
these rivers and perhaps nine tenths of all the Big Trees in existence.
Private claims cut and blotch both of the Sequoia parks as well as all
the best of the forests, every one of which the government should
gradually extinguish by purchase, as it readily may, for none of these
holdings are of much value to their owners. Thus as far as possible the
grand blunder of selling would be corrected. The value of these forests
in storing and dispensing the bounty of the mountain clouds is
infinitely greater than lumber or sheep. To the dwellers of the plain,
dependent on irrigation, the Big Tree, leaving all its higher uses out
of the count, is a tree of life, a never-failing spring, sending living
water to the lowlands all through the hot, rainless summer. For every
grove cut down a stream is dried up. Therefore, all California is
crying, “Save the trees of the fountains,” nor, judging by the signs of
the times, it is likely that the cry will cease until the salvation of
all that is left of Sequoia gigantea is sure.




CHAPTER X
The American Forests


The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great
delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole
continent was a garden, and from the beginning it seemed to be favored
above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe. To prepare the
ground, it was rolled and sifted in seas with infinite loving
deliberation and fore-thought, lifted into the light, submerged and
warmed over and over again, pressed and crumpled into folds and ridges,
mountains, and hills, subsoiled with heaving volcanic fires, ploughed
and ground and sculptured into scenery and soil with glaciers and
rivers,—every feature growing and changing from beauty to beauty,
higher and higher. And in the fullness of time it was planted in
groves, and belts, and broad, exuberant, mantling forests, with the
largest, most varied, most fruitful, and most beautiful trees in the
world. Bright seas made its border, with wave embroidery and icebergs;
gray deserts were outspread in the middle of it, mossy tundras on the
north, savannas on the south, and blooming prairies and plains; while
lakes and rivers shone through all the vast forests and openings, and
happy birds and beasts gave delightful animation. Everywhere,
everywhere over all the blessed continent, there were beauty and melody
and kindly, wholesome, foodful abundance.

These forests were composed of about five hundred species of trees, all
of them in some way useful to man, ranging in size from twenty-five
feet in height and less than one foot in diameter at the ground to four
hundred feet in height and more than twenty feet in diameter,—lordly
monarchs proclaiming the gospel of beauty like apostles. For many a
century after the ice-ploughs were melted, nature fed them and dressed
them every day,—working like a man, a loving, devoted, painstaking
gardener; fingering every leaf and flower and mossy furrowed bole;
bending, trimming, modeling, balancing; painting them with the
loveliest colors; bringing over them now clouds with cooling shadows
and showers, now sunshine; fanning them with gentle winds and rustling
their leaves; exercising them in every fibre with storms, and pruning
them; loading them with flowers and fruit, loading them with snow, and
ever making them more beautiful as the years rolled by. Wide-branching
oak and elm in endless variety, walnut and maple, chestnut and beech,
ilex and locust, touching limb to limb, spread a leafy translucent
canopy along the coast of the Atlantic over the wrinkled folds and
ridges of the Alleghanies,—a green billowy sea in summer, golden and
purple in autumn, pearly gray like a steadfast frozen mist of
interlacing branches and sprays in leafless, restful winter.

To the southward stretched dark, level-topped cypresses in knobby,
tangled swamps, grassy savannas in the midst of them like lakes of
light, groves of gay, sparkling spice-trees, magnolias and palms,
glossy-leaved and blooming and shining continually. To the northward,
over Maine and Ottawa, rose hosts of spiry, rosiny evergreens,—white
pine and spruce, hemlock and cedar, shoulder to shoulder, laden with
purple cones, their myriad needles sparkling and shimmering, covering
hills and swamps, rocky headlands and domes, ever bravely aspiring and
seeking the sky; the ground in their shade now snow-clad and frozen,
now mossy and flowery; beaver meadows here and there, full of lilies
and grass; lakes gleaming like eyes, and a silvery embroidery of rivers
and creeks watering and brightening all the vast glad wilderness.

Thence westward were oak and elm, hickory and tupelo, gum and
liriodendron, sassafras and ash, linden and laurel, spreading on ever
wider in glorious exuberance over the great fertile basin of the
Mississippi, over damp level bottoms, low dimpling hollows, and round
dotting hills, embosoming sunny prairies and cheery park openings, half
sunshine, half shade; while a dark wilderness of pines covered the
region around the Great Lakes. Thence still westward swept the forests
to right and left around grassy plains and deserts a thousand miles
wide: irrepressible hosts of spruce and pine, aspen and willow,
nut-pine and juniper, cactus and yucca, caring nothing for drought,
extending undaunted from mountain to mountain, over mesa and desert, to
join the darkening multitudes of pines that covered the high Rocky
ranges and the glorious forests along the coast of the moist and balmy
Pacific, where new species of pine, giant cedars and spruces, silver
firs and Sequoias, kings of their race, growing close together like
grass in a meadow, poised their brave domes and spires in the sky,
three hundred feet above the ferns and the lilies that enameled the
ground; towering serene through the long centuries, preaching God’s
forestry fresh from heaven.

[Illustration: In a Puget Sound Forest.]

Here the forests reached their highest development. Hence they went
wavering northward over icy Alaska, brave spruce and fir, poplar and
birch, by the coasts and the rivers, to within sight of the Arctic
Ocean. American forests! the glory of the world! Surveyed thus from the
east to the west, from the north to the south, they are rich beyond
thought, immortal, immeasurable, enough and to spare for every feeding,
sheltering beast and bird, insect and son of Adam; and nobody need have
cared had there been no pines in Norway, no cedars and deodars on
Lebanon and the Himalayas, no vine-clad selvas in the basin of the
Amazon. With such variety, harmony, and triumphant exuberance, even
nature, it would seem, might have rested content with the forests of
North America, and planted no more.

So they appeared a few centuries ago when they were rejoicing in
wildness. The Indians with stone axes could do them no more harm than
could gnawing beavers and browsing moose. Even the fires of the Indians
and the fierce shattering lightning seemed to work together only for
good in clearing spots here and there for smooth garden prairies, and
openings for sunflowers seeking the light. But when the steel axe of
the white man rang out on the startled air their doom was sealed. Every
tree heard the bodeful sound, and pillars of smoke gave the sign in the
sky.

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of
things they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might
have been made without barbarous wickedness. Likewise many of nature’s
five hundred kinds of wild trees had to make way for orchards and
cornfields. In the settlement and civilization of the country, bread
more than timber or beauty was wanted; and in the blindness of hunger,
the early settlers, claiming Heaven as their guide, regarded God’s
trees as only a larger kind of pernicious weeds, extremely hard to get
rid of. Accordingly, with no eye to the future, these pious destroyers
waged interminable forest wars; chips flew thick and fast; trees in
their beauty fell crashing by millions, smashed to confusion, and the
smoke of their burning has been rising to heaven more than two hundred
years. After the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia had been mostly
cleared and scorched into melancholy ruins, the overflowing multitude
of bread and money seekers poured over the Alleghanies into the fertile
middle West, spreading ruthless devastation ever wider and farther over
the rich valley of the Mississippi and the vast shadowy pine region
about the Great Lakes. Thence still westward, the invading horde of
destroyers called settlers made its fiery way over the broad Rocky
Mountains, felling and burning more fiercely than ever, until at last
it has reached the wild side of the continent, and entered the last of
the great aboriginal forests on the shores of the Pacific.

Surely, then, it should not be wondered at that lovers of their
country, bewailing its baldness, are now crying aloud, “Save what is
left of the forests!” Clearing has surely now gone far enough; soon
timber will be scarce, and not a grove will be left to rest in or pray
in. The remnant protected will yield plenty of timber, a perennial
harvest for every right use, without further diminution of its area,
and will continue to cover the springs of the rivers that rise in the
mountains and give irrigating waters to the dry valleys at their feet,
prevent wasting floods and be a blessing to everybody forever.

Every other civilized nation in the world has been compelled to care
for its forests, and so must we if waste and destruction are not to go
on to the bitter end, leaving America as barren as Palestine or Spain.
In its calmer moments, in the midst of bewildering hunger and war and
restless over-industry, Prussia has learned that the forest plays an
important part in human progress, and that the advance in civilization
only makes it more indispensable. It has, therefore, as shown by Mr.
Pinchot, refused to deliver its forests to more or less speedy
destruction by permitting them to pass into private ownership. But the
state woodlands are not allowed to lie idle. On the contrary, they are
made to produce as much timber as is possible without spoiling them. In
the administration of its forests, the state righteously considers
itself bound to treat them as a trust for the nation as a whole, and to
keep in view the common good of the people for all time.

In France no government forests have been sold since 1870. On the other
hand, about one half of the fifty million francs spent on forestry has
been given to engineering works, to make the replanting of denuded
areas possible. The disappearance of the forests in the first place, it
is claimed, may be traced in most cases directly to mountain pasturage.
The provisions of the Code concerning private woodlands are
substantially these: no private owner may clear his woodlands without
giving notice to the government at least four months in advance, and
the forest service may forbid the clearing on the following grounds,—to
maintain the soil on mountains, to defend the soil against erosion and
flooding by rivers or torrents, to insure the existence of springs or
watercourses, to protect the dunes and seashore, etc. A proprietor who
has cleared his forest without permission is subject to heavy fine, and
in addition may be made to replant the cleared area.

In Switzerland, after many laws like our own had been found wanting,
the Swiss forest school was established in 1865, and soon after the
federal forest law was enacted, which is binding over nearly two thirds
of the country. Under its provisions, the cantons must appoint and pay
the number of suitably educated foresters required for the fulfillment
of the forest law; and in the organization of a normally stocked
forest, the object of first importance must be the cutting each year of
an amount of timber equal to the total annual increase, and no more.

The Russian government passed a law in 1888, declaring that clearing is
forbidden in protected forests, and is allowed in others “only when its
effects will not be to disturb the suitable relations which should
exist between forest and agricultural lands.”

Even Japan is ahead of us in the management of her forests. They cover
an area of about twenty-nine million acres. The feudal lords valued the
woodlands, and enacted vigorous protective laws; and when, in the
latest civil war, the Mikado government destroyed the feudal system, it
declared the forests that had belonged to the feudal lords to be the
property of the state, promulgated a forest law binding on the whole
kingdom, and founded a school of forestry in Tokio. The forest service
does not rest satisfied with the present proportion of woodland, but
looks to planting the best forest trees it can find in any country, if
likely to be useful and to thrive in Japan.

In India systematic forest management was begun about forty years ago,
under difficulties—presented by the character of the country, the
prevalence of running fires, opposition from lumbermen, settlers,
etc.—not unlike those which confront us now. Of the total area of
government forests, perhaps seventy million acres, fifty-five million
acres have been brought under the control of the forestry department,—a
larger area than that of all our national parks and reservations. The
chief aims of the administration are effective protection of the
forests from fire, an efficient system of regeneration, and cheap
transportation of the forest products; the results so far have been
most beneficial and encouraging.

It seems, therefore, that almost every civilized nation can give us a
lesson on the management and care of forests. So far our government has
done nothing effective with its forests, though the best in the world,
but is like a rich and foolish spendthrift who has inherited a
magnificent estate in perfect order, and then has left his fields and
meadows, forests and parks, to be sold and plundered and wasted at
will, depending on their inexhaustible abundance. Now it is plain that
the forests are not inexhaustible, and that quick measures must be
taken if ruin is to be avoided. Year by year the remnant is growing
smaller before the axe and fire, while the laws in existence provide
neither for the protection of the timber from destruction nor for its
use where it is most needed.

As is shown by Mr. E. A. Bowers, formerly Inspector of the Public Land
Service, the foundation of our protective policy, which has never
protected, is an act passed March 1, 1817, which authorized the
Secretary of the Navy to reserve lands producing live-oak and cedar,
for the sole purpose of supplying timber for the navy of the United
States. An extension of this law by the passage of the act of March 2,
1831, provided that if any person should cut live-oak or red cedar
trees or _other timber_ from the lands of the United States for any
other purpose than the construction of the navy, such person should pay
a fine not less than triple the value of the timber cut, and be
imprisoned for a period not exceeding twelve months. Upon this old law,
as Mr. Bowers points out, having the construction of a wooden navy in
view, the United States government has to-day chiefly to rely in
protecting its timber throughout the arid regions of the West, where
none of the naval timber which the law had in mind is to be found.

By the act of June 3, 1878, timber can be taken from public lands not
subject to entry under any existing laws except for minerals, by _bona
fide_ residents of the Rocky Mountain states and territories and the
Dakotas. Under the timber and stone act, of the same date, land in the
Pacific States and Nevada, valuable mainly for timber, and unfit for
cultivation if the timber is removed, can be purchased for two dollars
and a half an acre, under certain restrictions. By the act of March 3,
1875, all land-grant and right-of-way railroads are authorized to take
timber from the public lands adjacent to their lines for construction
purposes; and they have taken it with a vengeance, destroying a hundred
times more than they have used, mostly by allowing fires to run in the
woods. The settlement laws, under which a settler may enter lands
valuable for timber as well as for agriculture, furnish another means
of obtaining title to public timber.

With the exception of the timber culture act, under which, in
consideration of planting a few acres of seedlings, settlers on the
treeless plains got 160 acres each, the above is the only legislation
aiming to protect and promote the planting of forests. In no other way
than under some one of these laws can a citizen of the United States
make any use of the public forests. To show the results of the
timber-planting act, it need only be stated that of the thirty-eight
million acres entered under it, less than one million acres have been
patented. This means that less than fifty thousand acres have been
planted with stunted, woebegone, almost hopeless sprouts of trees,
while at the same time the government has allowed millions of acres of
the grandest forest trees to be stolen or destroyed, or sold for
nothing. Under the act of June 3, 1878, settlers in Colorado and the
Territories were allowed to cut timber for mining and educational
purposes from mineral land, which in the practical West means both
cutting and burning anywhere and everywhere, for any purpose, on any
sort of public land. Thus, the prospector, the miner, and mining and
railroad companies are allowed by law to take all the timber they like
for their mines and roads, and the forbidden settler, if there are no
mineral lands near his farm or stock-ranch, or none that he knows of,
can hardly be expected to forbear taking what he needs wherever he can
find it. Timber is as necessary as bread, and no scheme of management
failing to recognize and properly provide for this want can possibly be
maintained. In any case, it will be hard to teach the pioneers that it
is wrong to steal government timber. Taking from the government is with
them the same as taking from nature, and their consciences flinch no
more in cutting timber from the wild forests than in drawing water from
a lake or river. As for reservation and protection of forests, it seems
as silly and needless to them as protection and reservation of the
ocean would be, both appearing to be boundless and inexhaustible.

The special land agents employed by the General Land Office to protect
the public domain from timber depredations are supposed to collect
testimony to sustain prosecution and to superintend such prosecution on
behalf of the government, which is represented by the district
attorneys. But timber thieves of the Western class are seldom
convicted, for the good reason that most of the jurors who try such
cases are themselves as guilty as those on trial. The effect of the
present confused, discriminating, and unjust system has been to place
almost the whole population in opposition to the government; and as
conclusive of its futility, as shown by Mr. Bowers, we need only state
that during the seven years from 1881 to 1887 inclusive, the value of
the timber reported stolen from the government lands was $36,719,935,
and the amount recovered was $478,073, while the cost of the services
of special agents alone was $455,000, to which must be added the
expense of the trials. Thus for nearly thirty-seven million dollars
worth of timber the government got less than nothing; and the value of
that consumed by running fires during the same period, without benefit
even to thieves, was probably over two hundred millions of dollars.
Land commissioners and Secretaries of the Interior have repeatedly
called attention to this ruinous state of affairs, and asked Congress
to enact the requisite legislation for reasonable reform. But, busied
with tariffs, etc., Congress has given no heed to these or other
appeals, and our forests, the most valuable and the most destructible
of all the natural resources of the country, are being robbed and
burned more rapidly than ever. The annual appropriation for so-called
“protection service” is hardly sufficient to keep twenty-five timber
agents in the field, and as far as any efficient protection of timber
is concerned these agents themselves might as well be timber.[7]

 [7] A change for the better, compelled by public opinion, is now going
 on,—1901.


That a change from robbery and ruin to a permanent rational policy is
urgently needed nobody with the slightest knowledge of American forests
will deny. In the East and along the northern Pacific coast, where the
rainfall is abundant, comparatively few care keenly what becomes of the
trees so long as fuel and lumber are not noticeably dear. But in the
Rocky Mountains and California and Arizona, where the forests are
inflammable, and where the fertility of the lowlands depends upon
irrigation, public opinion is growing stronger every year in favor of
permanent protection by the federal government of all the forests that
cover the sources of the streams. Even lumbermen in these regions, long
accustomed to steal, are now willing and anxious to buy lumber for
their mills under cover of law: some possibly from a late second growth
of honesty, but most, especially the small mill-owners, simply because
it no longer pays to steal where all may not only steal, but also
destroy, and in particular because it costs about as much to steal
timber for one mill as for ten, and, therefore, the ordinary lumberman
can no longer compete with the large corporations. Many of the miners
find that timber is already becoming scarce and dear on the denuded
hills around their mills, and they, too, are asking for protection of
forests, at least against fire. The slow-going, unthrifty farmers,
also, are beginning to realize that when the timber is stripped from
the mountains the irrigating streams dry up in summer, and are
destructive in winter; that soil, scenery, and everything slips off
with the trees: so of course they are coming into the ranks of
tree-friends.

Of all the magnificent coniferous forests around the Great Lakes, once
the property of the United States, scarcely any belong to it now. They
have disappeared in lumber and smoke, mostly smoke, and the government
got not one cent for them; only the land they were growing on was
considered valuable, and two and a half dollars an acre was charged for
it. Here and there in the Southern States there are still considerable
areas of timbered government land, but these are comparatively
unimportant. Only the forests of the West are significant in size and
value, and these, although still great, are rapidly vanishing. Last
summer, of the unrivaled red-wood forests of the Pacific Coast Range,
the United States Forestry Commission could not find a single
quarter-section that remained in the hands of the government.[8]

 [8] The State of California recently appropriated two hundred and
 fifty thousand dollars to buy a block of redwood land near Santa Cruz
 for a state park. A much larger national park should be made in
 Humboldt or Mendocino county.


Under the timber and stone act of 1878, which might well have been
called the “dust and ashes act,” any citizen of the United States could
take up one hundred and sixty acres of timber land, and by paying two
dollars and a half an acre for it obtain title. There was some virtuous
effort made with a view to limit the operations of the act by requiring
that the purchaser should make affidavit that he was entering the land
exclusively for his own use, and by not allowing any association to
enter more than one hundred and sixty acres. Nevertheless, under this
act wealthy corporations have fraudulently obtained title to from ten
thousand to twenty thousand acres or more. The plan was usually as
follows: A mill company, desirous of getting title to a large body of
redwood or sugar-pine land, first blurred the eyes and ears of the land
agents, and then hired men to enter the land they wanted, and
immediately deed it to the company after a nominal compliance with the
law; false swearing in the wilderness against the government being held
of no account. In one case which came under the observation of Mr.
Bowers, it was the practice of a lumber company to hire the entire crew
of every vessel which might happen to touch at any port in the red-wood
belt, to enter one hundred and sixty acres each and immediately deed
the land to the company, in consideration of the company’s paying all
expenses and giving the jolly sailors fifty dollars apiece for their
trouble.

By such methods have our magnificent redwoods and much of the
sugar-pine forests of the Sierra Nevada been absorbed by foreign and
resident capitalists. Uncle Sam is not often called a fool in business
matters, yet he has sold millions of acres of timber land at two
dollars and a half an acre on which a single tree was worth more than a
hundred dollars. But this priceless land has been patented, and nothing
can be done now about the crazy bargain. According to the everlasting
law of righteousness, even the fraudulent buyers at less than one per
cent of its value are making little or nothing, on account of fierce
competition. The trees are felled, and about half of each giant is left
on the ground to be converted into smoke and ashes; the better half is
sawed into choice lumber and sold to citizens of the United States or
to foreigners: thus robbing the country of its glory and impoverishing
it without right benefit to anybody,—a bad, black business from
beginning to end.

The redwood is one of the few conifers that sprout from the stump and
roots, and it declares itself willing to begin immediately to repair
the damage of the lumberman and also that of the forest-burner. As soon
as a redwood is cut down or burned it sends up a crowd of eager,
hopeful shoots, which, if allowed to grow, would in a few decades
attain a height of a hundred feet, and the strongest of them would
finally become giants as great as the original tree. Gigantic second
and third growth trees are found in the redwoods, forming magnificent
temple-like circles around charred ruins more than a thousand years
old. But not one denuded acre in a hundred is allowed to raise a new
forest growth. On the contrary, all the brains, religion, and
superstition of the neighborhood are brought into play to prevent a new
growth. The sprouts from the roots and stumps are cut off again and
again, with zealous concern as to the best time and method of making
death sure. In the clearings of one of the largest mills on the coast
we found thirty men at work, last summer, cutting off redwood shoots
“in the dark of the moon,” claiming that all the stumps and roots
cleared at this auspicious time would send up no more shoots. Anyhow,
these vigorous, almost immortal trees are killed at last, and black
stumps are now their only monuments over most of the chopped and burned
areas.

The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. It extends along the
western slope, in a nearly continuous belt about ten miles wide, from
beyond the Oregon boundary to the south of Santa Cruz, a distance of
nearly four hundred miles, and in massive, sustained grandeur and
closeness of growth surpasses all the other timber woods of the world.
Trees from ten to fifteen feet in diameter and three hundred feet high
are not uncommon, and a few attain a height of three hundred and fifty
feet or even four hundred, with a diameter at the base of fifteen to
twenty feet or more, while the ground beneath them is a garden of
fresh, exuberant ferns, lilies, gaultheria, and rhododendron. This
grand tree, Sequoia sempervirens, is surpassed in size only by its near
relative, Sequoia gigantea, or Big Tree, of the Sierra Nevada, if,
indeed, it is surpassed. The sempervirens is certainly the taller of
the two. The gigantea attains a greater girth, and is heavier, more
noble in port, and more sublimely beautiful. These two Sequoia are all
that are known to exist in the world, though in former geological times
the genus was common and had many species. The redwood is restricted to
the Coast Range, and the Big Tree to the Sierra.

As timber the redwood is too good to live. The largest sawmills ever
built are busy along its seaward border, “with all the modern
improvements,” but so immense is the yield per acre it will be long ere
the supply is exhausted. The Big Tree is also, to some extent, being
made into lumber. It is far less abundant than the redwood, and is,
fortunately, less accessible, extending along the western flank of the
Sierra in a partially interrupted belt, about two hundred and fifty
miles long, at a height of from four to eight thousand feet above the
sea. The enormous logs, too heavy to handle, are blasted into
manageable dimensions with gunpowder. A large portion of the best
timber is thus shattered and destroyed, and, with the huge, knotty
tops, is left in ruins for tremendous fires that kill every tree within
their range, great and small. Still, the species is not in danger of
extinction. It has been planted and is flourishing over a great part of
Europe, and magnificent sections of the aboriginal forests have been
reserved as national and State parks,—the Mariposa Sequoia Grove, near
Yosemite, managed by the State of California, and the General Grant and
Sequoia national parks on the Kings, Kaweah, and Tule rivers,
efficiently guarded by a small troop of United States cavalry under the
direction of the Secretary of the interior. But there is not a single
specimen of the redwood in any national park. Only by gift or purchase,
so far as I know, can the government get back into its possession a
single acre of this wonderful forest.

The legitimate demands on the forests that have passed into private
ownership, as well as those in the hands of the government, are
increasing every year with the rapid settlement and up-building of the
country, but the methods of lumbering are as yet grossly wasteful. In
most mills only the best portions of the best trees are used, while the
ruins are left on the ground to feed great fires, which kill much of
what is left of the less desirable timber, together with the seedlings,
on which the permanence of the forest depends. Thus every mill is a
centre of destruction far more severe from waste and fire than from
use. The same thing is true of the mines, which consume and destroy
indirectly immense quantities of timber with their innumerable fires,
accidental or set to make open ways, and often without regard to how
far they run. The prospector deliberately sets fires to clear off the
woods just where they are densest, to lay the rocks bare and make the
discovery of mines easier. Sheep-owners and their shepherds also set
fires everywhere through the woods in the fall to facilitate the march
of their countless flocks the next summer, and perhaps in some places
to improve the pasturage. The axe is not yet at the root of every tree,
but the sheep is, or was before the national parks were established and
guarded by the military, the only effective and reliable arm of the
government free from the blight of politics. Not only do the shepherds,
at the driest time of the year, set fire to everything that will burn,
but the sheep consume every green leaf, not sparing even the young
conifers, where they are in a starving condition from crowding, and
they rake and dibble the loose soil of the mountain sides for the
spring floods to wash away, and thus at last leave the ground barren.

Of all the destroyers that infest the woods, the shake-maker seems the
happiest. Twenty or thirty years ago, shakes, a kind of long,
board-like shingles split with a mallet and a frow, were in great
demand for covering barns and sheds, and many are used still in
preference to common shingles, especially those made from the
sugar-pine, which do not warp or crack in the hottest sunshine.
Drifting adventurers in California, after harvest and threshing are
over, oftentimes meet to discuss their plans for the winter, and their
talk is interesting. Once, in a company of this kind, I heard a man
say, as he peacefully smoked his pipe: “Boys, as soon as this job’s
done I’m goin’ into the duck business. There’s big money in it, and
your grub costs nothing. Tule Joe made five hundred dollars last winter
on mallard and teal. Shot ’em on the Joaquin, tied ’em in dozens by the
neck, and shipped ’em to San Francisco. And when he was tired wading in
the sloughs and touched with rheumatiz, he just knocked off on ducks,
and went to the Contra Costa hills for dove and quail. It’s a mighty
good business, and you’re your own boss, and the whole thing’s fun.”

Another of the company, a bushy-bearded fellow, with a trace of brag in
his voice, drawled out: “Bird business is well enough for some, but
bear is my game, with a deer and a California lion thrown in now and
then for change. There’s always market for bear grease, and sometimes
you can sell the hams. They’re good as hog hams any day. And you are
your own boss in my business, too, if the bears ain’t too big and too
many for you. Old grizzlies I despise,—they want cannon to kill ’em;
but the blacks and browns are beauties for grease, and when once I get
’em just right, and draw a bead on ’em, I fetch ’em every time.”
Another said he was going to catch up a lot of mustangs as soon as the
rains set in, hitch them to a gang-plough, and go to farming on the San
Joaquin plains for wheat. But most preferred the shake business, until
something more profitable and as sure could be found, with equal
comfort and independence.

With a cheap mustang or mule to carry a pair of blankets, a sack of
flour, a few pounds of coffee, and an axe, a frow, and a cross-cut saw,
the shake-maker ascends the mountains to the pine belt where it is most
accessible, usually by some mine or mill road. Then he strikes off into
the virgin woods, where the sugar pine, king of all the hundred species
of pines in the world in size and beauty, towers on the open sunny
slopes of the Sierra in the fullness of its glory. Selecting a
favorable spot for a cabin near a meadow with a stream, he unpacks his
animal and stakes it out on the meadow. Then he chops into one after
another of the pines, until he finds one that he feels sure will split
freely, cuts this down, saws off a section four feet long, splits it,
and from this first cut, perhaps seven feet in diameter, he gets shakes
enough for a cabin and its furniture,—walls, roof, door, bedstead,
table, and stool. Besides his labor, only a few pounds of nails are
required. Sapling poles form the frame of the airy building, usually
about six feet by eight in size, on which the shakes are nailed, with
the edges overlapping. A few bolts from the same section that the
shakes were made from are split into square sticks and built up to form
a chimney, the inside and interspaces being plastered and filled in
with mud. Thus, with abundance of fuel, shelter and comfort by his own
fireside are secured. Then he goes to work sawing and splitting for the
market, tying the shakes in bundles of fifty or a hundred. They are
four feet long, four inches wide, and about one fourth of an inch
thick. The first few thousands he sells or trades at the nearest mill
or store, getting provisions in exchange. Then he advertises, in
whatever way he can, that he has excellent sugar-pine shakes for sale,
easy of access and cheap.

[Illustration: Sugar Pine.]

Only the lower, perfectly clear, free-splitting portions of the giant
pines are used,—perhaps ten to twenty feet from a tree two hundred and
fifty in height; all the rest is left a mass of ruins, to rot or to
feed the forest fires, while thousands are hacked deeply and rejected
in proving the grain. Over nearly all of the more accessible slopes of
the Sierra and Cascade mountains in southern Oregon, at a height of
from three to six thousand feet above the sea, and for a distance of
about six hundred miles, this waste and confusion extends. Happy
robbers! dwelling in the most beautiful woods, in the most salubrious
climate, breathing delightful odors both day and night, drinking cool
living water,—roses and lilies at their feet in the spring, shedding
fragrance and ringing bells as if cheering them on in their desolating
work. There is none to say them nay. They buy no land, pay no taxes,
dwell in a paradise with no forbidding angel either from Washington or
from heaven. Every one of the frail shake shanties is a centre of
destruction, and the extent of the ravages wrought in this quiet way is
in the aggregate enormous.

It is not generally known that, notwithstanding the immense quantities
of timber cut every year for foreign and home markets and mines, from
five to ten times as much is destroyed as is used, chiefly by running
forest fires that only the federal government can stop. Travelers
through the West in summer are not likely to forget the fire-work
displayed along the various railway tracks. Thoreau, when contemplating
the destruction of the forests on the east side of the continent, said
that soon the country would be so bald that every man would have to
grow whiskers to hide its nakedness, but he thanked God that at least
the sky was safe. Had he gone West he would have found out that the sky
was not safe; for all through the summer months, over most of the
mountain regions, the smoke of mill and forest fires is so thick and
black that no sunbeam can pierce it. The whole sky, with clouds, sun,
moon, and stars, is simply blotted out. There is no real sky and no
scenery. Not a mountain is left in the landscape. At least none is in
sight from the lowlands, and they all might as well be on the moon, as
far as scenery is concerned.

The half-dozen transcontinental railroad companies advertise the
beauties of their lines in gorgeous many-colored folders, each claiming
its as the “scenic route.” “The route of superior desolation”—the
smoke, dust, and ashes route—would be a more truthful description.
Every train rolls on through dismal smoke and barbarous, melancholy
ruins; and the companies might well cry in their advertisements: “Come!
travel our way. Ours is the blackest. It is the only genuine Erebus
route. The sky is black and the ground is black, and on either side
there is a continuous border of black stumps and logs and blasted trees
appealing to heaven for help as if still half alive, and their mute
eloquence is most interestingly touching. The blackness is perfect. On
account of the superior skill of our workmen, advantages of climate,
and the kind of trees, the charring is generally deeper along our line,
and the ashes are deeper, and the confusion and desolation displayed
can never be rivaled. No other route on this continent so fully
illustrates the abomination of desolation.” Such a claim would be
reasonable, as each seems the worst, whatever route you chance to take.

Of course a way had to be cleared through the woods. But the felled
timber is not worked up into firewood for the engines and into lumber
for the company’s use; it is left lying in vulgar confusion, and is
fired from time to time by sparks from locomotives or by the workmen
camping along the line. The fires, whether accidental or set, are
allowed to run into the woods as far as they may, thus assuring
comprehensive destruction. The directors of a line that guarded against
fires, and cleared a clean gap edged with living trees, and fringed and
mantled with the grass and flowers and beautiful seedling that are ever
ready and willing to spring up, might justly boast of the beauty of
their road; for nature is always ready to heal every scar. But there is
no such road on the western side of the continent. Last summer, in the
Rocky Mountains, I saw six fires started by sparks from a locomotive
within a distance of three miles, and nobody was in sight to prevent
them from spreading. They might run into the adjacent forests and burn
the timber from hundreds of square miles; not a man in the State would
care to spend an hour in fighting them, as long as his own fences and
buildings were not threatened.

Notwithstanding all the waste and use which have been going on
unchecked like a storm for more than two centuries, it is not yet too
late—though it is high time—for the government to begin a rational
administration of its forests. About seventy million acres it still
owns,—enough for all the country, if wisely used. These residual
forests are generally on mountain slopes, just where they are doing the
most good, and where their removal would be followed by the greatest
number of evils; the lands they cover are too rocky and high for
agriculture, and can never be made as valuable for any other crop as
for the present crop of trees. It has been shown over and over again
that if these mountains were to be stripped of their trees and
underbrush, and kept bare and sodless by hordes of sheep and the
innumerable fires the shepherds set, besides those of the millmen,
prospectors shake-makers, and all sorts of adventurers, both lowlands
and mountains would speedily become little better than desert, compared
with their present beneficent fertility. During heavy rainfalls and
while the winter accumulations of snow were melting, the large streams
would swell into destructive torrents, cutting deep, rugged-edged
gullies, carrying away the fertile humus and soil as well as sand and
rocks, filling up and overflowing their lower channels, and covering
the lowland fields with raw detritus. Drought and barrenness would
follow.

In their natural condition, or under wise management, keeping out
destructive sheep, preventing fires, selecting the trees that should be
cut for lumber, and preserving the young ones and the shrubs and sod of
herbaceous vegetation, these forests would be a never failing fountain
of wealth and beauty. The cool shades of the forest give rise to moist
beds and currents of air, and the sod of grasses and the various
flowering plants and shrubs thus fostered, together with the network
and sponge of tree roots, absorb and hold back the rain and the waters
from melting snow, compelling them to ooze and percolate and flow
gently through the soil in streams that never dry. All the pine needles
and rootlets and blades of grass, and the fallen, decaying trunks of
trees, are dams, storing the bounty of the clouds and dispensing it in
perennial life-giving streams, instead of allowing it to gather
suddenly and rush headlong in short-lived devastating floods. Everybody
on the dry side of the continent is beginning to find this out, and, in
view of the waste going on, is growing more and more anxious for
government protection. The outcries we hear against forest reservations
come mostly from thieves who are wealthy and steal timber by wholesale.
They have so long been allowed to steal and destroy in peace that any
impediment to forest robbery is denounced as a cruel and irreligious
interference with “vested rights,” likely to endanger the repose of all
ungodly welfare.

Gold, gold, gold! How strong a voice that metal has!

“O wae for the siller, it is sae preva’lin’!”


Even in Congress a sizable chunk of gold, carefully concealed, will
outtalk and outfight all the nation on a subject like forestry, well
smothered in ignorance, and in which the money interests of only a few
are conspicuously involved. Under these circumstances, the bawling,
blethering oratorical stuff drowns the voice of God himself. Yet the
dawn of a new day in forestry is breaking. Honest citizens see that
only the rights of the government are being trampled, not those of the
settlers. Only what belongs to all alike is reserved, and every acre
that is left should be held together under the federal government as a
basis for a general policy of administration for the public good. The
people will not always be deceived by selfish opposition, whether from
lumber and mining corporations or from sheepmen and prospectors,
however cunningly brought forward underneath fables and gold.

Emerson says that things refuse to be mismanaged long. An exception
would seem to be found in the case of our forests, which have been
mismanaged rather long, and now come desperately near being like
smashed eggs and spilt milk. Still, in the long run the world does not
move backward. The wonderful advance made in the last few years, in
creating four national parks in the West, and thirty forest
reservations, embracing nearly forty million acres; and in the planting
of the borders of streets and highways and spacious parks in all the
great cities, to satisfy the natural taste and hunger for landscape
beauty and righteousness that God has put, in some measure, into every
human being and animal, shows the trend of awakening public opinion.
The making of the far-famed New York Central Park was opposed by even
good men, with misguided pluck, perseverance, and ingenuity; but
straight right won its way, and now that park is appreciated. So we
confidently believe it will be with our great national parks and forest
reservations. There will be a period of indifference on the part of the
rich, sleepy with wealth, and of the toiling millions, sleepy with
poverty, most of whom never saw a forest; a period of screaming protest
and objection from the plunderers, who are as unconscionable and
enterprising as Satan. But light is surely coming, and the friends of
destruction will preach and bewail in vain.

The United States government has always been proud of the welcome it
has extended to good men of every nation, seeking freedom and homes and
bread. Let them be welcomed still as nature welcomes them, to the woods
as well as to the prairies and plains. No place is too good for good
men, and still there is room. They are invited to heaven, and may well
be allowed in America. Every place is made better by them. Let them be
as free to pick gold and gems from the hills, to cut and hew, dig and
plant, for homes and bread, as the birds are to pick berries from the
wild bushes, and moss and leaves for nests. The ground will be glad to
feed them, and the pines will come down from the mountains for their
homes as willingly as the cedars came from Lebanon for Solomon’s
temple. Nor will the woods be the worse for this use, or their benign
influences be diminished any more than the sun is diminished by
shining. Mere destroyers, however, tree-killers, wool and mutton men,
spreading death and confusion in the fairest groves and gardens ever
planted,—let the government hasten to cast them out and make an end of
them. For it must be told again and again, and be burningly borne in
mind, that just now, while protective measures are being deliberated
languidly, destruction and use are speeding on faster and farther every
day. The axe and saw are insanely busy, chips are flying thick as
snowflakes, and every summer thousands of acres of priceless forests,
with their underbrush, soil, springs, climate, scenery, and religion,
are vanishing away in clouds of smoke, while, except in the national
parks, not one forest guard is employed.

All sorts of local laws and regulations have been tried and found
wanting, and the costly lessons of our own experience, as well as that
of every civilized nation, show conclusively that the fate of the
remnant of our forests is in the hands of the federal government, and
that if the remnant is to be saved at all, it must be saved quickly.

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could,
they would still be destroyed,—chased and hunted down as long as fun or
a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or
magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would
planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble
primeval forests. During a man’s life only saplings can be grown, in
the place of the old trees—tens of centuries old—that have been
destroyed. It took more than three thousand years to make some of the
trees in these Western woods,—trees that are still standing in perfect
strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the
Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ’s
time—and long before that—God has cared for these trees, saved them
from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling
tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools,—only Uncle Sam
can do that.




APPENDIX


I. NATIONAL PARKS

Map
No.   Name            Location     Established      Characteristic           Area: Acres     Private     Revenue     Appropriation,   Visitors
                                                    Features                                 Claims:     1908        1909             1908
                                                                                             Acres11
1     Yellowstone1    Wyoming      March 1, 18723   Unique volcanic
                                                    mountain scenery         22,142,720.00   None        $4,125.65   $73,000.0018     19,542
2     Hot Springs1    Arkansas     June 16, 18803   Medicinal springs,
                                                    wooded mountains         911.63          None        28,090.00   None             898,00422
                                                                                                                                       14,418
3     Sequoia1        California   Sept. 25, 18903  “Big Trees”              161,597.00      3,716.9612  59.72       15,550.00        1,251
4     Yosemite1 8     California   Oct. 1, 18903    Unique glacial valleys
                                                    and snow mountains       719,622.00      19,827.0013  18,260.98  30,000.00        8,850
5     Gen. Grant1     California   Oct. 1, 18903    “Big Trees”              2,536.00        160.0012     None       2,000.00         1,773
6     Casa Grande1    Arizona      June 22, 18924   Prehistoric dwellings    480.009         None         None       900.00           No count
7     Mt. Rainier2    Washington   March 2, 18993   Snow peak and glaciers   207,360.00      18.2014      1,064.84   28,000.0019      2,826
8     Crater Lake1    Oregon       May 22, 19023    Lake in extinct volcano  159,360.0010    1,914.22     15.00      3,000.00         5,27523
9     Platt6          Oklahoma     July 1, 19023    Mineral springs          848.22          None         72.00      16,000.0020      26,00024
10    Wind Cave1      So. Dakota   Jan. 9, 19033    Caverns                  10,522.00       719.3915     400.00     2,500.00         3,17124
11    Sully’s Hill5   No. Dakota   June 2, 19045    Wooded hills and lake    780.00          None         None       None21           25023
12    Mesa Verde1     Colorado     June 29, 19063   Prehistoric dwellings    42,376.00       2,080.0016   None       7,500.00         8025
      5-mile strip
      surrounding
      Mesa Verde1     Colorado     June 29, 1906    Prehistoric dwellings    175,360.00      50,346.1417
                                                    TOTALS                   3,624,9472.85   78,781.9111  $52,088.19 $178,450.00
13*   Glacier         Montana      Pending                                   915,000.00      6,000.00

_Name, location, and establishment:_

1 Constituted from unpatented lands of the public domain.

2 Constituted from unpatented lands of National Forests.

3 By direct Act of Congress.

4 By executive order authorized by Sundry Civil Act, March 2, 1889.

5 By executive order authorized by Act of April 27, 1904, amending
agreement with Devil’s Lake Indians. A cash purchase.

6 Cash purchase from Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians, acts of July 1,
1902, and April 21, 1904. Renamed in honor of late Senator Platt of
Connecticut, long member of Indian Affairs Committee, by Act of June
29, 1906.

7 A small percentage of park laps over into Montana and Idaho.

8 Yosemite _Valley_ set aside June 30, 1864, as a _State_ park. Receded
to United Sates by California, March 3, 1905, and accepted by acts of
Congress, March 3, 1905, June 11,1906.

9 Extension recommended to include neighboring ruins.

10 Extension recommended by Superintendent to include lower slopes of
mountain to supply winter sanctuary for game.

_Private Lands:_

11 Three areas are included in total areas of parks. Total private
claims amount to about 2.8% of total park areas. State school lands may
be exchanged if same lie within any government reservation, under
Section 2275 Revised Statutes as amended in 1891.

12 Secretary of Interior repeatedly recommended purchase of claims, but
Congress has failed to act on his bills.

13 About 2% of park area is patented, including some of finest timber.

14 This is a placer mine patent. There are also 178 unperfected claims.

15 Establishing act allows claimants to exchange for outside lands
under forest lieu land laws. No exchanges to date. State school lands
have been exchanged.

16 Of this 360 acres are patented. Remainder in unperfected claims and
school lands. Workable coal underlies whole park.

17 Of this 31,535.98 acres are patented. Remainder as noted in Note 16.

_Finances_ (revenues are from leases and concessions):

18 Of this $65,000 is for “maintenance and repair of improvements,” to
be expended by War Department.

19 Of this $25,000 is for road building under War Department.

20 Of this $15,000 is toward a sewer if city of Sulphur provides a like
amount.

21 Park is supervised by an Indian school officer stationed in the
neighborhood.

_Visitors:_

22 First figure is number of baths, free and paid. Second figure is
number of persons visiting the mountain observation tower at 25 cents
each.

23 Estimated.

24 Includes visitors from outside the immediate neighborhood. Park also
serves city of Sulphur.

25 No carriage road to this park. Horse trail, steep and dangerous, 10
miles.

* Proposed park. Bill to establish passed both branches in 60th
Congress, but no in identical form. The bills failed to each a
conference vote. Tract is now in a National Forest.

II. STATUTORY PROVISIONS RELATING TO NATIONAL PARKS

Name            Departments Allied     Penalties             Protection of “Natural    Special Privleges Allowed
                in Control1            for Misdemeanors10    Condition” specified19
Yellowstone     War3 4                 Yes11                 Yes                       Hotels, etc.23
Hot Springs2    None                   Yes12                 No                        Numerous24
Sequoia         War3                   None13                Yes                       Hotels, etc.25
Yosemite        War3                   None13                Yes                       Hotels, etc.25
Gen. Grant      War3                   None13                Yes                       Hotels, etc.25
Casa Grande2    Smithsonian5           None14                Yes20                     None
Mt. Rainier     War4: Agriculture6     None13                Yes                       Hotels26: Mining27
Crater Lake     None                   Yes15                 No21                      Hotels26: Mining28
Platt           None7                  Yes16                 No22                      Water29
Wind Cave       Justice8               Yes17                 No22                      Hotels: Cavern30
Sully’s Hill    None                   None14                No                        None
Mesa Verde      None9                  Yes18                 Yes                       Scientific Research31

_Nomenclature and Management:_

1 Interior Department is in all cases the custodian.

2 All are specifically called “parks” in the establishing acts or their
amendments except Hot Springs and Casa Grande Ruin. These are termed
“reservations.”

3 Policed by troops on request of Interior Department (Sundry Civil
Acts of March 3, 1883, and June 6, 1900). Paid for from Army
appropriation. Same Superintendent and guard cares for both Sequoia and
Gen. Grant Parks.

4 Road construction by Army Engineers (Act of June 6, 1900).

5 Scientific excavations and protective works placed under Smithsonian
Institution by Sundry Civil Act of June 30, 1906.

6 At present the Supervisor of Rainier National Forest acts as
superintendent of park. Forest surrounds the park. Forest rangers
police park in part.

7 Superintendent of park recommends a military guard in summer.

8 The U. S. Marshall for So. Dakota acts voluntarily as advisory
superintendent.

9 Scientific excavations and protective works undertaken voluntarily by
Smithsonian Institution at request of Interior Department.


_Misdemeanor Penalties:_

10 All National Forest and National Park employees given power of
arrest for violation of laws and regulations by Act of Feb. 6, 1905,
reënacted by Agriculture Appropriation Act of March 3, 1905. Act of
March 3, 1875, provides a fine up to $500 or imprisonment up to one
year for cutting or injuring trees or fences, or for unauthorized
pasturing on any reserved public lands. Act of June 3, 1878, as amended
August 4, 1892, forbids unlawful timber cutting on public lands, the
fine being $100 to $1000. Section 5391 Revised Statues and Act of July
7, 1898, makes offences on U. S. property punishable under the law of
the State where committed, if such law exists, in cases where there is
no U. S. law to cover same. See 11, 12, 13.

11 Special Act of May 7, 1894, “to protect birds and animals in
Yellowstone National Park, and to punish crimes in said park.” Fine up
to $1000 or imprisonment up to 2 years, or both, with costs. Wyoming
State laws apply where U. S. laws are deficient.

12 Fine up to $100 and costs in certain cases on a portion of the
reservation (Act of April 20, 1904, amended March 2, 1907). City
ordinances and State laws apply in some cases.

13 Violators of rules governing park may only be ejected. State laws do
not cover sufficiently. In the case of the Yosemite there is no U. S.
Commissioner within 100 miles.

14 Rules and regulations for government are required by law in
connection with all National Parks except Casa Grande and Sully’s Hill.

15 Fine up to $500 or imprisonment up to 1 year and liability for all
damages.

16 Fine of $5 to $100 or imprisonment up to 6 months.

17 Fine up to $1000, or imprisonment up to 1 year, or both.

18 Fine up to $1000, or imprisonment up to 1 year, and obligation to
restore removed property.


_Preservation Terms:_

19 The preservation of the park in its _natural condition_ is required
by law on 7 of the 12 parks.

20 Establishing act specifies “protection of said ruin and of the
ancient city of which it is a part.” Custodian provided annually by
Sundry Civil Act.

21 Custodian required by establishing act to “cause adequate measures
to be taken for the preservation of the natural objects” and of timer,
game, and fish.

22 Requirement might be implied, however, from general terms of
establishing act.


_Privileges:_

23 Act of August 3, 1894, amended March 2, 1907, redefined leasing
terms, limiting area to 10 acres, or where more than one location was
granted one person or concern, not over 20 acres all told. It forbade
leasing any natural wonders, or any land within a fixed distance of
chief objects.

24 Railway locations, revocable by Congress, granted by acts of March
3, 1877, and Oct. 19, 1888. Another railway right of Dec. 21, 1893, was
defaulted. City reservoir site granted by Act of August 7, 1894. An
observation tower with elevator, admission 25 cents, leased a site on
the mountain under Act of March 19, 1898. Hotel, bath-house, and
sanatorium locations allotted, and hot water from springs sold pursuant
to sundry acts of Congress.

25 Revocable locations to power-plants, water-supply works, pole lines,
conduits, etc. authorized by Act of Feb. 15, 1901, when not deemed
“incompatible with the public interest.” Hetch-Hetchy storage basin
grant to San Francisco made hereunto, May, 1908.

26 Hotel leases unlimited as to area or time. Railways may be built
_into_, not through, park.

27 Mining claims proved in good faith prior to Act of May 27, 1908, may
be worked under regulation of department. 178 such claims in park.

28 Mining claims may be located and worked under regulation of
department. Such claims do not carry a fee title to land here.

29 Village of Sulphur supplied from creek under department regulation.

30 Establishing act permits renting cavern, the chief natural feature
of the park. Mining claims antedating park would be protected.

31 A bill introduced in 60th Congress by Secretary of Interior to allow
hotel and similar leases failed to become law.

(Bill now pending to create Glacier National Park, Montana, allows
20-year leases for private cottages, and also allows removal of mature
timber “for the protection and improvement of the park.” No penalties
for misdemeanor are provided.)

III. NATIONAL MONUMENTS1

Map   Name                     Location     Established     Characteristic Features              Area: Acres2
No.
14    Devil’s Tower            Wyoming      Sept. 24, 1906  Example of erosion                   1,152.91
15    Petrified Forest         Arizona      Dec. 8, 1906    Silicified mesozoic forest remains   60,776.02
16    Montezuma Castle         Arizona      Dec. 8, 1906    Cliff-dwellings, prehistoric         160.02
17    El Moro                  New Mexico   Dec. 8, 1906    Inscribed rocks                      160.00
18    Chaco Canyon             New Mexico   Mch. 11, 1907   Pueblo ruin, prehistoric             20,629.40
19    *Lassen Peak             California   May 6, 1907     Extinct volcano                      1,280.00
20    *Cinder Cone             California   May 6, 1907     Lava field                           5,120.00
21    *Gila Cliff-Dwellings    New Mexico   Nov. 16, 1907   Cliff-dwellings, prehistoric         160.00
22    *Tonto                   Arizona      Dec. 19, 1907   Cliff-dwellings, prehistoric         640.00
23    Muir Woods3              California   Jan. 9, 1908    Primeval redwood forest              295.00
24    *Grand Canyon            Arizona      Jan. 11, 1908   “Titan of chasms”                    806,400.00
25    *Pinnacles               California   Jan. 16, 1908   Rock pinnacles and caves             2,080.00
26    *Jewel Cave              So. Dakota   Feb. 7, 1908    Large cavern                         1280.00
27    Natural Bridges          Utah         Apr. 16, 1908   Three natural bridges                4120.00
28    Lewis and Clark Cavern   Montana      May 11, 1908    Limestone cavern                     160,00
29    Tumacacori5              Arizona      Sept. 5, 1908   Spanish mission ruin                 10.00
30    *Wheeler                 Colorado     Dec. 7, 1908    Volcanic formations                  300.00
31    *Mt. Olympus             Washington   Mch. 2, 1909    Habitat of Olympic elk6              608,640.00
32    Navajo                   Arizona      Mch. 20, 1909   Cliff-dwellings and pueblos          600.00
33    *Oregon Caves            Oregon       July 10, 1909   Limestone caverns                    480.00
                                                                                                 1,510,443.35

* Managed by U. S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture. These
areas lie within National Forests. All others managed by Department of
Interior. These were created out of National Forest lands. All others
except Muir Woods and Tumacacori were created from unpatented public
lands. See notes 3 and 5.

1 Monuments created by Presidential proclamation under Act of June 8,
1906, “For the Preservation of American Antiquities.” Act specifies
“historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other
objects of historic or scientific interest” as reservable under this
authority. No power given to lease any part of such lands. The
Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, and War are directed to draw
uniform rules for the control of these tracts. They may permit
“properly qualified institutions” to carry on scientific
investigations, including excavations and collecting. No appropriation
ever made for maintenance of monuments. No revenue derived therefrom. A
fine up to $500 or imprisonment up to 90 days, or both, is the penalty
for unlicensed excavating or collecting, or for injuring the reserved
properties.

2 Includes any possible private claims. Extent of patented lands not
known to Interior Department.

3 Gift of WIlliam and Elizabeth Thacher Kent of Chicago, Illinois.

4 Proposal to enlarge under consideration.

5 A perfected patent on this land was relinquished by the entryman.

6 The Olympic elk is a rare species and found only in this section of
Cascade Mountains.

IV. LOCATION AND AREA OF THE NATIONAL FORESTS IN THE UNITED STATES,
ALASKA, AND PORTO RICO, AND DATES WHEN LATEST PROCLAMATIONS BECAME
EFFECTIVE.


June 30, 1909.


[_Official Table of the Forest Service, United States Department of
Agriculture._]

State or Territory   Forest          Headquarters of           Proclamation   Area: Acres   Total
                                     Supervisor                Effective
Arizona              Apache          Springerville             Mar. 2, 1909   1,785,711
                     Chiricahua1     Douglas                   July 2, 1908   287,520
                     Coconino        Flagstaff                 July 2, 1908   3,689,982
                     Coronado        Benson                    July 2, 1908   966,368
                     Crook           Stafford                  July 1, 1908   788,624
                     Dixie2          St. George, Utah          Feb. 10, 1909  626,800
                     Garces          Nogales                   July 2, 1908   644,395
                     Kaibab          Kanab, Utah               July 2, 1908   1,080,000
                     Prescot         Prescott                  Feb 1, 1908    1,541,762
                     Sitgreaves      Snowflake                 Mar. 2, 1909   1,470,364
                     Tonto           Roosevelt                 Feb. 10, 1909  2,110,354
                     Zuñi3                                     Mar. 2, 1909   266,981
                                                                                            15,258,861
Arkansas             Arkansas        Mena                      Feb. 27, 1909  1,663,300
                     Ozark           Harrison                  Feb. 25, 1909  1,526,481
                                                                                            3,189,781
California           Angeles         Los Angeles               July 1, 1908   1,350,900
                     California      Willows                   Feb. 25, 1909  1,114,904
                     Cleveland       San Diego                 Jan. 26, 1909  2,236,178
                     Crater4         Medford, Oreg.            July 1, 1908   58,614
                     Inyo5           Bishop                    July 2, 1908   1,458,444
                     Klamath         Yreka                     Feb. 13, 1909  2,094,467
                     Lassen          Red Buff                  Mar. 2, 1909   1,373,043
                     Modoc           Alturas                   Feb. 25, 1909  1,471,817
                     Mono6           Gardnerville, Nevada      Mar. 2, 1909   813,789
                     Monterey        Salinas                   July 2, 1908   514,477
                     Plumas          Quincy                    Mar. 2, 1909   1,407,053
                     San Luis        San Luis Obispo           July 1, 1908   355,990
                     Santa Barbara   Santa Barbara             July 1, 1908   2,027,180
                     Sequoia         Hot Springs, Tulare Co.   Mar. 2, 1909   3,079,942
                     Shasta          Sisson                    Mar. 2, 1909   1,754,718
                     Sierra          Northfork                 July 2, 1908   1,935,680
                     Siskiyou7       Grants Pass, Oregon       July 1, 1908   37,814
                     Stanislaus      Sonora                    July 2, 1908   1,117,625
                     Tahoe8          Nevada City               Mar. 2, 1909   1,931,042
                     Trinity         Weaverville               Mar. 2, 1909   1,834,833
                                                                                            27,968,510
Colorado             Arapaho         Sulphur Springs           July 1, 1908   796,815
                     Battlement9     Collbran                  July 1, 1908   759,002
                     Cochetopa       Saguache                  July 1, 1908   932,890
                     Cochetopa       Saguache                  July 1, 1908   932,890
                     Gunnison        Gunnison                  July 1, 1908   945,350
                     Hayden10        Encampment, Wyoming       July 1, 1908   84,000

1 Total of Chiricahua in Arizona and New Mexico = 466,497 acres.

2 Total of Dixie in Arizona and Utah = 1,102,655 acres.

3 Total of Zuñi in Arizona and New Mexico = 670,981 acres.

4 Total of Crater in California and Oregon = 1,119,834 acres.

5 Total of Inyo in California and Nevada = 1,521,017 acres.

6 Total of Mono in California and Nevada = 1,349,126 acres.

7 Total of Siskiyou in California and Oregon = 1,302,393 acres.

8 Total of Tahoe in California and Nevada = 1,992,127 acres.

9 Area of Battlement revised by General Land Office, May 27, 1909.

10 Total of Hayden in Colorado and Wyoming = 454,911 acres.

State or Territory   Forest          Headquarters of           Proclamation   Area: Acres   Total
                                     Supervisor                Effective
Colorado             Holly Cross1    Glenwood Springs          April 26, 1909 595,840
—cont.               La Sal2         Moab, Utah                Mar. 16, 1909  29,502
                     Las Animas3     La Veta                   Mar. 1, 1907   196,140
                     Leadville       Leadville                 July 1, 1908   1,184,730
                     Medicine Bow    Fort Colins               July 1, 1908   659,780
                     Montezuma       Mancos                    July 1, 1908   1,175,811
                     Pike            Denver                    July 1, 1908   1,457,524
                     Rio Grande      Monte Vista               July 1, 1908   1,262,158
                     Routt           Steamboat Springs         July 1, 1908   1,049,686
                     San Isabel      Westcliffe                July 2, 1908   560,848
                     San Juan        Durango                   July 1, 1908   1,460,880
                     Sopris1         Aspen                     April 26, 1909 655,360
                     Uncompahgre     Delta                     July 1, 1908   921,243
                     White River     Meeker                    May 21, 1904   970,880
                                                                                            15,698,439
Florida              Choctawhatchee                            Nov. 27, 1908  467,606
                     Ocala                                     Nov. 24, 1908  207,285
                                                                                            674,891
Idaho                Beverhead4      Dillon, Mont.             July 1, 1908   304,140
                     Boise           Boise                     July 1, 1908   1,147,360
                     Cache5          Logan, Utah               July 1, 1908   276,640
                     Caribou6        Idaho Falls               Jan. 15, 1907  733,000
                     Challis         Challis                   July 1, 1908   1,161,040
                     Clearwater      Kooskia                   July 1, 1908   2,687,860
                     Coeur d’Alene   Wallace                   July 1, 1908   1,543,844
                     Idaho           Elo                       July 1, 1908   1,293,280
                     Kaniksu7        Newport, Wash.            July 1, 1908   544,220
                     Lemhi           Mackay                    July 1, 1908   955,408
                     Minidoka8       Oakley                    July 2, 1908   619,204
                     Nezperce        Grangeville               July 1, 1908   1,946,340
                     Payette         Emmett                    July 1, 1908   844,240
                     Pend d’Oreille  Sandpoint                 July 1, 1908   913,364
                     Pocatello9      Pocatello                 July 1, 1908   288,148
                     Salmon          Salmon                    July 1, 1908   1,762,472
                     Sawtooth        Hailey                    July 1, 1908   1,211,920
                     Targhee10       St. Anthony               July 1, 1908   1,101,720
                     Weiser          Weiser                    July 1, 1908   764,829
                                                                                            20,099,029
Kansas               Kansas          Garden City               May 15, 1908   302,387
                                                                                            302,387
Michigan             Marquette                                 Feb. 10, 1909  30,603
                     Michigan                                  Feb. 11, 1909  132,770
                                                                                            163,373
Minnesota            Minnesota       Cass Lake                 May 23, 1908   294,752
                     Superior        Ely                       Feb. 13, 1909  909,734
                                                                                            1,204,486
Montana              Absaroka        Livingston                July 1, 1908   980,440
                     Beartooth       Red Lodge                 July 1, 1908   685,293
                     Beaverhead4     Dillon                    July 1, 1908   1,506,680

1 Holy Cross divided into Holy Cross and Sopris National Forests, April
26, 1909.

2 Total of La Sal in Colorado and Utah = 474,130 acres.

3 Total of Las Animas in Colorado and New Mexico = 196,620 acres.

4 Total of Beaverhead in Idaho and Montana = 1,810,820 acres.

5 Total of Cache in Idaho and Utah = 533,840 acres.

6 Total of Caribou in Idaho and Wyoming = 740,740 acres.

7 Total of Kaniksu in Idaho and Washington = 950,740 acres.

8 Total of Minidoka in Idaho and Utah = 736,407 acres.

9 Total of Pocatello in Idaho and Utah = 298,868 acres

10 Total of Targhee in Idaho and Wyoming = 1,479,320 acres.

11 Minnesota National Forest created by act of Congress.

State or Territory   Forest          Headquarters of           Proclamation   Area: Acres   Total
                                     Supervisor                Effective
Montana              Bitterroot      Missoula                  July 1, 1908   1,180,900
—cont.               Blackfeet       Kalispell                 July 1, 1908   1,956,340
                     Cabinet         Thompson Falls            July 1, 1908   1,020,960
                     Custer          Ashland                   July 2, 1908   590,720
                     Deerlodge       Anaconda                  July 1, 1908   1,080,220
                     Flathead        Kalispell                 July 1, 1908   2,092,785
                     Gallatin        Bozeman                   July 1, 1908   907,160
                     Helena          Helena                    July 1, 1908   930,180
                     Jefferson       Great Falls               July 2, 1908   1,255,320
                     Kootenai        Libby                     July 1, 1908   1,661,260
                     Lewis and Clark  Chouteau                 July 1, 1908   884,136
                     Lolo            Missoula                  Nov. 6, 1906   1,211,680
                     Madison         Sheridan                  July 1, 1908   1,102,860
                     Missoula        Missoula                  July 1, 1908   1,237,509
                     Sioux1          Camp Crook, So. Dakota    Feb. 15, 1909  145,253
                                                                                            20,389,696
Nebraska             Nebraska        Halsey                    July 2, 1908   566,072
                                                                                            566,072
Nevada               Humboldt        Elko                      Jan. 20, 1909   1,158,814
                     Inyo2           Bishop, Cal.              July 2, 1908    62,573
                     Moapa           Las Vegas                 Jan. 21, 1909   390,580
                     Mono3           Gardnerville              Mar. 2, 1909    535,337
                     Nevada          Ely                       Feb. 10, 1909   1,222,312
                     Tahoe4          Nevada City, Cal.         Mar. 2, 1909    61,085
                     Toiyabe         Austin                    Feb. 20, 1909   1,678,714
                                                                                            5,109,415
New Mexico           Alamo           Alamogordo                Mar. 2, 1909   1,513,817
                     Carson          Antonito, Colo.           Mar. 2, 1909   1,390,680
                     Chiricahua5     Douglas, Ariz.            July 2, 1908   178,977
                     Datil           Magdalena                 Feb. 23, 1909  2,869,888
                     Gila            Silver City               Feb. 15, 1909  1,782,562
                     Jemez           Santa Fé                  July 1, 1908   944,085
                     Las Animas6     La Veta, Colo.            Mar. 1, 1907   480
                     Lincoln         Capitan                   Mar. 2, 1909   677,790
                     Manzano         Albuquerque               Apr. 16, 1908  587,110
                     Pecos           Santa Fé                  Jan. 28, 1909  622,322
                     Zuñi7                                     Mar. 2, 1909   404,000
                                                                                            10,971,711
North Dakota         Dakota          Camp Crook, So. Dakota    Nov. 24, 1908  13,940
                                                                                            13,940
Oklahoma             Whichita        Cache                     May 29, 1906   60,800
                                                                                            60,800
Oregon               Cascade         Eugene                    July 1, 1908   1,767,370
                     Crater8         Medford                   July 1, 1908   1,061,220
                     Deschutes       Prineville                July 14, 1908  1,504,207
                     Fremont         Lakeview                  July 14, 1908  1,260,320
                     Malheur         John Day                  July 1, 1908   1,167,400
                     Oregon          Portland                  July 1, 1908   1,787,280
                     Siskiyou9       Grants Pass               July 1, 1908   1,264,579
                     Siuslaw         Eugene                    July 1, 1908   821,794
                     Umatilla        Heppner                   July 1, 1908   540,496
                     Umpqua          Roseburg                  July 1, 1908   1,567,500

1 Total of Sioux in Montana and South Dakota = 249,653 acres.

2 Total of Inyo in California and Nevada = 1,521,017 acres.

3 Total of Mono in California and Nevada = 1,349,126 acres.

4 Total of Tahoe in California and Nevada = 1,992,127 acres.

5 Total Chiricahua in Arizona and New Mexico = 466,497 acres.

6 Total of Las Animas in Colorado and New Mexico = 196,620 acres.

7 Total of Zuñi in Arizona and New Mexico = 670,981 acres.

8 Total of Crater in California and Oregon = 1,119,834 acres.

9 Total of Siskiyou in California and Oregon = 1,302,393 acres.

State or Territory   Forest          Headquarters of           Proclamation   Area: Acres   Total
                                     Supervisor                Effective
Oregon               Wallowa         Wallowa                   July 2, 1908   1,750,240
—cont.               Wenaha1         Walla Walla, Washington   Mar. 1, 1907   494,942
                     Whitman         Sumpter                   July 1, 1908   1,234,020
                                                                                            16,221,368
South Dakota         Black Hills     Deadwood                  Feb. 15, 1909  1,190,040
                     Sioux2          Camp Crook                Feb. 15, 1909  104,400
                                                                                            1,294,440
Utah                 Ashley3         Vernal                    July 1, 1908   947,490
                     Cache4          Logan                     July 1, 1908   257,200
                     Dixie5          St. George                Feb. 10, 1909  475,865
                     Fillmore        Beaver                    July 1, 1908   578,459
                     Fishlake        Salina                    July 2, 1908   537,233
                     La Sal6         Moab                      Mar. 16, 1909  444,628
                     Manti           Ephraim                   Apr. 25, 1907  786,080
                     Minidoka7       Oakley, Idaho             July 2, 1908   117,203
                     Nebo            Nephi                     July 1, 1908   343,920
                     Pocatello8      Pocatello, Idaho          July 1, 1908   10,720
                     Powell          Escalante                 July 2, 1908   726,159
                     Sevier          Panguitch                 Jan. 17, 1906  710,920
                     Uinta           Provo                     July 1, 1908   1,250,610
                     Wasatch         Salt Lake City            July 2, 1908   249,840
                                                                                            7,436,327
Washington           Chelan          Chelan                    July 1, 1908   2,492,500
                     Columbia        Portland, Oreg.           July 1, 1908   941,440
                     Colville        Republic                  Mar. 1, 1907   869,520
                     Kaniksu9        Newport                   July 1, 1908   406,520
                     Olympic         Olympia                   Mar. 2, 1907   1,594,560
                     Rainier         Orting                    July 1, 1908   1,641,280
                     Snoqualmie      Seattle                   July 1, 1908   961,120
                     Washington      Bellingham                July 1, 1908   1,419,040
                     Wenaha1         Walla Walla               Mar. 1, 1907   318,400
                     Wenatchee       Leavenworth               July 1, 1908   1,421,120
                                                                                            12,065,500
Wyoming              Ashley3         Vernal, Utah              July 1, 1908   4,596
                     Bighorn         Sheridan                  July 2, 1908   1,151,680
                     Bonneville      Pinedale                  July 1, 1908   1,627,840
                     Caribou10       Idaho Falls, Idaho        Jan. 15, 1907  7,740
                     Cheyenne        Laramie                   July 1, 1908   617,932
                     Hayden11        Encampment                July 1, 1908   370,911
                     Shoshone        Cody                      July 1, 1908   1,689,680
                     Sundance        Sundance                  July 1, 1908   183,224
                     Targhee         St. Anthony, Idaho        July 1, 1908   377,600
                     Teton           Jackson                   July 1, 1908   1,991,200
Wyoming              Afton                                     July 1, 1908   976,320
                                                                                            8,998,723

Total of 147 National Forests in the United States . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . 167,677,749

1 Total of Wenaha in Oregon and Washington = 813,342 acres.

2 Total of Sioux in Montana and South Dakota = 249,653 acres.

3 Total of Ashley in Utah and Wyoming = 952,086 acres.

4 Total of Cache in Idaho and Utah = 523,840 acres.

5 Total of Dixie in Arizona and Utah = 1,102,665 acres.

6 Total of La Sal in Colorado and Utah = 474,130 acres.

7 Total of Minidoka in Idaho and Utah = 736,407 acres.

8 Total of Pocatello in Idaho and Utah = 298,868 acres.

9 Total of Kaniksu in Idaho and Washington = 950,740 acres.

10 Total of Caribou in Idaho and Wyoming = 740,740 acres.

11 Total of Hayden in Colorado and Wyoming = 454,911 acres.

12 Total of Targhee in Idaho and Wyoming = 1,479,320 acres.

State or Territory   Forest          Headquarters of           Proclamation   Area: Acres   Total
                                     Supervisor                Effective
Alaska               Chugach         Ketchikan                 Feb. 23, 1909  11,280,640
                     Tongass         Ketchikan                 Feb. 16, 1909  15,480,986
                                                                                            26,761,626
Porto Rico           Luquillo                                  Jan. 17, 1903  65,950
                                                                                            65,950

Grand total of 150 National Forests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . 194,505,325




INDEX

Adenostema fasciculatum, heathlike shrub, its influence on the
physiognomy of Sierra landscapes, 142.


Age of trees, pine, 69, 104, 107, 108, 114, 275; libocedrus, 118;
juniper, 124; fir, 275, 276; sequoia, 260, 275-280, 297, 299.


Alaska, plants and animals of, 7-11.


Alpenglow, 74.


Apple, wild, 22, 23.


Aspen, 131


Aster, 164


Avalanches, snow, 27, 251-255; rock, 140, 259.


Azalea, 146, 181, 303.


Axe clearings, 101.

Bear-hunters, 353; Duncan, 179; David Brown and his dog Sandy, 181.


Bears, 28, 52, 57, 144, 314; food of Sierra, 172; interviews with 174,
177; tracks, 178; and sheep, 185.


Beaver, 16, 25, 53.


Beaver, mountain, 201.


Beaver meadows, 23, 37.


Birds, of the Yosemite Park, 213.


Blackberries, 24.


Bogs, 139, 166.


Brodiæa, 23, 155.


Bryanthus, 148.

California, floweriness of, 137.


Calochortus, 23, 145.


Calypso borealis, 7, 23.


Camassia, 156.


Campanula, 282.


Camping, 56, 133, 161, 163.


Cañon, the Grand, of the Colorado, 35; Yellowstone, 49; Merced, 259;
Tuolumne, 259.


Cañons of the Sierra, 83.


Cassiope, 147.


Cathedral Peak, 90.


Ceanothus, 145.


Cedar, incense, 116; red, 123, 273.


Chamæbatia foliolosa, a forest carpet, 143.


Chaparral, 142, 144, 146.


Cherry, 23, 146.


Chestnut, 22.


Chinquapin, 146.


Chipmunk, 196.


Climates of the Sierra, 138, 160, 161, 164.


Clintonia, 18, 23.


Clouds, 77, 164, 276, 281.


Colds, 133.


Coyote, 194.


Crow, Clarke, 228.


Crystals, 161.


Currants, 24.


Cypripedium, 156.

Daisy, 94, 149.


Danger, 28, 57, 133, 184, 208.


Deer, 189, 315.


Deserts, 6.


De Soto, 71.


Diver, great northern, 227.


Dog, Carlo, 175; Sandy, 181.


Dogwood, flowering, 22, 130.


Douglas, David, in forests of Oregon, 110.


Duck-hunters, 353.


Ducks, 226.


Dwarf willow, 94.

Eagle, 228.


Earthquake, 261; ancient, 265; taluses, formation of, 260; influence on
cañon scenery, 265.


Emerson, his visit to Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees,
131, 235.


Eriogonum, 149, 166.


Erythronium, 23, 31.

Farm lands of Washington and Oregon, 24, 25.


Ferns, 149, 160; Woodwardia, 149; Pteris, 150; Pellæa, five species of,
151; Cryptogramme, 151; Phegopteris, 151; Cheilanthes, three species
of, 152;


Adiantum, two species, 152.


Fir. _See_ Silver fir.


Floods, 256.


Floral cascades, 159.


Flower beds of the Sierra, 142.


Flowers, of pine, spruce, fir, and hemlock, 168, 169; sequoia, 284.


Forest fires, 297, 307, 335, 352, 356-359.


Forest picture, 302.


Forest Reservations, Rocky Mountain, 15; Pacific Coast, 19, 31, 34;
opposition to, 24, 360; wildness of, 24.


Forest Reserve, Black Hills, 13; Bitter Root, 16; Flathead, 17; Sierra,
31; Grand Cañon, 34.


Forest sepulchres, 64.


Forests, growing interest in, 2, 5, 33; of the Cascade Mountains, 22;
fossil, 60; of the Yellowstone Park, 67; Sierra, 80, 98-136; Giant, of
the Kaweah, 300; of the Tule River, 318; American, 331; destruction of,
336, 344; influence on streams, 337, 346, 359; management of, 337-365;
redwood (_Sequoia semper-virens_), 347-352.


Fountains of the Sierra, 241, 245.


Fritillaria, 23, 156.


Frogs, 211.


Frost crystals, 165.

Gardens, wild, of California, 5; the East, 6; Alaska, 7; Black Hills,
14; Rocky Mountains, 18, 19; Cascade Mountains, 23, 30; Sierra,
137-142; forest 155; cliff, 157; wall, 159; pot-hole, shadow, alpine,
160; winter, 161; meadow, 163; sky, Mono, and tree, 167.


Gaultheria, 23, 350.


Geese, 225.


General Grant National Park and tree, 298.


Gentians, 94, 142, 164.


Geyser basins, 43, 44.


Geyser craters, 46.


Geysers, 38, 41, 43, 53; distribution of, 55.


Giants of Sierra forests, 108; Western, 116.


Glacial action, 84, 92, 96, 138.


Glacial and post-glacial denudation, 84, 89.


Glacial period, 64, 65, 78, 96, 242.


Glacier lakes, 78, 95.


Glacier landscapes, 65, 91.


Glacier meadows, 37, 163.


Glacier monuments, 84.


Glacier pavements, 83, 84-86.


Glacier sparrow, 231.


Glaciers, 19, 30, 64, 78; of the Sierra, 95; ancient Tuolumne, 88, 90.


Goat, wild, 24, 29.


Gold, influence of, 11, 361.


Goldenrods, 17, 142, 164.


Gray, Asa, 33.


Great Basin, the, 94.


Grouse, 215.

Hackmatack, 18.


Hawks, 228.


Hayden, F. V., his work exploring the Yellowstone region, and getting
it set apart as a national park, 39.


Hazel, 23, 146.


Hazel Green, 81.


Heathworts, 23, 147.


Hemlock, mountain, 125, 170.


Home-going, 98.


Honeysuckle, 142, 147.


Hooker, Sir Joseph, 33.


Hothouses, natural, 161.


Hot springs, 38, 41, 43, 54.


Huckleberries, 24.


Hulsea, 167.


Hunters and trappers, 51, 58.

Indian summer, 165, 283, 316.


Indians, 24, 51, 263; their orchards, 105; hunting grounds, 14, 122,
193; tame, 317.

Johnson, Dr., on the trees of Scotland, 108.


Joliet and Father Marquette on the upper Mississippi, 71.


Juniper, western, 123, 273.

Lakes, McDonald, 18; Avalanche, 19; Yellowstone, 47, 70; Mono, 94,
Tahoe, 48; Tenaya, 86.


Landscapes, new, 8; changes in, 4; of the Sierra, 87.


Landslip, 287.


Larch, western, 18; Lyall, 18.


Lark, meadow, 238.


La Salle, 71.


Lewis and Clark, 28.


Library, geological, 59.


Light, 82, 165.


Lightning, 276.


Lilies, 23, 153, 155, 350.


Linnæa borealis and companions, 18, 50.


Lizards, 204.


Log houses, 288, 305, 320.


Loggers, 29.


Lumbering in the Sierra, 100.

Man influence on landscapes, 4.


Manzanita, 143.


Maple, 22, 130.


Mariposa tulip, 155.


Marmot, 17, 199.


Meadows, glacier, 37, 163; in sequoia woods, 296, 302.


Monardella, 282.


Moneses, 18.


Monument, the Glacier, 87.


Mosses, 22.


Mt. Rainier, 30; Amethyst, 60, 73; Washburn, 66; Dana, 90, 93; Lyell,
McClure, Gibbs, 90; Hoffman, 161.


Mountaineering, 285, 306.


Mountains, the Western, 2; new, 4; Cascade, 19; Olympic, 19; Rocky,
12-18, 37, 38; Sierra, 76.


Mud, 44.


Mule, Brownie, 285, 295, 301; his prayer, 318.

Names, 58.


Nature, 56, 73, 97, 332; laboratories of, 44.


Night air, 133.


Nights, 165


Nuts, pine, 103.

Oaks, California black, 128; gold-cup live-oak, 128.


Orchids, 23, 156.


Ousel, water, 29, 52, 238.


Owens River water, 246.

Parks, national, of the West, 12; Mt. Rainier, 30; Yellowstone, 37;
Yomesite, 76; animals of, 172, 201; birds, 213; General Grant and
Sequoia, 298, 328, 329; management of, 40, 351.


Petrified forests, 38, 60.


Phlox, 94.


Pika, 162, 201.


Pine, yellow, 13, 112, 115; contorted, lodge-pole, Murray, two leaved,
tamarack, 15, 18, 67, 68, 83, 121, 122; mountain, 18, 108; Sabine, 102;
hard cone (attenuata), 103; dwarf, 106; sugar, 100, 109; nut, 105;
white, 68, 105.


Plover, 227.


Plum, 23.


Polemonium, alpine, 167.


Poplar, 130.


Primrose, shrubby, 147.


Prospectors, 289, 352.


Pyrola, 18.

Quail, mountain, 219; valley, 222.

Railroads in western forests, 357.


Rain, 26.


Raspberries, 24.


Rat, wood, 201.


Rattlesnakes, 28, 57, 206.


Redwood, 100, 268.


Reservations, _See_ Forest Reservations.


Rhododendron, 23, 146, 350.


Ribes, 282.


River, the Yellowstone, 48; Mississippi, 71; Columbia, 73; Missouri,
73; Colorado, 73; Tuolumne, 95, 258; Merced, 95, 258; San Joaquin, 95.


Rivers, 37; Sierra, 242.


Riverside trees, 130.


Robin, 236.


Rock ferns, 149.


Rose, 23, 147, 282.


Rubus, 147.

Sage-cock, 214.


Salmon berries, 24.


Sandhill crane, 227.


Sanger Lumber Co., 298.


Sarcodes, 281.


Sawmills, in sequoia woods, 292, 298, 299, 319, 351.


Scenery, habit, 2, 3; best, care-killing, 17; cañon, 259, 266.


Seed collectors, 101.


Seeds of conifers, 120.


Sequoia ditches, 291.


Sequoia gigantea, 268; cones, 274; age, 275; death, 276; groves in
spring, 281; summer, 282; autumn, 283; winter, 283; studies, 285;
seedlings, 297; young trees, 288, 296; oldest, 297; size of, 294, 322;
durability of wood, 291; gum, 292; groves of Yosemite Park, 109;
Mariposa Grove, 286, 328; Fresno Grove, 287-292; Dinky Grove, 293;
forests of Kings River, 295; Kaweah and Tule river basins, 300, 314,
316; distribution of, 322, 325; permanence of the species, 323;
influence on streams, 324, 329.


Shake-makers, 298, 353.


Sheep, wild, 194; hoofed locusts, 317, 318, 352.


Shepherds, 33, 185, 293, 317.


Sierra climate, change of, 324.


Silex pavements, 46.


Silver fir, alpine, 31, 68, 170; magnificent, 83, 118, 170; white,
noble, grand, and lovely, 119, 170.


Snow, 26, 247.


Snow avalanches, 251.


Snow plant (Sarcodes), 156, 281.


Snowstorms, 249, 283.


Soil, 65, 67; moraine, 100, 138; crystal, 140, 161; earthquake boulder,
140, 259.


Sparrow, the glacier, 231.


Spiræa, 142.


Spiritual world, the, 74.


Springs, 244, 245; soda, 247.


Spruce, Engelmann, 14, 68; Douglas, 19, 22, 68, 100, 116; Sitka, 170.


Squirrels, 19, 52, 192, 194, 274, 284.


Storms, 267.


Streams of the Sierra, 241, 246, 248; in spring, 256; in summer and
autumn, 257.


Sunflowers, crystal, 162.


Swamps, 7.

Talus, earthquake, 140, 259.


Tamarack, 18.


Thoreau, his description of the pistillate flowers of the white pine,
169; on the destruction of trees and shrubs, 356.


Torreys, 131.


Tourists, 21, 27, 53.


Trapper, 57.


Travel, modern, 1, 50, 56.


Tree flowers, 168; how best to see them, 165.


Tree gardens, 167.


Trout, 18, 48, 67, 211.


Tumion, 131.


Tundra, Alaska, 7.

Vaccinium, 18, 94, 148.


Valley, Central, of California, 5, 137.


Violets, 142, 281.


Volcanic cones, 30, 94.


Volcanic rocks, 60.


Volcanic storms, 61.


Volcanoes, 30; mud, 51.

Water, action of, on soilbeds, 138.


Water, Owens River, 246.


Waterfalls, Yellowstone, 49; Kaweah, 300.


Wildness, 2; unchangeable, 4.


Willow, dwarf, 94.


Wind, action of, on soilbeds, 139.


Woodchuck, 199.


Woodpeckers, 233, 282.


Wood-rat, 201.




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